Culture

Objectives
At the end of the session, the learners are expected to:
 Define and explain what culture is
 Describe culture and society a complex whole
 Identify elements of culture

Motivation:
List all things that make Filipino culture unique and different from other cultures. Then explain why Filipinos
behave the way they do. Are these cultural traits unchangeable or are they subject to historical and social changes?
Do all Filipinos share the same traits? Explain

The complexity of Culture

Culture is a people’s way of life. This classic definition appears generic, yet prefigures both the processes and
structures that account not only for the development of such a way of life, but also for the inherent systems that lend
it its self-perpetuating nature.

According to British literary scholar, Raymond Williams, the first thing that one has to acknowledge in defining
culture is that culture is ordinary. This means that all societies have a definite way of life, a common way of doing
and understanding things.

Culture is a complex whole since it is a collection of knowledge, experiences, belief, values, attitudes, meanings
and language and material objects and possessions which is acquired by people in the course of generation through
individual and group struggle. It is a system of knowledge shared by a large group of people.

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols,
constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment, in artifacts, ideas and their
attached values.

Sociological Perspective about Culture

1. FUNCTIONALIST THEORY
This viewpoint believe that culture meets human needs, from basic needs for food and shelter to the higher
needs for psychological security, social harmony and spiritual fulfillment. Culture ensure social order and stability
because it helps explain perplexing cultural practices.
2. CONFLICT THEORY
This theory discusses that culture dominates the poor and powerless through manipulation and support of the
status qou of social inequality.
3.SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Assumed that man is free to create and change his culture. Cultures are guide to social interaction and a
product of interaction. Symbolic perspectives stress the importance of culture as a human creation while functionalist
and conflict perspective believe that culture is pressure to human behavior.

Types of Culture

1. Material culture includes all the tangible and visible parts of culture which includes clothes, foods, and even
buildings. The concrete and tangible objects created and used by man to satisfy his varied needs and wants.

2. Nonmaterial culture includes all the intangible parts of culture which consist of values, ideas, norms and
knowledge.

Elements of Culture

To understand culture, it is necessary to understand the different elements that compose it:
1. Symbol is anything that carries a particular meaning which is recognized by the member of society. It is the basis
and the very foundation of culture.
 2.Language is a system of symbols that allows members of the society to communicate with one another. It is the
most important means for cultural transmission which is known as oral cultural tradition. And from all of this,
language can free human imagination.

3.Values shape our personality, our family, friends, school and religious group influence us on how to think and act
according to the approved principles.

4.Norms are rules that guided our behavior, this are the standards and prescriptions created by people within the
society. It is a social construct, providing us with what we should not do.

5. Social control is more of punishment and reward, it could be formal or non-formal. Sanction lies in the heart of a
culture’s system.

Types of norms

1. Mores –moral values-the vital norms to a society, the society’s code of ethics and moral standards
a. Positive mores/duty-the behavior that must be done because it is good (“thou shall behavior”)
b. Negative mores/taboo-the behavior that must not be done because it is bad (“thou shall not behavior”)

2. Laws – formal rules or the formalized norms enacted by people with legitimate authority; have formal sanctions

Sanctions-system of reward and punishment to ensure norms are followed

3. Folkways –repetitive behavior/ the habitual ways of doing something without giving much thought, do not have
particular moral and ethical significance

4. Rituals -ceremony

Evaluating Learning: Modified Matching Type

Direction: Column B consists of scrambled words. Form the correct answer and match them in the given
definition in Column

Colunm A
1. It is the most important means of cultural transmission.
2. It is a social construct, providing us with what we should not do.
3. It is the basis and the very foundation of culture.
4. It is the formalized norms enacted by people with legitimate authority
5. It consists of values, ideas, norms and knowledge.
6. It is the society’s code of ethics and moral standards.
7. It is a system of reward and punishment to ensure norms are followed.
8. It is the perspective that stresses the importance of culture as a human creation
9. It is a system of knowledge shared by a large group of people.
10. It is the visible part of culture.

Column B
a. Material Culture
b. Laws
c. Symbol
d. Culture
e. Nonmaterial culture
f. Language
g. Mores
h. Sanctions
i. Norms
j. Symbolic interactionism
 *identify the aspects of culture
Aspects of Culture

Since culture is very complex, there are important aspects of culture that contribute to the development of man’s
social interaction.

1. Dynamic, flexible and adaptive

2. Shared and contested
3. Learned through socialization or enculturation
4. Patterned social interactions
5. Integrated and at times unstable
6. Transmitted through socialization
7. Requires language and other forms of communication

*generate awareness of why and how cultural relativism mitigates ethnocentrism

CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Diversity is the state or condition of having or being composed of different elements or variety. It is also a
situation where people living together have different races, ethnicity and culture. It is the conclusion of different types of
people in a group or organization. There are two components of Cultural Diversity:

1. Cultural Relativism means that people came from different culture and because of this people practice, speak, think
different from each other. Example, in the Philippines abortion is a crime while in China because of the two child policy,
abortion is legal. This shows that cultural practices vary from society to another.

2. Ethnocentrism is an understanding that our world is closely knitted to our own particular way of life. It is the belief that
one’s society is the center of the world and this enhances morale and solidarity among members

ETHNOCENTRISM is a term coined by william summer, is the tendency to see and evaluate other cultures in terms of
one race, nation and culture. This rests on the belief of superiority of one's own culture or ethnic group compared to
others.

