IGNORANCE IS NEVER BLISSFUL!

Ways of Knowing Day One Student Notes

October 12, 2012
1. Six methods of human inquiry, or six ways of knowing, include
a. Tradition: Tradition means you accept something as true because its the way things have always
been. We are born into a knowledgeable culture. Each generation builds on the knowledge of
past generations. We do not reinvent the wheel every generation; instead, we simply accept the
truths, or the information that everybody knows, that have been passed down to us.
b. Authority-Gaining knowledge from persons you consider to be experts on subjects of interest. We
tend to believe the person who is considered knowledgeable on the subjects of importance to us
in our everyday lives.
c. Common Sense: Knowledge that individuals believe just makes sense. Common sense refers to
ideas that are so completely taken for granted that they have never been seriously questioned
and seem to be sensible to any reasonable person. Much of common sense was based on
superstitions and unsupported ideas about human nature.
d. Media Myths-People sometimes believe what they read in the printed word. Research continually
indicates that the mass media are important because they are powerful but also because their
influence may differ from that of families, communities, and other social institutions. The media
introduce people to ideas and images that are new, so it does have the potential to be a good
source of knowledge.
e. Personal Experience: If something happens to you or you see something for yourself, you tend to
accept it as true. But sometimes what people think they saw, they truly did not see. Also, two
people can witness the same event, and describe it in two totally opposite ways. An example
could be husbands and wives that do not agree on the amount of shared housework.
f. Science is a way of knowing that bases knowledge on direct, systematic observation. Scientific
sociology is the study of society based on systematic observation of social behavior. Science
rests on empirical evidence, information we can verify with our senses.
2. Whatever the form of human inquiry, there is a desire to know what is real. There are two types of
reality:
a. Agreement reality refers to knowledge considered real only because it is learned from trusted
sources. It is knowledge told to us, but which we have not personally experienced or observed.
b. Experimental reality refers to knowledge learned through direct personal experience; knowledge
that the individual experiences with one or more of their five senses.
3. The Enlightenment: An European intellectual movement in the seventeenth century that ushered in
an intellectual and scientific revolution, in which the way of thinking about society and the world
changed from traditional and religious thought to the use of reason and logic.
a. The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement that began around the time Sir Isaac
Newton published Principia Mathematica in 1686.
b. The Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, can be considered an intellectual revolution,
because it turned thinking about the human condition toward the view that progress was not only
possible, but inevitable. 1
c. The ideas of the Enlightenment were progress, empiricism, freedom, and tolerance. The principal
targets of this movement were the Church and the monarchy. The people who embraced this
movement believed that the use of reason and logic, rather than religious explanations, would
enlighten the world in ways that fate and faith could not.
d. Enlightenment thought touted rational analysis and decision making over habit and tradition.
Before this time traditional knowledge was dominant, and it was embedded in long periods of time
1

Powers, Charles H. 2010. Making Sense of Social Theory. 2nd ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 46.

e.

f.
g.
h.
i.
j.

and resistant to change and progress. It was based on religious revelation, which made
knowledge of the world dependent on Gods disclosure and not on humans developing and
advancing knowledge through systematic study.
The view of the Enlightenment period was that social conditions, particularly conditions dealing
with poverty, inequality, and disease, could improve, and that the true nature of human beings is
defined by a curiosity to experiment, a desire to understand, and a wish to make a more perfect
world. They sought knowledge that was valid only if empirically tested and if it worked to bring
about social change.
Enlightenment social thought sought to move past superstitions and beliefs such as sick people
bring affliction on themselves as heavenly retribution for bad behavior, or sickness was cast on
them by the evil eye of devilish people.
They believed that humans should be able to use reason to govern themselves as individuals and
in their relations with others. Collective life should be based on principles of reason rather than
deference to non-rational forces such as those represented by the monarchy.
Humans are basically good, and therefore, they should not have to surrender their individual
natural rights to a strong monarch to survive. Instead, humans give over their rights to a
government that is responsible to them and which performs functions that maintain social order.
Writers argued against wealth as evidence of virtue and poverty as evidence of depravity and sin.
Instead, every human being had value and worth, and each person was free to think and learn.
This period include the belief that science was the answer to all problems, and that systematic and
scientific studies of society would help to define social laws, similar to the natural laws that Galileo
and Copernicus and others had found, particularly the idea that the earth revolved around the sun,
and not the other way, and idea for which Galileo was persecuted by the Church.

4. Significant social changes that ushered in both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution of
the 17th century:
a. Massive movements of populations from small local communities to large urban centers.
b. A high division of labor, with groups specializing in areas of production for human needs that once
had been filled by individuals only for family consumption.
c. High commodification and use of rational markets. Rational markets being markets designed to
meet specific ends.
d. The widespread use of bureaucracy, which refers to a specific type of large modern organization
that is rationally designed to maximize efficiency; it is characterized by formal relations between
participants, clearly laid-out rules and procedures, promotion through the ranks, the pursuit of
stated goals, and impersonality.
e. Large-scale integration through national identities, such as French or German.
f. The defining institutions were nation-states and mass democracy, capitalism, science, and mass
media.
g. Some of the historical moments included the European Renaissance, the Reformation, the
American and French Revolutions, and the early Industrial Revolution.
Ways of Knowing Day Two Student Notes
October 15, 2012
1. Science refers to the systematic process of producing human knowledge. It uses empirical
research methods to discover facts and test theories. With advances in the natural sciences,
observation and cause-and-effect processes became part of tradition. Ideas such as lightning as the
sign of an angry god gave way to electricity caused by meteorological forces.

2. Scientific Revolution occurred in the 17th century. It was the based on a clear articulated way of
thinking about and conducting research. 2
a. It was a precarious time as scientists were charged with heresy for any findings that contradicted
religious teachings.
b. Scientists like Francis Bacon and Copernicus set in motion a world-changing commitment to
careful, objective, and systematic investigation of the physical and biological worlds.
c. The objective of the scientific method was a greater understanding of factors at work in the world,
to help people make the world a better place.
d. Early successes in astronomy and anatomy encouraged later fields of chemistry and geology.
e. The scientific method is an important part of the cultural history of human beings, and the scientific
revolution forever changed the lives of every person living on the planet.
3. The scientific method is based on several assumptions:
a. There is a real social world that can be studied scientifically.
b. There is a certain order to the world with identifiable patterns that results from a series of causes
and effects.
c. The world is not a collection of unrelated random events but a collection of events causally related
and patterned.
d. The way to gain knowledge of the world is to subject it to empirical testing. Empirical knowledge
means that facts have been objectively collected, without ones personal opinions or prejudices
taken in consideration, and carefully measured in the same ways as others who observe it.
e. Evidence refers to facts and information that are confirmed through systematic testing using the
five senses and sometimes enhanced with research tools.
f. Empirical research is based on evidence that can be verified by using our direct experience.
4. The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and
doing experiments.
5. In the 5-stepscientific method, we see the formation of the problem, a prediction that provides
explanation, a procedure used to test the ideas, the observation of results in the procedure, and a
conclusion based on all of the other steps. There is a bit more to the method, and it might look like
this:
a. Ask and define the question. Identify some variation or change that seems worth trying to
understand and explain. It defines the focus of the research.
b. Suggest one or more theoretical premises. Choose the appropriate theory to guide the research
questioning and gathering of data.
c. Form a hypothesis. Hypothesis refers to educated guesses about how phenomena are related to
each other including causal relationships. the speculations do not have supporting data yet but are
based on the knowledge researchers have gained in previous research,
d. Gather information and resources through observation.
e. Perform one or more experiments and collect and sort data. use some form of data collection,
such as collecting samples of water, for testing.
f. Analyze the data. Utilize the available means for studying the data collected, such as a
microscope for finding bacteria.
g. Interpret the data and make conclusions that point to a hypothesis. Interpret what one sees and
then determine if the hypotheses were correct or incorrect.
h. Formulate a "final" or "finished" hypothesis. Complete the research and publish the results.
Culture and Ideology Student Notes
2

Powers, Charles H. 2010. Making Sense of Social Theory. 2nd ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 46.

