Understanding Culture: Material Objects, Shared Behavior, Language, and Innovation, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Understanding Culture: Material Objects, Shared Behavior, Language, and Innovation and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 3: Culture  Culture and Society o What is culture?  Material objects, shared behavior, shared language, shared knowledge  Culture - everything humans create in establishing our relationships to nature and with each other  help us interpret: o perception o knowledge o other peoples’ and our own actions and words o understanding of the external world  we seek to preserve it and pass it along to others o What is society?  Society – structure of relationships within which culture is created and shared through regularized patterns of social interaction  The ways through which we structure our societies shape and constrain the kinds of cultures we can construct  Constructing Culture: Cultural Universals o Cultural Universals – common practices and beliefs shared by all societies o Many adaptations to meet essential human needs (Murdock)  Sports, cooking, funeral ceremonies, medicine, marriage, trade o Sociobiology – the systemic study of how biology affects human social behavior. It looks at cultural universals from a biological perspective.  Sociobiologists argue that our genes and our biological makeup must be taken into account when explaining our thoughts and actions as a species o Pushback:  Sociologists question this because biological explanations for social behavior have been user in the past to justify inequality – claims that were later revealed to be scientifically untrue  Lombroso’s ‘Born Criminals’ o Walking it back:  Modern sociobiology argues that how genes are expressed as interdependent with our natural, social, and cultural contexts  Constructing Culture: Sociobiology o While these are universal features of societies, we do see some variation from society and society in how they are organized or implemented, suggesting it’s not something innate. o Do our genes determine our social outcome? Does DNA act as a computer code to direct how we build our society?  Constructing Culture: Innovation o Innovation – the process of introducing new ideas or objects to a culture o Two forms of innovation;  Discovery – making things known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality  Example: identifying the structure of a DNA molecule, finding new galaxies  Invention – combining existing cultural items into a form that didn’t exist before  Example: the bow and arrow, the automobile, Protestantism, democracy  Constructing Culture: Diffusion o Cultural innovation can be highly globalized in today’s world  More and more cultural expressions and practices are crossing national borders and influencing the traditions and customs of the societies exposed to them o Diffusion – the process by which some aspect of culture spreads from group to group or society to society o Which methods?  Mass media  Tourism  The internet  Immigration o Diffusion has led to the cultural domination of developing nations by more affluent nations o Globalization has led to the cultural domination of developing nations by more affluent nations  Western popular cultures represents a threat to native cultures  Three Elements of Culture o Three primary types:  Material – our physical modification of the natural environment to suit our purposes  Includes books, housing, roads, lights, cell phones, and other modifications of the natural world  Technology – a form of material culture in which humans modify the natural environment to meet particular wants and needs  Sociological importance of material culture  Cultural Lag – the adjustment period when nonmaterial culture is trying to adapt to new conditions of the material culture (Ogburn)  Cognitive – our mental and symbolic representations of reality  Values o Collective conceptions about what is considered good, desirable, and proper – or bad, undesirable and improper- in a culture o Values are not universal within a society.