. Is the preference for the products, styles or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own. XENOCENTRISM

IS the principle that an individual human's belief and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's
own culture. It highlights the perspective that no CULTURE IS SUPERIOR TO ANY OTHER CULTURE WHEN
COMPARING TO MORALITY,LAWS,ETC. CULTURAL RELATIVSM

CULTURAL RELATIVSM DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ACCEPT AND TOLERATE
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES. INSTEAD IT REQUIRES UNDERSTANDING THAT CULTURE OF OTHER PEOPLE IN
THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT FROM ANOTHER'S BIASES CULTURAL RELATIVSM

HOW CULTURAL RELATIVSM MITIGATES ETHNOCENTRISM?

✣ It is believed that each person, in one way or another, possess an ethnocentric attitude or behavior. It is widely
believed in the field of sociology that ethnocentric behavior may be mitigated through the recognition and application of
cultural relativism. A person can practice cultural relativism by recognizing that our culture shapes what we consider to
be beautiful, ugly, appealing, disgusting , virtuous, funny and abhorrent and that this should not be the basis for
evaluating other culture.

identify forms of tangible and intangible heritage and their various threats

Cultural Heritage
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the primary transnational
entity that manages and negotiates matters relating to human heritage. It defines cultural heritage as follows:
Cultural heritage is not limited to material manifestations, such as monuments and objects that have been
preserved over time. This notion also encompasses living expressions and the traditions that countless groups and
communities worldwide have inherited from their ancestors and transmit to their descendants, in most cases orally.
(UNESCO, 2010)
 This definition provides us with a two-part meaning of cultural heritage. One is the tangible heritage in the form of
structures, monuments, historical sites and other artifacts. The other one is the intangible heritage in the form of
literature, oral traditions, concepts and values. Tangible heritage could be divided into two categories the movable and
immovable. The difference in these two categories is the size of the heritage. Movable heritage pieces are often removed
from the sites where they were found and transferred to museums for safekeeping and maintenance. Immovable tangible
heritage pieces are left to the elements of nature which makes them vulnerable to decay and corrosion. Due to the
constant exposure of these objects to these elements, conservation is more challenging.

Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

Music, fashion, technology, and values—all are products of culture. But what do they
mean? How do sociologists perceive and interpret culture based on these material and
nonmaterial items? Let’s finish our analysis of culture by reviewing them in the context of
three theoretical perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalists view society as a system in which all parts work—or function—together to

create society as a whole. In this way, societies need culture to exist. Cultural norms
function to support the fluid operation of society, and cultural values guide people in
making choices. Just as members of a society work together to fulfill a society’s needs,
culture exists to meet its members’ basic needs.

Functionalists also study culture in terms of values. Education is an important concept in

the United States because it is valued. The culture of education—including material culture
such as classrooms, textbooks, libraries, dormitories—supports the emphasis placed on
the value of educating a society’s members.
This statue of Superman stands in the center of Metropolis, Illinois. His pedestal reads “Truth—Justice—The
American Way.” How would a functionalist interpret this statue? What does it reveal about the values of American
culture? (Photo courtesy of David Wilson/flickr)

Conflict theorists view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power

differentials related to issues like class, gender, race, and age. For a conflict theorist,
culture is seen as reinforcing issues of “privilege” for certain groups based upon race, sex,
class, and so on. Women strive for equality in a male-dominated society. Senior citizens
struggle to protect their rights, their health care, and their independence from a younger
generation of lawmakers. Advocacy groups such as the ACLU work to protect the rights of
all races and ethnicities in the United States.

Inequalities exist within a culture’s value system. Therefore, a society’s cultural norms
benefit some people but hurt others. Some norms, formal and informal, are practiced at the
expense of others. Women were not allowed to vote in the United States until 1920. Gay
and lesbian couples have been denied the right to marry in some states. Racism and
bigotry are very much alive today. Although cultural diversity is supposedly valued in the
United States, many people still frown upon interracial marriages. Same-sex marriages are
banned in most states, and polygamy—common in some cultures—is unthinkable to most
Americans.

At the core of conflict theory is the effect of economic production and materialism:
dependence on technology in rich nations versus a lack of technology and education in
poor nations. Conflict theorists believe that a society’s system of material production has
an effect on the rest of culture. People who have less power also have less ability to adapt
to cultural change. This view contrasts with the perspective of functionalism. In the U.S.
culture of capitalism, to illustrate, we continue to strive toward the promise of the American
dream, which perpetuates the belief that the wealthy deserve their privileges.

Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that is most concerned with the

face-to-face interactions between members of society. Interactionists see culture as being
created and maintained by the ways people interact and in how individuals interpret each
other’s actions. Proponents of this theory conceptualize human interactions as a
continuous process of deriving meaning from both objects in the environment and the
actions of others. This is where the term symbolic comes into play. Every object and action
has a symbolic meaning, and language serves as a means for people to represent and
communicate their interpretations of these meanings to others. Those who believe in
symbolic interactionism perceive culture as highly dynamic and fluid, as it is dependent on
how meaning is interpreted and how individuals interact when conveying these meanings.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/reading-theoretical-perspectives-on-culture
https://brewminate.com/sociological-perspective-and-the-elements-of-culture/