October 17, 2012

1. The ideology of the society dictates its beliefs and how people see the world. Ideology refers to a
system of beliefs that justify or rationalize social ideals, actions, or policies. It is a belief
system and worldview of people in a society, and is demonstrated in the culture.
2. A paradigm is set of assumptions about reality that underlies the questions asked and the kinds of
answers that result.
a. A paradigm is what members of a scientific community share, and conversely, a scientific
community consists of men who share a paradigm.
b. Paradigms seek to understand the world. Paradigms are important because cultural assumptions
often direct attention from potential explanations for social problems.
c. In explaining patterns of social behavior, sociologists are drawn to explanations that rely on
concepts such as social structure or culture rather than ones own biases, prejudices, and
opinions. Sociological research requires objectivity.
d. Paradigm shifts occur when new information is acquired through careful research that indisputably
proves all existing paradigms incorrect. The scientific revolution was characterized by constant
paradigm shift, such as the world was round, and the earth revolved around the sun.
e. Paradigms can be intransigent and very hard to change, even with new information, as scientists
are slow to accept paradigms that appear to dispute traditional knowledge.
f. Paradigm shifts occur when research is an objective as possible.
g. Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of
peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one
conceptual world view is replaced by another".
h. We can think of a paradigm shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution,
a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents
of change.
3. The scientific revolution ushered in the belief in objectivity, a different manner of understanding and
doing research. Objectivity refers to the absence of bias in making or interpreting observations.
a. Objectivity requires weighing all evidence according to clear criteria that would lead to similar
conclusions.
b. Objectivity means researchers must, as much as possible, not allow their own prejudices and
biases impact their research.
c. To achieve objectivity is to describe the world free from interference from the ways we think about
and conceptualize it, in a direct and pure fashion.
4. The culture of every society includes an ideology that serves to explain and justify its own
existence as a way of life. Ideologies often derive from misguided and false paradigms,
a. Marx stated that most ideology reflects the interests of dominant groups as a way to perpetuate
their privilege.
b. Ideas regarding social class differences derive from stereotypes that prevent individuals from
seeing the common humanity of all people.
5. Cultural hegemony is a form of ideology in which one social class can manipulate the system of
values and mores of a society, in order to create and establish a ruling-class ideology, which
represents a worldview that justifies the status quo of bourgeois domination of the other social
classes of the society.
a. Hegemony is a particular form of dominance in which a ruling class legitimates its position and
secures the acceptance of those below it.
b. It is a form of dominance, and for dominance to be stable, the ruling class must create and sustain
widely accepted ways of thinking about the world that defines oppression and inequality as
reasonable, fair, and in the best interests of the society as a whole.

c. Hegemony, then, rationalizes and justifies separate social classes in which some groups are
disadvantaged and other groups have unfair advantage.
6. Stereotypes refer to an oversimplified generalization by which we attribute certain traits or
characteristics to a group without regard to individual differences.
a. It is through labeling members of minority groups as all the same that people come to fear or
dislike individuals of different racial and ethnic groups.
b. Stereotypes deny individuals the right to be viewed and treated on the basis of their own personal
merit, but they also attribute a particular image to the entire group, and the stereotypes become
justification for discriminatory behavior.
c. For some minority members this type of labeling means that they are often viewed negatively,
even by strangers.
d. Stereotypes are hard to eradicate, even in succeeding generations.
e. Both dominant groups and minority groups hold stereotypes of each other
7. Social Class refers to any group of people who occupy a similar economic position in society.
a. Members of a class tend to share a common lifestyle and to have relatively similar resources and
life chances.
b. A social category and division resulting from unequal distribution of rewards and resources.
c. Addresses the idea that people who earn their money the same way share interests in preserving
or advancing their collective welfare.
d. The position groups hold relative to the economic, social, political, and cultural resources in
society.
e. Social class is determined by access to wealth, income, power, prestige, deference, and authority.
f. Ways of earning a living in a given division of labor.
8. Classed Self refers to an individuals consciousness of themselves as belonging to or not
belonging to a specific social class.
a. The classed self is derived through socialization. Individuals must be taught to have act, think,
talk, and be, according to their social class.
b. It represents a sense of belonging, meaning the creation of a them versus us mentality, in which
there is a perception of difference which doesnt inherently engender subjective beliefs in the
superiority or inferiority of ones own social class.
c. Because the classed self is socially constructed, individuals often attempt to pass as members of
social classes to which, according to levels of wealth, income, power or prestige, they dont
belong.
d. Peoples awareness of the differences between members of their social class and members of
other social classes.
9. Life chances refer to your opportunities, depending on your achieved and ascribed status in
society. Life chances represent the resources and opportunities that people have to provide
themselves with material goods and favorable living conditions.
Science and Cultural Change Student Notes
October 19, 2012
1. The Scientific Revolution and Social Progress: The Scientific Revolution has been viewed as a
major social change where science affects the technology, social organization, or culture of a society.
a. Science contributed to a world less dominated by a single, unified belief of how things should be.
b. Scientists were held accountable for research findings that were not empirically tested.

c. New criteria were developed to evaluate scientific statements.

d. From its early beginnings, when it was at war with theology, to the post-industrial world of today,
science has made its mark on culture first in the production of new information and a new world
view and in the rise of scientism.
e. The war between science and theology was fought on two levels: the production of empirical
information and the development of explanations of that information.
f. Scientism developed a new cultural value of science and technology, and the belief that science
could solve all human problems, eventually.
g. A scientific revolution is also a social revolution because of its effect on human affairs, and its
determining influence on all aspects of civilization.
h. It accelerated the Industrial Revolution, bringing about an increase in the rate of change in the
material culture.
2. Science and technology are intertwined in ways that a technological society represents one
committed to continually improving the means to carefully examine knowledge claims.
a. Science effects institutions and the social organization of society.
b. Science influences values, education, class structure, ways of life, political decisions, and the
ways of looking at the world.
c. In its infancy, science was focused mainly on accuracy of information about the empirical world.
d. Science ushered in a respect for evidence and a willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads
regardless of the preconceptions or desires of the scholar.
e. Science is one of the most dynamic of contemporary intellectual trends plays a strong role in
creating a cultural climate.
3. Science changed social roles, social relationships, and social identities.
a. Scientific societies flourished in the 17th century, as educated men anxious to participate in the
scientific enterprise willingly devoted their time and energy to new questions about the social
and physical worlds.
b. The dominance of priests as expositors of knowledge came to an end, and people came to
trust science rather than theology for answers.
c. The persecution of scientists whose research challenged current religious beliefs resulted in
greater willingness to do so.
d. The creation of scientific journals for the dissemination of new knowledge that supposedly
demonstrated the scientific method, and tremendous prestige that accompanied being
published.
e. Scientists were able to read works by other scientists in different parts of the world, ending the
cross-purposes of much scientific research.
f. Knowing their competitors were working on a problem produced a sense of urgency to find
solutions and answers.
g. Diseases came to be seen not as evidence of social class or lack of morality, but as natural
phenomena that could be explained scientifically not socially or culturally.
h. The importance of theories developed from systematic study for understanding the world, and
the need to constantly ask questions which lead to paradigm shifts that further human
knowledge.
i. Science represents an enterprise where one persons findings help to create other questions
from other scientists, until layer upon layer of research culminates in An answer to the original
question or hypothesis.
j. Global solutions were created that still today profit the world. There are still questions to be
solved, and science can be both healing and destructive.

