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Culture Documents
Culture
Culture
The need to understand our own culture and other cultures has never been
greater. Cross-culture contacts are becoming an everyday event. Culture is a
design for living: the shared understandings that people use to coordinate
their activities. Human beings learn to be human through socialization
process, but the content of socialization varies from one culture to another,
and these differences reflect the content of culture. Culture refers to an
appreciation of the finer things in life. Social scientists use the term to
describe a people’s entire design for living. Much of what we take for
granted, as part of human nature, is actually the result of enculturation:
immersion in a culture to the point where that particular design for living
seems “only natural”.
Definition of Culture:
Considering all above definition, culture can also be defined as “all the
modes of thought, behavior and production that are handed down
from one generation to the next by means of communicative
interaction – that is, by speech, greetings, writing, building and all
other communication among humans – rather than by genetic
transmission or heredity”.
Although the contents differ, all cultures consist of six basic elements:
Beliefs
Values
Norms and sanctions
Symbols
Language
Technology
DEGREE OF SANCTION
Mode I Relatively Relatively
Weak Strong
Of Informa Folkways, Taboos,
l Fashions Mores
Development Formal Misdemeanor laws, Capital-offense laws,
some rules, guidelines, felony laws
civil rights
1. Culture is Learnt:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
2. Culture is Social:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
3. Culture is Shared:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
4. Culture is Tran missive:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
5. Culture is Continuous and Cumulative:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
6. Culture is Consistent and Integrated:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
7. Culture is Gratifying:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
8. Culture is Dynamic and Adaptive:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
9. Culture varies from Society to Society:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
10. Culture is Super-organic and Ideational:
For details, please check page 190 to 191 of “Sociology Primary
Principles” by C. N. Shankar Rao.
Dimensions of culture:
Dimension of Culture
Material Culture:
Non-Material Culture:
The term culture when used in the ordinary sense, means “non-material”
culture. It is something internal and intrinsically valuable, reflects the
inward nature of man. Non-material culture consists of the words the
people use or they speak, the beliefs they hold, values and virtues they
cherish, habits they follow, rituals and practices that they do and
ceremonies the observe. It also includes our customs and tastes, attitudes
and outlook, in brief, our ways of acting, feeling and thinking.
What are the functions of culture:
It is not easy to transplant oneself into another cultural setting and feel
comfortable all at once. In fact, adjustment takes a great deal of time and
patience. One reason for this lies in an understanding of the term
“ethnocentrism”. Most, if not all, peoples have feelings of cultural
superiority; they have high opinion of their own design for living,
compared with those of other peoples. Our own culture becomes so much
a part of us that we think of our own way of doing thinks as the only way.
Taken out of context, any custom seems peculiar.
Ideal Culture consists of norms and values to which people openly and
formally adhere; real culture consists of norms and values that people
may not openly or formally admit to, but practice nonetheless.
A subculture exists when a group of people has developed a set of
variations on cultural norms and values that set these people apart from
other members of their society.
Cultural Growth:
The growth of culture was exceedingly slow and only recently has culture
began to change rapidly. The explanation for this situation is to be found
in the fact that culture grows in two ways: through (i) invention of new
traits within the culture or through (ii) diffusion of new traits from outside
the culture.
(ii) Invention:
Cultural Change:
Any change that takes place in the realm of culture can be called cultural
change. Culture is not static but dynamic.