Understanding Culture, Society

and Politics

Self- Learning
Material 2

Culture and Society as

Anthropological and Sociological Concepts

Most Essential Learning Competency:

Analyze the concepts, aspects and changes

in/of culture and society

Week 4
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 Lesson 3. Approaches to the Study of Culture and Society

Learning Objectives
At the end of the lesson, students would have been able to:
1. Demonstrate a holistic understanding of culture and society;
2. Analyze the concepts, aspects and changes in culture and society;

I. Culture and society defined

The term culture refers to a system of beliefs, customs, knowledge, behaviour, religion, practices, etc.,
which is commonly shared by a group of people. It is described as the people’s way to live such as their learned
behaviour, values, morals, art, law, symbols, lifestyle which they accept completely without any second thought in
mind. In general, culture is handed down through the generations, by communication, teaching and imitation. It is
considered as the social heritage of the organized group. Culture is a pattern of responses (thinking, feeling,
behaving) developed by the Society for solving problems arising due to the interaction of the group members and
the environment.

We define the term ‘society’ as a group of people who share a common lifestyle, territory, behaviour
pattern and organization. It refers to an ordered community, engaged in a continuous social interaction with the
members.
In simple terms, society implies the bunch of people who organize themselves and lives together in a
particular geographical area and come in contact with each other. The members of the society share common
attributes like values, traditions and customs. They also share similar cultures and religion. Each and every member
is important to the society, as its existence depends on the members only.

Basis for Culture Society

Compariso
n
Meaning Refers to the set of beliefs, practices, learned Society means an interdependent group of
behavior and moral values that are passed people who live together in a particular region
on, from one generation to another. and are associated with one another.
What is it? It is something that differentiates one society It is a community of people. Residing in a
from the other. specific area, sharing common culture over time.
What it It unites the social framework through It shapes the social framework through pressure.
does? influence.
Represents Rules that guide the way people live. Structure that provides the way people organize
themselves.
Includes Beliefs, values and practices of a group. People who share common beliefs and practices.

Examples Fashion, lifestyle, tastes and preferences, Economy, village, city, etc.
music, art, etc.
https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-culture-and-society.html

II. Types of culture

Studying culture is a big job. Social scientists, like anthropologists and sociologists, study culture to
understand patterns of human behavior. While there are unlimited ways that people can express their culture,
social scientists have developed two fundamental categories to define things produced by a society.

A. First is material culture. Material culture is physical things that are created by a society. These objects can
be classified into four: artifacts, written or historical documents, technology, and fossils.
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1. An artifact is an object made by a human being. Artifacts include art,
tools, and clothing made by people of any time and place. The term can
also be used to refer to the remains of an object, such as a shard of
broken pottery or glassware. Artifacts are immensely useful to scholars
who want to learn about a culture. Archaeologists excavate areas in which
ancient cultures lived and use the artifacts found there to learn about the
past. Many ancient cultures did not have a written language or did not
actively record their history, so artifacts sometimes provide the only clues
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/
about how the people lived. encyclopedia/artifacts/

2. Historical documents, also known as primary sources, are most often

produced around the time of the events you are studying and provides direct
or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. They
can reflect what their creator observed or believed about the
event. (https://suscc.libguides.com/c.php?g=1081586&p=7882916). These
includes both primary and secondary sources in the form of books, personal Londonpe.gov.ph
papers, government documents, letters, oral accounts diaries, maps,
photographs, records, novels and short stories, stamps, etc.

3. Technology is the use of scientific knowledge for practical purposes or

applications, whether in industry or in our everyday lives. So, basically, whenever
we use our scientific knowledge to achieve some specific purpose, we're using
technology. Well, there is slightly more to it than that. Technology usually involves
a specific piece of equipment, but that equipment can be incredibly simple or
dazzlingly complex. It can be anything from the discovery of the wheel, all the
way up to computers and MP3 players.
mechanical, electronic, industrial, medical,
or communications technology. https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-
technology-definition-types.html Quora.com

4. Fossils are the preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient organisms.

Fossils are not the remains of the organism itself! They are rocks. A fossil can
preserve an entire organism or just part of one. Bones, shells, feathers, and
leaves can all become fossils. Preserved remains become fossils if they reach
an age of about 10,000 years. Fossils can come from the Archaeaean Eon
(which began almost 4 billion years ago) all the way up to the Holocene Epoch
(which continues today). The fossilized teeth of wooly mammoths are some of
our most "recent" fossils. Some of the oldest fossils are those of
ancient algae that lived in the ocean more than 3 billion years
ago. (https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/fossil/)

B. The other category is nonmaterial culture, or the intangible things produced by a culture. In other words,
the parts of culture you cannot touch, feel, taste, or hold. Common examples include social roles, ethics,
beliefs, or even language. Non‐material culture refers to the nonphysical ideas that people have about their
culture, including beliefs, values, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions. For instance,
the non‐material cultural concept of religion consists of a set of ideas and beliefs about God, worship, morals,
and ethics. These beliefs, then, determine how the culture responds to its religious topics, issues, and events.

