Study Notes on Culture (Sociology): Overview of the common components of culture (Symbols, Language, Values, Norms, Material Culture), Cultural Diversity (High/Popular/Sub-/Counterculture), Culture and Self-concept (Individualist and collectivist cultures, Biculturalism)
Culture is the way of life of a particular society. It includes beliefs, values, norms, customs,
traditions, history, language and material objects that together form our lives; how we think
and act and what we own. We can speak about non-material culture, which is the intangible
world of ideas created by members of a society, and also about material culture, which is the
tangible things created by members of a society. Animals all over the world behave in uniform,
species-specific ways. This uniformity follows from the fact that most living creatures are
guided by instincts and over this biological programming have no or just very little control. A
few animals-chimpanzees and related primates- have capacity for limited culture but only
humans rely on culture rather than instincts to ensure the survival of their kind.
THE COMPONENTS OF CULTURE
Cultures vary greatly all over the world.
The cultural diversity involves not only differences in musical tastes, preferred foods and
clothing, but also differences in family patterns, religious beliefs, ideas about what is right and
wrong, polite or impolite, beautiful or ugly.
Despite all of these differences, they all have 5 common components:
• SYMBOLS
• LANGUAGE
• VALUES
• NORMS
• MATERIAL CULTURE.
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, ➢ SYMBOLS
Human beings try to give meaning to the world and so they translate elements of it into
symbols. Anything that carries a particular meaning which recognized by people sharing a
culture is a symbol. A word, red light in traffic, a raised fist-all serve as symbols.
CULTURE SHOCK is the personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life;
an inability to interpret the symbols of another culture, to read meaning in new surroundings.
Not understanding the symbols of a culture leaves a person feeling lost, confused and isolated.
Cultural shock is a two-way process. The travellers experience culture shock when
encountering people whose way of life is different. North Americans, British people as well as
other Europeans consider dogs and cats to be beloved pets. They are very likely to be horrified
to find that, in parts of Indonesia and some parts of China people eat these animals. On the
other hand, travellers might inflict cultural shock on local people by acting in ways that offend
them. If we would ask for a burger in an Indian restaurant we would offend Hindus, who
consider cows to be sacred.
Symbolic meanings also vary within a society. A fur coat might represent wealth, prestige,
success for one, while for another the inhumane, cruel treatment of animals. Societies create
new symbols all the time: cyber symbols have developed along with our increasing use of
computers.
➢ LANGUAGE
It is a system of symbols, that allows people to communicate with one another. Language is a
cultural heritage and the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation
passes culture to the next. Chinese is the native tongue of one-fifth of the world’s people,
almost all of whom live in Asia. English is spoken by one-tenth of humanity, being the official
language of several countries and also the preferred second language in many countries.
Sapir and Whorf claimed that language actually shapes reality, since every language has its own
distinctive symbols that serve as the building blocks of reality. They also noted that each
language has words or expressions not found in any other symbolic system. Falk (1987) also
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