1. CULTURE
Chapter 2

2. What Is Culture?
Culture: The language, beliefs, values, norms, and material objects that are passed from one generation to the next.
Material Culture: The material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as food, art, buildings, clothing, machines, utensils.
Nonmaterial Culture: A group’s way of thinking (including values and beliefs) and doing (patterns of behavior, language, interaction).

3. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life
We came into life without language, values, morality, etc., but we acquire them and they become our assumptions about what normal behavior is
Because we assume that our language, values, etc. are normal we often follow them without question
Culture provides a basis for decision making – what we ought to do or think

4. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life
Culture Shock:
The surprise, disorientation, and fear people experience when they encounter a new culture.
We find unfamiliar behaviors upsetting because they violate our expectations of the way “people ought to be”

5. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life
Ethnocentrism: Using one’s own culture to judge the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors
Positive Effects: Can create loyalty
Negative Effects: Can lead to discrimination
Cultural Relativism: Not judging a culture, but trying to understand it in its own terms

6. Components of Symbolic Culture
Symbolic Culture: Another term for nonmaterial culture
Symbol: Something to which people attach meaning and then use to communicate with others, including gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways, and mores.

7. Components of Symbolic Culture
Gestures: The ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another

8. Components of Symbolic Culture
Language: A system of symbols that can be combined in an infinite number of ways and can represent not only objects but also abstract thought.
Language allows us to…
pass ideas, knowledge, & attitudes to future generations.
move beyond immediate experiences –share past or future events.
develop a shared understanding of past events
plan future events
establish shared understandings

9. Components of Symbolic Culture
Language (continued)
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
When we learn a language, we not only learn words, but a way of thinking and understanding
Ex: If you didn’t know words like jock, goth, stoner, etc. you wouldn’t perceive people in these manners

10. Components of Symbolic Culture
Values:
The standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.
Values underlie our preferences, guide our choices, and indicate what we hold worthwhile in life.

11. Components of Symbolic Culture
Norms: Expectations, or rules of behavior, that reflect and enforce values.
Change constantly
Differ widely among cultures and even within cultures
Settings
Time Period
Country

12. Components of Symbolic Culture
Sanctions: Expressions of approval or disapproval given to people for upholding or violating norms
Positive Sanction: A reward or positive reaction for following norms
Negative Sanction: An expression of disapproval for breaking a norm. Can be informal (a frown) or formal (prison sentence).

13. Folkways and Mores Folkways: Norms that are not strictly enforced
We expect people to follow these, but don’t make a big deal if they don’t.
Mores (MORE-ays): A norm based on morality, or definitions of right and wrong.
Usually strictly enforced.
Taboo: A norm that is so strong that it often brings revulsion if violated.
Ex: eating human flesh, necrophilia

14. Many Cultural Worlds
Subcultures: A world within the larger world of the dominant culture.
May be based on occupation, race, religion, financial status, political ideals, sexual orientation, hobbies
Example of subcultures may include Hasidic Jews (religion), surfers (hobby), or marines (profession)

15. Many Cultural Worlds
Counterculture: A subculture that opposes the dominant culture.
Image on Left: Sister Wives is a reality show on TLC that follows a polygamist family.
Image on Right: Hippies rejected the

16. Values in U.S. Society
Pluralistic Society: A society made up of many different groups, such as the United States.

17. Values in U.S. Society Core values shared by most Americans:
Achievement
Success
Individualism
Hard Work
Technology
Progress
Material Comfort
Freedom
Democracy
Equality