When considering non‐material culture, sociologists refer to several processes that a culture uses to shape
its members' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Four of the most important of these are symbols, language, values,
and norms. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/material-and-nonmaterial-
culture
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1. Symbols are the basis of culture. A symbol is an object, word, or action that stands for something else with no
natural relationship that is culturally defined. Everything one does throughout their life is based and organized
through cultural symbolism. Symbolism is when something represents abstract ideas or concepts.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/types-elements-subsets-of-culture.html#:~:text=The%20two%20basic
%20types%20of,part%20of%20our%20nonmaterial%20culture.

2. Language is one of the most important parts of any culture.  It is the way by which people communicate with
one another, build relationships, and create a sense of community.  There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages
in the world today, and each is unique in a number of ways. https://greenheart.org/blog/greenheart-
international/language-the-essence-of-culture/

3. Cultural values are a series of principles and values passed on generation after generation by our ancestors.
Based on values the entire cultural community decides their way of life. Those ideas decide how a person of
that culture will behave and how they will lead their lives. https://cioviews.com/cultural-values-are-what-make-
diverse-cultures-unique/

4. Cultural norms are the standards we live by. They are the shared expectations and rules that guide behavior of
people within social groups. Cultural norms are learned and reinforced from parents, friends, teachers and
others while growing up in a society. Norms often differ across cultures, contributing to cross-cultural
misunderstandings. https://www.globalcognition.org/cultural-norms/
III. Cultural Universals

Often, a comparison of one culture to another will reveal obvious differences. But all cultures share
common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. One
example of a cultural universal is the family unit: every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates
sexual reproduction and the care of children. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In
many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household.
In these cultures, young adults will continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and
join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s
homestead. In Canada, by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period
before forming a family unit consisting of parents and their offspring.

Despite how much humans have in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural
universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of particular language structures and
conversational etiquette reveal tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand
close to others in conversation. North Americans keep more distance, maintaining a large “personal space.” Even
something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from culture to culture. If your professor comes into an
early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume she is drinking? In the United States, it’s most
likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favourite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.

IV. Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. Some travelers, like celebrated food writer
Anthony Bourdain, pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, while others return home
expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. Canadians often express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine,
thinking it is gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig, for example, while they do not question their own habit of
eating cows or pigs. Such attitudes are an example of ethnocentrism, or evaluating and judging another culture
based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner
(1906) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost
everyone is a little bit ethnocentric.

A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy; a shared sense of community pride, for
example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures, causing
misunderstanding and conflict. People with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people,
seeing them as uneducated or backward, essentially inferior. In reality, these travellers are guilty of cultural
imperialism—the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture. Europe’s colonial expansion,
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begun in the 16th century, was often accompanied by a severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often
viewed the people in the lands they colonized as uncultured savages who were in need of European governance,
dress, religion, and other cultural practices. 

Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it
through the lens of one’s own culture. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) argued that each culture has
an internally consistent pattern of thought and action, which alone could be the basis for judging the merits and
morality of the culture’s practices. Cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and
even adapt to, new values and norms. However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not
always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies—ones in which women have
political rights and control over their own bodies—would question whether the widespread practice of female
genital mutilation in countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted as a part of cultural tradition.

V. Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

Music, fashion, technology, and values—all are products of culture. But what do they mean? How do
sociologists perceive and interpret culture based on these material and nonmaterial items? Let’s finish our analysis
of culture by reviewing them in the context of three theoretical perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory,
and symbolic interactionism.
A. Functionalists view society as a system in which all parts work—or function—together to create
society as a whole. In this way, societies need culture to exist. Cultural norms function to support the fluid
operation of society, and cultural values guide people in making choices. Talcott Parsons referred to the function of
culture as “latent pattern maintenance” meaning that the cultural practices that reproduce and circulate symbolic
meanings and codes serve the function of maintaining social patterns of behaviour and facilitating orderly pattern
change. Culture functions to ensure that the “meaning of life” remains stable.
A noted structural functionalist, Robert Merton (1910–2003), pointed out that social processes often have
many functions. Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated,
while latent functions are the unsought consequences of a social process. A manifest function of college
education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes
that education. Latent functions of your college years include meeting new people, participating in extracurricular
activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy of
employment based on the level of education attained. Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Social
processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are called dysfunctions. In education,
examples of dysfunction include getting bad grades, truancy, dropping out, not graduating, and not finding suitable
employment. (https://www.sophia.org/tutorials/structural-functional-theory--2)
B. Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that is most concerned with the face-to-face
interactions between members of society. Interactionists see culture as being created and maintained by the ways
people interact and how individuals interpret each other’s actions. Proponents of this theory conceptualize human
interactions as a continuous process of deriving meaning from both objects in the environment and the actions of
others. This is where the term “symbolic” comes into play. Every object and action has a symbolic meaning, and
language serves as a means for people to represent and communicate their interpretations of these meanings to
others. Those who believe in symbolic interactionism perceive culture as highly dynamic and fluid, as it is
dependent on how meaning is interpreted and how individuals interact when conveying these meanings.

