Chapter 3: “I am Canadian” what is “Canadian “culture?

Culture: encompasses the sum total of the social environment in which we are raised and continue to be socialized throughout our
lives. Culture entails a wide assortment of ideas, customs, behaviours, and practices. Although all societies and even groups within
the same culture differ in how they develop and carry out specific practices, they also share certain features. Example: all societies
find ways to secure food, clothing, and shelter. These things are called cultural universals: common practices shared by all societies.

Postmodern lens: emphasizes the changing nature of society and is useful for examining the diversity and ever-changing nature
Canadian culture. This is done by recognizing the spectrum of cultural differences among divergent groups that make up Canada, this
lens affirms that we are discussing what can be described as multiple simultaneous Canadian culture that are constantly being
created and re-created, rather than a single unified Canadian identity.

Material and nonmaterial culture

Through socialization practices, Canadians come to share cultural ideas about what is important (securing a job) and what the
appropriate means or for obtaining desired goals (going to school to learn skills associated with legitimate forms of employment.

William Fielding Ogburn: social heritage – the common cultural world into which children of a particular group are born. He also
noted the importance that people attached to material objects and the central role that material belongings take on in any given
culture.

Material culture: all of the tangible or physical items that people have created for use.

Nonmaterial culture: intangibles that are the end product of intellectual or spiritual development, or the meanings that people
attached to artifacts (language, knowledge, morals, beliefs). Things like these helped organize and give meaning to our social world.

Both of these cultures contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

How culture shapes our understanding

language as a precursor to shared understanding

language is the primary facilitator of culture because it is the main channel to which people express themselves and passed acquired
knowledge on from one generation to the next.

Language: a shared system of communication that includes spoken, written, and signed forms of speech as well as nonverbal
gestures used to convey meaning.

Significant portions of immigrants and their descendents speak languages other than English and French and engage in a variety of
traditional cultural practices. In this sense, language contributes to cultural diversity and freedom of expression.

Mother tongue: first language learned at home in childhood that it still understood by an individual at the time the information on
language is collected.

Sociology in theory: the SapirWhorf hypothesis

Language serves as a referent such that aspects of material and nonmaterial culture come to take on particular meanings and come
to be understood are similarly by people who share a common culture and speak the same language.

Edward spair: became intrigued by how language she people worldview when he came across Franz Boas’s early study of Hopi Indian
language and noted the absence of an objective sense of time. Example: we might say “the light flashed”, they would say “flash”
without a subject (light) with no reference to time. Because of how they use and understand language, they experience the world
quite differently from other groups that use languages that make reference to time. This lead spair to believe the language helps
establish thinking linguistic determination.

Benjamin Lee Whorf: how language is used to label and code events and objects is also important for understanding what those
things mean in a particular culture. His position was that language has particular meaning within the given culture in which it occurs
is commonly referred to as linguistic relativism.
 Spair – Whorf hypothesis: (linguistic determination and relativism, taken together )the assertion that language helps shape reality
for those experiencing it.

Language helps us appreciate how vastly different cultures may be from one another. This is especially evident in the language used
to describe prevalent aspects of climate, geography, and material culture. Example: that’s why Inuit have different words for snow
(soft snow, old slow).

Nuances of language and meaning are especially apparent in blunders that occur when products are marketed in foreign countries.

Sociology in theory: gendered language

language enables cultural diversity; it also imposes constraints on individuals and groups in society.

Feminist framework: helps us better appreciate how language confers cultural constructions. Begins with the names selected for
boys versus girls, followed by the qualitatively different adjectives used to describe males versus females later on. Example: baby
boy; strong, cute, but not pretty.

Feminist theory is especially concerned with the ways in which language differentiates between males and females in ways that
perpetuate and even produce inequalities. Example: certain terms can denote that a male is assumed to be present and serves as
the head of the household (“ his”rather than “there”house).

Androcentric or exclusively male terms to represent both sexes (United States Declaration of Independence: all men are created
equal) may inadvertently reinforce sexism by emphasizing the male term over the female one.

Result of feminine activism and increased female participation in the paid workforce, English-language as started to shift. More
terms are gender-neutral in that they do not identify any particular sex. Example: occupational titles in North America have become
gender-neutral (chairperson, city counsellor, firefighter).

Norms as regulators of shared behaviours

language is often used by members of a given culture to communicate expectations about appropriate conduct, and this is another
way that language places restrictions on individuals.

Folkways: informal norms based on accepted traditions and centre on acts of kindness or politeness that demonstrates respect for
the generalized other. Example: address your instructor with his or her formal title (Dr. or professor). Failure to comply with cultural
expectations in the formal folkways generally result in informal sanctions (punishments) such as suppressions of disapproval from
others.

