CULTURE

Soc Sci 6
SY 2018 – 2019
PSHS - MC
 CULTURE
• Totality of learned, socially
transmitted customs, knowledge,
material objects, and behavior.
 SOCIETY
• Composed of a fairly large number of people, living
in the same territory, relatively independent of
people outside their area, and participate in a
common culture.
 CULTURE UNIVERSALS
• ALL societies have developed certain
COMMON PRACTICES and BELIEFS
• Examples:
• Sports
• Cooking
• Dancing
• Visiting
• Personal names
• Marriage
• Medicine
• Religious rituals
• Funeral ceremonies
• Sexual restrictions
• Trade
 ETHNOCENTRISM
• Tendency to assume
that one’s own culture
and way of life
represent the norm or
are superior to all
others.

CULTURAL
RELATIVISM
• Viewing people’s
behavior from the
perspective of
their own culture.
 MAPPING LIFE WORLDWIDE
FIGURE 3-1 COUNTRIES WITH HIGH CHILD MARRIAGE RATES

Niger

Mali Afghanistan
Dominican Chad
Republic Burkina Nepal
Faso Bangladesh
India
Guinea Eritrea
Sierra Ethiopia
Nicaragua Leone
Percentage of women Somalia
age 20 to 24 who were Uganda
married or in union before Nigeria Malawi
age 18 Central
African
More than 60 percent Republic Zambia
41–60 percent
21–40 percent Mozambique
20 percent or less
Data not available or
child marriage not
widely practiced

Note: Data are the most recent available, ranging from 1987 to 2006.
Source: UNICEF 2010.
In 21 countries, 40 percent or more of the women under 18 are married.
 Beautiful or not?
• With a partner, discuss what you
think defines beauty in women?

• How do ideas of beauty differ

across cultures?
Ideas of beauty across cultures
 Karo Tribe-Ethiopia
• Cut skin to be more beautiful
• Rub ash into cut to produce welt
• Attracts a husband
 Mauritania
• The bigger the better.
• Sometimes girls are forced to eat
• A heavier woman is more desirable as a
wife
 Burma: Kayan Tribe
• Begin wearing the rings at age five
• A full set of rings=10 kilos
• More rings=more beauty
 Maori people of New Zealand
• A traditional practice
• Women usually only tattoo lips, chin,
and neck
• Both men and women are tattooed
Development of Culture around
the World
• Innovation, Globalization,
Diffusion, Technology
 Material and non-material
culture
• Material culture • Nonmaterial
refers to the culture refers to
physical or ways of using
technological material objects,
aspects of our as well as to
daily lives, customs, beliefs,
including food, philosophies,
houses, factories, governments, and
and raw mate- patterns of
rials. communication.
 Cultural Variation
• Subculture: is a segment of society
that shares a distinctive pattern of
customs, rules, and traditions that
differs from the pattern of the larger
society.
• Counterculture: When a subculture
conspicuously and delib- erately
opposes certain aspects of the larger
culture
 Cultural Variation
• High culture vs. Pop culture
 Norms and Values
• Norms are the • Cultural values are
established these collective
standards of conceptions of
behavior what is considered
maintained by a good, desirable,
society. and proper—or
bad, undesirable,
and improper—in a
culture.