CULTURE Culture rules virtually every aspect of your life and like most people; you are completely

unaware of this. If asked, you would likely define culture as music, literature, visual arts, architecture or language, and you wouldn't be wrong. But you wouldn't be entirely right either. In fact the things produced by a culture which we perceive with our five senses are simply manifestations of the deeper meaning of culture what we do, think and feel. Culture is taught and learned and shared there is no culture of one. And yet, culture is not monolithic individuals exist within a culture. Finally, culture is symbolic. Meaning is ascribed to behavior, words and objects and this meaning is objectively arbitrary, subjectively logical and rational. For example, a "home", is a physical structure, a familial construct and a moral reference point which is distinct from one culture to another. Culture is vital because it enables its members to function with one another without the need to negotiate meaning at every moment. Culture is learned and forgotten, so despite its importance we are generally unconscious of its influence on the manner in which we perceive the world and interact within it. Culture is significant because as we work with others it both enables us and impedes us in our ability to understand and work effectively together. What Is Culture? Culture is the entire way of life of a society as well as all its products. Society is then composed of individuals who share a culture.

relative or in a formal setting such as a school, it is vital for individuals to be able to become true members of society. 3. Culture is Adaptive or Dynamic Society changes so rapidly and the people should know how to conform to these changes. As man pursues to live in this world, he creates things and advances ideas that may initiate change in the society. Culture is constantly changing in a pervasive state. The changes may be imperceptible but they are changes nonetheless. The practices of today will never be the same tomorrow. 4. Culture is Cumulative Knowledge is stored and passed on from one generation to the next, and new knowledge is constantly being added to the existing stock. Each culture has worked out solutions to the basic problems of life which is then passes on to its children. The jeepneys and pedicabs in the Philippines are good examples of the cumulative quality of culture. Their invention involved the use of materials which were invented in different places of the world. 5. Culture is Symbolic

Characteristics of Culture
1. Culture is Shared

To be a member of society means sharing a culture. In this sense, a society is more than the sum of its members. Membership in a society necessarily involves sharing a way of life, engaging in similar patterns of thought and behavior, such as celebrating Thanksgiving in comparable fashion, overspending before Christmas or spending years in school. 2. Culture is Learned

People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts and to exchange those thoughts with others. Language and other forms of symbolic communication, such as art, enable people to create, explain, and record new ideas and information. A symbol has either an indirect connection or no connection at all with the object, idea, feeling, or behavior to which it refers. For instance, most people in the United States find some meaning in the combination of the colors red, white, and blue. But those colors themselves have nothing to do with, for instance, the land that people call the United States, the concept of patriotism, or the U.S. national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. To convey new ideas, people constantly invent new symbols, such as for mathematical formulas. In addition, people may use one symbol, such as a single word, to represent many different ideas, feelings, or values. Thus, symbols provide a flexible way for people to communicate even very complex thoughts with each other. For example, only through symbols can architects, engineers, and construction workers communicate the information necessary to construct a skyscraper or bridge. People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language. Research has shown, for example, that infants have a basic structure of languagea sort of universal grammarbuilt

Human beings are not born with cultural patterns encoded into their DNA. No one is born Christian, English-speaker, and MP3 files user. All such patterns of behavior have to be learned, and the more complex the society one lives in, the longer it takes to learn the necessary skills needed for competent social participation. Accordingly, most members of postindustrial societies spend long years in the educational system whereas member of the few remaining hunting and gathering societies have no need for formal education and rely rather on informal training. But however such learning takes place, informally with a

into their minds. Infants are thus predisposed to learn the languages spoken by the people around them.

