SOCIETY AND CULTURE
The society in which we live determines
everything from the food we eat to the choices we make. The word society comes from the latin root socius, meaning “companion” or
“being with others.” A society consists of people who share a territory, who
interact with each other, and who share a culture. Some societies are, in fact,
groups of people united by friendship or common interests. Our respective
societies teach us how to behave, what to believe, and how we’ll be punished if
we don’t follow the laws or customs in place.
Sociologists study
the way people learn about their own society’s cultures and how they discover
their place within those cultures. They also examine the ways in which people
from differing cultures interact and sometimes clash—and how mutual
understanding and respect might be reached.
Society
According to sociologists, a society is a group of people with common
territory, interaction, and culture. Social
groups consist of two or more
people who interact and identify with one another.
·
Territory: Most countries have
formal boundaries and territory that the world recognizes as theirs. However, a
society’s boundaries don’t have to be geopolitical borders, such as the one
between the United States and Canada. Instead, members of a society, as well as
nonmembers, must recognize particular land as belonging to that society.
Example: The society of the
Yanomamo has fluid but definable land boundaries. Located in a South American
rain forest, Yanamamo territory extends along the border of Brazil and
Venezuela. While outsiders would have a hard time determining where Yanomamo
land begins and ends, the Yanomamo and their neighbors have no trouble
discerning which land is theirs and which is not.
·
Interaction: Members of a society
must come in contact with one another. If a group of people within a country
has no regular contact with another group, those groups cannot be considered
part of the same society. Geographic distance and language barriers can
separate societies within a country.
Example: Although Islam was
practiced in both parts of the country, the residents of East Pakistan spoke
Bengali, while the residents of West Pakistan spoke Urdu. Geographic distance,
language differences, and other factors proved insurmountable. In 1971, the
nation split into two countries, with West Pakistan assuming the name Pakistan and East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh. Within each newly formed
society, people had a common culture, history, and language, and distance was
no longer a factor.
·
Culture: People of the same
society share aspects of their culture, such as language or beliefs. Culture refers to the language, values,
beliefs, behavior, and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.
It is a defining element of society.
Example: Some features of
American culture are the English language, a democratic system of government,
cuisine (such as hamburgers and corn on the cob), and a belief in individualism
and freedom.
Pluralism
The United States is a society composed of
many groups of people, some of whom originally belonged to other societies.
Sociologists consider the United States apluralistic society, meaning it
is built of many groups. As societies modernize, they attract people from
countries where there may be economic hardship, political unrest, or religious
persecution. Since the industrialized countries of the West were the first to
modernize, these countries tend to be more pluralistic than countries in other
parts of the world.
Many people came to the United States between
the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Fleeing poverty and
religious persecution, these immigrants arrived in waves from Europe and Asia
and helped create the pluralism that makes the United States unique.
Pluralism in the Neighborhood
Both cities and regions reflect pluralism in
the United States. Most major American cities have areas in which people from
particular backgrounds are concentrated, such as Little Italy in New York,
Chinatown in San Francisco, and Little Havana in Miami. Regionally, people of
Mexican descent tend to live in those states that border Mexico. Individuals of
Cuban descent are concentrated in Florida. Spanish-speaking people from other
Caribbean islands, such as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, are more
likely to live in the Northeast.
Assimilation
Some practices that are common in other
societies will inevitably offend or contradict the values and beliefs of the
new society. Groups seeking to become part of a pluralistic society often have
to give up many of their original traditions in order to fit in—a process known
as assimilation.
Example: When people arrive in
the United States from other countries, they most likely speak a foreign
language. As they live here, they generally learn at least some English, and
many become fluent. Their children are most likely bilingual, speaking English
as well as the language of their parents. By the third generation, the language
originally spoken by their grandparents is often lost.
In pluralistic societies, groups do not have
to give up all of their former beliefs and practices. Many groups within a
pluralistic society retain their ethnic traditions.
Example: Although Chinese
immigrants started arriving in the United States 150 years ago,
Chinese-American communities still follow some traditions, such as celebrating
the Lunar New Year.
Melting Pot?
The United States is commonly referred to as
a melting pot, a society
in which people from different societies blend together into a single mass.
Some sociologists prefer the term “multicultural,” pointing out that even if a
group has been in this country for many generations, they probably still retain
some of their original heritage. The term “multiculturalism” recognizes
the original heritages of millions of Americans, noting that Americans who are
originally from other societies do not necessarily have to lose their
individual markers by melting into the mainstream.