Culture and Connection3

The Invention of the Printing Press
October 5, 2012 Student Notes
1. Communities refer to people who are tied together by webs of communication, friendship,
association, and support. The kind of communities we live in and the technological advancement of
those communities impact how we see the world and what is possible.
2. Oral cultures refer to communities in which communication depends on face-to-face interaction,
and they are characterized by widely shared knowledge throughout the community.
a. These cultures rely on prodigious feats of memorization from a few memory specialists, who serve
as repositories of history and genealogy, but most knowledge is held in common and constantly
reiterated.
b. There is the widespread use of proverbs, to teach cultural norms, values, and beliefs.
c. Epic poetry flourish, as shared wisdom is encoded in poetic rhythms and figures of speech as an
aid to memory.
d. Vocabularies tended toward the concrete, as they were elaborate where they needed to be;
because there were no dictionaries to store words, infrequently used words simply dropped out
of the language.
e. History, because it was stored in human memories, would be modified to serve present needs. In
oral cultures, myths and history merge into one.
f. Oral histories support a small-scale, undifferentiated social order in which people think, do, and
believe the same things. The overlap between the individuals consciousness and the collective
consciousness of the society is nearly total.
g. Individuals have little basis for comparing their own groups thinking to the thinking of other
cultures, so their ways of living and being seem normal and remains stable.
h. Oral cultural communities are filled with magic, enchanted by mysterious forces and spirits. The
boundaries between reality and fantasy are easily crossed, due to the absence of any fixed
knowledge.
i. There is very little rebellion against the dominant culture, as the populace has no access to other
kinds of knowledge.
3. Written cultures represent the first communication revolution, and the advent of media, the means
to make oral communication more permanent and accessible to others.
a. The Sumerian, the Egyptian, and the Chinese cultures represent some of the earliest writing
communities, as they emerged in the ancient world in which signs stood for particular words, more
or less on a one-to-one basis.
b. These systems were very complex, as literate people in these cultures had to learn thousands of
signs in order to have a reading capacity that matched their spoken vocabulary.
c. Only a few specialists, the religious or governmental elite, were literate, meaning could read and
write. These small groups had much power and control, along with tremendous prestige. They
generally were sons of nobles and elites.
d. Phonetic alphabets, in which characters represent sounds rather than words or concepts, were
simpler and much easier to learn. Through idea diffusion, cultures without writing came to design
writing systems similar to other cultures or to independently create their own writing systems.
e. Ease of learning encouraged the general adoption of writing, especially among the commercial
classes.
4. The Basis of Western Writing:4
3
4

Griswold, Wendy. 2008. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press.
Murray, Denise E. 2000. Changing Technologies, Changing Literacy Communities. Language Learning and Technology, 4 (2): 43-58

a. The basis of Western literacy was the invention of alphabetic writing by the Greeks, building on a
syllabary, which is a writing system representing spoken syllables, invented in 1100 B.C. by the
Phoenicians.
b. Writing was originally condemned by Socrates and Plato, who argued that literacy would change
the way people thought, would destroy memory, shift power, and consequently negatively affect
the social order. They believed that knowledge could only be preserved through face-to-face
dialogue with someone else.
c. The transformation from an oral culture to a literate culture reshaped peoples consciousness,
allowing for logical analysis and procedures.
d. Writing spread across the world through idea diffusion. Idea diffusion refers to the transmission of
social institutions, skills, and myths from one culture to another. In this case, writing.
e. Literacy in writing cultures like Greece were limited to free men, as it was believed that women
and slaves did not need to be literate, because knowledge would lead them to understand their
oppression and lead to rebellion and revolt.
f. The technology of writing was influenced by and influenced social practices. The invention of
written records did not create a more efficient system for the communities, but solidified power in
the hands of scholar-priests and royal bureaucracies.
g. The spread of writing and reading to the more general population in the 13 th and 14th centuries,
created a market for a more permanent book, providing a need that the printing press would
ultimately fill.
5. Print Cultures represent the beginning of a mass media, meaning formats or vehicles that carry,
present, or communicate information to large populations.
a.
The shift democratized literacy in the West and allowed for the transmission and comparison of
knowledge. Print cultures support a more organic solidarity wherein the collective conscience
does not maintain so much power and control over the thinking of the individual.
b.
Two qualities separated written cultures and print cultures: the capacity to duplicate texts in larger
numbers and the capacity to fix and preserve texts and images over centuries.
c.
The invention of the printing press made literacy a form of technology, meaning a way to more
efficiently meet the needs of a society, as literacy gave its possessors potential power; as a stock
of cultural knowledge within a given tradition, literacy can constrain or liberate, instruct people or
entertain them, discipline or disaffect people. 5
d.
The printing press liberated the written word, making it available to the masses, and stopping the
power and prestige of elites who perpetuated ignorance in the people they ruled by keeping them
ignorant and illiterate.
Culture and the Mass Media Day Two
October 10, 2012 Student Notes
1. Technological revolutions entail rapid and far-reaching social change that is the inevitable result of
the introduction of a major new technology. 6
a. Changes in the technologies of literacy affect literacy practices and communities:
b. The invention of the printing press moved the power of scholar-priests to more democratic
institutions and promoted individualism, nationalism, and secularism.
c. Individualism refers to both the pursuit of individual rather than common or collective interests and
the principle or habit of or belief in independent thought or action.
d. Nationalism refers to the policy or doctrine of asserting the interests of one's own nation, viewed
as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations.
5

Ibid, p. 43.
Murray, Denise E. 2000. Changing Technologies, Changing Literacy Communities. Language Learning and Technology, 4(2): 4358.
6

