Sociology is the study of people in groups and societies. A society is composed of social actions within a group of people who share a culture, geography, time period, and relative autonomy. To understand a society, one must first understand its culture. Culture is learned through socialization and is shared among members of a group. It has both material and non-material aspects that meet human needs in diverse ways. Cultural change occurs over time in response to various factors, but change may happen at different rates than shifts in material culture.

1. Terms and ideas

2. Society is the  Sociology is the study of
largest form of
group 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. Culture
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 http://commons.wikimedia.org/w
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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”
age-grading hygiene postnatal care
ethics pregnancy usages
athletic sports incest taboos
bodily adornment ethno-botany inheritance rules property rights
calendar etiquette joking propitiation of
supernatural beings
cleanliness training faith healing kin groups
puberty customs
community family feasting kinship nomenclature
organization religious ritual
language
cooking fire-making residence rules
law
co-operative labor folklore sexual restrictions
luck / superstitions
cosmology soul concepts
food taboos magic
courtship status differentiation
funeral rites marriage
dancing surgery
games mealtimes
decorative art tool-making
medicine
divination gestures trade
obstetrics
division of labor gift-giving visiting
penal sanctions
dream interpretation weather control
government personal names
education weaving
greetings population policy Source:http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/pow
eschatology erpt/define.ppt
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  Resources Matter
Change
 Materialism
Obviously time can
bring new  Marx (who controls materials)
technologies and
techniques to solve  Diamond (geographic luck)
old problems.  Lenski (technology drives change)
But it may be that
ideas will change as  Ideas Matter
well. This results in
changes in the social  Beliefs
rules and
expectations.
 Weber (Protestant Ethic)

10. Culture change
Culture Lag  The rate of change can be
Sometimes culture very slow or very fast… or
changes faster than
people within the anywhere in between
culture can keep  Culture changes in response to
up.
 Population changes
When non-
material culture  Environmental changes
falls behind  Resource changes
material culture it is  Discovery, Innovation, Invention
called culture lag
 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 The Rosetta Stone,
world. written in 3 languages
Learning a new language provide a clue to the
involves learning how the translation of
culture perceives reality, hierogyphics
in fact how it defines and
constructs what is real.

12. Dominant Ideology
Cultural  Two views
 Conflict Theory
beliefs that
 This term is defined as the conflict
help to theorists see it
maintain  Ideas that provide advantage to the
powerful and disadvantage to the less
control by powerful
 Ex: bank policies
the powerful  Functionalism
in society.  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
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14. The Intersection of History &
Biography
Culture is an intrinsic part of our Background image http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/itl05/
history and our biography

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