Equality
In a truly pluralistic society, no one group
is officially considered more influential than another. In keeping with this
belief, the United States does not, for example, put a legal quota on how many
Italian Americans can vote in national elections, how many African Americans
may run for public office, or how many Vietnamese Americans can live on a
certain street. However, powerful informal mechanisms, such as prejudice and
discrimination, work to keep many groups out of the political process or out of
certain neighborhoods.
Types
The society we live in did not spring up
overnight; human societies have evolved slowly over many millennia. However,
throughout history, technological developments have sometimes brought about
dramatic change that has propelled human society into its next age.
Hunting
and Gathering Societies
Hunting and gathering
societies survive
by hunting game and gathering edible plants. Until about 12,000 years ago, all
societies were hunting and gathering societies.
There are five basic
characteristics of hunting and gathering societies:
1.
The primary institution is the family, which decides how food
is to be shared and how children are to be socialized, and which provides for
the protection of its members.
2.
They tend to be small, with fewer than fifty members.
3.
They tend to be nomadic, moving to new areas when the current
food supply in a given area has been exhausted.
4.
Members display a high level of interdependence.
5.
Labor division is based on sex: men hunt, and women gather.
The first social revolution—the
domestication of plants and animals—led to the birth of the horticultural and
pastoral societies.
Twilight of the
Hunter-Gatherers
Hunting and gathering
societies are slowly disappearing, as the encroachment of civilization destroys
the land they depend on. The Pygmies in Africa are one of the few remaining
such societies.
Horticultural Societies
In a horticultural society, hand
tools are used to tend crops.The first horticultural societies sprang up
about 10,000–12,000 years ago in the most fertile areas of the Middle East,
Latin America, and Asia. The tools they used were simple: sticks or
hoe-like instruments used to punch holes in the ground so that crops could be
planted. With the advent of horticultural machinery, people no longer had to
depend on the gathering of edible plants—they could now grow their own food.
They no longer had to leave an area when the food supply was exhausted, as they
could stay in one place until the soil was depleted.
Pastoral Societies
A pastoral society relies on the domestication and
breeding of animals for food.Some geographic regions, such as the desert
regions of North Africa, cannot support crops, so these societies learned how
to domesticate and breed animals. The members of a pastoral society must move
only when the grazing land ceases to be usable. Many pastoral societies still
exist in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.
Job Specialization
As techniques for
raising crops and domesticating and breeding animals improved, societies began
to produce more food than they needed. Societies also became larger and more
permanently rooted to one location. For the first time in human history, not
everyone was engaged in the gathering or production of food. As a result, job
specialization emerged. While some people farmed or raised animals, others
produced crafts, became involved in trade, or provided such goods as farming
tools or clothing.
Agricultural Societies
The invention of the
plow during the horticultural and pastoral societies is considered the second social revolution, and
it led to the establishment of agricultural societies approximately five
thousand to six thousand years ago. Members of an agricultural or agrarian society tend crops with an animal harnessed to
a plow. The use of animals to pull a plow eventually led to the
creation of cities and formed the basic structure of most modern
societies.
The development of
agricultural societies followed this general sequence:
·
Animals are used to pull plows.
·
Larger areas of land can then be cultivated.
·
As the soil is aerated during plowing, it yields more crops for
longer periods of time.
·
Productivity increases, and as long as there is plenty of
food, people do not have to move.
·
Towns form, and then cities.
·
As crop yields are high, it is no longer necessary for every
member of the society to engage in some form of farming, so some people begin
developing other skills. Job specialization increases.
·
Fewer people are directly involved with the production of
food, and the economy becomes more complex.
Around this same
time, the wheel was invented, along with writing, numbers, and what we would
today call the arts. However, the invention of the steam engine—the third
social revolution—was what took humans from agricultural to industrial
society.
Roots of Gender
Inequality
As people moved
toward domesticating animals and using them to do work, males tended to
dominate more of the workforce, since physical strength was necessary to
control animals. By the time societies became agricultural, males all but
dominated the production of food. Since then, more prestige has been accorded
to traditionally male jobs than to traditionally female jobs, and hence, to
males more than to females.
