1. The Real World
An Introduction to Sociology
4th Edition
Chapter 3:
Cultural Crossroads
2. Culture and Sociology
• Culture is one of the fundamental elements of
social life and thus a very important topic in
sociology.
• You need to think about how culture is
relevant to the things you already know from
your own life experience.
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3. What Is Culture?
• Culture is the entire way of life for a
group of people.
5. What Is Culture?
• It includes things such as language, standards
of beauty, hand gestures, styles of dress, food,
and music.
• Culture is learned. It is passed from one
generation to the next through
communication—not genetics.
8. Why is Culture Important?
• Culture is essential for our individual survival
and communication with other people.
• We rely on culture because we are not born
with the information we need to survive.
• It provides shared rules for societies to create
order.
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9. Why is Culture Difficult to Study?
• It is easier to study other cultures, however,
you still have biases and background
assumptions about other cultures. (“They
drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.”)
• Studying your own culture is especially
difficult because it is normal and natural to
you. Therefore, you’re less likely to question it
and assume it is not worth studying.
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10. Ethnocentrism
• You may have experienced this yourself—if you’ve ever watched
a program on television where they’re showing you some
remote tribe of people and their way of life seems very different
you might say something like,
– “Oh, that is so gross, I can’t believe those people eat that…”
• You’re assuming that your way of life is better than their way of
life. Interestingly, if that tribe watched your daily life, they would
question some of the things that you consider “normal.”
• Ethnocentrism occurs when a person uses their own culture as a
standard to evaluate another group or individual, leading to the
view that cultures other than one’s own are abnormal.
11. Why is Culture Difficult to Study?
• Here is an example of something we all do and experience each
day. However, it is written as if the author has never witnessed
this experience. This is an excerpt from “Body Ritual among the
Nacirema” by Horace Miner.
• “While each family has at least one shrine, the rituals associated
with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret…The
focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into a
wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical
potions without which no native believes he could live…Beneath
the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the
family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his or her
head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water
in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.”
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14. Cultural Relativism
• We can also clear our view of society by;
• Cultural relativism is the process of understanding
other cultures on their own terms, rather than
judging according to one’s own culture.
• When studying any group, it is important to try to
employ cultural relativism because it helps
sociologists see others more objectively.
16. Components of Culture
• Culture consists of two different broad
categories: material culture and symbolic
culture.
17. Material Culture
• Material culture includes the objects
associated with a cultural group, such as tools,
machines, utensils, buildings, and artwork;
basically, any physical object to which we give
social meaning.
18. Symbolic Culture
• Symbolic culture are the ideas associated with
a cultural group including ways of thinking
(beliefs, values, and assumptions) and ways of
behaving (norms, interactions, and
communication).
• One of the most important functions of
symbolic culture is to allow us to
communicate through signs, gestures, and
language.
19. Components of Culture
• Signs (or symbols), such as a traffic signal or product
logo, are used to meaningfully represent something
else.
• Gestures are the signs that we make with our body,
such as hand gestures and facial expressions; it is
important to note that these gestures also carry
meaning.
22. Components of Culture
• Finally, language is a system of
communication using vocal sounds, gestures,
and written symbols.
• This is probably the most significant
component of culture because it allows us to
communicate.
23. Components of Culture (con’t.)
• Language is so important that many have argued that it
shapes not only our communication but our perceptions of
how we see things as well.
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the idea that language
structures thought and that ways of looking at the world are
embedded in language, supports this premise.
– If I made up a word right now and I told you that the word
I just made up is an animal and then asked you to picture
that animal, could you do it?
– Sapir-Whorf tells us that if we don’t have language, or the
words to describe something, we can’t even think of it. In
other words, language shapes our thoughts.
24. Values
• Values are shared beliefs about what a group
considers worthwhile or desirable; these
guide the creation of norms.
–What are some examples of values?
• Value Contradictions are values that conflict
with one another or are mutually exclusive.
– Are there dominant U.S. Values?
25. Dominant U.S. Values
1. Achievement and
Success
2. Activity and Work
3. Moral Orientation
4. Humanitarianism
5. Efficiency and
Practicality
6. Progress
7. Material Comfort
8. Equality
9. Freedom
10. External Conformity
11. Science
12. Nationalism-Patriotism
13. Democracy
14. Individual Personality
15. Racism and Group
Superiority
26. Norms
• Norms are the formal and informal rules
regarding what kinds of behavior are
acceptable and appropriate within a culture.
• Norms are specific to a culture, time period,
and situation.
• Norms can be either formal, such as a law or
the rules for playing soccer, or informal, not
written down and unspoken.
27. Types of Norms
• Types of norms can also be distinguished by
the strictness with which they are enforced.
28. Types of Norms: Folkways
• A folkway is a loosely enforced norm that
involves common customs, practices, or
procedures that ensure smooth social
interaction and acceptance.
29. Types of Norms: Mores
• A more is a norm that carries greater moral
significance, is closely related to the core
values of a group, and often involves severe
repercussions for violators.
30. Types of Norms: Taboos
• A taboo is a norm engrained so deeply that
even thinking about violating it evokes strong
feelings of disgust, horror, or revulsion for
most people.
31. How do we enforce norms?
• Sanctions are positive or negative reactions to the
ways that people follow or disobey norms, including
rewards for conformity and punishments for norm
violators.
