Chapter 3: Culture

• As we move to different parts of the country or the world, we see people wearing
different clothes, eating different things, behaving in a different manner, having different
attitudes, performing different religious system, speaking different languages etc
• The differences we experience is the differences in the culture.
• A newly born baby is helpless, depends on its mother and lacks the behavioral pattern
necessary for living in human society.
• The baby slowly learns the skills, knowledge and accepted ways of behaving in the
society.
• The baby learns the way of life which is necessary for him to survive in the society.
• In sociological language, the baby learns the culture of the society.
Definition of culture:
“Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as the member of the society”.
- E.B Taylor
 Culture is the ways of thinking, ways of acting and the material objects that together form
a people’s way of life.
 Actually, culture includes what we think, how we act and what we own.
 Culture is unique possession of man which separates it from the other animals.
 When man is born in a society, at the same time he is born in the culture.
 Man is a culture being.

Culture contents:
i. Material culture
ii. Non-material culture
i. Material culture:
 It consists of man-made objects such as tools, implements, furniture, automobiles,
buildings, dams, roads, bridges etc.
 It includes technical and material equipments like printing press, telephone, television,
tractor, machine gun etc.
 It is concerned with external and utilitarian objects.
  It is referred to as civilization.
ii. Non-material culture:
 It is the ideas created by the members of a society.
 It is our ways of acting, thinking and feeling.
 It includes the language people speak, the belief they hold, values and virtues they
cherish, habits they follow, rituals they practice and the ceremonies they perform.
Elements of Culture:
1. Symbols,
2. Language,
3. Values and beliefs
4. Norms
1. Symbol:
 Human beings transform elements of world in to symbols.
 A symbol is anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a
culture.
 For eg. A word, a whistle, a red flashing light, a raised fist etc all serves as symbols.
2. Language:
 Language is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with each other.
 Each cultural group has their own specific language.
 Humans have created many alphabets to express hundreds of language we speak.
 Language not only allows communication but it is also the key to cultural transmission
(the process by which one generation passes culture to the next).
3. Values and Belief:
 Values can be defined as the cultural standards that people use to decide what is good,
desirable and beautiful and that serves as broad guideline for social living.
 Values are the criteria, people use in assessing their daily lives, arranging their priorities,
choosing between alternative course of action, etc.
 For eg. Academic achievement, economic progress etc are the dominant values of urban
life.
 Beliefs are the specific statements or particular practices that people hold to be true.
  Eg. The belief in the witch doctor for curing the illness.
 In empirical terms it may be true or false.
4. Norms:
 Norms are the rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its
members.
 It determines, control and guide our behavior.
 It specifies how people should or should not behave in various situations.
 For eg. Younger one must always respect the elders.
, A gentle man pays his dept, One is supposed to be quite in place of worship.
Multiculturalism:
 It is the perspective recognizing the cultural diversity within a country and promoting
equal stand for all cultural traditions.
 It is an effort to enhance the appreciation of cultural diversity.
 It was developed as a reaction to the previous idea of ‘melting pot ’in U.S, which was
thought to result in minorities' losing identity as they adopted mainstream cultural
patterns.
Euro-centrism:
 The dominance of European (especially English cultural pattern) is called as Euro-
centrism.
 It is the perspective to think that Europe as the centre of social universe.
Afro-centrism:
 It is the perspective emphasizing the African American cultural patterns which they see
necessary after centuries of being minimized or ignored.
Causes of cultural change:
 The basic human truth is that all things in this world pass through some sort of change.
 The culture of a group cannot remain same forever.
 The causes of cultural change are as follows:
i. Invention
ii. Discovery
iii. Diffusion
i. Invention:
 The process of producing new things (that did not existed before) by the combination of
existing knowledge is called as invention.
 The nature and rate of inventions in a particular society depends upon its existing store of
knowledge.
 For eg. Inventions of telephone, airplane, computers etc have significant impact on our
way of life.
ii. Discovery:
 A discovery is a shared human perception of an aspect of reality which already exists.
 A new discovery becomes an addition to the society’s culture only when it is shared in
society.
 It becomes a factor of cultural change when it is put in use.
 For eg. Women’s political leadership or food of another culture

iii. Diffusion:
 The spread of cultural elements – both material artifacts and ideas from one culture to
another is called as cultural diffusions.
 It is the borrowing of cultural elements from another society.
 The most outstanding contemporary cultural change i.e the process of modernization is
taking place from the process of diffusion from advanced to less developed societies.
 Material contents which are useful for mankind have more chances of diffusion than the
non-material contents.
Analyzing cultural diversity:
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
• There are differences among people in norms, values, belief and practices.
• So, there is cultural diversity.
• Whenever different groups have come into contact with one another, people have
compared and contrasted their respective cultural traditions.
• Societies often differentiated themselves from one another based on these variant cultural
patterns.
• Ethnocentrism is a phenomenon in which people, consciously or unconsciously, view
their own culture as normal and natural and judge other culture, accordingly
• Ethnocentrism is the practice of judging another society by the values and standards of
one’s own society
• Throughout history, people of various cultural backgrounds have leveled those of other
cultural background as savage, barbaric, primitive etc. because these people’s behavior
differed from their own. They regard their culture superior than that of other.
• The Europeans who first travelled to different parts of the world were shocked by the
culture of the outer sphere they observed. They considered their culture superior and
other’s culture as inferior. Actually, they were ethnocentric.
• Ethnocentrism exists in all societies.
• To most North American, eating beef is nutritious but the thought of eating worms, dogs
or grasshoppers is repulsive. But in other societies, same thing is viewed differently. In
many society’s worms, dogs or grasshoppers are eaten in an ease way.
• In this situation, North American may think that their culture of eating beef as natural
and superior but that of worms, dogs or grasshoppers eating culture as abnormal and
inferior. This kind of phenomenon is called ethnocentrism.
• In contrast to ethnocentrism, social scientists try to look at human behavior and culture
from a viewpoint of cultural relativism.
• It recognizes that cultures are different but does not view differences as deficiency.
Rather, it realizes that different societies develop different cultures and different social
structures in response to the different environmental conditions they face.
• Thus, even if our ways seem natural and best for us, they are not natural and best but a
social product, and they certainly may not be natural and best for some other person.
• Cultural relativism also means trying to understand the behavior of people in other
cultures according to what it means to them and not what it would mean to someone in
our culture.