Industrial Societies
An industrial society uses advanced sources of energy,
rather than humans and animals, to run large machinery. Industrialization began in the
mid-1700s, when the steam engine was first used in Great Britain as a means of
running other machines. By the twentieth century, industrialized societies
had changed dramatically:
·
People and goods traversed much longer distances because of
innovations in transportation, such as the train and the steamship.
·
Rural areas lost population because more and more people were
engaged in factory work and had to move to the cities.
·
Fewer people were needed in agriculture, and societies became urbanized, which means that the
majority of the population lived within commuting distance of a major city.
·
Suburbs grew up around cities to provide city-dwellers with
alternative places to live.
The twentieth century
also saw the invention of the automobile and the harnessing of electricity,
leading to faster and easier transportation, better food storage, mass
communication, and much more. Occupational specialization became even more
pronounced, and a person’s vocation became more of an identifier than his
or her family ties, as was common in nonindustrial societies.
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies divided societies into two large
categories:Gemeinschaft societies
and Gesellschaft societies. Gemeinschaft societies consist primarily of
villages in which everyone knows everyone else. Relationships are lifelong and
based on kinship. A Gesellschaft society is modernized. People have
little in common with one another, and relationships are short term and based on
self-interest, with little concern for the well-being of others.
Postindustrial Societies
The Industrial
Revolution transformed Western societies in many unexpected ways. All the
machines and inventions for producing and transporting goods reduced the need
for human labor so much that the economy transformed again, from an industrial
to a postindustrial economy.
A postindustrial society, the
type of society that has developed over the past few decades, features an
economy based on services and technology, not production. There are three major
characteristics of a postindustrial economy:
1.
Focus on ideas: Tangible
goods no longer drive the economy.
2.
Need for higher education: Factory
work does not require advanced training, and the new focus on information and
technology means that people must pursue greater education.
3.
Shift in workplace from cities to
homes: New
communications technology allows work to be performed from a variety of
locations.
Mass Society
As industrialized
societies grow and develop, they become increasingly different from their less
industrialized counterparts. As they become larger, they evolve into large,
impersonal mass societies. In a mass
society, individual achievement is valued over kinship ties, and people
often feel isolated from one another. Personal incomes are generally high, and
there is great diversity among people.
Norms
Every society has expectations about how its
members should and should not behave. A norm is a guideline or an expectation for
behavior. Each society makes up its own rules for behavior and decides when
those rules have been violated and what to do about it. Norms change
constantly.
How
Norms Differ
Norms differ widely
among societies, and they can even differ from group to group within the same
society.
·
Different settings: Wherever we go,
expectations are placed on our behavior. Even within the same society, these
norms change from setting to setting.
Example: The
way we are expected to behave in church differs from the way we are expected to
behave at a party, which also differs from the way we should behave in a
classroom.
·
Different countries: Norms are
place-specific, and what is considered appropriate in one country may be
considered highly inappropriate in another.
Example: In
some African countries, it’s acceptable for people in movie theaters to yell
frequently and make loud comments about the film. In the United States, people
are expected to sit quietly during a movie, and shouting would be unacceptable.
·
Different time periods: Appropriate and inappropriate
behavior often changes dramatically from one generation to the next. Norms can
and do shift over time.
Example: In
the United States in the 1950s, a woman almost never asked a man out on a date,
nor did she pay for the date. While some traditional norms for dating prevail,
most women today feel comfortable asking men out on dates and paying for some
or even all of the expenses.
Norm Categories
Sociologists have
separated norms into four categories: folkways, mores, laws, and taboos.
Folkways
A folkway is a norm for everyday behavior that
people follow for the sake of convenience or tradition. People practice
folkways simply because they have done things that way for a long time.
Violating a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.
Example: Holding
the door open for a person right behind you is a folkway.
Mores
A more (pronounced MORE-ay) is a norm based
on morality, or definitions of right and wrong. Since mores have moral
significance, people feel strongly about them, and violating a more usually
results in disapproval.
Example: Parents
who believe in the more that only married people should live together will
disapprove of their son living with his girlfriend. They may consider their
son’s action a violation of the moral guidelines for behavior.
Laws
A law is a norm that is written down and
enforced by an official agency. Violating a law results in a specific
punishment.
Example: It
is illegal in most countries to drive a car while drunk, and a person violating
this law may get cited for driving under the influence (DUI), which may bring a
fine, loss of driver’s license, or even jail time.
Taboos
A taboo is a norm that society holds so
strongly that violating it results in extreme disgust. The violator is often
considered unfit to live in that society.
