LECTURE- 05

CULTURE
PREVIEW OF THE LAST CLASS :
 WHAT IS CULTURE ?

 Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and

other characteristics common to the members of a
particular group or society. Through culture, people and
groups define themselves, conform to society's shared
values, and contribute to society.

 Thus, culture includes many societal aspects: language,

customs, values, norms, mores, rules, tools, technologies,
products, organizations, and institutions. This latter term
institution refers to clusters of rules and cultural
meanings associated with specific social activities.
Common institutions are the family, education, religion,
work, and health care.
 Popularly speaking, being cultured means being well‐educated,
knowledgeable of the arts, stylish, and well‐mannered.

 High culture—generally pursued by the upper class—refers to

classical music, theater, fine arts, and other sophisticated pursuits.

 Members of the upper class can pursue high art because they have
cultural capital, which means the professional credentials,
education, knowledge, and verbal and social skills necessary to
attain the “property, power, and prestige” to “get ahead” socially.

 Low culture, or popular culture—generally pursued by the

working and middle classes—refers to sports, movies, television
sitcoms and soaps, and rock music. Remember that sociologists
define culture differently than they do cultured, high culture, low
culture, and popular culture.
 Sociologists define society as the people who
interact in such a way as to share a common culture.
The cultural bond may be ethnic or racial, based
on gender, or due to shared beliefs, values, and
activities.
 The term society can also have a geographic
meaning and refer to people who share a common
culture in a particular location. For example, people
living in arctic climates developed different cultures
from those living in desert cultures. In time, a large
variety of human cultures arose around the world.
MATERIAL VS. NON-MATERIAL CULTURE
 MATERIAL CULTURE :

 Material Culture :
 There are many elements and aspects of culture.
However, each can be categorized as either material
or nonmaterial culture. Material culture includes
all the physical things that people create and attach
meaning to. Clothing, food, tools, and architecture
are examples of material culture that most people
would think of. Natural objects and materials (rock,
dirt, trees, etc.) aren't considered to be part of
material culture. However, how people view natural
objects and how they use them are.
 NON-MATERIAL CULTURE :

 Nonmaterial culture includes creations and

abstract ideas that are not embodied in physical
objects. In other words, any intangible products
created and shared between the members of a
culture over time are aspects of their nonmaterial
culture.
 Social roles, rules, ethics, and beliefs are just some
examples. All of them are crucial guides for members
of a culture to use to know how to behave in their
society and interpret the world.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE:
 CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE:

 1. Learned Behavior:
 Not all behavior is learned, but most of it is learned;
combing one’s hair, standing in line, telling jokes,
criticizing the President and going to the movie, all
constitute behaviors which had to be learned.
 Sometimes the terms conscious learning and
unconscious learning are used to distinguish the
learning. For example, the ways in which a small child
learns to handle a tyrannical father or a rejecting mother
often affect the ways in which that child, ten or fifteen
years later, handles his relationships with other people.
 2. Culture is Abstract:

 Culture exists in the minds or habits of the members

of society. Culture is the shared ways of doing and
thinking. There are degrees of visibility of cultural
behavior, ranging from the regularized activities of
persons to their internal reasons for so doing. In
other words, we cannot see culture as such we can
only see human behavior. This behavior occurs in
regular, patterned fashion and it is called culture.
3. Culture is a Pattern of Learned Behaviour:

The definition of culture indicated that the learned

behaviour of people is patterned. Each person’s
behaviour often depends upon some particular
behaviour of someone else. The point is that, as a
general rule, behaviours are somewhat integrated or
organized with related behaviours of other persons.
 4. Culture is the Products of Behaviour:

 Culture learning are the products of behaviour. As the

person behaves, there occur changes in him. He acquires
the ability to swim, to feel hatred toward someone, or to
sympathize with someone. They have grown out of his
previous behaviours.
 In both ways, then, human behaviour is the result of
behaviour. The experience of other people are impressed
on one as he grows up, and also many of his traits and
abilities have grown out of his own past behaviours.
 5. Culture includes Attitudes, Values Knowledge:

 There is widespread error in the thinking of many people

who tend to regard the ideas, attitudes, and notions
which they have as “their own”. It is easy to overestimate
the uniqueness of one’s own attitudes and ideas. When
there is agreement with other people it is largely
unnoticed, but when there is a disagreement or
difference one is usually conscious of it. Your differences
however, may also be cultural. For example, suppose you
are a Catholic and the other person a Protestant.
 6. Culture also includes Material Objects:

