West Coast University Society and Culture Discussion

Read chapter 3 and the class notes in the pages section. NO PLAGIARISM. MUST FINISH WITHIN 3 HOURS.

Reflection paper: Write a one to two page paper on the link between society and culture. Address how the media can encourage ethnocentrism. Provide examples of the way the media covers other cultures. In addition, think about how U..S. culture has misrepresented minorities and women and how that has affected them.

***NOTES***

Culture

Cultures are patterns for living that are created by each society to help meet human needs. They are not natural and can be changed as needed by the society. The culture is passed down through generations and people are expected to use the rules established by the culture in carrying out their activities.

Society and culture are interdependent. One could not exist without the other. As the book states the society provides the structure that gives order and stability to group life, while the culture is used to guide the people’s actions and interactions in order to create a particular lifestyle.

Evolution of Society

Emilie Durkheim’s research focused on social cohesion = what holds societies together. He noted that as societies became more complex that what hold them together changes.

Small village / pre-modern societies were held together by mechanical solidarity, which is based on people having shared beliefs and values, and of emotional ties between members of the group. The tasks people did – the division of labor – were largely determined by gender and age groups. People in these societies tended to know each other and most people shared the same belief systems, such as religion, and engaged in the same behaviors. Everyone was expected to follow the rules traditionally observed by the group.

Larger more complex societies / modern societies were held together by organic solidarity. Social cohesion was provided by an interdependent division of labor, where people were dependent on each person carrying out their specialized roles in order for the society to function. For example, the construction worker does not grow his own food, and the farmer does not build their own highways to his or her produce to market. They and other workers need each other to do what they cannot do. The division of labor in large complex societies depends more on skills and education than gender and age. In these societies, emotional ties and shared beliefs are not that important. In fact, in large cities most people very little about most of their neighbors, and even less about people who live in other parts of the city.

I will not focus on the development of societies from hunter-gatherers to post-industrial societies. That information is in the book chapter. It is important to note that the level of development in societies also affected their cultures. But it is important to note that older ways of life do not completely disappear as new ones are adopted and cultures do not change at a uniform rate.

Culture as a shared way of life

The book compares culture to the software a computer uses. It allows the society to function well. The cultures that have developed in different societies vary widely. Some of the factors that lead cultures to vary are climate, the type of work people do, the level of industrialization in a society, the religious beliefs of the society, and technological innovations. Each society must adapt to new challenges and opportunities. The culture that people in a society share has evolved over time, but is built on the culture that has been handed down to them. No one is born knowing a culture, everyone in that society must learn that culture in a process called socialization which we will study in the next chapter. Immigrants who move into a new country will acculturate over time, but for a short period of time will share two cultures, one from their old country and one from their new country, and some lead lives that are transnational where they have ties to both the sending and receiving country. The presence of people with different cultures in a society is called multiculturalism and is not a bad thing, even though some people act like it is. Part of the problem is caused by ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativity

Each society teaches individuals its own culture and people raised within that culture come to view that culture as normal or natural. People from that culture develop standards of behavior and beliefs that can vary widely from those that exist in other societies. This tendency to view one’s own groups cultural expectations as right, proper, and superior those of people who have a different culture is called ethnocentrism. In the social sciences ethnocentrism is seen as a problem because it leads to bias in research and in the past was linked to imperialism and racism. While people who hold ethnocentric beliefs may not be hostile to others, having such beliefs makes misunderstandings between peoples of different cultures more likely. The fact that our society does not do a good job of educating people about other cultures contributes to a lack of understanding and mischaracterizations of what they are like. Perhaps the main problem with people who are ethnocentric is that they fail to see what is good about other cultures, or look at other people’s cultural practices as worth adopting, even though they could improve our society.

Cultural relativism involves the belief that it is important to be impartial when studying other cultures. To do this one must not judge the other culture according to the cultural expectations of one’s own culture, but seek to understand the other culture using the standards of that culture. In other words, one must try to comprehend the behavior of the people from other cultures as something that makes sense to them and corresponds to their beliefs and values. Travel can help people gain an understanding of other cultures, if people travel to other places with an open mind. However, having an open mind does not mean that social scientists must adopt the beliefs of people they study or agree with all aspects of another culture, but only that they seek to understand other people’s cultural practices in the social and cultural contexts in which they occur.

