1. Terms and ideas
Societies and Culture

2. Society is the largest form of group
Sociology is the study of people in groups
Sociology is a way to think about social action
Society is composed of social actions with a group of people who share
Culture
(and related subcultures)
Defined geography
A Specific time period
And are relatively autonomous

3. To understand a society we must first understand its culture

4. Where does culture come from?
Culture is handed down to us through the process of socialization.
Learning a culture is also called aculturalization
Culture is learned
The ability to have culture is biological but the specific culture is learned
We are constantly socialized
We are always learning more about our culture
Culture is shared
No one has their “own culture”
Always shared with someone

5. Culture has a material basis
We use material “things” to support ourselves and survive
Culture is limited by our ability to
Obtain material goods or the resources to make them
Use material goods in settings for which they were not designed
Culture adjusts to new uses of environmental resources through
Material change …Technology (technological change)
And through non-material adaptation (ideological change)

6. Culture has a non-material basis
Knowledge
Ideas
Skills
Organized into
Philosophies
Beliefs
Customs
Institutions
Language

7. Different cultures meet the same needs differently
Cultural Universals
Every culture must provide a set of routine behaviors that make it possible for the people in the culture to meet their human needs.
George Murdock, an Anthropologist, compiled a list of 72 areas that are addressed by all cultures.
He found great diversity in the way in which cultures handled the same area of human need, emotion or behavior
Importantly, he believes that all cultures do address all these areas; these areas of culture are the cultural Universals

8. The “Universals”
postnatal care
pregnancy usages
property rights
propitiation of supernatural beings
puberty customs
religious ritual
residence rules
sexual restrictions
soul concepts
status differentiation
surgery
tool-making
trade
visiting
weather control
weaving
Source: werpt/define.ppt
age-grading
athletic sports
bodily adornment
calendar
cleanliness training
community organization
cooking
co-operative labor
cosmology
courtship
dancing
decorative art
divination
division of labor
dream interpretation
education
eschatology
hygiene
incest taboos
inheritance rules
joking
kin groups
kinship nomenclature
language
law
luck / superstitions
magic
marriage
mealtimes
medicine
obstetrics
penal sanctions
personal names
population policy
ethics
ethno-botany
etiquette
faith healing
family feasting
fire-making
folklore
food taboos
funeral rites
games
gestures
gift-giving
government
greetings
hair styles
hospitality
housing
List from: Howard Culverson’s summary of Murdock’s Universals

9. The same culture often meets the same need differently at different times and places
Cultural Change
Obviously time can bring new technologies and techniques to solve old problems.
But it may be that ideas will change as well. This results in changes in the social rules and expectations.
Resources Matter
Materialism
Marx (who controls materials)
Diamond (geographic luck)
Lenski (technology drives change)
Ideas Matter
Beliefs
Weber (Protestant Ethic)

10. Culture change
Culture Lag
Sometimes culture changes faster than people within the culture can keep up.
When non- material culture falls behind material culture it is called culture lag
The rate of change can be very slow or very fast… or anywhere in between
Culture changes in response to
Population changes
Environmental changes
Resource changes
Discovery, Innovation, Invention
Ideas

11. Language Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The words that a culture uses transmit more than communication, they transmit the values, what is good/bad; right/wrong; important/not important.
Language shapes not only what we say, but how we think about the world.
Learning a new language involves learning how the culture perceives reality, in fact how it defines and constructs what is real.
The Rosetta Stone, written in 3 languages provide a clue to the translation of hierogyphics

12. Dominant Ideology
Cultural beliefs that help to maintain control by the powerful in society.
Two views
Conflict Theory
This term is defined as the conflict theorists see it
Ideas that provide advantage to the powerful and disadvantage to the less powerful
Ex: bank policies
Functionalism
Social stability requires consensus
“Strong values” (i.e. dominant ideology) provides the needed agreement
Everyone benefits when we all agree

13. Dominant Ideology… an example
Are we Christian nation?
Would this change our experience of living as Americans?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

14. The Intersection of History & Biography
Society
Biography (Culture)
History (Culture)
Culture is an intrinsic part of our history and our biography
Background image

15. Societies are unique
Society emerges from the actions of all the members of the interrelated social group
Actions take place in real time and are affected by earlier actions
Culture is expressed
Through the norms of the actors
Through the rules of the society
Through the institutions of society
Through material objects
People are free to deviate
Deviation may or may not bring cultural change