 Man’s behavior results in creating objects. Men were behaving

when they made these things. To make these objects required
numerous and various skills which human beings gradually
built up through the ages. Man has invented something else
and so on. Occasionally one encounters the view that man
does not really “make” steel or a battleship. All these things
first existed in a “state nature”.
 Man merely modified their form, changed them from a state
in which they were to the state in which he now uses them.
The chair was first a tree which man surely did not make. But
the chair is more than trees and the jet airplane is more than
iron ore and so forth.
 7. Culture is shared by the Members of Society:
 The patterns of learned behaviour and the results of behaviour are
possessed not by one or a few person, but usually by a large
proportion. Thus, many millions of persons share such behaviour
patterns as Christianity, the use of automobiles, or the English
language.
 Persons may share some part of a culture unequally. For example,
as Americans do the Christian religion. To some persons
Christianity is the all important, predominating idea in life. To
others it is less preoccupying/important, and to still others it is of
marginal significance only.
 Sometimes the people share different aspects of culture. For
example, among the Christians, there are – Catholic and Protestant,
liberal or conservation, as clergymen or as laymen. The point to our
discussion is not that culture or any part of it is shred identically,
but that it is shared by the members of society to a sufficient extent.
 8. Culture is Super-organic:

 Culture is sometimes called super organic. It implies that

“culture” is somehow superior to “nature”. The word super-
organic is useful when it implies that what may be quite a
different phenomenon from a cultural point of view.
 For example, a tree means different things to the botanist who
studies it, the old woman who uses it for shade in the late
summer afternoon, the farmer who picks its fruit, the motorist
who collides with it and the young lovers who carve their
initials in its trunk. The same physical objects and physical
characteristics, in other words, may constitute a variety of
quite different cultural objects and cultural characteristics.
Functions of Culture :
 Functions of Culture :

1. Culture Defines Situations:

 Each culture has many subtle cues which define each
situation. It reveals whether one should prepare to fight, run,
laugh or make love. For example, suppose someone
approaches you with right hand outstretched at waist level.
What does this mean? That he wishes to shake hands in
friendly greeting is perfectly obvious – obvious, that is to
anyone familiar with our culture.
 But in another place or time the outstretched hand might
mean hostility or warning. One does not know what to do in a
situation until he has defined the situation. Each society has
its insults and fighting words. The cues (hints) which define
situations appear in infinite variety. A person who moves from
one society into another will spend many years misreading the
cues. For example, laughing at the wrong places.
 2. Culture defines Attitudes, Values and Goals:
 Each person learns in his culture what is good, true, and
beautiful. Attitudes, values and goals are defined by the
culture. While the individual normally learns them as
unconsciously as he learns the language. Attitude are
tendencies to feel and act in certain ways. Values are
measures of goodness or desirability, for example, we value
private property, (representative) Government and many
other things and experience.
 Goals are those attainments which our values define as
worthy, (e.g.) winning the race, gaining the affections of a
particular girl, or becoming president of the firm. By
approving certain goals and ridiculing others, the culture
channels individual ambitions. In these ways culture
determines the goals of life.
 3. Culture defines Myths, Legends, and the Supernatural:
 Myths and legends are important part of every culture. They may
inspire, reinforce effort and sacrifice and bring comfort in
bereavement. Whether they are true is sociologically unimportant.
Ghosts are real to people who believe in them and who act upon this
belief. We cannot understand the behaviour of any group without
knowing something of the myths, legends, and supernatural beliefs
they hold. Myths and legends are powerful forces in a group’s
behaviour.
 Culture also provides the individual with a ready-made view of the
universe. The nature of divine power and the important moral
issues are defined by the culture. The individual does not have to
select, but is trained in a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or
some other religious tradition. This tradition gives answers for the
major (things imponderable) of life, and fortuities the individual to
meet life’s crises.
 4. Culture provides Behaviour Patterns:
 The individual need not go through painful trial and error learning
to know what foods can be eaten (without poisoning himself), or
how to live among people without fear. He finds a ready-made set of
patterns awaiting him which he needs only to learn and follow. The
culture maps out the path to matrimony. The individual does not
have to wonder how one secures a mate; he knows the procedure
defined by his culture.
 If men use culture to advance their purposes, it seems clear also that
a culture imposes limits on human and activities. The need for order
calls forth another function of culture that of so directing behaviour
that disorderly behaviour is restricted and orderly behaviour is
promoted. A society without rules or norms to define right and
wrong behaviour would be very much like a heavily travelled street
without traffic signs or any understood rules for meeting and
passing vehicles. Chaos would be the result in either case.
 5. Culture is the Treasury of Knowledge :

 Culture provides knowledge which is essential for the physical,

social and intellectual existence of men. Birds and animals behave
instinctively. With the help of instincts they try to adapt themselves
with the environment. But man has greater learning capacity. With
the help of these he has been able to adapt himself with the
environment or modify it to suit his convenience.
 Culture has made such an adaptation and modification possible and
easier by providing man the necessary skills and knowledge. Culture
preserves knowledge and helps its transmission from generation to
generation through its element, that is, language. Language helps
not only the transmission of knowledge but also its preservation,
accumulation and diffusion.
 On the contrary, animals do not have this advantage. Because ,
culture does not exist at sub-human level.
 6. Culture cultivates :

