Unit 2 Culture
Overview
Welcome to Unit 2 of Sociology 101, an introduction to the study of how the social world influences the way people behave and vise versa. In this second unit, we will learn about culture – the written and unwritten guidelines about how a group of people exist together. Any group of people can have a culture whether a workplace, a family, a sports team, a religious group or a nation.
Topics
This unit is divided into the following topics:
- What is Culture?
- Culture and Language
- Subculture and Counterculture
- High Culture and Popular Culture
- The Culture of Science
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:
- Discuss culture as a symbolic environment in which humans live
- Consider the significance of cultural differences around the world
- Connect local and global cultures and analyze how they influence each other
- Compare Science and technology as subcultures as well as cultural influences
Activity Checklist
Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.
Learning Activities
- Watch the video, What Does Culture Mean to You? (5 minutes)
- Anaylze the Case Study – The Sacred Rac (20 minutes)
- Read the article on hand gestures around the world. (15 minutes)
- Watch the video, Does language shape how we think? (3 minutes)
- Consider the music genre of Indie music and how it influenced the general music industry. (15 minutes)
- Watch the video about high culture in China.
- Case Study (30 Minutes)
Assessment
- See the Assessment section in Moodle for assignment details and due dates.
2.1 What is Culture?
Consider how you began your day. What clothes did you decide to wear? What food did you eat for breakfast? What language are you using to communicate to your fellow classmates? What songs were you streaming on the way to school? You may have heard the word culture used many times, but did you know all the decisions you made from the list of questions above are the result of culture’s influence on you?
Photo by Victor Xok on Unsplash
Questions to Consider
- Ask yourself, why did I listen to that play list and not another one?
- Why did I wear this clothing and not a traditional garment from another country or what people wore 300 years ago?
- Why am I speaking the language I do and not another one?
- Is culture working on influencing your actions?
In this second unit we are going to learn about culture and its powerful influence in shaping the way we think and behave.
Activity: What is Culture?
Culture is something that must be viewed from an international perspective. Watch this video to see people from all over the world tell you what they think culture is.
Case Study
A good way to understand culture and the role it plays in our social world is to consider society as being like a game. If society is the game, the culture represents the rules and goals of the game. Culture helps us identify what the goal of the game is and the best way to play it. Imagine you are invited to play a sport like soccer with a group of people, but you have never played soccer before or even watched it. Now let’s say you are a very good rugby player and know that sport and its rules very well. You can see that this is not going to end well. When the game of soccer starts you may be tempted to pick up the ball and run with it, or you might tackle someone to the ground. It might come as a surprise to you that you are penalized for what you considered a perfectly good rugby tackle.
The point of this example is that you can’t play soccer the same way you play rugby; there are different rules and as a result different strategies and skills you need to play the game well. What is considered acceptable or normal in one game may be illegal in another. In society, these are referred to as social norms. Social norms are the beliefs and values we consider to be normal. They might be a written rule (don’t steal) or just one that everyone abides by (be polite to other people). Culture differs from fads or trends in that is has a history and is passed on from generation to generation.
Sociology helps us understand that our own culture “seems” to come naturally to us - even though we are not born with culture; it is something we learn. It comes so naturally to us that we have the proclivity to think it is the best or the right culture when compared to others. This tendency is referred to as ethnocentrism and is key to helping us understand society. Just like a rugby player might think the rules of soccer don’t make sense, we don’t understand why people don’t live like we do. In fact, we tend to see the world through the eyes of own culture and because of that, we have difficulties appreciating why people behave differently than we do. In contrast to seeing the world through our own experiences, cultural relativism is the willingness to learn about, appreciate and understand why people do things differently.
Note that you may be asked to discuss these terms with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
2.2 Culture and Language
Language is a very important form of culture. It is an agreed upon form of communication. Imagine being in a room full of people who all speak different languages, if you couldn’t understand each others words, what might you try next? We have already discussed the fact that culture is an agreed upon set of beliefs and behaviours that a group adopts. They do this in order to live together. Languages are just highly developed forms of symbols. The letters of an alphabet are each symbols recognized by the people of that culture. Languages have rules about how you put together combination of letters and then how the words made up by those letters need to work together. Consider verbs, nouns, and conjunctions and you get the idea. Language allows us to be very exact and concise. This makes contracts and laws less likely to be misunderstood. Have you ever tried to text someone a message and it got misunderstood?
Photo Credit: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/welcome-sign-calligraphy-modern-976277/
Language is both verbal and non-verbal. We can make sounds that form words but we can also convey more information about what we are trying to communicate when you look into someone’s eyes, watch their body language or see their facial expressions. How do you feel when you are talking to someone about something important and then they look at their phone?