Culture is always changing, and that is why you are much more inclined than your peers to begin an email or answer the phone with
the greeting hey, rather than hello. Also, that aspect of culture is also contested, and that’s why some of your instructors may still
frown on the use of the term hey as an appropriate conversation starter.

Mores: more institutionalized norms that are considered to embody fundamental values. It is a formalized means for maintaining
social control and society. Example:mores in Canadian culture included formal legislation stating that no one is allowed to trespass,
commit theft, or sell prohibited drugs.

Taboos:mores that have such strong moral connotations attached to them that the acts are considered wrong in and of themselves
(cannibalism and incest). Transgression of Mores and taboos results in formal sanctions such as loss of personal freedom (prison).

Perspective norms: rules depicting behaviours we are expected to perform (covering one’s mouth while coughing, respecting the
rights of others).

Prospective norms: rules outlining behaviours we are expected to refrain from doing (swearing in church or taking drugs).

Nonverbal communication as a conveyor of cultural meaning

signs of disapproval and other informal sanctions are often applied to nonverbal communication. Example: someone cuts in front of
you in traffic, you might blow your horn or perhaps even give the other driver a hand gestured (middle finger).

There are no universal gestures, even in commonplace Western gestures (waving hello) can mean different things in other cultures.
All cultures possess similar categories of gestures. Example: have gestures for displays of friendship or anger. Facial expressions are
widely recognized across cultures.

Emblems: nonverbal gestures with direct verbal equivalence. They are typically used in place of words. Example: middle finger.
Gestures are also used for greetings or displays of pleasure.

Values as shared ideas

Cultural values are collectively shared ideas about what is right and wrong.

References are constantly being made to help policies, mission statements, or programs line up with core Canadian values, no
agreed-upon source to which those values correspond.

While there may be no obvious consensus on core Canadian values, common themes repeatedly emerge. Example: citizens forum on
Canada future, 1991, the federal government created a task force to gather opinions from Canadians about their view on Canada’s
future.

The participants identified these seven common unifying Canadian values:

1. Believe in equality and fairness in a demographic society: the participants identified in equality and fairness as a core value.
2. Believe in consultation and dialogue: Canadians regarded themselves as people settle their differences peacefully and in a
consultative rather than confrontational manner, both at the level of individual and at the level of government.
3. Importance of accommodation and tolerance: participants recognized the existence of different groups in society and their
right to sustain their own cultures while attaching themselves to the country’s society, values, institutions.
4. Support for diversity: participants noted the importance of retaining and celebrating Canada’s rich diversity in terms of
language, region, ethnicity, and culture.
5. Compassion and generosity: the importance of supporting the collective in the form of universal and extensive social
services, our healthcare system, how pension, willingness to help refugees, commitment to regional economic equalization.
6. Attachment to Canada’s natural beauty
7. our world image: commitment to freedom, peace, and in nonviolent change, the maintenance of a Progressive but free and
peacekeeping country was expressed by forum participants.

Corresponding values and norms

Cultural values and norms are closely related in that values reflect group ideas, while norms are those ideas translated into
expectations about actions. Example: Canadians value freedom and equality including the right to choose marital partners (based on
things such as love and mutual respect), this translates into law or recognizing same-sex marriages and laws permitting the adoption
of children by same-sex couples.

Sociology in theory: functionalist and conflict perspectives

Functionalist content that shared cultural values are the foundation of society and what holds it together. Emile Durkheim the extent
cultural values and norms are social facts: observable social phenomena external to individuals that exercise power over them. She
argued that people display a collective conscience, that is a reoccurring pattern by which the respect norms and follow them,
because they have internalized them through early socialization practices.

Internalization norms: as time goes on, people come to accept cultural norms and follow them without even being aware they are
doing so.

Talcott Parsons: contended that culture is a generalized system of internalized symbols and meanings, along with role expectations
(norms), and general values held by the collectivity. In this case, norms and values work together at a more general level in the form
of social motions (school and family) to keep society running.

In contrast, conflict framework highlights the lack of correspondence and the apparent contradictions between cultural values and
norms. Example: even though equality is valued in Canadian society, not all’s are treated equally.

Ideal versus real culture

Ideal culture: encompasses the cultural values that most will identify with

real culture: actual practices engaged in

Example: Canadians value equal rights, and while men and women are treated similarly under the law, this is not always the case in
practice – women are still disadvantaged by inequities in pay.

These discrepancies between real and ideal are not an exclusively Canadian phenomena. Gannon’s global study of 62 National or
societal cultures found the same paradox: cultural values are consistently associated with cultural practices, but those associations
are often contradictory. Means more often than not, groups behave in ways that go against cultural values.

Why does it happen? Control over scarce resources and the desire for profit, cultural variations in the existing beliefs and practices
of particular groups also explain the discrepancy.

Traditional beliefs versus modern practices modern technology or science advocates for practices that may be inconsistent with
traditional beliefs that are highly regarded and continue to be part of a group’s cultural heritage. Example: despite the well-
established health benefits of breast-feeding for both mother and infants in developing countries, cultural beliefs continue to
discourage women from engaging in the practice.