Kinds of Culture
1. Nonmaterial

biological responses to specific needs necessary for survival: food, drink, sleep, mating, and social companionship. These drives may be biological but we satisfy them through culturally acceptable means. Culture provides members of society with specific scripts that they are expected to follow in the satisfaction of their drives: table manners and dating rules are examples of such cultural scripts. Biology may explain the commonalities between human societies but culture accounts for the differences. It is then extremely hard to draw a strict line between what is considered biological and what is considered cultural. We certainly have the biological capacity to laugh or cry but what makes us laugh or cry and under what circumstance such behavior is appropriate is a cultural matter. It is also extremely hard to determine whether or not there is such a thing as human nature since many behaviors are the products of the interaction between biological needs and cultural experience. Appropriately enough, different cultures define human nature based on their own cultural scripts. For instance, in individualistic and competitive western societies, we tend to define human nature in exactly such terms. In other words, how we define human nature is a factor of the culture we happen to live in. Similarly, culture forces to reconsider the question of human instinct. Instinct is often mistaken for reflex. However, instinct refers to genetically determined complex behavior that all members of a species engage in at some point: spiders weave complex webs, birds engage in building nests of the same type. Even though some of them have never done it before, they instinctively know how to do it. If humans ever had instinct, it has been lost a long time ago and culture provides a substitute. However, it is because culture provides substitutes for biological evolution, human nature and instinct that it seems natural to us. Culture as Natural Another important characteristic of culture is that we tend to take our way of life as natural, that is, we take it for granted and as the right way of doing things. We therefore rarely question our cultural assumptions. In a sense, culture is invisible to us: it is just the way things are. We do not think we engage in specifically cultural practices when we buy items over the Internet using a credit card, work out at the gym or listen to a music CD. These practices just seem natural. This natural attitude has several consequences.

Nonmaterial culture comprises the software of society: specific shared ways of thinking shared by members of society such as language, beliefs systems, customs, myths, music, scientific knowledge or political ideas. And as mentioned above, culture also involves shared ways of behaving, such as participating in religious rituals or organized sports. These shared modes of thinking and behaving all constitute non-material or intangible culture. 2. Material

Material culture also comprises all the hardware of social life, that is, all the material and physical products of society: buildings, computers, IPods, bows and arrows, DVDs and DVD players and all forms of technology. Technology consists in the material application of knowledge, scientific or other. Significance of Culture Human beings are the most creative species on the planet. It is the only species to have spread to all the continents, able to drive other species to extinction, and transform the environment to adjust to its needs, for better and for worse. Culture is the reason why the human species has been so successful and is therefore significant for several reasons. Cultural Evolution v. Biological Evolution Most animals are limited in their capacity to adapt by the slow process of biological evolution. In a sense, culture liberates humans from biological evolution in that it allows for faster change and adaptation. Cultural evolution and the cultural capacity to accumulate knowledge over generations have made biological evolution less significant a process. If we had to wait for biological evolution to develop the capacity to fly or travel great distances in a short period of time, we would still wait. Yet, technology, a product of culture, allows us to do just that. In this sense, cultural evolution is a faster, more successful extension of biological evolution. Reflex, Drives and Instinct At the same time, human beings are not completely free from some genetic and biological determinations: we have reflexes unlearned automatic responses to physical stimuli such pulling ones hand away from a flame, throwing ones arms when thrown off balance or sneezing. We also have biological drives unlearned

Other Cultural Concepts

1. Culture Shock

Because we tend to consider our cultural ways as natural, we often experience disorientation and discomfort when confronted with other cultures, a feeling known asculture shock. The greater the difference between the two cultures, the greater the shock.

2.

Ethnocentrism

Cognitive culture 1. Symbols

Another consequence of seeing our own culture as natural is that we develop a tendency to judge other cultures by our own moral standards. We tend to consider ourselves more civilized: we worship the right divinity and our moral standards are better than those of other cultures. Such an attitude is called ethnocentrism. It is almost impossible to be objective about ones culture and, in this sense, ethnocentrism can be a source of social solidarity and unity. However, ethnocentrism can also be a source of hostility, prejudice and conflict between groups. Also ethnocentrism can be a force of resistance to change. After all, if one considers ones culture and tradition as better than others, why change? 3. Cultural relativism

A symbol is anything that represents something else. It can be either a material object (a flag, a cross) or a non-material element (a sound, a gesture). As members of a culture, we are constantly and thoroughly surrounded by symbols: when we stop at the red light, we obey a symbolic command. Symbols carry shared meanings among people and they can be used to produce loyalty or hostility. When American students pledge allegiance to the flag, they symbolically display their patriotism. When crowds in parts of the Middle East burn the American flag, they symbolically display their hostility toward the United States. For one category of people, the flag represents national pride and is object of some degree of devotion whereas for other categories of people, it represents evil and imperialism. The fact that symbolic meaning is shared is crucial: when Americans witness Middle Eastern crowds burning the American flag on CNN, they have no difficulty understanding the meaning of such actions. The symbolic meaning is obvious and powerful. In other words, the meaning of a symbol may depend on the users. For instance, the picture of the snowman commonly represents Christmas and snowy winters. However, when used by a rapper, the snowman carries a completely different meaning: the snowman becomes a cocaine dealer. 2. Language

