Chapter 3: Culture

Culture Defined
High culture: is culture consumed mainly by upper class (opera, ballet, etc.)

Populate culture: (or mass culture) is culture consumed by all classes

Culture: consists of the shared symbols and their definitions that people create to solve real-life
problems

Symbols: are concrete objects or abstract terms that represent something else

Abstraction: is ability to create general concepts that meaningfully organize sensory experience

Beliefs: are cultural statements that define what community members consider real

Cooperation: is the capacity to create a complex social life by establishing generally accepted
ways of doing things and ideas about what is right and wrong

The Origins of Culture

Norms: are generally accepted ways of doing things

Values: are ideas that identify desirable states (conditions that are true, good, or beautiful)

Production: is the human capacity to make and use the tool and technology that improve our
ability to take what we want from nature

Material Culture: comprises the tools and techniques that enable people to accomplish tasks

Non-material culture: is composed of symbols, norms and other intangible elements

Social organization: is the orderly arrangement of social interaction

Four Types of Norms: Folkways, Mores, Taboos, and Laws

Folkways: are norms that specify social preferences. Because they are the least important
norms, violating them evokes the least severe punishment

Mores: MOR-ays – are core norms that most people believe are essential for the survival of
their group of their society

Taboos: are among the strongest norms. When someone violates a taboo, it causes revulsion
in the community and punishment is severe

Laws: are norms that are codified and enforced by the state
 Language and the Sapir-Whorf Thesis
Language and the Sapir-Whorf Thesis: holds that we experience certain things in our
environment and form concepts about those things. We can develop language to express our
concepts. Finally, language itself influences how we see the world

Experience

Verbalization (language) Conceptualization (thought)

A functionalist Analysis of Culture: Culture and Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism: is the tendency for people to judge other cultures exclusively by the standards
of their own culture

Culture as Freedom
Cultural relativism: is the belief that all cultures have equal value

A Conflict Analysis of Culture: The Rights Revolution

Rights revolution: the process by which socially excluded groups struggle to win equal rights
under the law and in practice beginning in the second half of the twentieth century

From Diversity to Globalization

Rites of passage: are cultural ceremonies that mark the transition from one stage of life to
another (for example, baptisms, confirmations, weddings) or from life to death (for example,
funerals and memorial services)

Globalization: process by which formerly separate economies, states, and cultures are tied
together and people become aware of their growing interdependence

Aspects of Postmodernism
Postmodernism: is characterized by an eclectic mix of cultural elements, the erosion of
authority, and the decline of consensus around core values
Culture as Constraint
Rationalization: is the application of the most efficient means to achieve given goals and the
unintended, negative consequences of doing so

Consumerism: is the tendency to define ourselves in terms of the goods we purchase

Subculture: a set of distinctive values, norms, and practices within a larger culture

Counterculture: are subversive subcultures – the oppose dominant values and seek to replace
them

Cultural Capital: refers to the beliefs, tastes, norms, and values that people draw upon in
everyday life

Cultural jamming: refers to the creative methods used by individuals and groups to challenge
dominant cultural beliefs, tastes, norms, and values
Culture as Problem Solving:
- Like all elements of culture, superstitions help people to solve the challenges of life
- At root of culture is solving the problem of meaning

Culture Defined:
- The meaning of a symbol is not the symbol; the meaning resides in what the symbol
refers to
- Our definitions of culture notes that symbols are shared
- Culture is the primary driver of what people do because individuals respond to the
meaning of events, and the meaning of events is defined by our culture

The Origins of Culture:

- Culture is the primary means by which humans adapt to their environments; that is why
our definition of culture emphasizes that we create culture to solve real-life problems
- The cultural survival kits that the early humans about 100 000 years ago created
contained three main tools
1. Abstraction
2. Beliefs
3. Cooperation
 Norms
 Values
- Note that different times and places give rise to different norms and values

Four Types of Norms: Folkways, Mores, Taboos, and Laws

1. Folkways
2. Mores
3. Taboos
4. Laws

Culture and Biology

The Evolution of Human Behaviour
- We have seen how the human capacity for abstraction, cooperation, and production
enables us to create culture and makes us discover human
- Biology, as every sociologist recognizes, sets broad human limits and potentials,
including the potential to create culture

Male Promiscuity, Female Fidelity, and Other Myths

- Evolutionary psychologists employ a three-step argument for their biological
explanation of human behaviour and social arrangements
1. First – they identify universal human behaviour traits
2. Next – the offer an explanation for why this behaviour increases survival chances
through reproduction
3. Finally – they conclude that the behaviour in question cannot easily be changed
Language and the Sapir-Whorf Thesis
- Consequently, sociologists commonly think of language as a cultural intervention that
distinguishes humans from other animals.
- Sapir-Whorf Thesis- holds that we experience things in our environment and form
concepts about those things. We then develop language to express our concepts.
Finally, language itself influences how we see the world.
- We think "egocentrically," locating objects relative to ourselves.

