The document discusses the concept of culture from a sociological perspective. It provides definitions of culture from several anthropologists and sociologists such as Tylor, Linton, Goodenough, and Geertz. Culture is described as the shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and worldviews that are learned and transmitted between generations within human societies. The key characteristics of culture outlined include that culture is learned, unconscious, shared, integrated across different domains like kinship and religion, and symbolic in nature. Culture provides a lens that shapes how individuals perceive and evaluate the world.
2. The Concept of Culture
Think of 10 ways in which we use the word culture or
cultural.
Eg. Culture shock, Canadian culture, multicultural
3. Culture Construction Cultural Awareness Deviant Culture.
C. Shock Underground Culture Rural Culture
Agriculture Pop Culture Youth Culture
Global Culture Cultural Identity Cultural Exchange
Cultural Perspective Cultural Assimilation Cross- Culture
Elite Cultural Dead Culture Cultural Diversity
Cultural Sustainability Cafe Culture Multicultural
Canadian Culture Cultural event To be Cultured
Cultural Imperialism Cultural survival High Cultured
Cultural Hegemony drug Culture Enculturation
Cultural Evolution Subculture Cultural Phenomenon
uncultured World Culture Intercultural
Consumer Culture Bacterial Cultural Counter Culture
Safety Culture Corporate Culture Cultural Relativism
The Concept of Culture
4. A Way of Life
Rural Culture. Corporate Culture.
Canadian Culture. Youth Culture
Cafe Culture. Island Culture
Non-anthropological/sociological
Agriculture Bacterial . Horticulture, Aquaculture
A continuum
Global Culture. World Culture Cultured Evolution
Public Culture
A set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices
Counter C. Safety C. drug C. Subculture
Consumer C C. Perspective
Refinement of mind, tastes, and manners
High C. Elite C To be Cultured. Uncultured
5. An object (of manipulation)
C. Sustainability C. Genocide Dead C C. survival
C. Hegemony C. Imperialism C. event C. Heritage
A disparagement of difference
C. Shock Deviant C. Pop C. Underground C.
Subculture C. Assimilation
A sense of agency
C. Construction Enculturation
A celebration of difference
C. Diversity C. Awareness Multicultural
C. Relativism Intercultural Cross-C
C. Exchange
A sense of identity and otherness
C. Identity Canadian C
6. Edward Burnett Tylor
1832-1917
Culture or civilization, taken in its
wide ethnographic sense, is that
complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired
my man as a member of society.
E. B. Tylor 1871
7. `The sum total of knowledge, attitudes and habitual behaviour
patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a particular
society'
Ralph Linton (1940).
The pattern of life within a community, the regularly
recurring activities and material and social arrangements
characteristic of a particular group'.
Ward Goodenough (1957):
“Culture is the framework of beliefs, expressive symbols, and
values in terms of which individuals define their feelings and
make their judgements”
(Geertz 1957 American Anthropologist 59:32-54).
8. An historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied in
symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in
symbolic form by means which men communicate'
(Geertz 1973: 89).
“Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through
learning, that form and guide the beliefs and behaviour of
the people exposed to them.... Cultural traditions include
customs and opinions developed over the generations
about proper and improper behaviour”
(Kottak 2008)
9. • Culture - the language,
beliefs, values, norms,
behaviors, and material
objects that are passed
from one generation to
the next.
• Material culture - the
material objects that
distinguish a group of
people.
• Non-material culture -
a group’s way of
thinking and doing.
What is Culture?
10. Culture is a way of life
Material
Objects
Ideas
Attitudes
Values
Behavior
Patterns
“Everything that people have, think, and do as members of a
society”
(Ferraro, 2008)
12. DO NOT CONFUSE
CULTURE WITH
SOCIETY.
SOCIETY REFERS TO
A GROUP OF PEOPLE,
INTERACTING WITHIN
A GIVEN TERRITORY,
WHO ARE GUIDED
IN THEIR DAILY LIVES
BY THEIR CULTURES.
13. MOST CULTURES SHARE COMMON
COMPONENTS. WE WILL NOW EXAMINE EACH
IN TURN.
CULTURE SURE HAS A
WAY OF CHANGING
WHAT IS MEANT BY
“GOING TO THE
BEACH!”
18. USA 89%
French Canada 81%
English Canada 77%
United Kingdom 71%
Italy 69%
France 59%
Australia 25%
Such findings signal that Canadian values, ideas, and attitudes should not be relied upon when
planning marketing forays into foreign consumer markets
Should everyone use
a deodorant?
Culture is Relative
22. Culture is learned
Culture is unconscious
Culture is shared
Culture is integrated
Culture is Symbolic
Culture is a way of life
Culture is Dynamic
Culture is Relative
Characteristics of Culture
24. Symbolic culture -
nonmaterial culture
whose central
components are
symbols.
◦ A symbol - something
to which people attach
meaning and which they
use to communicate.
Gestures - involve
using one’s body to
communicate.
Language - a system
of symbols that can be
strung together in an
infinite number of
ways for the purpose
of communicating.
Components of
Symbolic Culture
25. • All human groups have a language.
• Language allows for experiences to be passed
from one generation to the next.
• Language allows culture to develop by freeing
people to move beyond their immediate
experiences.
• Language provides us a past and a future, as well
as shared understandings.
What Language Does
26. • The effects of our own culture generally remain
imperceptible to us.
• These learned and shared ways penetrate our being.
• Culture becomes the lens through which we perceive
and evaluate what is going on around us.
How Culture Affects
Our Lives
27. Culture Shock - the
disorientation that
people experience
when they come into
contact with a
different culture.
Ethnocentrism - the
tendency to use one’s
own culture as a
yardstick for judging
the ways of other
societies.
It can create in group
loyalties or lead to
harmful discrimination.
Cultural Orientations
28. • Values - ideas of what is desirable in life.
• Values are the standards by which people
define good and bad.
• Norms - describe rules of behavior that
develop out of a group’s values.
• Sanctions - positive or negative reactions to
the ways in which people follow norms,
including laws and punishments.
Values, Norms,
& Sanctions
29. .CULTURALLY DEFINED STANDARDS OF DESIRABILITY,
GOODNESS, AND BEAUTY, WHICH SERVE AS BROAD
GUIDELINES FOR SOCIAL LIVING
VALUES SUPPORT BELIEFS
SPECIFIC STATEMENTS THAT PEOPLE HOLD
TO BE TRUE
• CAPITALISM AND ACHIEVEMENT= SUCCESS
CORE AMERICAN VALUES
VALUE INCONSISTENCY AND SOCIAL
CHANGE Page 66 EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND
COMPETITION
• HUMANITARIANISM AND “ME FIRST”
30.
31. • Folkways - norms
that are not strictly
enforced.
• If someone does not
follow a folkway, we
may stare or shrug our
shoulders.
• Mores - norms that
are considered
essential to our core
values.
• Taboos - norms so
strongly ingrained
that even the thought
of its violation is
greeted with
revulsion.
Folkways, Mores,
and Taboos