e. Secularism refers to the attitude that religion should have no place in civil affairs. Decision-making
is in the hands of the people and not the religious establishment.
f. Many scholars and others separate into two usually opposing camps: those who fear the new
technology, fearing it will negatively change life as they know it, and those who extol the virtues of
the new technology, believing it will create new, beneficial ways of knowing and interacting.
g. Both sides ultimately argue over issues of power and control, and this was no less true for the
printing press.
2. Gutenberg and the Printing Press:
a. Gutenberg printed the Bible first because he thought he could make greater profit from printing it
than from any other book. The first books printed and sold were selected on the basis of
mercenary concerns, as publishers sought to increase profits, without concerns for religious and
state officials.
b. Before the printing press, religious and state leaders had control over what could be written and
disseminated, as well as who had access to the knowledge. The common view is that the
invention of printing removed the power from the scholar-priests, replacing them with more
democratic institutions.
c. Gutenberg also printed indulgences, which were payments for the remission of part or all of the
temporal and especially purgatorial punishment that according to Roman Catholicism is due for
sins whose eternal punishment has been remitted and whose guilt has been pardoned
3. The Reformation was a 16th-century movement in Western Europe, led by Martin Luther that
aimed at reforming some doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the
establishment of the Protestant churches. 7
a. Luther was a German monk, priest, and professor of theology who argued against the idea that
freedom from Gods punishment for sin could be purchased with money.
b. Luther taught that salvation was a free gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer for
sin, and could not be purchased through good deeds, an argument antithetical to the teachings of
the Roman Catholic Church. Luther also believed that priests should be allowed to marry, which
became a practice among Protestant churches.
c. Luther challenged the authority of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the
Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and considered all baptized Christians to
be a holy priesthood. Luther challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to dictate the
lives of its members, in effect changing the social relationships between priests and followers.
d. Social roles and social identities underwent a change in Europe when those contesting the
hegemony of the Catholic Church discovered that printing presses facilitated a means of
spreading their definitions of reality and morality to the multitudes.
e. Luther found that the printed press allowed him to reach the masses of people through printed
tracts and sermons. Through the printed word, Luthers message became a social movement for
change, as Luther wrote his arguments in the language of the people, rather than in Latin, which
few people could read, making it more accessible to the masses.
f. With greater literacy among the populace, Luthers argument touched a nerve with the German
public, and printers in a large number of German cities found that Luther could write with
phenomenal speed and quickly developed an extraordinary range from sermons to careful,
systematic exposition of complex theological issues.
g. Because printed books were cheap and easily reproducible and therefore widely available, what
began as a local quarrel between Martin Luther and his church was transformed into the
Protestant Reformation.
h. The Reformation was possible because the Bible could be in the hands of the common people
who no longer had to rely on the priests to interpret it for them. More people had access to
7

Pettegrew, Andrew and Matthew Hall. 2004. The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsuderation.

i.
j.
k.
l.

religious materials and could read it as individuals, rather than be told what was in the Bible by
learned priests-scribes.
The combination of market forces and Germanys particular political structure made effective
control of print shops and the acquisition of information they disseminated impossible.
The Reformation represented the greatest fault-line to appear in the Christian culture since the
Latin and Greek halves of the Roman Empire went their separate ways a thousand years before; it
produced a house divided.
The Reformation changed Europe from a common culture in which answers to all questions were
ultimately religious, to the use of reason and logic to answer questions, without the use of priests.
Book printers became quite wealthy selling Luthers work, and a whole industry developed around
his arguments and writings to counter his arguments.
Culture and the Mass Media Day One
October 8, 2012 Student Notes

1. The arrival of the printing press ushered in the era of mass communication which changed the
structure of the society, meaning the patterns of everyday life in Western cultures and then around the
world.
2. Johann Gutenberg invented the first moveable type printing press for the Roman alphabet, in 1455,
the middle of the 15th century.
a. The printing press made possible a revolution in the transmission of knowledge.
b. It steadily reduced the dependence on oral systems of transmission.
c. It also accelerated a revolution in human consciousness, as knowledge became less warm, less
personal, and less immediate and became colder, more abstract, and more intellectual, with ideas
as the counterpoint of knowledge.
3. Several factors affected the invention of the printing press and its impact on the culture of
European societies:
a. A change in social structure from an agricultural society that included fiefdoms to the beginning of
an emerging capitalist society that featured wealth that was earned not inherited.
b. The spread of literacy and the development of universities to teach the sons of the new
bourgeoisie, that required greater access to information than a writing culture could produce.
c. The collapse of the feudal society created a class of tenant-farmers with more freedom to market
their goods and more incentives to invest in new technologies. The change from men and women
as farmers to men and women as wage-laborers in the emerging capitalist system represent
changes in social identities that helped to create a demand for the printed word.
d. Technology was embraced to find newer more profitable ways for the production of goods.
e. A technique for making paper and the subsequent development of an European papermaking
industry. Paper has been crated in China centuries before, but it was the perfecting of a way to
produce paper that did not need to be wet when print was applied that bolstered the printing
press.
f. A technique for producing metal type in large quantities, at a reasonable cost, so that printing
would be economically feasible.
g. The development of suitable inks for printing with the new type. Gutenberg created a viscous oilbased ink that proved successful.
4. The printing press changed the nature of communication. Communication processes, particularly
the mass media in which information is produced in large quantities and diffused across borders,

changes social relationships and social identities when people began to communicate new ways of
thinking.8
a. Each new form of information technology in a society bestows particular formats on the
information transmitted and leads to consequences for the social structures and human
consciousness.
b. When people communicate, they produce social acts and sometimes form social relationships.
When they form social relationships, the relationships help inform their social acts.
c. Most information technologies, including the printing press, were developed to facilitate the
production of particular types of social acts and extend and/or elaborate social relationships
already in existence.
d. The maturation of printing in Western Europe was closely associated with the development of
divergent ideologies, rebellions, migrations, and religious wars, which changed the nature of social
roles, social relationships, and social identities in significant ways.
e. The early printed information that circulated in Europe was produced by merchants who used
printing presses to produce material culture, meaning objects of value, that they sold at markets.
f. The printed book, which was the first form of mass media or communication allowed an individual
to transmit information to the multitudes, to create a focus to form different forms of social
relationships and subcultures.
g. The printed book changed learning from a collective enterprise to an individual enterprise, as
people could purchase books and read them in the privacy of their homes, forming their own
opinions and questioning the information within the text, which was revolutionary.
h. The demand for books increased phenomenally, and print shop owners became wealthy, but not
necessarily the authors.
Becoming Human, Becoming Social Day One
September 24, 2012 Student Notes
1. Transformative moments refer to historical times when individuals utilize either changes in the
material culture and/or changes in the non-material culture to alter or modify how humans interact
with each other as members of groups and how societies meet common goals or needs.
2. Transformative moments change the world by altering or modifying how humans construct culture,
and how humans create societies with unequal relations across group membership.
3. Sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and
consequences of human behavior (Ballantine and Roberts (2012, p. 6).
a. Sociologists attempt to understand the creation of human society, particularly the formation of
groups with differing levels of power.
b. Sociology specifically focuses on the lives of people as members of social groups, unlike
psychology which is based on individual actions and thoughts.
c. For sociologists, being human means being social, living or disposed to live in companionship with
others in a community, rather than in isolation:
d. Pertaining to human societies, people are considered to be social beings creating the culture that
guides their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors, particularly as members of groups divided
according to status or social rank.
e. Sociologists study the influence of culture on the social structure of society and the impact of
social structure on culture.
4. Assumptions of Human Society:
8

Couch, Carl J. 1995. Oh, What Webs Those Phantoms Spin. Symbolic Interaction, 18: 229-245.