Example: In
most countries, cannibalism and incest are considered taboo. In some Muslim
cultures, eating pork is taboo because the pig is considered unclean.
Deviance
Where there are
rules, there are rule breakers. Sociologists call the violation of a norm deviance. The word deviant has taken on the negative connotation
of someone who behaves in disgusting or immoral ways, but to sociologists, adeviant is anyone who doesn’t follow a norm,
in either a good way or a bad way. See Chapter 6 for more
about deviance.
Example: Most
people don’t graduate from college with a 4.0 grade point average, so
sociologists view someone who does graduate with a 4.0 as deviant. Likewise,
most Americans get married at some point in their lives, so someone who chooses
not to marry is sociologically a deviant.
Although deviance can
be good and even admirable, few societies could tolerate the chaos that would
result from every person doing whatever he or she pleased.Social control refers to the methods that
societies devise to encourage people to observe norms. The most common method
for maintaining social control is the use of sanctions,
which are socially constructed expressions of approval or disapproval. Sanctions
can be positive or negative, and the ways societies devise to positively or
negatively sanction behaviors are limited only by the society’s imagination.
Positive Sanctions
A positive sanction rewards someone for following a norm
and serves to encourage the continuance of a certain type of behavior.
Example: A
person who performs well at his or her job and is given a salary raise or a
promotion is receiving a positive sanction. When parents reward a child with
money for earning good grades, they are positively sanctioning that child’s
behavior.
Negative Sanctions
A negative sanction is a way of communicating that a
society, or some group in that society, does not approve of a particular
behavior. The optimal effect of a negative sanction is to discourage the
continuation of a certain type of behavior.
Example: Imprisoning
a criminal for breaking the law, cutting off a thief’s hands for stealing, and
taking away a teenager’s television privileges for breaking curfew are all
negative sanctions.
Positive or Negative?
A sanction is not
always clearly positive or negative. A child who throws a temper tantrum may
find he has everyone’s attention, but while his parents might be telling him to
stop, the attention he receives for his behavior is actually a positive
sanction. It increases the likelihood that he’ll do it again. Attention can be
a powerful positive sanction, while lack of attention can be a strong negative
sanction.
Norms and Consequences
Norm
Example
Consequences for
violation
Folkway
Wearing a suit to an
interview
Raised eyebrow
More
Only married couples
should live together
Conflicts with family
members, disapproval
Law
Laws against public
nudity
Imprisonment,
monetary fine
Taboo
Eating human flesh
Visible signs of
disgust, expulsion from society
Status and
roles
Most people associate status with the
prestige of a person’s lifestyle, education, or vocation. According to
sociologists, status describes the position a person
occupies in a particular setting. We all occupy several statuses and play the
roles that may be associated with them. A role is the set of norms, values,
behaviors, and personality characteristics attached to a status. An individual may occupy the statuses
of student, employee, and club president and play one or more roles with each
one.
Example: Status as student
Role 1: Classroom: Attending class, taking
notes, and communicating with the professor
Role 2: Fellow student: Participating in
study groups, sharing ideas, quizzing other students
Status as employee
Role 1: Warehouse: Unloading boxes, labeling
products, restocking shelves
Role 2: Customer service: Answering
questions, solving problems, researching information
Status as club president
Role 1: Administrative: Running club
meetings, delegating tasks to club members
Role 2: Public: Distributing flyers,
answering questions, planning community volunteer activities
At any given time, the individual described
above can also occupy the statuses of athlete, date, confidant, or a number of
others, depending on the setting. With each change of status, the individual
plays a different role or roles.
Society’s Definition of “Roles”
Societies decide what is considered
appropriate role behavior for different statuses. For example, every society
has the “mother” status. However, some societies consider it inappropriate for
a mother to assume the role of authority in the family. Other societies ascribe
lots of power to the status of mother. In some societies, students are expected
to be completely obedient to teachers. In American society, the student role
involves asking the teacher questions and even challenging the teacher’s
statements.
Role
Conflict
Role conflict results from the
competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our time and energy. The
more statuses we have, and the more roles we take on, the more likely we are to
experience role conflict.
A member of a nonindustrialized society
generally has just a few statuses, such as spouse, parent, and villager. A
typical middle-class American woman, meanwhile, probably has many statuses, and
therefore many roles. She may be a mother, wife, neighbor, member of the PTA,
employee, boss, town council president, and part-time student. Because people in
modernized societies have so many roles, they are more likely than people in
nonindustrialized societies to experience role conflict.