Culture as Freedom and Constraint

A functionalist Analysis of Culture: Culture and Ethnocentrism
- Ethnocentrism impairs sociological analysis
- If you refrain from taking your own culture for granted and judging other cultures by the
standards of your own culture for granted and judging other cultures by the standards
of your own, you can take an important first step toward developing a sociological
understanding of culture
Culture as freedom
1) Culture provides us with an opportunity to exercise our freedom. We use and
elaborate elements of culture in our everyday life to solve practical problems and
express our needs, hopes, love, and fears
2) The raw materials for the culture we create consist of cultural elements that either
existed before we were born or are created by other people after our birth. Culture
constrains us

Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Production

- Symbolic interactionism is inclined to regard culture as an independent variable
- The idea that people actively produce and interpret culture implies that, to a degree, we
are liberty to choose how culture influences us

Cultural Diversity
- Part of the reason we are increasingly able to choose how culture influences us in that
Canadian society has diversified

Multiculturalism
- Culture diversity has become a source of conflict
- For the past few decades, multiculturalism has argued that school, college, and
university curriculum should present a more balanced view of Canadian history, society,
and culture
- Multiculturalists conclude that to the extent that existing curricular are biased, they fail
to provide students with the type of education demanded by a country truly devoted to
multiculturalism
- Has three negative consequences
1. Critics believe that multicultural education hurts students who are member of
minority groups by forcing them to spend too much time on non-core subjects
 2. Critics also believe that multicultural educations lead to political disunity and
results in more inter-ethnic and interracial conflict
3. Finally, critics complain that multiculturalism encourages the growth of cultural
relativism
- Clearly, multiculturalism in education is complex and an emotional issue

A conflict Analysis of Culture: The Rights Revolutions

- The rights revolution fragments Canadian culture by legitimizing the grievance of
groups that were formerly excluded from full social participation and renewing their
price in their identity and heritage

From Diversity to Globalization

- The cultural diversification we witness today is not evident in preliterate or tribal
societies. Many tribal societies organize rites of passage
- One of the most important roots of globalization is the expansion of international
trade and investment
- Globalization in short, destroys political, economic, and cultural isolation, bringing
people together – GLOBAL VILLAGE
- Because of globalization, people are less obliged to accept the culture into which
they are born or freer to combine elements of culture from a wide variety of
historical periods and geographical settings

The Globalization of English

- A good indicator of the influence and extent of globalization is the spread of English.-
Today, more than a billion people speak English worldwide, more than half as a second
language. Because of the rise in English, several thousand languages around the world
are being eliminated.
- The contrasting experiences of Quebec and Canada's First Nations illustrate that the
globalization of English will continue eroding traditional languages and cultures unless
vigorous, sustained efforts are mounted to resist the trend.

Aspects of Postmodernism
An Eclectic Mix of Elements from Different Times and Places
- In the postmodern era, it is easier to create personalized belief systems and practices by
blending facets of different cultures and historical periods -People who engage in
cultural blending are likely to be more tolerant and appreciative of ethnic, racial, and
religious groups other than their own.
The Erosion of Authority
- Half a century ago, Canadians were more likely than they are today to defer authority in
the family, schools, politics, medicine, and so forth.-As the social bases of authority and
truth have multiplied, however, we are more likely to challenge authority.
The Decline of Consensus around Core Values
- Half a century ago, people's values remained relatively stable over the course of their
adult lives, and many values were widely spread.-Today, value shifts are more rapid, and
 consensus has broken down on many issues (Robert et al., 2005).
- For most of the past 200 years, consensus throughout the world was built around such
monumental projects.-The postmodern condition empowers ordinary people and makes
them more responsible for their own fate.
- The postmodern attitude also encourages healthy skepticism about rosy and naïve
scientific and political promises.

Canada: The First Postmodern Culture?

- Canada became an independent country not through a revolutionary upheaval but in a
gradual, evolutionary manner.
- Sociologists now find that Americans are more deferential to traditional institutional
authority than Canadians are. Because Canadians are less deferential, some
commentators say that Canadians lack a distinct culture
- Canada continues its trend toward postmodernism as its values become more
progressive and secular.
- In short, Canadian culture is distinctive, and its chief distinction may be that it qualifies
us as the first thoroughly postmodern society.-
- This distinctiveness is recognized around the globe as Canada continues to rank as the
nation with the best reputation in the world (Reputation Institute, 2013).

Culture as Constraint
Culture also operates as a force for social control and the replication of privilege.
Rationalization and Time Use
- Max Weber coined the term rationalization to describe the application of the most
efficient means to achieve given goals and the unintended, negative consequences of
doing so. In Weber's view, rationalization is one of the most constraining aspects of
contemporary culture, making life akin to living inside an "iron cage."
- The constraining effects of rationalization are evident, for example, in the way we
measure and use time the regulation of time ensures efficiency.
- People complain that life has become too hectic to enjoy.
Consumerism
- The second constraining aspect of culture that we examine is consumerism.
- Consumerism- is the tendency to define ourselves in terms of the goods we purchase
- Recent innovations in advertising take full advantage of our tendency to define ourselves
in terms of the goods we purchase. Advertising becomes us.
- The rationalization process, when applied to the production of goods and services,
enables us to produce more efficiently, to have more or just about everything than
previous generations did.
- We can also choose to buy items that help define us as members of a particular
subculture
- Many sociologists say that the consumerism, like rationalization, acts as a powerful
constraint on our lives

From Counterculture to Subculture

- Consumerism is remarkably effective at taming countercultures.
 - Countercultures- are subversive subcultures.
- In our society, consumerism acts as a social control mechanism that normally prevents
countercultures from disrupting the social order. It does that by transforming deviations
from mainstream culture into means of making money and by enticing rebels to become
entrepreneurs.
- Under the impact of consumerism, counterculture has become a subculture.

Cultural Capital
- Another way that culture constrains us is through the use of cultural capital.
- People with different socialization histories occupy different social positions and have
different amounts and types of cultural capital.
- Cultural capital- refers to beliefs, tastes, norms, and values that people draw upon in
everyday life.
- Cultural capital isn't just about differences; it is about differences with important social
consequences.
- Culture jamming- refers to the creative methods used by individuals and groups to
challenge dominant cultural beliefs, tastes, norms, and values.
- Cultural jamming illustrates the paradoxical nature of culture.