Cultural relativism: the notion that a society’s customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of
that societies problems and opportunities.

Ethnocentrism: the tendency to believe that one’s cultural beliefs and practices are superior and should be used as the standard to
which other cultures are compared.

Subcultures and counter cultures

Subculture: groups that can be differentiated from mainstream culture by its divergent traits involving language, norms, beliefs, and
or values. Individuals can belong to more than one subculture, and various subcultures can exist within the larger context of
Canadian culture. Subcultures are identified by shared traits, which can include food preferences (vegetarians), music interests (rap),
clothing and hair style (punk).

Counterculture: type of subculture that strongly opposes core aspects of the mainstream culture. Example: Hells Angels are
appropriately classified as a counterculture because of their involvement in criminal activities such as prostitution, drug trafficking,
weapons trafficking, and extortion.

Canadian culture continues to include a blend of diverse groups and traditions coexisting in what sociologists describe as “cultural
mosaic”.

How is Canadian culture unique?

The abundance of Canadian symbols

Symbol: object, image, or event that represents a particular concept. Example: heart is a symbol for love. Similarly, a flag is often
used to symbolize a country, the Canadian flag serves as an important, uniquely Canadian symbol.

Other well accepter symbols underscore Canada’s cultural diversity. Example: Inukshuks remind us of inuit traditions, while totem
poles are associated with aboriginal people of the specific Northwest.

Even nonmaterial aspects of culture can serve as symbols, such as sports originating in Canada: hockey, lacrosse, basketball. Symbols
also reflect values, including attachment to Canada’s distinct natural beauty and its wilderness. Symbols are especially evident in
popular forms of material culture: Canadian beer, maple syrup, Tim Hortons.

The prevalence of high culture and popular culture

high culture and the societal elite

Pierre Bourdieu: cultural and educational practices lead to the social reproduction of society. Those people in the higher classes have
more financial resources and this allows more exposure to high culture; also, they have been socialized by the elite families and by
their education to understand and appreciate various aspects of that culture. Members of the social elite then pass on their shared
understanding and appreciation of high culture to future generations as social asset.

Status symbol: material indicators of wealth and prestige. Also, people who participate in elite culture can be distinguished from the
lower classes on the basis of status symbols. Example: luxury cars, designer clothing and jewelry.

Popular culture and the masses

Popular culture: often contrasted with high culture, term is used to describe the everyday cultural practices and products that are
most desired by the masses. Example: Canadian popular culture encompasses movies and television series, YouTube, Facebook, cell
phone apps, and heavy marketed products that may or may not originate in Canada.It also includes well-established spots to eat,
drink, or show. Example: Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, Lulu lemon.

Popular culture, sometimes equates to youth culture. In our society, much of popular culture is promoted and even constructed via
the mass media (television and movie celebrities).

Sociology in theory: critical views of popular culture

John Storey: popular culture theorist, describes popular culture as an empty conceptual category that can be filled in a number of
potentially conflicting ways. Example: popular culture can be viewed as whatever is left over from the categorization of high culture,
as a power struggle involving dominant and subordinate classes, and as a venue for distinguishing various social groups from
dominant ones.

Ideology: set of ideas that support the needs and views of a particular group. Conflict theorists generally view popular culture as a
means for the ruling class to control the masses. Additionally, critical approaches view pop culture through the perspective of
ideology.

Frankfurt institution for social research (Frankfurt School): claimed that popular culture serves the dominant class while exploiting
the lower classes.

Theodor W. Adorno: points out how the price of commodities forms the basis of most social relations. Additionally, how the costs of
advertising preclude the lower classes from ever getting a chance to make money in the culture industry. That the consumer is
brought under the spell of advertising in such a way that he or she feels compelled to participate in consumerism even with a full
understanding that capitalists are benefiting in ways that go well beyond the value of the product being sold.

Goldthorpe and colleagues state in the affluent worker in the class structure: consumerism is viewed as a personal choice rather than
a form of exploitation, important to note that many Canadians choices are constrained by socioeconomic and other macrolevel
factors that are largely beyond their control.

Understanding popular culture , John Fiske: viewing culture from either a solely exploitative framework or a solely personal choice
framework is too limiting. Popular culture is intricately tied into capitalism since it is the producers who determine what exists for
the masses to consume. Not a one-way relationship, and the links between the two are important for understanding how the masses
themselves help shape popular culture. He differentiates between mass culture and popular culture, and stating that mass culture
refers to the material products produced by the capitalists to exploit masses, whereas popular culture includes the intangible
components of culture experienced by the masses, components that in turn shape mass culture.

The masses impart their own meanings to the objects created by the capitalists and in doing so play an important role in shaping the
face of consumerism.