Sociology and Current Affairs

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Sociology and Current Affairs

• Chapter 3 Culture

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Multicultural of the United States

• The most multicultural of the world
• Drawn from the Nations history of immigration
• Preferences and tastes differ by culture
• More/fewer children
• Honor of elderly/young
• Peaceful/warlike
• What is polite, rude, beautiful, ugly, etc

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What is Culture

• Values, beliefs, behavior and material objects
  that together form a peoples way of life
• Our link to the past and our guide to the future
• Nonmaterial Culturethe ideas created by members
  of a society
• Material culturethe physical things created by
  members of a society

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Culture Shock

• Personal disorientation when experiencing an
  unfamiliar way of life

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Culture ShockEven in the US

• A trip to the Amish countryside in Ohio
• A New Yorker visits a small southern town
• Other examples?

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Question

• What specific practices or social patterns
  familiar to us in the United States that would
  shock people from another society?

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HumanityNo natural Way

• Since humans have the capacity to think, there is
  no one way for them to build a culture or act
• Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct
  to create a way of life and ensure our survival

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Culture and Human Intelligence

• From primates of 12 million years ago
• Animals with largest brains/body size
• Closest relative
• Homo Sapiens of 40,000 years ago
• People looked more or less like ourselves

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River Valley Civilizations

• Permanent settlements
• Fashioning the natural environment for ourselves
• Iraq
• Egypt

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Culture, Nation, and Society

• Culturea shared way of life
• Nationpolitical entity, with bordersbut not
  necessarily
• Societythe organized interaction of people who
  typically live in a nation or some specific
  territory
• The US is both a nation and a society

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How Many cultures in the US

• Census Bureau list 200 languages
• 100 languages spoken in the LA school system
• 7000 languages spoken globally
• But half are spoken by 10,000 people
• Number spoken commonly is declining
• High technology, communication, international
  migration, expanding global economy accounts for
  decline

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The elements of Culture

• Symbols
• Languages
• Values
• Norms
• etc

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Symbols

• Anything that carries a particular meaning
  recognized by people who share a culture
• Word
• Whistle (verb)
• Graffiti
• Raised fist
• Flag
• Winking the eye
• Interest, understanding, or insult

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New Symbols are Created All the Time

• -() I am shocked
• - I am smiling
• -II I am angry with you
• Etc

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Symbols and Culture Shock

• The inability to read meaning in new
  surroundings
• Not sure how to act
• Fear
• What about seeing people burning the flag

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Differences

• People in parts of Asia roast dogs for dinner
• We may offend people in India by asking for a
  hamburger because cows are sacred
• A fur coat may represent success or inhumanity to
  animals
• Confederate Flagregional pride/history or a
  symbol of racial oppression

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Language

• Helen Keller (1880-1968)
• Blind and deaf
• Brought to understanding through sign language
• Became famous educator
• Language
• A system of symbols that allows people to
  communicate with one another
• Cultural Transmission
• The process by which one generation passes
  culture to the next

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Literacy

• The USabout 10 are illiterate
• Low income countriesabout 50 are illiterate
• Language sets humans apart as the only creatures
  who are self-conscious, aware of our limitations,
  and ultimate mortalityable to dream and hope for
  the future and better

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Does Language Shape Reality?

• Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorfyes!
• Symbols are distinctive and build reality
• Language has words or expressions not found in
  any other symbolic system
• A single idea may feel differently in another
  language

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Values and Beliefs

• Values Culturally defined standards that people
  use to decide what is desirable, good, beautiful,
  and that serves as broad guidelines for social
  living. Values support beliefs
• Beliefs Specific statements that people hold
  to be true
• Differentvalues are more abstract and beliefs
  more specific

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Values and Beliefs (cont)

• Culturally mosaic nation
• The US differs from Asian countries like Japan
  and Chinamore culturally homogeneous

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Key Values of U.S. Culture

• Equal opportunity
• Achievement and success
• Material comfort
• Activity and work
• Practicality and efficiency
• Progress
• Science
• Democracy and free enterprise
• Freedom
• Racism and group superiority

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Values Sometimes in Conflict

• Do our values of equal opportunity conflict with
  our ways we view race and sex?
• Do we view values in a hierarchy?
• Are we becoming a Culture of Victimization?
• Where has rugged individualism gone?
• Where is accepting our responsibilities gone?

