DEFINING CULTURE AND SOCIETY FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

Society – is a group of people living together in a definite territory, having a sense of

belongingness, mutually interdependent of each other, and follows a certain way of life.

 It is a group of people sharing a common culture.

People live together in a large scale grouping such as community, state which is international in
nature, or in a small member of people like the family, clan, tribe and neighborhood. Each social
group exhibits a shared common traits, beliefs, values and way of life which we call Culture.
Culture – is a dynamic medium through which societies create a collective way of life reflected in
such things such as beliefs, values, music, literature.

CULTURE AND SOCIETY AS A COMPLEX WHOLE

CULTURE – is a complex whole which encompasses beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws,
norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge, and everything that a person learns and shares as a member of
society (Edward B. Taylor, 18th Century English anthropologist).
SOCIETY – is a complex whole because it is a social system. As a complex whole, it is made up
of individuals and groups that interact as a relatively stable and patterned manner.

Anthropological perspective on culture and Society

1. The Evolutionist - Intellectual Perspective

Proponents are: Edward Burnett Tylor, Johann Jakob Bachofen and James G. Frazer
 According to them Death and the belief the soul and the spirits play important roles in
this perspective.
2. The French Sociology School
Proponents are: Emile Durkheim and his followers (including Robert Hertzand and
Marcell Mauss)
 They investigated the mechanisms by societies sustain and reproduce themselves.
3. The British Functionalist School
Proponents are:
a. Bronisław Malinowski
 He considered the anxiety caused by the rationally uncontrollable happenings as the
basic motivation for the emergence of religious faith.
 He suggested that religion was not born of speculation and illusion, but rather out of
the real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between human plans and
realities… The existence of strong personal attachments and the fact death, which all
of human events the most upsetting and disorganizing to man’s calculations, are
perhaps the main sources of religious belief
b. Arnold Radcliffe – Brown

 According to him in the case of certain rights, it would be easy to maintain… that they
give men fears and anxieties from which they would otherwise be free - “The fear of
black magics or of spirits, fear of God, of the devil, of Hell”

Sociological Perspectives on Culture and Society

1. Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

 People attach meanings to symbols, and then they act according to their subjective
interpretation of the symbols.
2. Functionalist Perspective
 Also called Functionalism, each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to
society’s functioning as a whole.
3. Conflict Perspective

ASPECTS OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY

1. CULTURE IS EVERYTHING – It is what a person has, does and thinks as part of society.
This implies all of persons belief system, set of bahaviors and material possessions.
a. Material Culture – includes all tangible and visible parts of culture, which includes clothes,
foods and even buildings.
b. Non-material Culture – includes all intangible parts of culture, which consists of values,
ideas, and knowledge.
2. CULTURE IS LEARNED – culture is a set of beliefs, attitudes and practices that an
individual learns through his or her family, school, church and other social institutions.
a. Enculturation – is a process of learning you own culture.
b. Acculturation – is a process of accommodating desirable traits from other culture.
c. Decculturation – culture has been lost and even cultural trait itself is in the process of
being forgotten.
3. CULTURE IS SHARED - This implies that a particular behavior cannot be considered as a
culture if there is only one person practicing it. Culture is shared intergenerational.
4. CULTURE AFFECTS BIOLOGY – Humans are born into cultures that have values on
beauty and body. As such, they alter their bodies to fit physiological norms that are dictated
by their culture.
5. CULTURE IS ADAPTIVE – Culture is a tool for survival that humans use in response to
the pressures of their environment.
6. CULTURE IS MALADAPTIVE – Culture can also cause problems for the people who
subscribe to it. These problems arise when environment change and culture has remained the
same.
7. CULTURE CHANGES – The final characteristic of culture it is never static. This
dynamism of culture is due to changing needs of humans as they interpret and survive in their
environment.