a. People are social by nature. This means that humans seek to fellowship with other people, and
they need to be part of groups to survive.
b. People live much of their lives belonging to social groups. It is in their groups that people learn to
create culture and feelings of belonging to a specific society.
c. Through the creation of culture, people learn to interact with others, how to behave in various
contexts, how to identify themselves, how to form opinions, beliefs, and attitudes about other
people and about themselves.
d. Social life involves the myriad ways that human beings interact to meet the basic necessities for
each person in a society, to secure emotional and physical help across social roles, to
manufacture and distribute social goods, to create a division of labor to assure that all tasks
necessary to survival are met, and to foster the stability and equilibrium of the society.
e. Social life involves the manipulation of nature for the production of the means of subsistence that
allows humans to survive but also to procreate so that the species survives as well.
f. Social life is hierarchical, often based on biological determinants such as age, sex, perceived
physical or mental capacity.
g. Social life happens in recurrent social patterns, meaning ordered behavior, with shared
expectations of self and others, and with common understandings among people who are in
groups. Processes of conflict and change are natural and inevitable features of groups and
societies.
h. Cultural innovation that alters social life results in differential consequences across social roles,
social relationships, social institutions, and social identities.
5. Evolution is but one theory of how man became human. 9
a. Evolution means change. It suggests progress, meaning that as something evolves, it advances
upward toward a goal defined as ideal.
b. For humankind, that goal is civilized society, or a society in which there is harmony with others
through observing cultural values, norms, and beliefs, which are the agreed-upon rules and
expectations.
c. Humans are in constant competition with nature, having to continuously adapt nature to their
needs. Technology represents the adaptation of nature to human needs and goals.
d. Humans are superior to, and hold dominion over nature. To control and use nature for their needs,
humans use both cultural and biological attributes.
e. As animals, human are the key species in most environments, and we can learn much about the
history of social interactions through changes in technology.
f. Humans evolve from savagery to civilized, through the differential persistence of specific
behaviors over time, such as cooking.
Becoming Human, Becoming Social Day Three
September 28, 2012 Student Notes
1. The Theory of Diet, Intelligence, and Longevity in Human Life Histories 10: It is believed that
extreme intelligence, along with an exceptionally long lifespan, an extended period of juvenile
dependence, support of reproduction by older post-reproductive individuals, and male support of
reproduction through the provisioning of females and their children, were responses to a dietary shift
in high-quality, nutrient-dense, and difficult-to-acquire food resources.

Sutton, Mark Q. and E. N. Anderson. 2004. Introduction to Cultural Ecology. New York: AltaMIra Press.

10

Kaplan, Hillard, Kim Hill, Jane Lancaster, and A. Magdalena Hurtado. 2000. A Theory of Human Life
History Evolution: Diet, Intelligence, and Longevity. Evolutionary Anthropology, 9 (4): 156-185.

2. The logic of the theory11:

a. High levels of knowledge, skill, coordination, and strength are required to exploit high-quality,
difficult-to-acquire resources that human consume.
b. The attainment of those abilities required time and a significant commitment to development,
particularly of the next generation. Human children demonstrated an extended learning phase,
during which they did not produce much of the needs of their societies. As adults, that learning
paid off with higher productivity and the flow of food from the old to the young.
c. The feeding niche involved specializing in large, valuable food packages promoted food sharing,
provisioning of juveniles, and increased grouping, all which act to lower mortality during the
juvenile and early adult periods. Grouping lowers risks of predators.
d. Long human life span co-evolved with the lengthening of the juvenile period, increased brain
capacities for information processing and storage, and intergenerational resource flows, all due to
dietary shifts caused by the technologies that evolved due to the invention of cooking.
e. Humans have the capacity to develop new techniques for extractive foraging and hunting allows
them to exploit a wider variety of different foods and to colonize earths ecosystems.
f. Hunter-gather societies have a longer juvenile period, a longer adult lifespan, and higher fertility
than other mammals.
g. Men play a huge role in supporting reproduction. So high-quality foods, extractive foraging, and
hunting are fundamental to understanding human evolution. Natural selection occurs that favors
humans of greater intelligence.
h. Intelligence evolved to support survival and reproduction, leading to the advent of large complex
social groupings.
3. Social Brain Hypothesis: Humans evolved large brains, and thus possessed brilliant minds, to
manage unusually complex social systems. 12
a. Larger brains are associated with categorical differences in mating systems, as species that live in
pair-bonded (i.e., monogamous) social systems tend to have the largest brains. Pair-bonded
refers to a lasting (sometimes, but not always, lifelong) relationship between a male and a female,
normally for reproductive purposes, guarding against invasion by same-sex rivals.
b. Large brains are needed to manage social relationships between individuals. When humans
began to live in large groups, natural selection favored individuals with greater intelligence,
particularly in providing nutrient-rich food to the groups.
c. Sociality refers to the formation by adults of regular associations, meaning the creation of groups
with differential meaning and purposes. Most humans live in relatively cohesive groups, an
indication of sociality.
4. Evolutionary Theory and Becoming Human and Social: Sex differences are a product of strategies
men and women adopted to ensure their survival and reproductive success.
a. Natural differences explain social differences that developed between males and females. Each of
the sexes developed strategies for reproductive success, which refers to the passing of genetic
materials to the next generation.
b. For males, reproductive success depended on the ability to fertilize a large number of eggs. So,
males attempted to fertilize as many eggs as possible, and this was accomplished through
promiscuity; thus, men have a natural propensity toward promiscuity.
c. Females required one successful mating before their egg was fertilized, and therefore tended to
be choosy regarding potential mates. Females invested a lot of energy into gestation and
lactation, so their costs were higher. Therefore, females tended to be naturally monogamous,

11

ibid
Dunbar, R. 2009. The Social Brain Hypothesis and Its Implications for Social Evolution, Annals of Human
Biology, 36(5): 562-572.
12

d.
e.
f.

g.

choosing the male who would make the better parent, capable to providing for her and her
offspring.
In all social groups within societies, there were the dominant males, thought to be most intelligent
in regards to finding and preparing foods.
Higher intelligence was demonstrated in their by reciprocal altruism (the ability to recognize the
needs of others in regards to ones own needs) and coalition formation, to guard against predators
and competitors of the same-sex.
The dominant male formed social groups that were profitable to him, in terms of passing along his
genes, what we might think of today as families, in which he made the major social and political
decisions. Their status in the groups would allow them to define the role expectations for his
category of persons, creating values, norms, and beliefs regarding each role.
A sexual division of labor, determined by culture, evolves to ensure that all the needs of the
groups are met.

5. Social statuses refer to the social positions of an individual in a society. Statuses represent
recognizable social position that an individual occupies.
6. Roles refer to the expected behaviors, rights, obligations, responsibilities, and privileges assigned
to a social status.
a. Roles represent he duties and behaviors associated with a particular status.
b. Everyone plays different roles, and each role requires individuals to act in certain prescribed ways,
according to the culture of the society in which they live,
7. Social groups refer to social units involving two or more people who interact with each other
because of shared common interests, goals, experiences, and needs. Groups represent a collection
of people who share some attribute, identify with one another, and interact with each other. Within
each social group are differential statuses and roles.
8. Primary groups are groups characterized by close, intimate, long-term contacts, cooperation, and
relationships. Primary groups represent social groups composed of intimate face-to-face relationships
that strongly influence the attitudes and ideals of those involved.
a. Primary groups have limited numbers of members, to facilitate face-to-face interactions.
b. Families are the most significant primary groups for the majority of individuals within a society.
c. Primary groups typically involve greater cooperation and deeper feelings of belonging. They
provide the most emotional satisfaction through interaction with other members, are responsible
for our socialization, and remain central to our identity throughout our lives.
d. Primary groups have the most influence over individuals lives and the social construction of the
self. Their values and attitudes are fused into a personal identity, a sense of being unique.
e. Primary groups are significant because it is in these associations that the culture of the society is
learned.
9. Secondary groups are groups characterized by formal, impersonal, and businesslike relationships.
Secondary groups social groups marked by instrumental relationships (those existing as a means to
an end).
a. Affiliation in the group is contingent on its meeting a specific need in ones life.
b. Secondary groups are large, less intimate groups, usually organized around a specific activity or
the accomplishment of a task, such as hunting or foraging.
c. Membership is temporary and usually does not carry the same potential for emotional
attachments.
10. In-groups refer to groups in which an individual feels a sense of loyalty and belonging. In-groups
represent the social groups that one identifies with.