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Values A Global Perspective

• Higher income countries have different values
  than lowerLower
• Lower income countries value survival
• Physical safety
• Economic security
• Traditional values
• Celebrate the past
• Family, religion, obedience to authority,
  conformity

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Higher Income Countries

• Individualism
• Self expression
• High quality of life
• Lifestyle
• Happiness
• Tolerant
• Divorce
• Abortion

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Norms

• Rules and expectations by which a society guides
  the behavior of its members
• Proscriptivewhat we should not do
• Prescriptivewhat we should do
• Example we are expected to applaud at the end of
  a musical entertainment event but not after a
  sermon

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Mores (more-rays) and Folkways

• Mores norms that are widely observed and have
  great moral significance
• Folkways norms for routine or casual interaction
• Appropriate greetings
• Proper dress
• Draw a line between the right and rude

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Social Control

• Mores and folkways make dealings with others more
  orderly and predictable
• Social controlattempts by society to regulate
  peoples thoughts and behavior
• Help to give people a conscious
• Downloading a term paper on the internet can
  cuase some guilt
• Mark Twainpeople are the only animals that that
  blushor need to.

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Ideal and Real Culture

• We may not make achieve the ideal actions or
  behavior, but we should strive for it

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Material Culture and Technology

• Physical human creations called artifacts
• We own 230 vehicles and half bought in recent
  years were SUVs
• Rugged individualism
• Consistent with the U.S.

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Material Culture and Technology

• TechnologyKnowledge that people use to make a
  way of life in their surroundings
• The better the technology, the more people can
  make a life
• The better to shape society around them

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Technology Downside

• Has contributed to unhealthy levels of stress
• Created weapons capable of destroying mankind
• Amish of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana live
  simple live amid commercialism and technology
  run wild

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New Information Technology and Culture

• Not so much working with your hands as working
  with symbols
• Ability to speak
• Ability to write
• Ability to compute
• Ability to design
• Ability to create

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Computer-Based Economy

• Generating new cultural ideas, images and products

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Cultural Diversity Many Ways of Life in One World

• The U.S. is the most multicultural of all
  high-income
• Japan, due to historic isolation, is the most
  monocultural of all high income nations
• Between 1820 and 2003, 69 million people came to
  our shores
• One million newcomers now arrive each year.

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High Cultural and Popular Culture

• High culturecultural patterns that distinguish a
  societys elite
• Popular culturecultural patters that are
  widespread among a societys population
• The text author suggests we may praise high
  culture more simply because people have more
  money in that cultureoh, really? What about
• Dangers that may exist in more popular culture
• Untried new habits that sprang up as just
  popular, in the cultures face, hooky actions
• Just because its different

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Subculture

• Subculturecultural patterns that set apart some
  segment of a societys population
• chopper riders (author forgetsnow yuppies)
• Polish Americans
• New England Yankees
• Etc.

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What Kind of Commitment ot Subculture

• Can set people apart from one anothersometimes
  referred to as tribal mentalities or
  Balkanism
• Yugoslavia
• 1990s civil war fueled by extreme diversity
• Two alphabets, three religions, four languages,
  five major nationalities, six political
  republics, absorbing cultures of seven
  surrounding countries
• The above was a source of pleasing variety but
  also outright violence

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The Melting Pot is Questioned

• Out of many, one
• The author suggests that one subculture is as
  good as anotherthe rich skier in Aspen is equal
  to the skateboarder in L.A. (cant a rich skier
  also be a skateboarder in L.A.?)
• Therefore, some sociologists prefer to level the
  playing field by emphasizing multiculturalism

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Multiculturalism

• An educational program recognizing the cultural
  diversity of the United States and promoting the
  equality of all cultural traditions (how do you
  do that?)
• Formally, we defined ourselves through Western
  (primarily English) culture
• Historical traditions or contemporary
  diversityis that the real question?