• Sanctions help to establish social control, the formal
and informal mechanisms used to increase
conformity to values and norms and thus increase
social cohesion.
• They may be formal or informal
• They can be positive or negative
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33. Variations in Culture
• Cultural Universals are customs and practices
that occur across all societies.
– These are the things that all cultures have; like
laws, food, family etc. However, the
manifestations of those things vary from culture
to culture.
34. Variations in Culture
• Multiculturalism values diverse racial, ethnic,
national, and linguistic backgrounds and so
encourages the retention of cultural differences
within society, rather than assimilation.
• In the United States there is a trend that encourages
multiculturalism, however, we still often see the
dominant culture as the “norm” and therefore many
minority cultures feel pressure to conform.
– Example: The push for Hispanics to learn English
35. Dominant Culture, Subcultures, and
Countercultures
• The dominant culture refers to the values,
norms, and practices of the group within
society that is most powerful in terms of
wealth, prestige, status, and influence.
36. • A subculture is a group within society that is differentiated by its
distinctive values, norms, and lifestyle.
• They interact with the dominant group, but maintain their
distinctive values, norms, and lifestyles.
• Subcultures include skateboarders, vegetarians, and college
students.
Dominant Culture, Subcultures, and
Countercultures (cont’d.)
37. Dominant Culture, Subcultures, and
Countercultures (cont’d.)
• A counterculture is a group within society that openly
rejects and/or actively opposes society’s values and
norms.
– A counterculture is a subculture that strongly rejects
dominant societal values and norms and seeks
alternative lifestyles.
– Its norms and values are often incompatible with or in
direct opposition to the mainstream.
– Historically – hippies, antiwar protestors, civil rights
activists and feminists – Today: anti-abortion activists,
street gangs, and terrorists.
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39. Culture Wars
• Mainstream culture is often characterized by points
of dissension and division, which are sometimes
called culture wars.
– Culture Wars – clashes within mainstream
society over the values and norms that should be
upheld.
• Sociologists also make a distinction between norms
and values are more aspired to (ideal culture) than
actually practiced (real culture).
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42. Ideal vs. Real Culture
• Real Example of Ideal vs. Real Culture
– Tucson Garbage Project (1973)
• Quantitative data from bins was compared with
information known about the residents who owned
them. The results have shown that information people
freely volunteered about their consumption habits did
not always tally with the contents of their waste bins.
For example, alcohol consumption was proven to be
significantly higher in reality than in the questionnaires
completed by the people studied. Such findings have
highlighted the difference between people's self-
reported and actual behaviors.
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43. High vs. Popular Culture
• Popularly speaking, being cultured means being well-educated,
knowledgeable of the arts, stylish, and well-mannered.
• High culture—generally pursued by the upper class—refers to
classical music, theater, fine arts, and other sophisticated pursuits.
• Members of the upper class can pursue high art because they
have cultural capital, which means the professional credentials,
education, knowledge, and verbal and social skills necessary to
attain the “property, power, and prestige” to “get ahead” socially.
• Low culture, or popular culture—generally pursued by the working
and middle classes—refers to sports, movies, television sitcoms and
soaps, and rock music.
• Remember that sociologists define culture differently than they do
cultured, high culture, low culture, and popular culture.
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44. High vs. Popular Culture
• High culture is distinguished from low culture based
on the characteristics of their audiences, not on
characteristics of their cultural objects.
• High culture refers to those forms of culture usually
associated with the elite or dominant classes.
• Popular culture refers to the forms of cultural
expression usually associated with the masses,
consumer good, and consumer products.
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45. High vs. Popular Culture
• Culture capital theory is based on the assumption that high culture is a device
used by the dominant class to exclude the subordinate classes.
– This theory, introduced by Pierre Bourdieu, refers to the symbols, ideas,
tastes, and preferences that can be strategically used as resources in social
action. Bourdieu argued that, above and beyond economic factors, “cultural
habits and…dispositions inherited from” the family are fundamentally
important to school success
• For example, middle-class parents area able to endow their children
with the linguistic and cultural competencies that will give them a
greater likelihood of success at school and at university.
• In contrast, working class children, without access to such cultural
resources, are less likely to be successful in the educational system.
Thus, education reproduces class inequalities.
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46. High vs. Popular Culture
• Popular culture refers to the forms of cultural expression usually associated
with the masses, consumer good, and consumer products.
– Fads - A fad is any form of behavior that develops among a large
population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period,
generally as a result of the behavior's being perceived as novel in some
way.
• Object fads
• Activity fads
• Idea fads
• Personality fads
– Trends - A trend in culture can also mean any form of behavior that
develops among a large population that last longer than ten years. These
trends usually occur in fashion, technology, or business. A well known
example of this is the cellphone.
48. Cultural Change
• Cultures usually change slowly and
incrementally, though change can also happen
in rapid and dramatic ways.
• At times, a subculture can influence the
mainstream and become part of dominant
culture, or something that is dominant can
change to a counterculture.
52. Cultural Leveling
• Cultural Leveling is the process by which
cultures that were once unique and distinct
become increasingly similar.
53. Cultural Change
• Cultural Imperialism is the imposition of one
culture’s beliefs and practices on another
culture through mass media and consumer
products rather than by military force.
55. Globalization
• Globalization is the development of an
increasingly integrated global economy
marked especially by free trade, free flow of
capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign
labor markets.
