1. CULTURE BASICS Cultural Landscape
AP HG
Mr. Hensley
SRMHS
Today, we are going to introduce the discipline of sociology and look at the three major sociological perspectives, which will inform our further study of culture. After that, we will define “culture” and discuss various substructures and hierarchies. Finally, we will compare and contrast two competing views on culture: the environmental determinists (whom we have already introduced) and the possibilists, who believe that humans impact their environment just as much, if not more than the environment impacts humans.

2. The Social Sciences Umbrella
Human geography is but one of the sub-disciplines of the social sciences. The social sciences focus on human actions, as opposed to the natural sciences like physics and chemistry, which focus on the physical world. Within the social sciences, there is overlap. Both psychology and economics, for example, seek to explain individual human behavior and individual decisions. Both sociology and political science seek to understand how groups make decisions or reach a consensus.

3. What is the sociological perspective?
The sociological perspective means you seek to understand social interactions through data and the scientific method – not through anecdotes, folk tales and “common sense” beliefs
Sociologists use the scientific method to model, understand and predict human behavior. There are three perspectives that sociologists use, each perspective contains different assumptions regarding the purpose of group behaviors.

4. Functionalist Perspective
Group structures exist to help keep things stable
Group structures have manifest (obvious) functions or latent (not-so-obvious functions)
Dysfunctional structures tend to make society less stable and do not become permanent
The functionalist perspective is primarily an evolutionary perspective. Shared group structures, like marriage, exist because they provide long-term benefits to the larger group. Over time, according to the functionalists, bad ideas have been weeded out and only those group structures that provide superior benefits to the group overall remain. For example: public education is now the norm because the long-term benefits outweigh the costs. Public education has a manifest purpose (give everyone the same opportunity to develop their intellect) but there are also latent functions (public education provides day care and allows both parents to work, if so desired).

5. Conflict Perspective
Resources are limited and social structures exist to help one group get those scarce resources at the expense of other groups
Winners and losers, the zero-sum game
Change is inevitable, chaos is part of life
Associated with Marx
The conflict perspective says that group structures exist to allow elites to maintain control over scarce and limited resources. The conflict perspective requires a zero-sum game – for every winner, there has to be a loser. For the person using the conflict perspective, public education exists to pre-sort the winners and the losers, to identify future potential elites.

6. Interactionist Perspective
Concerned with symbols and how groups use symbols to interact with each other
Social groups give meanings to people – then people use those definitions to make decisions
Reality is what social groups decide it is
More “micro” than other two
Interactionists care about how the group structure impacts each individual in that group and changes their behavior and perception of reality. A famous experiment that fascinates interactionist is the Stanford Prison Experiment of Student volunteers were randomly assigned roles of “guard” or “prisoner”. Within hours, the role of “guard” had so changed the students that they began to systematically abuse the students assigned the role of prisoners. This perspective has significant overlaps with psychology and even philosophy.

7. What is a GROUP? Needs 2 or more people Requires interaction
Members share expectations (values)
Group members share common identities (traits, norms)
NOT a group – “aggregates”
“Groups” need 2 or more people who share expectations (goals) about what they hope to gain through group membership. Group members must be able to regularly interact with one another. Finally, the group members must share common identities – they must share common traits, behaviors and norms. Note that this class right now is probably an aggregate more than it is a group. If some natural disaster were to befall the class and we worked together to overcome our problems, then we would have a better chance of being a “group”. The common struggle would give us common goals and increase the chance we formed a common identity.

8. Groups Have CULTURE
Culture – a groups shared system of ideas, values, traits, norms, and customs; a learned behavior expressed in dress, food, work, language, etc.
Norms or traits: shared rules of conduct that tell people how to act in specific situations - expected behaviors not actual behaviors
We finally come to a definition for culture and cultural norms or traits. We learn the cultural traits of our parents during childhood. As adults, we can adapt to new cultures but the process is not quick nor is it easy (it is often referred to as “culture shock”). These shared behaviors and beliefs that come with culture allow for groups to become very large – and large groups have better outcomes than small ones.

9. Culture is System I
Cultural traits are rules-of-thumb, heuristics that help people function efficiently in a complex world
Cultural traits can break down when subjected to System II thought
Asian toilets are often of the “squat” variety. Squatting does improve the efficiency of evacuating our bowels but yet, most Westerners recoil at the thought of squatting to defecate. System II would dictate that all toilets, for the sake of efficiency, should be of the squat variety.

10. Hierarchy of Culture
Traits (norms) are the fundamental building block of culture
Related traits are cultural complexes
Complexes that share geography are cultural systems or regions
At the top are cultural realms (usually grouped by languages, religions)
Human geographers enjoy ranking thinks in a hierarchy – a top to bottom order. Here, the smallest unit of culture is the “trait”. A trait can be a tool (artifact), an idea or a belief. “Norm” is often used interchangeably for trait but norms are beliefs, norms usually involve a value judgment. For example, a fisherman may prefer a certain type of fish-hook. The preference for the type of hook is a norm, while the hook itself is an artifact or trait.

11. Cultural Realms
Cultural region or cultural realm are the largest categories and and the top of the hierarchy. The two terms are often used interchangeably. You can see that language and religion are the determining factor at the level of the realm. Also recall that the more we generalize within a model, the less useful it becomes.

12. Structure of Culture Three building blocks or “subsystems”:
Ideas: beliefs, language, religion
Technology: artifacts, tools, material objects
Social Organization: kinship, family, all interpersonal relationships
We can also look at culture by analyzing it component parts. Cultures are made up of shared ideas, technologies and social organizations. The wedding bands pictured here contain all three – the idea that we mark our unions through rings; the technology involved in making the rings and finally, the monogamous lifetime mating bond the rings represent.

13. Cultural Landscape and Possibilism
As humans act upon their environment, they create a cultural landscape
Possibilism says that the environment only provides constraints – within those constraints, humans are the dynamic force behind cultural development
Different directions of causation
Possibilism is an important perspective in human geography. The possibilist would say that humans act upon the environment and that the combination of human culture with the physical environment creates the cultural landscape. Pictured here is Capetown South Africa in which European culture has transformed the African environment to create a unique cultural landscape. Possibilism differs from environmental determinism in that the direction of causality is reversed. Possibilists would say humans change their environment; a strict determinist would say that the physical environment changes human culture. Both perspectives are valid. You could say that humans change their environment within certain boundaries or constraints dictated by physical conditions.

14. Human Impacts Extinction of megafauna (aka Pleistocene overkill)
North African over-farming (Roman Empire)
Easter Island collapse
Dutch dike system
Current irrigation of American Southwest
Construction of Dubai
Global warming?
A collection of both positive and negative impacts humans have had upon their physical environment. In each example, causality runs from humans to the environment, strengthening the possibilist position.