1. Culture and Society Culture—the concept Components of culture Society Categorizing societies Premodern societies Industrialized societies Globalization

2. Culture—the concept A shared set of norms, beliefs, and values that guide the social life of a group, and the material products of that group. Becker: what is it that allows us to act together “without missteps and conflict”? Redfield (in Becker): “conventional understandings made manifest in act and artifact” A “way of life” Where does it come from? Becker: imposed and invented, continuously

3. Components of culture Objects (material culture) Symbols (non-material culture)

4. Material culture The physical artifacts or objects made by humans in society Technology: the tools and techniques used in production the link between culture and nature

5. Nonmaterial culture Intangible products of social life

6. Two important types of ideas that give culture the capacity to guide social life: Values: Abstract ideals Ideas about what is right, good, preferred Examples? Norms Specific principles or rules of expected behavior; do’s & don’ts Types: Folkways Mores Taboos Laws

7. What are these?

8. $

11. money

12. What do they all have in common? They are symbols.

13. symbol An item that stands for or represents another item Words are symbols Language is a system of symbols that carry meanings, including abstract ideas

17. What do all these have in common? They are signifiers.

18. signifier Any vehicle of meaning Can be sound, gesture, image, object, or even a style A symbol is a type of signifier (involving motivation- meaning )

19. Semiotics: Analysis of nonverbal cultural meanings

20. Example of semiotics: ritual buildings Christian church with spire: male-centered, heaven-oriented Hopi kiva: female-centered, earth-oriented Old norm that spire was highest building New urban norm of skyscraper

21. Cultural identity we take our own culture for granted, assume it as the norm; culture is an important part of our identity this can also take the form of a subculture ; examples? judging other culture’s by one’s own cultural standards is ethnocentrism social scientists strive for cultural relativism : understanding another culture by it’s own standards

22. Society: A group of people who live in a specific place with its own political authority and are aware of their shared identity.

23. society System of interrelationships A macro social structure Industrialization and globalization are the main drift of this period of history

24. Categorizing societies Marx’s concept: mode of production Non-Marxists: level of material culture (technology) taken as key indicator Societies divided into “pre-capitalist/capitalist” by marxists, premodern/modern by non-marxists.

25. Categorizing societies Mode of production: forces of production (technology) and relations of production (classes) periods defined by key classes: “primitive” communism slavery Feudalism Capitalism socialism Material culture: complexity of technology and source of energy key sociocultural evolution assumed, but all “levels” still exist hunting and gathering agrarian pastoral traditional states or civilizations industrial

26. Marx’s Historical Materialism (“vulgar” version, based on statements in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) Primitive Communism (classless) Slavery (masters vs. slaves) Feudalism (lords vs. peasants Capitalism (capital vs. labor) Socialism (dictatorship of the proletariat) Communism (classless, stateless) “Class struggle is the motor of history”

27. Premodern societies Review table 3.1

28. Hunting and gathering +

29. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari How is stratification minimized in a gift- based mode of exchange?

30. Agrarian + ( )

31. Pastoral +

32. Traditional state or civilization

33. Industrialized societies +

34. Industrialization: emergence of machine production based on the use of inanimate power sources.

35. Industrialized societies: characteristics Rapid technological innovation (Marx sez capitalism causes this) More non-agricultural workers than farmers Urbanization Nation-state

36. Political community with clearly delimited borders Distinguished from traditional states with fluctuating frontiers All modern societies are nation-states

37. Nation-states

38. World system: globalization Three worlds? Product of colonialism: expansion of European, Japanese and American power (first world) Second world product of state socialism (marxist model) Third world: formerly colonized peoples; now either poor or “newly industrializing”

39. globalization Now clearly a World System in economic and political sense Also cultural influences—both ways Jihad vs. McWorld (Benjamin Barber)