Cultural relativism refers to the opposite attitude of trying to understand cultural practices in their own context, rather than judge them by the standards of other cultures. However, cultural relativism does not mean that anything goes, and that anything is acceptable. Cultural relativism is not moral relativism: the Holocaust remains a crime against humanity even if it made sense from the Nazis point of view. Therefore, cultural relativism is the attitude that any social scientist should adopt when examining other cultural practices without failing to notice if such practices are oppressive or violate human rights. 4. Culture as Toolbox

Because humans are not born with pre-determined solutions to most of lifes problems, they use culture as a toolbox that provides answers that are learned and shared. Culture provides material and non-material solutions to different problems: how to find food, deal with social relationships and the knowledge of human mortality, heal sickness and express emotions. In other words, culture provides ready-made but variable formulas on how to be a human being in a given society. And because the problems faced by human societies change over time, culture is dynamic as new solutions are needed.

Components of Culture
All cultures comprise different components that are necessary for members of society to competently participate in social life and interactions. First, culture provides a stock of knowledge a cognitive component that is a basic foundation for social behavior. Culture also comprises elements necessary for the maintenance of integration and conformity in society a normative component that is, ways of specifying the correct ways of thinking and behaving and of defining morality.

A major symbolic system in use in all human societies is language. Other species have linguistic systems but human language is significantly different. For most language-using species, the capacity for language is genetically determined and fixed; linguistic elements are not learned and do not change over time. Uses of language operate on a stimulus-response basis: a given stimulus (food or danger) will trigger a fixed linguistic response (a specific growl or shriek for lions, a specific flying pattern for bees). Human language has to be learned and is variable (thousands of different human languages exist in the world), flexible (there is significant linguistic variation over time) and generative (humans can create linguistic forms, such as sign or computer languages, literature and poetry). Finally, human language does not operate on a stimulus-response model. Human language comprises two basic components: vocabulary (list of all existing words) and grammar (rules of combination). These two components are the basic tools that can then be used by any competent member of society to produce a wide range of expressions. Without language, there would be no culture. It is through language that we are able to create, share, preserve and transmit cultural meanings such as complex (and uniquely human) patterns of emotion, thought, knowledge and beliefs. In

this sense, language gives us a sense of history and contributes to social evolution as each new generation does not have to reinvent the wheel but can count on an already available stock of knowledge and ideas and build on it. Language is essential to give members of society a sense of identity. For many years, people living in the Canadian province of Quebec have asserted their distinctive national identity through the use of French throughout the province. Linguistic diversity is also considered part of humanitys heritage. In 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) promulgated a Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity that incorporates the preservation of linguistic diversity in the face of disappearing languages. Half of the worlds 6,000 languages are considered endangered and on an average, one language disappears every two weeks as the numbers of their speakers dwindle and American English becomes a global language. Language disappearance can also be the result of political oppression. In the former USSR, one way of imposing the rule of the central Russian government over the different republics was through a process known as Russification: schools were allowed to teach only and exclusively in Russian, at the expense of the Republics native languages. This was done to ensure the new generations loyalty to the Soviet state rather than to their own specific culture. We commonly think of language as a tool through which we communicate but it is more than that. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (Sapir, 1949; Whorf, 1956), through what became known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, posited the language we speak determines the way we think, perceive and interpret the world around us. We do not use language to think, language shapes the very way and the very concepts we use to think. We would not be able to make sense of all the sensory information (sounds, sights, tastes, etc.) we constantly receive if language didnt classify that information into concepts and thereby turn it into meaningful information. A classical illustration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the fact that the Eskimo have over twenty words for snow but have no strict equivalent of the word snow as a general category. These fine distinctions between more than twenty types of snow result from the Eskimos environmental conditions in the Arctic region. When snow is such an important part of your natural environment, you learn to distinguish between different types. As a result, Eskimo learn to truly see more than twenty types of snow that a non-native would not be able to discern. Lacking the linguistic categories to do so, non-Eskimo simply do not see twenty types of snow. Normative Culture 1. Values

