This document defines key concepts from anthropology and sociology regarding culture and society. It discusses that culture encompasses beliefs, practices, values, and everything people learn as members of a society. Culture contains material aspects like artifacts as well as nonmaterial aspects like ideas and norms. Norms guide human behavior and come in forms like folkways, mores, taboos, and laws. Society describes a group that shares territory and culture, and different types of societies include hunting, pastoral, and industrial. The document also discusses ethnocentrism, xenocentrism, and cultural relativism as orientations for viewing other cultures.

1. Chapter 2
DEFINING CULTURE AND SSOCIETY
FROM THEE PERSPECTIVES OF
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

2. I.Defining Culture
andSocietyfrom
theperspectives
ofAnthropology
andSociology
CULTURE- refers to the complex whole which
encompasses beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws,
norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge and everything that
a person learns and shares as a member of society.
CLASSIFICATION OF CULTURE:
a. Material culture- cultural components that are visible
and tangible.
b. Nonmaterial culture- components of culture that are
intangible or without representation
2 category of nonmaterial culture:
1. Cognitive- include the ideas, concepts, philosophies,
design etc. that are products of the mental or
intellectual functioning of the human mind.
2. Normative- includes all the expectations, standards
and rules for human behavior.

3.  ELEMENTS OF CULTURE:
1. beliefs
2. values
3. symbols
a. verbal
b. nonverbal
4. language
5. technology
6. norms

4.  2 TYPES OF NORMS:
a. proscriptive- defines and tells is thing to do.
b. prescriptive- defines and tells is thing to do.
FORMS OF NORMS:
1. Folkways
2. Mores
3. Taboos
4. laws

5. CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE:
1. dynamic, flexible and adaptive
2. Shared and may be challenged
3. Learned through socialization or enculturation
4. Pattered social interactions
5. Integrated
6. Transmitted through socialization/ enculturation
7. Requires language and other forms of communication.

6.  SOCIETY- describes a group of people who share a
common territory and a culture.
 TYPES OF SOCIETY:
a. hunting and gathering societies
b. pastoral societies
c. horticultural societies
d. agricultural societies
e. industrial societies
f. post- industrial societies

7. ETHNOCENTRISM/
XENOCENTRISMAND
CULTURALRELATIVISM
ASORIENTATIONSIN
VIEWINGOTHER
CULTURE
 ETHNOCENTRISM
- Is the tendency to see and evaluate other culture in terms of one’s own
race, nation or culture.
XENOCENTRISM
- one;s exposure to cultural practices of others may make one to give
preferences to the ideas, lifestyle and products of other cultures.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
- Is the principle that an individual humans beliefs and activities should
be understood by others in terms of that individual’s own culture.
3 IDEAS OF CULTURAAL RELATIVISM:
a. moral relativism
b. situational relativism
c. cognitive relativism

8.  Reference:
 Understanding, Culture, Society and Politics. 2016. Myla M. Arcinas Ph. D. pp 1-13.