Example: A working father is
expected at work on time but is late because one of his children is sick. His
roles as father and employee are then in conflict. A role for his father status
dictates that he care for his sick child, while a role for his employee status
demands that he arrive at work on time.
Culture
Culture is everything made,
learned, or shared by the members of a society, including values, beliefs,
behaviors, and material objects.
Culture is learned,
and it varies tremendously from society to society. We begin learning our
culture from the moment we’re born, as the people who raise us encourage
certain behaviors and teach their version of right and wrong. Although cultures
vary dramatically, they all consist of two parts: material culture and nonmaterial
culture.
Material Culture
Material culture consists of the
concrete, visible parts of a culture, such as food, clothing, cars,
weapons, and buildings. Aspects of material culture differ from society to
society. Here are a few features of modern material culture in the United
States:
·
Soy lattes
·
CD burners
·
Running shoes
·
iPods
·
Lifestyle magazines
·
Organic vegetables
·
Sport utility vehicles
Example: One
common form of material culture is jewelry that indicates a person’s status as
married. In American culture, people wear a metal band on the ring finger
of the left hand to show that they are married. In smaller, nonindustrialized
societies, everyone knows everyone else, so no such sign is needed. In certain
parts of India, women wear a necklace to indicate that they are married. In
Northern Europe, married people wear wedding bands on the right hand.
Nonmaterial Culture
Nonmaterial culture consists of the
intangible aspects of a culture, such as values and beliefs. Nonmaterial
culture consists of concepts and ideas that shape who we are and make us
different from members of other societies.
·
A value is a culturally approved concept about
what is right or wrong, desirable or undesirable. Values are a culture’s principles
about how things should be and differ greatly from society to society.
Example: In
the United States today, many women value thinness as a standard of beauty. In
Ghana, however, most people would consider American fashion models sickly and
undesirable. In that culture and others, robustness is valued over skinniness
as a marker of beauty.
Cult of the Car
Automobile ownership
clearly illustrates the American value of material acquisition. Americans love
cars, and society is constructed to accommodate them. We have a system of
interstate roadways, convenient gas stations, and many car dealerships.
Businesses consider where patrons will park, and architects design homes with
spaces for one or more cars. A society that values the environment more than
the material acquisition might refuse to build roadways because of the damage
they might do to the local wildlife.
·
Beliefs are specific ideas
that people feel to be true. Values support beliefs.
Example: Americans
believe in freedom of speech, and they believe they should be able to say
whatever they want without fear of reprisal from the government. Many Americans
value freedom as the right of all people and believe that people should be left
to pursue their lives the way they want with minimal interference from the
government.
In societies where there are different kinds
of people, one group is usually larger or more powerful than the others.
Generally, societies consist of a dominant culture, subcultures, and
countercultures.
Dominant
Culture
The dominant culture in a society is the group whose
members are in the majority or who wield more power than other groups. In the United States, the dominant
culture is that of white, middle-class, Protestant people of northern European
descent. There are more white people here than African Americans, Latinos,
Asian Americans, or Native Americans, and there are more middle-class people
than there are rich or poor people.
The Majority Doesn’t
Always Rule
A group does not have
to be a majority to be a dominant culture. In South Africa, there are four
times as many black Africans as white Africans of European descent. Yet under a
system of racial segregation and domination called apartheid, which was legally in
effect from 1948 to 1991, the white population managed to hold political and
economic power. South African whites thus were the dominant culture.
Subculture
A subculture is a group that lives differently
from, but not opposed to, the dominant culture. A subculture is a culture
within a culture. For example, Jews form a subculture in the largely Christian
United States. Catholics also form a subculture, since the majority of Americans
are Protestant. Members of these subcultures do belong to the dominant culture
but also have a material and nonmaterial culture specific to their subcultures.
Religion is not the
only defining aspect of a subculture. The following elements can also define a
subculture:
·
Occupation
·
Financial status
·
Political ideals
·
Sexual orientation
·
Age
·
Geographical location
·
Hobbies
W. E. B. Du Bois
One important
theorist of subcultures was W.
E. B. Du Bois. The first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard
University, Du Bois was one of the most renowned sociologists of race
relations in the United States. He described racism as the predominant problem
that American culture faced in the twentieth century. He paid special attention
to the effects of what he called the “color line” in America and studied the
impact of racism on both whites and blacks.