a. Members express intense respect and pride in the group.

b. Generally because of feelings of belonging and distinctiveness from other groups, members tend
to feel hostility toward individuals not part of the group.
c. Also refers to the dominant group in society, or the most powerful group.
d. Generally referred to as us.
e. Often in-groups include members who share social statuses.
11. Out-groups refer to a group in which an individual does not belong and that is often in competition
or in opposition to ones in-group. Out-groups represent any group an individual feels a rivalry toward.
a. Groups considered as rivals or opponents of another group.
b. Also a term used to stigmatized or less powerful groups, often minority groups.
c. Generally referred to as them.
Becoming Human, Becoming Social Day Four
October 1, 2012 Student Notes
Sex refers to the categories that are physically based. Sex emphasizes differences in hormones,
chromosomes, anatomy, reproductive systems, and other physiological components. Biological sex
varies little across cultures and societies.
Gender refers to the social meanings that are attached to differences between males and females in
a society. Gender is femininity and masculinity. Gender represents the socially learned expectations
and behaviors associated with femininity and masculinity, according to cultural beliefs.
Gender roles are the social and cultural expectations associated with a persons sex. There are only
two sexes.
a. Gender roles involve the commonly assigned tasks or expected behaviors of individuals because
of their sex category.
b. Gender roles differ across cultures, within the same culture according to race or ethnicity and
social class, and changes across time.
c. Our cultural beliefs define what is right and wrong; therefore, there is not some absolute truth
governing gender roles.
Gender socialization refers to the process by which individuals, through agents of socialization, learn
the cultural behavior of femininity and masculinity that is associated with the biological sex of female
or male. They learn the norms and values of their culture.
Dominant group is the group who determines the criteria of difference between groups. People are
members of the dominant group because they possess more control and power over their own lives
and the lives of members of other groups.
A minority group refers to a category of people who are set apart for unequal treatment because of
physical or cultural characteristics. A minority group, or a subordinate group, has less power and
control over their own lives.
According to McIntosh, privilege exists when one group has rights that are denied to others simply
because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they have done or failed to do.
Unearned entitlements refers to things of value that all people should have, such as feeling safe in
public spaces or working in a place where they feel they belong and are valued for what they can
contribute. Unearned privileges give members of dominant groups a competitive edge that they are
reluctant to acknowledge, much less give up.

Conferred dominance refers to the awarding of power to one group over another group.
Conferred dominance allows members of dominant groups to move through their lives without being
marked in ways that identify persons as outsiders, as exceptional or other to be excluded, or to be
included but always with conditions.
Privilege is rooted in societies and groups as much as its rooted in peoples personalities and how
they perceive and react to one another. So, changing privileges means changing societies or groups,
not individuals, per se.
Deviance refers to any transgression of social norms.
a. Deviance involves behavior, beliefs, and conditions considered by relatively powerful segments of
society to be serious violations of important norms.
b. Both individuals and behaviors can be considered deviant. Because of the arbitrary nature of
deviance, sociologists consider deviance a socially constructed label.
c. Social control refers to those mechanisms that create normative compliance in individuals.
d. Formal social sanctions refer to mechanisms of social control by which rules or laws prohibit
deviant criminal behavior. Formal deviance is behavior that breaks laws or official rules of a
society. Formal deviance results in formal sanctions such as imprisonment, fines, and death.
e. Informal social sanctions are the usually unexpressed but widely known rules of group
membership, the unspoken rules of social life. Informal deviance represents behavior that violates
customary norms. Individuals will not be sent to jail, but the looks they receive should influence
their future behavior, as imposed looks generate shame or humiliation.
Becoming Human, Becoming Social Day Two
September 26, 2001 Student Notes
1. Human history and culture change:13
a. Evidence appears to support the idea that earliest stages of human evolution began in Africa.
b. Human history, separate from animal history, began there about 7 million years ago (estimates
range from 5 to 9 million years).
c. Fossils indicate that the evolutionary line leading to humans had achieved upright posture by
around 4 million years ago, then began to increase in body size and in relative brain size around
2.5 million years ago.
d. By about half a million years ago, human fossils diverged from older Homo erectus skeletons with
enlarged, rounder, and less angular skulls.
e. Homo erectus was the first human ancestor to spread beyond Africa
f. Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens, with two technologies in their cultural repertoire: stonetool making and the use of fire.
g. Some momentous change took place about 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, referred to as the Great
Leap Forward, which resulted in the perfection of the voice box and the anatomical basis of
modern language, on which human creativity is based
2. Biological Changes and Cultural Adaptations: Which occurred first? 14
a. Culture plays a central role in fulfilling biological aspects of human existence. The technologies
available altered human anatomy in ways in which group membership became important.
b. Anatomical adaptations refer to long-term genetic changes in genotype and phenotype due to
selective pressures. Anatomical adaptations are passed along to subsequent generations.
Humans adapt anatomically through alterations of their basic body structure.
13
14

Diamond, Jared. 1999. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York:W. W. Norton, pp.35-40.
Sutton, Mark Q. and E. N. Anderson. 2004. Introduction to Cultural Ecology. New York: Alta Mora Press, pp. 53-58.

c. Human populations grew slowly for millions of years. With technological advances, human
populations began to soar to the six billion of today, an annual growth rate of about 2 percent.
Food supply is an important factor that influenced population growth and size.
d. The natural aspects of predation, disease, food supply, and habitat size control the populations of
most species, but humans employ culture (including technology) in an attempt to bypass these
factors.
e. Humans manipulate the environment and food supply and employ a variety of cultural rules to
ensure the survival of their societies, leading to population growth.
f. Population growth forced people to intensify their food production to meet the challenge of feeding
many people. Population growth led to greater need for cooperation and interdependence.
3. Evolution of Societies
a. With the advent of new technology, formation of societies changed as needs altered by
modifications due to anatomical adaptations.
b. Societies represent a collective activity, and societies range from simple societies to more
complex societies, with differences according to a division of labor, cultural rules, and different
social institutions created to meet human needs.
c. Societies change as populations growth leads to increases in human interactions, different types if
interactions, diversity in social roles, and the level of cohesion or solidarity.
d. Cohesion refers to the degree to which those who participate in a society identify with it and feel
bound to support it, especially its norms, values, beliefs, and social structure.
e. The degree of cohesion depends on how the societies are organized, meaning how human needs
are met.
4. Group Cohesion refers to the sense of solidarity or loyalty that individuals feel toward the groups to
which they belong.
a. It is the force that binds members together.
b. The life and satisfaction of a group depend on how cohesive the group members are with each
other.
c. Cohesion tends to rely heavily on interpersonal factors such as shared values and shared
demographics traits like race, ethnicity, age, or gender.
d. Cohesion also relies on an attraction to the group or members ability to cooperate in achieving
their goals.
5. Division of labor refers to the range of tasks within a society. It can vary from everyone doing the
same thing to each person having a different role. 15
a. It is through the division of labor that social life takes place and people are connected to their
society.
b. The concept is used primarily to study economic production, and cooking would have constituted
a new form of economic production, in terms of economy referring to the means utilized for
providing for the subsistence of the members of a society.
c. The division of labor can be simple, with few tasks to be performed, or complex, with a variety of
tasks that expand beyond the ability to survive.
d. The division of labor leads to differential statuses and roles, which fosters the development of
social inequality. It is important in the study of gender, racial, and other forms of inequality,
because the kind of work each person does impacts their access to wealth, power, and prestige.
e. Divisions of labor can be simple or complex. With simple divisions of labor, social cohesion is
based primarily on peoples similarities to each other and the sharing of a common culture or way
of life.
15