C. Critical sociologists view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power differentials related
to issues like class, gender, race, and age. For a critical sociologist, culture is seen as reinforcing and perpetuating
those inequalities and differences in power. Unlike the functionalists who examine culture in terms of the general
interests it supports, or symbolic interactionists who emphasize how people come to mutual understandings
through cultural practices and interactions, critical sociologists examine how inequalities and power relationships
are maintained by a culture’s value system.

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 TEST YOURSELF

I. Identification. Identify what is being referred to in the statement.

1. ________ is the belief that one’s culture is superior to others.
2. Family first is a value of almost all countries. It is an example of a _______.
3. The Philippine flag is a _____________ of the Filipinos’ struggle for nationhood.
4. What theoretical perspective views society as a system of interdependent parts? ________
5. _______refers to a system of beliefs, customs, knowledge, behaviour, religion, practices, etc., which is
commonly shared by a group of people.
6. Jose Rizal’s handwritten book “Noli Me Tangere” is an example of material culture classified as _____.
7. Today, the bahay kubo has become an ______ of our country’s history and culture.
8. ______ analyze the discrimination suffered by the LGBTQ community.
9. Understanding other cultures without any judgement is a practice in _____________.
10. The use of wedding rings during the marriage ceremony is an example of the theory of ________.
11. According to ____________ theory, workers and capitalists have different class interests.
12. Regarding all Muslims as terrorists is an example of ___________.
13. ________ is defined as a group of people who share a common lifestyle, territory, behaviour patterns
and organization.
14. A scissor is an example of _____________.
15. Kissing the hand (pagmamano) is an example of ___________.
16. Faith in God is an example of __________.
17. __________ can be verbal and non-verbal.
18. Ancient pottery is an example of an ________.
19. In the US, old people are admitted in care homes; while, in the Philippines, we take care of our old
family members. This is an example of ____________.
20. _________ posits that education, while providing better job opportunities, also contribute to the holistic
development of the individual.

II. Essay.
1. Can a society exist without culture; and can culture exist without society? Why or why not?
2. Give one cultural norm that your family/community practices.
3. Which of the three theoretical perspectives can you relate to? Discuss why.

References

https://suscc.libguides.com/c.php?g=1081586&p=7882916
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/culture-and-society-defined
introduction to sociology Canadian edition https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter3-culture/
lumen: boundless sociology https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/culture-and-society/
#:~:text=Culture%20is%20what%20differentiates%20one%20group%20or%20society%20from%20the
%20next.&text=culture%20with%20society.-,A%20culture%20represents%20the%20beliefs%20and%20practices
%20of%20a%20group,could%20exist%20without%20the%20other.
Study.com understanding the difference between society and culture
https://study.com/academy/lesson/understanding-the-difference-between-society-culture.html
The difference between society and culture https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-culture-and-
society.html
https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-culture-and-society/
Randolph Macon College https://www.rmc.edu/departments/sociology-and-anthropology
.

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https://suscc.libguides.com/c.php?g=1081586&p=7882916
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/culture-and-society-defined
introduction to sociology Canadian edition https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter3-culture/
lumen: boundless sociology https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/culture-and-society/
#:~:text=Culture%20is%20what%20differentiates%20one%20group%20or%20society%20from%20the
%20next.&text=culture%20with%20society.-,A%20culture%20represents%20the%20beliefs%20and%20practices
%20of%20a%20group,could%20exist%20without%20the%20other.
Study.com understanding the difference between society and culture
https://study.com/academy/lesson/understanding-the-difference-between-society-culture.html
The difference between society and culture https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-culture-and-
society.html
https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-culture-and-society/
Randolph Macon College https://www.rmc.edu/departments/sociology-and-anthropology