Counterculture
A counterculture is a subculture that opposes the
dominant culture. For example, the hippies of the 1960s were a counterculture,
as they opposed the core values held by most citizens of the United States.
Hippies eschewed material possessions and the accumulation of wealth, rejected
the traditional marriage norm, and espoused what they called free love, which was basically
the freedom to have sex outside of marriage. Though hippies were generally
peaceful, they opposed almost everything the dominant culture stood for.
Not all
countercultures are nonviolent. In 1995, the federal building in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma, was blown up, killing 168 people and injuring many others. That
horrific crime brought to light the existence of another counterculture in the
United States: rural militias. While such groups go by several names, their
members tend to be people who despise the U.S. government for what they see as
its interference in the lives of citizens.
Counterculture and
Politics
In many parts of the
world, ethnic, political, or religious groups within larger nations struggle
for independence or dominance. For generations, the Basque separatist group ETA
(Freedom for the Basque Homeland) in northern Spain has violently pursued the
goal of independence for the Basque regions. In Northern Ireland, which is
governed by Great Britian, Sinn Fein is a violent political organization whose
stated goal is the end of British rule in Ireland. ETA and Sinn Fein are
examples of countercultures.
Interaction of
culture
When many different cultures live together in
one society, misunderstandings, biases, and judgments are inevitable—but fair
evaluations, relationships, and learning experiences are also
possible. Cultures cannot remain entirely separate, no matter how
different they are, and the resulting effects are varied and widespread.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to
judge another culture by the standards of one’s own culture.Ethnocentrism
usually entails the notion that one’s own culture is superior to everyone
else’s.
Example: Americans
tend to value technological advancement, industrialization, and the
accumulation of wealth. An American, applying his or her own standards to a
culture that does not value those things, may view that culture as “primitive”
or “uncivilized.” Such labels are not just statements but judgments: they imply
that it is better to be urbanized and industrialized than it is to carry on
another kind of lifestyle.
People
in other cultures, such as some European cultures, also see American culture
through the lens of their own ethnocentrism. To members of other cultures, Americans
may seem materialistic, brash, or arrogant, with little intellectual subtlety
or spirituality. Many Americans would disagree with that assessment.
Exported
Ethnocentrism
When missionaries go
to other countries to convert the local people to their brand of religion, they
are practicing ethnocentrism. Missionaries usually want to convert people to
their own forms of worship, and they sometimes encourage people to give up
their religious beliefs.
Cultural Relativism
The opposite of
ethnocentrism is cultural
relativism—the examination of a cultural trait within the context of that
culture. Cultural
relativists try to understand unfamiliar values and norms without judging them
and without applying the standards of their own culture.
Example: In
India, the concepts of dating, love, and marriage differ from those in the
United States. Though love is important, parents choose their children’s
spouses according to similarities in educational levels, religions, castes, and
family backgrounds. The families trust that love will develop over time but
believe that a wedding can take place without it. From an American ethnocentric
perspective, arranging marriages appears to be a custom that limits individual
freedom. On the other hand, a cultural relativist would acknowledge that
arranged marriages serve an important function in India and other cultures.
Culture Shock
The practices of
other cultures can be and often are jarring, and even the most adept cultural
relativist is not immune to culture shock. Culture
shock is the surprise,
disorientation, and fear people can experience when they encounter a new
culture.
Example: Visitors
to Western Europe from Islamic countries often experience culture shock when
they see women wearing what they consider to be revealing clothing and
unmarried couples kissing or holding hands in public, because these behaviors
are forbidden or frowned upon in their own cultures.
Culture Shock at Home
Encountering an
unfamiliar subculture in one’s own country, spending time with very rich or
very poor people, or spending time with a group of people who hold radical or
unfamiliar political views can produce culture shock just as much as
encountering a brand-new culture in a foreign country.
Culture Lag
In 1922, the
sociologist William Ogburn coined the term culture lag. Culture lagrefers to the
tendency for changes in material and nonmaterial culture to occur at different
rates. Ogburn proposed
that, in general, changes in nonmaterial culture tend to lag behind changes in
material culture, including technological advances.
Technology progresses
at a rapid rate, but our feelings and beliefs about it, part of our nonmaterial
culture, lag behind our knowledge of how to enact technological change.