Photo Credit: Photo by Budgeron Bach from Pexels
Gestures are also a symbolic form of communication. If you can see someone but can’t speak to them, what would you do to communicate hello? Goodbye? Or I love you? Or what about a gesture that conveys you are really upset at someone? The same gesture can have different meanings depending on the culture.
Learning Activities
Gestures
Go to the following website about gestures around the world and see if you are surprised by their meanings.
Language is a reflection of our culture but it also shapes it as well. In English we have a word for love. This word can used to convey a feeling toward a romantic partner but it can also be used to describe how we feel about our car, a song or our mother. The same word conveys very different meanings depending on the context. In other languages there are many words for love and each word carries a different meaning. Researchers Sapir and Whorf have suggested that language is not only an expression of our thoughts but that it structures them as well.
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
Does Language Shape How We Think?
Watch the following video on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis then look up the Spanish word Sobremesa. How might the hypothesis be used to explain why the word has no English translation? (3 minutes)
2.3 Subculture and Counterculture
It would be a mistake to think that everyone who lives in a certain place at a certain time all believe and behave the same way. That just isn’t the case. Some cultures are very dominant. It is more difficult to be different, but every society is going to have some difference. The way to understand these differences is looking at the concepts of subculture and counterculture.
Subculture are cultures within a culture. Take for example music genres. If you told someone that you liked music, what would expect the next question to be? Different kinds of music represent different musical cultures. You might like Rap, Punk, Jazz, Rock and Roll or classical music or a combination. The point is that your musical interests would attract you to other people with the same preferences. Together you would form a musical subculture. You would go to certain concerts or listen to certain bands. Subcultures can exist in all aspects of society, from fashion to religion. Think of subcultures as clusters of beliefs and behaviours within a larger cluster of beliefs and behaviours.
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
In contrast to a subculture being a subset of cultural values, countercultures want to exist outside the dominant culture they are surrounded by. A counterculture has its own unique beliefs and behaviours but they are often reactions to the main culture around them. Countercultures don’t embrace the dominant culture because they want to reject it or change it. Countercultures are often viewed as bad because they don’t conform to the rest of society, but sociologists do not all agree that countercultures are negative. Consider a religious group in a non-religious society as an example. The Amish people of the Midwestern United States reject modern technology and therefore are countercultural. We will see shortly that what gets defines as bad or good subculture is often defined by those with the power to create and enforce those labels.
Activity: Countercultural Music
Consider the music genre of Indie music. This is a genre of music that is meant to be produced independently of big commercial music companies. As a result, it can be considered countercultural. Consider what happens when Indie music becomes so popular that most people start listening to it, music stations are dedicated to it and recording companies start to finance it?
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
2.4 High Culture and Popular Culture
Another way to understand culture is from the perspective of class structure. Sociologists are very interested in how different classes experience life differently. One way they make sense of inequality is by distinguishing high culture from popular culture. High culture represents the values, beliefs, and preferences of the group of society who are considered to be the upper class. The group with more wealth and prestige. An example of the upper class would be those people who wear expensive clothing, live in large homes, and drive fancy cars. This group also is more likely to go to expensive restaurants, listen to classical music, and go to art exhibits. Sociologists observe that different classes of people prefer different forms of recreation and have different tastes when it come to what they buy and even how they talk. Sociologists also recognize that this group has the economic means to live differently than those with lesser wealth.
High culture is contrasted to popular culture. Pop music is really just short for popular music. Music that most people listen to. Popular fashion is what most people wear. Consider the most popular cars or popular TV shows and you get a sense of what popular culture is all about. Most people know the songs of the Beatles more than they do of Bach or Beethoven. The Beatles would be considered popular culture.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the term cultural capital to refer the social value of having access to high culture. He recognized that groups that have access to high culture use that culture to restrict access to the group. Consider the difference in people who belong to a yacht club compared to those who belong to a neighbourhood soccer team. Or what about those who have the clothes and the money to go to exclusive restaurants compared to those who go to the MacDonald’s Drive Thru?
Bourdieu believed that cultural capital came from the blended effort of parents and educational intuitions that perpetuate high culture. Getting a degree from a prestigious university exposes you to different culture than if you go to a local college. Even though most do not have an opportunity to live a very wealthy lifestyle, it is still possible to be knowledgeable about it. Cultural Literacy is what you are gaining by taking this course and that will give you an advantage in life.