 Culture “cultivates”–it develops and grows. What does it grow? It

cultivates the human spirit. By communicating and creating worlds
for us to inhabit, metaphors to live by, or the basic orientation for
our lives, culture develops our souls. It gives a vision of the meaning
of life for our “hearts”–the seat our willing and acting–to desire and
pattern itself against. “In short, culture cultivates character traits–
the habits of the heart–and in doing so forms our spirit so that we
become this kind of a person rather than that kind.” The point isn’t
that we are helpless against the onslaught of culture’s imagination
or affection-shaping power. It is rather that we need to understand
that it’s not a question of whether a particular show is educational,
but what’s the lesson being taught? Prolonged exposure to cultural
texts presenting us with similar narratives and worlds shape our
self-understandings and create a sort of “second nature” for good or
ill.Culture is a spirit-forming reality.
7. Culture reproduces :
We need to understand that culture spreads. “Culture spreads
beliefs, values, ideas, fashions, and practices from one social group
to another.” In the past through institutional force or colonization,
but now it mostly happens through mimetic reproduction. A
“meme” is a “cultural unit” analogous to a gene in that it reproduces
and passes itself on by means of imitation (mimesis). This could be
anything from an idea, a fashion, phrase, song, or practice. The
point is that cultural “programming” is spread from person to
person, sort of like a virus, as people encounter each other and
begin to copy or imitate the cultural behaviors that they see. This
can happen institutionally in schools, or through parental
instruction, but more often than not it’s happening informally all
the time through everyday interactions with friends, online content,
and media saturation.
 8.Culture communicates :

 Finally, culture is constantly communicating to us in ways both

explicit as well as subtle, in a variety of formats, media,
advertisements, and cultural artifacts. While there are hundreds
of different specific messages aimed at a every discernable area
of human life, the over-arching goal is to communicate a vision
of the meaning of life, and the embodied form it should take. We
mustn’t be naive the way this vision is communicated though.
Most cultural communication happens not through propositional
argumentation but through allusion, suggestion, and
connotation. It gives us pictures and metaphors (“life is like a box
of chocolates”) that give rise to broader stories about the world
we live in; subtle hermeneutical suggestions that shape the way
we interpret our lives.
 CULTURE SHOCK :

 DEFINITION :

 Culture shock is a very real experience for many people

who move to another country. Anyone who has lived or
studied or even traveled extensively in another
country has tasted and lived through culture shock. At
the time it may feel more like homesickness, but what
most people who haven't undergone any kind of pre-
adaptation program don't know is that there are several
stages one goes through when adjusting to a new
language and culture.
 Culture shock is the personal disorientation a person may feel
when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a
visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or
simply travel to another type of life. One of the most common
causes of culture shock involves individuals in a foreign
environment. Culture shock can be described as consisting of at
least one of four distinct phases: honeymoon, frustration,
adjustment, and mastery.
 Common problems include: information overload, language barrier,
generation gap, technology gap, skill interdependence, formulation
dependency, homesickness(cultural), infinite regress
(homesickness), boredom (job dependency), response ability
(cultural skill set). There is no true way to entirely prevent culture
shock, as individuals in any society are personally affected by
cultural contrasts differently.
 Four Phases of Cultural Shock :

 1st Phase :

 During this period, the differences between the old

and new culture are seen in a romantic light. For
example, in moving to a new country, an individual
might love the new food, the pace of life, and the
locals' habits. During the first few weeks, most
people are fascinated by the new culture. They
associate with nationals who speak their language,
and who are polite to the foreigners.
 2nd Phase :
 After some time (usually around three months,
depending on the individual), differences between the
old and new culture become apparent and may create
anxiety. Excitement may eventually give way to
unpleasant feelings of frustration and anger as one
continues to experience unfavorable events that may be
perceived as strange and offensive to one's cultural
attitude. Language barriers, stark differences in public
hygiene, traffic safety, food accessibility and quality may
heighten the sense of disconnection from the
surroundings.
 3rd Phase :

 Again, after some time (usually 6 to 12 months), one

grows accustomed to the new culture and develops
routines. One knows what to expect in most situations
and the host country no longer feels all that new. One
becomes concerned with basic living again, and things
become more "normal". One starts to develop problem-
solving skills for dealing with the culture and begins to
accept the culture's ways with a positive attitude. The
culture begins to make sense, and negative reactions and
responses to the culture are reduced.
 4th and Final Phase :

 In the mastery stage individuals are able to

participate fully and comfortably in the host culture.
Mastery does not mean total conversion; people
often keep many traits from their earlier culture,
such as accents and languages. It is often referred to
as the bicultural stage.
RECAPITULATE
CLASS-WORK