Characteristics of culture
OBJECTIVES
At the end of today’s lesson, you should be able to:
(1) Define culture, material culture, nonmaterial culture and norms.
(2) Describe the elements that determine the characteristics of a culture.
(3) Evaluate the norms, customs and institutions which prescribe behaviour
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
Culture speaks to the ideas, beliefs, practices and values that form the basis on which the society is built. Hence the culture of a society is learned and shared by the members of the society. Culture is transmitted from one generation to another through verbal and nonverbal interactions. Cultures are passed down through institutions such as the family and religion, which has prescribed behaviours for its members to follow. Culture also has gendered practices, in term of how males and females are expected to respond in situations that are unique to them. Culture is a dynamic, creative, continuous process. The culture of the Caribbean is diverse, oftentimes referred to as a melting pot of cultures because of the contribution of various groups, such as the East Indians, Chinese, Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians. This legacy of diversity can be readily seen in the languages spoken in the Caribbean: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Creole, Mandarin (Chinese immigrants). Culture therefore provides individuals with a set of common understandings that they employ in fashioning their actions, and makes society possible by providing a common framework of meaning.
The process by which people learn their society’s culture is called enculturation. Enculturation unifies people of a society by providing them with common experiences. Social scientists identify certain aspects of culture as pop culture, or popular culture. Pop culture includes such elements of a society’s arts and entertainment as television, radio, recordings, advertising, sports, hobbies, fads and fashions.
THE MAIN ONES ARE A CULTURE:
Satisfies human needs in a particular way. Is acquired through learning. Is based on the use of symbols. Consists of individual traits and groups of traits called patterns.
TYPES OF CULTURE
Sociologists describe two interrelated aspects of human culture: the physical objects of the culture and the ideas associated with these objects.
Material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. These include homes, neighborhoods, cities, schools, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, offices, factories and plants, tools, means of production, goods and products, stores, and so forth. All of these physical aspects of a culture help to define its members’ behaviours and perceptions.
Non-material culture refers to the nonphysical ideas that people have about their culture, including beliefs, values, rules, norms, morals, language, organisations, and institutions. For instance, the non-material cultural concept of religion consists of a set of ideas and beliefs about God, worship, morals, and ethics. These beliefs, then, determine how the culture responds to its religious topics, issues, and events.
When considering non-material culture, sociologists refer to several processes that a culture uses to shape its members’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Four of the most important of these are symbols, language, values, and norms.
COMPONENTS OF CULTURE
Norms – Norms are social rules that specify appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in given situations. They afford a means by which we orient ourselves to other people. Folkways, mores, and laws are types of norms.
Values – Values are broad ideas regarding what is desirable, correct, and good that most members of a society share. Values are so general and abstract that they do not explicitly specify which behaviours are acceptable and which are not.
Symbols and language – Symbols are acts or objects that have come to be socially accepted as standing for something else. Symbols assume many different forms, but language is the most important of these. Language is the chief vehicle by which people communicate ideas, information, attitudes, and emotions, and it serves as the principal means by which human beings create culture and transmit it from generation to generation.
CULTURAL UNITY AND DIVERSITY CULTURAL UNIVERSALS
Cultural universals are patterned and recurrent aspects of life that appear in all known societies. All people confront many of the same problems; culture represents an accumulation of solutions to the problems posed by human biology and the human situation.
CULTURAL INTEGRATION
The items that form a culture tend to constitute a consistent and integrated whole. For example, societies that value universal education also usually have norms and laws about schools, organise education into a collective activity, and create symbols and share meanings about the value of education and educational organisations.
ETHNOCENTRISM
The cultural ways of our own society become so deeply ingrained that we have difficulty conceiving of alternative ways of life. We judge the behaviour of other groups by the standards of our own culture, a phenomenon sociologists term ethnocentrism.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
In studying other cultures, we must examine behaviour in the light of the values, beliefs, and motives of each culture, an approach termed cultural relativism.
SUBCULTURES AND COUNTERCULTURES
Cultural diversity may be found within a society in the form of subcultures. When the norms, values, and lifestyles of a subculture are at odds with those of the larger society, it is a counterculture.