Cultural values are linked to economic behaviour in the way we consume (what we buy and spend our money on) but also in the way we produce. Max Weber believed that the rise of capitalism in Europe was encouraged by a religious culture that emphasized hard work and austere living. When you work hard but consume little, you end up developing a surplus that can then be reinvested into your work. Weber believed that a certain form of Protestantism (Calvinism) was that the catalyst of the economic growth on both an individual and national level.
Learning Activities
High vs. Pop Culture
Watch the following video about high culture in China:
After watching the following video clip, consider the importance of knowing how to pronounce the names of expensive goods, not just have the money to buy them. Consider what high culture and pop culture look like in your community/country.
2.5 Science, Technology, and Cultural Change
“Science says so” is a claim most of us have heard and maybe even made as well. Why is the term used? It is used to add legitimacy to the claim being made. For most, if science is behind the claim, it is more likely to be accepted as true. Sociology is a social science and seeks to make truth claims as well. Yet it is also interested in studying the social nature of competing truth claims. If science stating something to be true is all we needed to confirm truth, there would be no controversies about what is true and what is not. Many topics in science are places of debate. Scholarly journals are places where scientists can publish their research in order to engage in academic debates.
Science is often contrasted to tradition or myths. In the modern era, science grew in importance during the period of Enlightenment in which Western rational thought began to dominate. The rise of empiricism, or what is known as the scientific method, moves explanation about the physical and social world away from religious or mythical explanations and focused on empirical explanation. Critical theorists argue that science is not as objective as it gets presented. They would point to the human element of science and say that political and economic agendas tend to influence what science focuses on and what it can say and can’t say. They would say that science is socially constructed, which is a term that means it is a human creation and subjective. What “good science” is, is really just a reflection of the values of that society.
Technology and science are closely connected. Technology is any form of human invention that leverages human effort. That can be a wheel, a shovel, a steam engine, or a cell phone. Technology drives cultural change. Think of how texting has expanded our communication reach. Now you can video chat with anyone in the world with a cell or wifi connection. Look how cars have changed where we live and how food science has changed how and what we eat. Medical technologies have improved our chances of survival and help us live longer lives.
Question to Consider
- Think about the latest piece of technology you adopted, whether it was a new kind of beauty product, a new clothing fabric, a new medication, or a new app. What kind of vetting process if any, did you go through before taking a risk on this product?
The adoption curve listed below is a normal bell curve that is applied to the way technology adoption and social change work. Most of you have grown up with technology all around you, but maybe you remember the first time your family got a mobile phone. Maybe you were the first one with an electric car or a yet to exist form of technology. Usually a few people get it, then more until almost everyone is using it. That is how technology changes a culture. Have you ever read a physical newspaper or sent a handwritten postcard to someone? Probably not because you can do all that digitally quicker and better.
Summary
In this second unit, you learned about culture and the way in which it influences human behaviour. Culture is not something you see. It is symbolic of the values, beliefs, and behaviours of a group of people. When a culture is dominant, it strongly influences behaviour. Subcultures are made up of clusters of traits within a culture, and countercultures are cluster of traits that are often in reaction to dominant cultures. Language is an important part of culture since it is the way a group of people communicate. Language can be verbal and non-verbal. Culture is a universal trait among human societies, and we tend to think of our culture as the lens to view all other cultures.
We also saw how culture can be an asset if we come from a high culture background. It can set us apart from the bulk of society who embrace a normal or popular culture. Finally, we saw how science and technology can be both a subculture and drive cultural change. People usually adopt change slowly in a pattern that resembles a standard bell curve.
Assessment
Quiz 3
After completing this unit, including the learning activities, you are asked to complete the online quiz reviewing material from chapter 3.
These quizzes are meant to be formative, and a tool to help you measure your own understanding of the course material.
Go to Quizzes in the main Assessment tab for access to Quiz 3. Note that the quizzes will be administered in the Learning Lab.
Be sure to practice with the online quizzes from the textbook.
Assignment: Reflective Journal
The Reflective Journal assignment is a chance to present your understanding and application of the course material, ask questions, and clarify issues. We are looking for evidence that you are engaging the course material. Examine the learning outcomes for each unit and ensure that your journal addresses each outcome. Include your thoughts from the learning activities and how you apply the concepts to your life and current events.
Refer to the Assessment section in Moodle for all other assignment details and due dates.
Checking Your Learning
Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to:
- Identify culture as a symbolic environment in which humans live
- Recognize and describe the significance of cultural differences around the world
- Connect local and global cultures and analyze how they influence each other
- Compare science and technology as subcultures as well as cultural influences