Johnson, Allan G. 2000. The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A Users Guide to Sociological Language. 2nd ed.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp.

f. With complex divisions of labor, cohesion is based on interdependency that results from
specialization.
g. Societies evolve from simple divisions of labor to complex divisions of labor, as technological
changes lead to population growth and the need for cultural adaptations to ensure societal
stability.
6. Two basic types of societies in terms of cohesion or solidarity, according to Emile Durkheim:
mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Societies evolve over time from mechanical to organic
societies.
7. Mechanical solidarity is cohesion based on a shared culture and way of life, consensus over
values, norms, and beliefs, and common experience.
a. Mechanical solidarity is associated with tribal societies, where the distinction between individuals
and societies are minimal.
b. Mechanical solidarity societies include a simple division of labor.
c. Based on a strong collective conscience regulating the thought and actions of individuals located
within structural units that are all alike.
d. Collective consciousness permeates and dominates individual consciousness. The collective
conscience refers to the level of shared, agreed upon beliefs, values, and norms that guide social
behavior, thoughts, and attitudes.
e. Low social differentiation, as similarity rules, with very few personal differences among persons in
the group or society.
8. Organic solidarity is based on ties of cooperation between individuals and groups of individuals due
to their interdependence within a complex division of labor.
a. These societies are typified by large populations, distributed in specialized roles in many diverse
structural units.
b. Organic societies reveal high degrees of interdependence among individuals and corporate units,
with exchange, legal contracts, and norms regulating these interrelations. This represents a higher
division of labor.
c. The collective conscience becomes enfeebled and more abstract, providing highly general and
secular premises for the exchanges, contracts, and norms regulating the interdependencies
among specialized social units.
d. In such societies individual freedom is great, and the secular and highly abstract collective
conscience becomes dominated by values stressing respect for the personal dignity of the
individual.
Cultural Innovations and Theories of Culture 16
September 21, 2012 Student Notes
1. Society, the hardware or the structure of organization and stability of a people, refers to an
organized and interdependent group of individuals who live together in a specific geographical area
and who interact more with each other than they do with outsiders; they cooperate for the attainment
of common goals and share a common culture over time.
a. A society represents a system that is defined by geographical territory within which a population
shares a common culture and way of life under conditions of relative autonomy, independence,
and self-sufficiency.
b. Today, a global society based on the Web exists that has a common language, culture or
netiquette, and have a common goal of obtaining and creating information for dissemination.

16

Griswold, Wendy. 2008. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press.

c. Societies evolve over time, changing with alterations in the ways that people relate to each other
and to the environment.
d. Societies differ according to culture, including the strength of shared values, norms, and beliefs,
interdependence of positions or roles and statuses, increasingly advanced technologies, and new
forms and uses of energy. Societies also differ in the complexity and in the types of work available
for members of the society.
2. Two segments of culture in society: Material and Non-Material.
a. Material culture refers to everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environments,
including technology. It includes everything that we can see or touch. Material culture includes
artifacts, physical objects, and items that are created by members of a society and the meanings or
significance attached to them.
b. Nonmaterial culture refers to ways of using material objects and to customs, philosophies,
governments, and patterns of communication. Examples of nonmaterial culture are values, beliefs,
behavior, social norms, and traditions that are found in a society. Nonmaterial culture is intangible,
abstract, and members of a society must agree on the meanings attached.
3. Cultural universals refer to certain common practices and beliefs in all known societies. Food,
shelter, and clothing are cultural universals, but also athletic sports, cooking, funeral rites, marriage,
and sexual taboos. Language is a cultural universal in societies.
4. Language refers to an abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture.
Language reflects the priorities of a culture. Language is the key to cultural transmission, defined as
the process by which one generation passes culture to the next.
a. It includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and nonverbal gestures and
expressions.
b. Words represent a mental concept that is based on empirical reality, or what we experience with
our five senses. One word may have different meanings across cultures.
c. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis describes the role of language in shaping our interpretation of reality:
1. Since people can conceptualize the world only through language, language precedes
thought.
2. The word symbols and grammar of a language organize the world for us.
3. Language can shape our senses, as it influences the way we think about people, ideas,
and objects around us.
4. Linguistic relativity refers to the recognition that different languages dissect and present
reality in different ways.
b. Nonverbal communication refers to the use of gestures, facial expressions, and other visual
images to communicate. Non-verbal language includes posture or body language, body
movements, gestures, physical proximity or space, facial expressions, and paralinguistic signal,
which refer to the use of sounds not words to convey distinct meanings.
5. Ideology refers to a system of beliefs that justify or rationalize social ideals, actions, or policies. It is
a belief system and worldview of people in a society, and is demonstrated in the culture.
a. Ideologies provide explanations for how things come to be as they are in a culture or group.
b. Ideologies represent shared ideas and beliefs which serve to justify inequalities or difference, in
support of the interests of a group or organization.
c. Ideologies include a set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of political, economic, or other
social systems.
d. Ideologies involve a body of ideas that reflect the social needs and aspirations of a culture.
e. Different cultures within the same society can have varying ideologies, which can impact power
dynamics among social groups.

6. Cultural change occurs through innovation, cultural diffusion, cultural leveling, and cultural
imperialism.
a. Cultural innovation refers to the introduction of new ideas into the culture of a society. Ideas
involve material and non-material culture, meaning cultural innovation can include technological
innovations such as the Kindle reader and ideologies such as the American Dream.
b. Cultural innovations derive from individuals or a groups belief in a better, more efficient way to
meet human needs.
c. Cultural Diffusion refers to the process by which a cultural item spreads from group to group or
society to society. Diffusion can occur through a variety of means, including exploration, military
conquest, missionary work, the mass media, and the Internet today.
d. Cultural leveling occurs when cultures that were once distinct become increasingly similar to one
another.
e. Cultural imperialism refers to the imposition of one cultures beliefs, practices, and material culture
on another culture through mass media and consumer products. It is thought to occur when one
culture, through the media, music, soft drinks, running shoes and other commodities, inundates
another culture and begins to change the second culture to increase the profits of the first culture.
7. The sociological analysis of culture begins with the supposition that within societies, culture
provides stability and equilibrium, through providing meaning for both material and non-material
objects. Meaning, also referred to as significance, refers to an objects capacity, in addition to
whatever practical or direct properties it may possess, to suggest or point to something else. For
example, the National Anthem means that people stand to show their patriotism, or receiving an n A
on a paper means a job well done.
8. Theories of culture that help understand cultural innovation in societies.
a. A social theory is a set of logically interrelated statements that attempt to describe, explain, and
occasionally predict social events, social behaviors, and social change.
b. Macro-sociological theories focus on the largest social units and involve entire nations or other
social events that shape our daily lives.
c. Micro-sociological theories emphasize individual behavior: the choices that people make and the
personal and interpersonal factors that influence these choices. It focuses on individual, face-toface interactions.
d. Sociological theory studies not what goes on within a person, but what occurs between people,
whether as individuals, groups, organizations, or entire societies.
9. Functionalist theory of culture utilizes the cultural ecological theory, which examines the
relationship between a culture and its total environment.
a. Culture is a complex strategy for meeting human needs. Cultural values give meaning to life and
bind people together.
b. Each cultural object, whether material or non-material culture, has a function, or it meets a need
that helps the society as a whole work efficiently and beneficially for all.
c. Culture reflects the social structure of a society. Social structure refers to the enduring and regular
social arrangements based on persistent patterns of interaction and social relationships, such as
family roles.
d. The foundation of functionalist theory is that to maintain stability, human societies have concrete
needs, and social institutions are created to meet the needs. A healthy society is one in a state of
equilibrium. Each institution reflects the others, as in culture reflects the economy or the political
system, and they, in return reflect the culture.
10. Conflict theory of culture argues that the values, beliefs, and traditions of a nation or society are
not necessarily a product of consensus.