Example: Though
the technology that allows people to meet online has existed for years, an
understanding of what the proper conduct is in an online “dating” situation
lags behind the knowledge of how to use the technology. No definite answers
exist to many important questions: How long should people talk over the
internet before meeting in person? What is the right interval of response time
between emails? New technology has brought with it new questions and
uncertainties.
Cultural Diffusion
Cultural diffusion is the process
whereby an aspect of culture spreads throughout a culture or from one culture
to another.
Example: In
the United States in the early 1990s, only people who needed to be available in
emergencies, such as doctors, carried cell phones. Today, every member of a
family may have his or her own cell phone. In some developing nations, where
standard telephone lines and other communications infrastructures are
unreliable or nonexistent, cell phones have been welcomed enthusiastically, as
they provide people with an effective communication tool.
Global Diffusion
Many aspects of
American culture, such as McDonald’s hamburgers and Coca-Cola, have been
diffused to other countries, and food items from other countries have become
diffused throughout the United States. Sushi, for example, is now available in
grocery stores in many parts of the country, and pizza can be found almost
everywhere in the United States.
Review
What
Is a Society?
·
A society is a group of people with shared
territory, interaction, and culture. Some societies are made up of people who
are united by friendship or common interests. Some societies are merely social
groups, two or more people who interact and identify with one another.
·
Every
society must have territory,
or an area to call its own.
·
Members
of a society must interact with one another on a regular basis.
·
Culture is a defining element
of a society.
·
Some
societies are pluralistic
societies composed of many different
kinds of people, some of whom belonged to other societies. The United States is
a pluralistic society.
·
In
a pluralistic society, members retain some ethnic traditions and beliefs from
their old society. In order to fit into their new society, however, members
must give up some of these original traditions. This process is called assimilation.
·
In
a truly pluralistic society, no one group is officially considered more
influential than another.
Types
of Societies
·
Societies
have evolved over many millennia. The different types of societies include hunting and gathering, horticultural, pastoral, agricultural or agrarian,industrial,
and postindustrial.
·
In hunting and gathering societies,
members survive by gathering plants and hunting for food.
·
Members
of horticultural societies use hand tools to raise crops.
·
Members
of pastoral societies rely on domestication and breeding
of animals for food.
·
Members
of agricultural or agrarian
societies raise crops by
harnessing an animal to a plow.
·
In industrial societies, members
use machinery to replace human labor in the production of goods. As fewer
people are needed for agriculture, societies become urbanized, which means that the
majority of the population lives within commuting distance of a major city.
·
Postindustrial societies feature an economy based on services
and technology rather than production.
·
A mass society is a large, impersonal society that
values individual achievement over kinship ties.
Norms
·
Norms are guidelines,
standards of behavior that change depending on contextand location. The four types of
norms are folkways, mores, laws, and taboos.
·
Deviance is the violation of a
norm, whether for good or bad.
·
Societies
discourage deviance with social
controls, such as positive
sanctions(rewards for approved behavior) and negative sanctions (punishments for disapproved
behavior).
Status
and Roles
·
We
all occupy several statuses, or positions in particular settings,
and play roles based on them.
·
A role is a set of norms, values, and
behaviors attached to a status.
·
When
we are expected to fulfill more than one role at the same time, we can
experience role conflict.
Culture
·
Culture is everything made,
learned, or shared by the members of a society.
·
Although
cultures vary dramatically, they all are composed of material culture(physical
things) and nonmaterial
culture (intangible aspects
such as beliefsand values).
·
A dominant culture is the culture held by the majority or
the most powerful. It usually maintains economic, political, and cultural
power.
·
A subculture is a culture within the dominant
culture. The subculture does not oppose the dominant culture but does have its
own material and nonmaterial cultures that the dominant culture does not share.
·
A counterculture actively opposes the dominant culture.
·
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to
view other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture. Ethnocentrists often
consider their cultures superior to other cultures.
·
The
opposite of ethnocentrism, cultural
relativism, means interpreting other cultures based on one’s own standards.
·
We
experience culture shock when the practices of other cultures
seem unfamiliar, scary, or shocking.
·
William Ogburn coined the term culture lag, which
occurs when material and nonmaterial culture develop at different rates. For
example, culture lag sometimes leaves us with technology we’re not yet sure how
to use.
·
Cultural diffusion occurs when an item
of culture spreads throughout a culture or from one culture to another.
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