CULTURE

How do sociologists define culture?

Culture is the values, norms, language, tools and other shared products of society that
provide a plan for social life.
What do functionalists see as the functions of culture?
Functionalists suggest that culture provides for continuing social order by handling
down prescribed ways of behaving in specific situations and allows people to benefit
from the achievements of previous generations.
What are norms and why are they important?
Norms are shared rules or guidelines for behavior in specific situations. The strongest
norms are taboos or rules that prohibit certain behavior and carry severe punishment
for violators. Norms carry sanctions or rewards for behavior that conform to a norm and
punishment for behavior that violates a norm. Institutions are organized sets of norms,
values, statuses and roles that are centered on the basic needs of society. The five
basic institutions of most societies are: the family, religion, the state, the economic
system and education.
How do values underlie norms?
Values are shared ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and
undesirable. Values are the general concepts on which our specific norms are built.
How do norms vary between cultures?
Many norms are specific to one society or to one group in a society for example most
college students in the United States share a norm against turning in a fellow student
for cheating.
What are the symbolic elements of culture?
A symbol is that which represents something else. Norms and values are often
transmitted within a culture or to other cultures through symbolic elements such as
language, gesture and stance, style of clothing, hairstyle, social distance, time use or
symbolic representation such as flags.
What is the importance of language in transmitting culture?
Most social scientists see a strong connection between a society's language and the rest
of its culture with the language reflecting what is important to that society to its new
members and those outside of the culture. Our silent language or nonverbal space and
time messages are also tied to our culture.
How do cultures vary?
Cultures differ in the degree of complexity whether they are focused around kinship or
institutions and the pace of change. In simple societies kinship organizes people's lives
around families and relatives. Such societies might change rather slowly compared to
modern postindustrial society.
How do the functional, ecological, evolutionary, conflict and symbolic
interactionist approaches explain cultural variation?
The functional approach suggests that a functional cultural trait has a positive
consequence for the society and will probably not be adopted unless it fits well with the
existing culture and contributes to the well-being of the society. The ecological
approach shows how societies adapt culture to their physical environment in order to
survive thus making it a sub form of the functional approach. The evolutionary
approach views culture as developing through a series of stages toward forms that are
increasingly well suited to the environment based on changes in the culture's basic tools
or technology. The conflict approach points out that prevailing definition of beauty,
justice and truth may serve the elites at the expense of the masses with culture being
created and imposed on the masses by the ruling class. The symbolic interactionist
approach highlights the importance of symbols in understanding culture and the social
behavior it shapes, suggesting that symbols are the major agent for transmitting and
shaping culture.
How do subcultures and counter cultures differ from the dominant culture?
A subculture is the culture of a subgroup of society that adopts norms that set them
apart from the dominant group; for instance persons who live in a Chinatown but are
integrated into the life of the city as a whole. A counterculture is a subculture whose
norms and values are not just different from but in conflict with those of the dominant
culture.
How do cultural universalism and cultural relativism differ?
Some sociologists believe that cultural universals or traits common to all human
societies,exist.Others suggest that each culture should be studied only in relation to
itself and not be judged by an external cultural standards or by a universal standard a
stance known as cultural relativism.
How does ethnocentrism affect one's viewpoint?
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to use one's own cultural values in evaluating the beliefs
and customs of other cultures with different values. It can be useful to a society in that
it bonds members together, but can also lead to conflict with people from other
cultures.