a. They utilize the notion of cultural hegemony, which refers to the domination of cultural industries
by elite groups.
b. Cultural industries include the educational system, religion, the family, and the media.
c. Power is the basis of decision-making. Power refers to the capability of individuals or groups to
make their own concerns or interests count, even when others resist.
d. Power represents the ability of individuals or members of a group to achieve aims or further the
interests they hold.
e. Conflict is necessary and inevitable, and social change can only occur through conflict between
groups, as the powerless seek to reduce the oppression of the powerful.
11. Symbolic Interaction theory of culture focuses on how individuals and groups use symbols to
define and interpret reality.
a. It emphasizes that our daily lives are structured by the symbols, especially languages, and
meanings of many groups, whether the meanings are true, real, or scientifically valid.
b. Our perception of reality is related to culture, as cultural definitions help us interpret the
environment, giving it meaning or significance, and tells us how to respond to others.
c. Symbols refer to anything to which group members assign meaning. It includes objects, colors,
sound, gestures, persons, and language.
Culture and Society
September 19, 2012 Student Notes17
1. Culture refers the way of life shared by a group of people within a society, including their
knowledge, beliefs, values, norms, laws, language, customs, symbols, and material products that
help meet human needs or wants.
a. Culture includes the sum of the social categories and concepts we recognize in addition to
behaviors and practices. Social categories refer to culturally-specific identities, such as
gender/sex, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and social class.
b. Culture binds individuals to each other and to the past. Culture is learned behavior, acquired
chiefly through verbal communication, or language, but can also be learned through non-verbal
communication, such as gestures.
c. It becomes vitally important for individuals to learn the norms, values, beliefs, and symbols of their
cultures, but also of other cultures
d. There are many cultures within one society, and people can participate in more than one culture at
a time, such as the digital culture, the culture of their specific racial or ethnic group, the culture of
their fraternity or sorority, or the culture of their street gangs.
e. Culture is constantly changing, albeit at a slow rate, by technological innovation and changes in
ideas regarding what the world is like or how it should be.
f. Culture can be constraining with its specific ways to live, but without guidelines or rules of
behavior, societies would be chaotic. Culture provides stability, through routines, patterns, and
expectations for daily rituals and interactions.
g. Culture is so much a part of our lives that often we do not notice behaviors the rightness or
wrongness of our behaviors until someone violates the norms or we are in another culture in
which their way of life differs from ours.
2. No way of life is natural to humanity, even though people view their own behavior that way.

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Ballantine, Jeanne H. 328 and Keith A. Roberts. 2012. Our Social World: Condensed Version. Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 66-78.

a. Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency to view ones own group and its cultural expectations as
right, proper, and superior to others. Ethnocentrism represents the taken-for-granted superiority of
ones own culture in the context of cultural practices and attitudes.
b. Cultural relativism requires setting aside cultural and personal beliefs and prejudices to
understand another group or society through the eyes of a member of that group. Cultural
relativism means taking into account differences across cultures without passing judgment. It
allows individuals to judge each culture on its own merits, and not to judge other cultures in
comparison to ones own.
3. Characteristics of culture:
a. Culture evolves over time and is adaptive. What is considered normal and acceptable behavior in
the past may not be so today.
b. The creation of culture is ongoing and cumulative. Individuals through changing ideas about
behavior or through technological innovations continually build on existing culture to adapt to new
challenges and opportunities.
c. The transmission of culture is the feature that most separates humans from other animals. Human
cultures have significantly more content and are mediated through language. Humans are the only
mammals with cultures that enable them to adapt to and even modify their environments so they
can survive under any circumstances.
4. Dominant culture is the culture of the most powerful group in the society. It is the cultural form that
receives the most support from major institutions and that constitutes the major belief system.
a. The dominant culture is the standard by which other cultures in the society are judged.
b. It need not be the culture of the majority of people; it is the culture of the group with the most power
in the society.
c. The ruling elite uses their power to impose their views, beliefs, ideologies (refer to ideas and values
that rationalize and support particular points of views), and norms on other groups.
d. This constitutes a form of cultural hegemony, defined as the domination of the culture by elite
groups. Cultural hegemony represents the pervasive and excessive influence of one culture
throughout society. Cultural hegemony can result in a homogeneous mass culture.
f. Generally, where cultural hegemony exists, multiculturalism is viewed in negative ways.
Multiculturalism acknowledges the influence and the authenticity of cultures other than the dominant
culture.
5. Cultural values are shared judgments about what is desirable and undesirable, right or wrong,
good or bad. Values involve social agreements among groups in the culture.
a. Values are culturally defined standards by which people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty
and that serve as broad guidelines for living.
b. Values are abstract standards that particularly matter to people in a society. They are used to rank
individuals, groups, and societies.
c. While most members of a society embrace many of its values, there are always individuals that
question the propriety and correctness of societal values.
6. Beliefs refer to the ideas and hypotheses that a culture holds about the nature of society, its
organization, the nature of human beings, and their relationship to their society.
a. Beliefs represent the truths that are generally accepted in a society, and they are usually
not based on any empirical evidence but on social agreement.
b. Beliefs include definitions and explanations about what is assumed to be true.
c. Beliefs are specific statements that people hold to be true
7. Norms are the rules of behavior shared by members of a society and rooted in its value system.

a. Norms represent established standards of behavior maintained by a society. Norms include

expectations and rules for proper conduct that guide the behavior of group members. Norms
include socially defined rules of behavior.
b. Prescriptive norms state what we should do.
c. Proscriptive norms state what we should not do.
d. Norms are widely shared and understood.
e. Violations of norms result in sanctions. Informal sanctions are unofficial rewards or punishments.
Formal sanctions are implemented by official authorities.
8. Three types of norms:
a. Folkways are customs that are not strictly enforced, such as manners and etiquette.
Violation of the folkways may get you frowns or other forms of disapproval but will not get
you arrested.
b. Mores are norms that most members observe because they have great moral significance
for the society. These include taboos, which are the strongest form of mores, and they
concern actions considered unthinkable or unspeakable in the cultural, such as the incest
taboo against sexual contact between close relatives, as defined within the culture
c. Laws are norms that have been formally encoded by those holding political power in
society, such as laws against using a cell phone while driving or murder.