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Eurocentrism

• The dominance of European (especially English)
  cultural patterns
• But the country is moving to where people of
  African, Asian, and Hispanic ancestry will be the
  majority (really?? Then what about the tendencies
  to cross-marry, etc)
• Some educators call for Afrocentrismemphasizing
  and promoting African cultural patterns (OK, but
  what about the Asians, Hispanics and Indians)or
  is it really just the loudest voices speaking?

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Multicultural Criticism

• Divides people by looking at their skin pigment
  rather than looking at people as individuals
• Is it better to live, breathe, and ooze in the
  color of ones skin or is it better to simply
  accept all people as equals and children of God
  as made in the image of God.
• Do we obsess over our differences through the
  philosophy of multiculturalism rather than
  embracing each other through the simple faith
  that we are all seekers of God and the promise of
  everlasting life?

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Multiculturalism Criticism (cont)

• Does multiculturalism unify? Or does it d
  separate us by pointing out divisions and
  differences among us?
• Instead of recognizing truth, does not
  multiculturalism interpret truth through the
  prism of race? Or gender?
• Do we not dissolve into an African experience
  or Asian experience instead of a human
  experience

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Multiculturalism Criticized (cont)

• What ever happened to Dr. Martin Luther Kings
  statement that implores people to evaluate people
  based not upon the color of ones skin but on the
  content of ones character?
• Are we to study only certain topics and issues
  from one point of view? How intellectual is that?

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Cultural Change

• Change remains a constant
• Todays students more interested in making money
  rather than developing a philosophy of lifetrue?
• Cultural integrationwhen one thing changes, the
  change(s) effects other things.

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Cultural Lag

• When some things change faster than others
• Does the laboratory fertilization of an egg with
  sperm from a stranger change the traditional
  ideas of motherhood and fatherhood? If yes, then
  what about adoption?

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Causes of Cultural Change

• Invention like the telephone, airplane, and
  computer
• Discovery a better understanding of something
  already in existencesuch as new elements
• Diffusion the spread of cultural traits from one
  cultural to another

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Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

• Confucius All people are the same its only
  their habits that are different
• Ethnocentrism the practice of judging another
  culture by the standards of ones own culture
• Common to come from some place when evaluating
  others
• But, there can be conflict

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Cultural Relativism

• Judging a culture by its own standards
• Requires openness
• Requires putting aside cultural standards known

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ProblemsAre Some Cultural Norms Just Plain Wrong?

• What about the children of Indian and Moroccan
  families who worked long hours
• Before judging, first ask what do they think
  about the norm

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A Global Culture

• The world is flat
• Everyone is wearing jeans
• More people are speaking English
• Migration
• Communications
• Economy

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The World is Flat Limitations?

• The author say the advantages go to North America
  and Europereally? What about the internet?
• Poverty sets people apart from others
• People see cultural differences differentlyHarry
  Potter has more influence in one nation than
  another

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The Functions of Culture Structural-Functional
Analysis

• Complexstrategies for trying to meet human needs
• Cultural values bind us together
• Think functionallywhy do these people live this
  way? The Amish?
• Cultural universals family, funerals, care of
  children, etc

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Critical ReviewStructural-Functional

• Emphasizes dominant cultural patterns
• Downplays change

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Inequality and Culture Social-Conflict Analysis

• Link between culture and inequality
• Any trait benefits some members more than others
• Marx said that mans social being determines his
  consciousness
• Materialism verses structural functionalism

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Capitalism

• Serves the interests of the countries wealthy
  elite. (your author) Really? What about all
  those who have moved from poor to middle class
  and middle class to wealthy in this system?
• Teaches us that the rich work harder and are more
  deservingOh?
• Disparages economic equalityOh, how?

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Evolution and Culture

• Sociobiologya theoretical approach that explores
  ways in which human biology affects how we create
  culture
• Rests on Charles Darwinnatural
  selectionorganisms change over time
• Adaptation and survival of the fittest
• Butis one race superior to another?

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Culture as a Constraint

• Habit
• Racial prejudices
• Gender discrimination

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Culture As Freedom

• We are forced to chose and we make choiceshaving
  that freedom
• We continue to make and re-make
• Good?