we value education and dislike ignorance or we value individualism and fear collectivism. Values define general moral qualities of behavior expected from members of society, such as honesty, patriotism, or commitment to freedom. Values are part of the standards we use to evaluate the moral properties of our or other peoples views and actions and they constitute the unspoken background of our moral preferences. Also, we do not treat values as what they are, that is, cultural products of society that we internalized, but rather as strongly-held personal morals. Because individuals feel strongly about values as define moral behavior through them, we tend to defend them vigorously when confronted with different value systems held by other people. For instance, many observers have defined such value conflict in the United States as culture war. A culture war is an expression used in the mass media to depict the clash between competing systems of values. The competition is over which values should represent society as a whole. It becomes visible, for instance, in the conflict over homosexual rights. One side the so-called anti-gay camp defines morality based on a conservative Christian view that they think should define the American society, whereas the other side the pro gay rights camp invokes what they see as a basic American right to privacy and civil rights. In general, conservatives tend to think that morality should be based on what they perceive as the Christian roots of America and that deviation from such standards lead to immorality in thought (e.g. secularism) and behavior (e.g. permissiveness). On the other hand, a liberal view is more based on personal choice and recognizes the possibility of change in moral standards. In other words, complex societies do not necessarily have a consensus in values as different categories of people develop very different experiences that shape their moral standards. 2. Norms, Folkways, Mores

As mentioned before, norms are specific guidelines for behavior based on values. They are rules and instructions specifying what are expected of us in different situations. For instance, the value of honesty implies the norm that students should not cheat on exams or plagiarize papers. Doing so would violate the value of honesty that is characteristic of academic life. Norms can be prescriptive defining how one ought to behave in given situations or proscriptive defining how one ought NOT to behave. William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) distinguished between two types of norms: folkways and mores. Folkways are conventions of everyday life that members of society are expected to follow but whose violation is not considered serious. If someone picks their nose in public, it is considered impolite and inappropriate behavior but no one gets arrested for this. On the

Values are general abstract moral principles defining what is right or wrong, good or evil, desirable or undesirable. In other words, values often come in pairs of positive and negative terms: we value freedom and dislike oppression,

other hand, mores (pronounced mo-RAYS) are norms which reflect stronglyheld values and whose violation involves a strong negative societal reaction, such as incarceration or even death. For instance, in India, patriarchy (mens social dominance over women) is a common value and it is incarnated in the practice of dowry (wealth that is offered by the brides family to the grooms family). When the dowry is deemed insufficient by the grooms family, the groom is traditionally entitled to set his bride on fire, a practice known as bride-burning. Every year, Indian police receive more than 2,500 reports of such practices. Because normative expectations are so strong regarding dowry, the societal reaction to what is perceived as a violation is brutal. In some societies, some norms are considered so important that they are put in writing and some categories of people are put in charge of their enforcement and specific punishment is imposed on violators. Such norms are laws. Laws are sometimes based on traditional mores. For instance, in some parts of the world, the practice of honor killing the killing of a girl or a woman deemed to have shamed the familys honor by being raped or unauthorized sexual activity by a male relative is only mildly punished by the law and is treated as justifiable murder. Other laws can be enacted to protect people against the negative consequences of outdated mores. In the case of bride burning, the Indian government created a special police branch to deal with such crimes against women and the penalties are heavy for the violators, although traditional mores are so strong that these crimes are rarely reported. Enforcing Normative Culture: Sanctions The previous section makes it clear that normative culture involves social control the different processes through which society enforces conformity to the norms. Such processes are also called social sanctions, that is, social reactions to either conformity (positive sanctions) or violation (negative sanctions) of the norms. Sanctions can also be informal administered by any individual in any setting or formal specified by some social procedure and administered by specific public officials. Positive sanctions often take the form of rewards. A pat on the back for a good shot at a basketball game is an informal positive sanction. A graduation ceremony is a formal positive sanction. A time-out given to an unruly child is an informal negative sanction whereas a prison sentence for a crime is a formal negative sanction.