Material and Nonmaterial Culture

I will not go into detail but will only mention that material culture involves objects that one can see and touch that are used as part of the lifestyle of that society, while nonmaterial culture involves beliefs, values, rules, and language.

Values are shared beliefs about what society feels is desirable or undesirable, right or wrong. The norms of society are rules of behavior that are based on the values of a society. For example, if our culture values the lives of human beings, it will establish norms that seek to prevent people from killing each other.

Because societies develop differently their norms and values will vary, so what is acceptable in one culture may not be acceptable in other cultures. But despite the differences that exist, there are a number of cultural universals. These are aspects of culture that exist in most cultures, such as language, marriage, and the incest taboo (to prevent genetic deformations, such as the “Hapsburg jaw”). An anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, found that the cultures he studied had more similarities than differences. This led him to conclude that there were “universal structures” that underlie all human activity.

The ideal culture of a society is the way society believes the culture should be practiced. But the real culture of a society often fails to correspond to the ideals that have been created.

Information on the norms of a society and how society enforces its standards are in the book. The sanctions used by groups can range from informal ways of getting people to go along with the culture to formal sanctions like laws.

Society, Culture, and Our Social World

Microcultures exist at the micro level and exist within organizations or in particular settings. The book has examples of this type of culture.

Meso level: Subcultures and Countercultures

Subcultures are basically cultures within the dominant culture that differ in some way from the culture of the dominant group. They will still share the dominant groups culture, but will have other cultural practices, such as language or dress, that makes them different from the dominant group. Subcultures are groups that members remain a part of throughout their lives. Examples of subcultures are ethnic groups that have their own sets of conventions and expectations covering things like religious practices, food, and celebrations. However, although they are different, they still live, go to school, work, and live within the dominant society.

Countercultures are cultural groups that have expectations and values that are at odds with those of the dominant culture. They reject aspects of the dominant culture, and may even seek to withdraw from the dominant society and live apart from it. An example from the book is the Old Order Amish who seek to live without electricity or modern conveniences, and have their own standards for education and success. Their separation from the dominant culture is mainly based on their religious beliefs. Sociologist Stuart Hall studied how the Rastafarians in Jamaica developed as a counterculture in opposition to British colonialism an its efforts to impose British culture on the Jamaicans. While the dominant culture may not like the existence of countercultures, sometimes the hostility of counterculture groups to the dominant society is justified. Their presence may be an indicator of contradictions or tensions in the society that need to be addressed.

The book mentions the emergence of a global society and culture due to globalization. As people travel and trade across borders the interactions between people of different cultures increases. As people come to know more about each other a global culture comes into existence, that includes behavioral standards, symbols, and material objects that have become common across the globe. Some may welcome the emergence of a global culture, while others may see it as a threat.

Theories of culture

Symbolic Interaction Theory (micro level) – looks at how people learn to share the ideas and meanings of complex cultures with others in those cultures. They learn their culture through interaction with others, starting at birth. The social construction of reality involves how what people come to define as normal or good based on interactions with others from that culture. Our reality is shaped by those interactions, and that version of reality may not be shared with others who are raised in a different society.

Structural-Functional Theory (meso level) – views society as composed of interdependent parts, each performing a necessary function or purpose, that benefits the society and allows it to function. These theorists maintain that social practices and the creation of institutions will lead to stable societies and that all of parts of society are functional or they would not exist. This has been challenged by conflict theorists who maintain that some aspects of society are dysfunctional and do not create unity and stability within the society.

Conflict Theory (meso -macro level) – does not assume, like the functionalists, that society operates with a consensus about how society should function and do not see culture as having a unifying effect. Conflict theorist look at society as being composed of various meso-level groups that are vying for power. The dominant groups will use its power to try and impose its culture on subordinate groups as part of an effort to gain hegemony in the society.

Hegemony describes the dominance of one social group or class in a society. Rather than using force or explicit coercion, hegemonic power rests on the successful manipulation of cultural and social institutions — such as religion, education or the media — to shape the limits of economic and political opportunities for citizens. For example, if the educational system only teaches students about how great the dominant group is or provides misinformation about subordinate groups, it will make it seem like societal inequality is justified. Another example would be how tv and the movies portrayed Native Americans as “savages”, when in reality they were defending their families and homes against settler colonialism, and also ignoring the fact that some groups like the Cherokee were living a similar lifestyle to that of the European colonists before they were forced off their land for many to die on the “trail of tears.”