Chapter 4 Culture Copyright 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Copyright 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc.

Chapter 4

Culture


A Definition of Culture

• Culture encompasses the ideas, values, and material objects that allow a group, even an entire society, to carry out their collective lives in relative order and harmony.


The Basic Elements of Culture: Values

• The broadest elements of culture

• General and abstract standards defining what a group or society considers good

• Express a society’s ideals


The Basic Elements of Culture: Norms

• Informal rules that guide what people do and how they live

• Tell people what to do and not do in a certain situation

• Informal


The Basic Elements of Culture: Norms

• Norms are reinforced through sanctions, which can be positive (rewards) or negative (punishments).

• Folkways: norms that are relatively unimportant

• Mores: important norms whose violation is met with a severe negative sanction


The Basic Elements of Culture: Material Culture

• Encompasses the artifacts that are reflections of culture

• Includes clothes, homes, technology, toys, and even weapons

• Culture shapes these objects.


The Basic Elements of Culture: Symbolic Culture and Language

• Symbolic culture encompasses nonmaterial culture.

• Two key forms are values and norms.

• Language is an important aspect of symbolic culture that allows for the storage and development of culture.


Cultural Differences: Ideal and Real Culture

• Ideal culture: what the norms and values of society lead us to think people should believe and do

• Real culture: what people actually think and do in their everyday lives


Cultural Differences: Ideology

• Ideology: set of shared beliefs that explains the social world and guides people’s actions

• A dominant ideology is one upon which many people act.


Cultural Differences: Subcultures• Subculture: a group of people who accept

much of the dominant culture, but are set apart from it

• Subcultures can be grouped by interest, entertainment, fashion, vocabulary, or lifestyle.


Cultural Differences: Countercultures

• Counterculture: a group of people who are set apart from the dominant culture and their norms and values are incompatible with it

• Examples include the KKK, hippies, antiwar activists, and computer hackers


Cultural Differences: Culture Wars• A conflict between a subculture or

counterculture and the dominant culture

• Culture wars sometimes lead to the disruption of the social, economic, and political status quo.


Cultural Differences: Multiculturalism and Assimilation

• Multiculturalism: an environment in which cultural differences are accepted and appreciated by the majority dominant group

• Assimilation: when the dominant culture makes the minority culture adapt to its values, norms, and beliefs


Cultural Differences: Multiculturalism and Assimilation

• Identity politics: a tactic used by the minority group when the dominant group is unwilling to accept them

• Cultural relativism: the idea that a culture needs to be understood within the context of that culture

• Ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s culture is superior to other cultures


Cultural Differences: High and Low Culture

• High culture has tended to be associated with societal elites, seen as the product of artists or skilled professionals, and thought of as aesthetically rich.

• Low culture (sometimes called popular culture) has been associated with the masses and is viewed as lacking in redeeming aesthetic qualities.


Emerging Issues in Culture: Global Culture

• The Globalization of Values: as ideas, information, products, and people flow across the globe, what people value become increasingly similar.

• Cultural Imperialism: the idea that what affects global culture the most is the imposition of one dominant culture on other cultures


Emerging Issues in Culture: Consumer Culture

• Consumer culture: a culture in which the core ideas and material objects relate to consumption and in which consumption is a primary source of meaning in life

• While it can be said that consumer culture is the culture of the West and modernity, it has been globalized to a great degree.



• Children in a consumer culture is perhaps the most controversial aspect of consumer culture.• It is the idea that children are socialized into, and

actively involved in, consuming

• Nontraditional settings for consumption include areas like health care (doctors, pharmaceuticals), higher education, and the Internet.



• The recent Great Recession (2007-2009) caused many observers to question the durability of the consumer culture, leading many to consider the possibility of a postconsumer culture.

• Culture Jamming involves radically transforming an intended message in popular culture.


Emerging Issues in Culture: Cyberculture

• The Internet is a site of an entirely new culture---a cyberculture.

• The Internet has the characteristics of a culture, including distinctive values (openness and sharing) and norms (don’t hack into websites).

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Chapter 4 Culture Copyright 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc