UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY,
Media – social institution responsible for the
CULTURE & POLITICS
Lesson 1: Understanding Society
Society - is defined as a group of people living
together in organized communities, following
common laws, customs, and traditions.
SOCIETAL FEATURES
1. Territory – All societies occupy a definite area or
space on the planet.
2. Size – A society is relatively large in terms of the
number of members, a trait common in most
societies today.
3. Common culture – Way of living otherwise they
would not be able to coherently relate and interact
with one another.
4. Sense of belongingness – Members of society
must identify with it and feel that they belong
there.
5. Common historical experience – The feeling that
everyone in the particular society has a common
destiny.
6. Common Language – The existence of a major
one that everyone understands and uses part of its
national patrimony and heritage.
7. Autonomy – Expressed in a society`s capacity to
sustain its existence vis-à-vis other societies
through social institutions that organize, manage
and regulate it from within.
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
as an organized system of social relationships that
represent a society`s common values and
procedure.
There are 6 generally recognized institutions in every society:
1. Family – the bedrock or foundation of the
society.
2. Education – formal institution designated to
preserve and transfer cultural knowledge and
identity to the members of a society.
3. Economy – social institutions responsible for the
production and the allocation of scarce resources
and services.
4. Government – a social institution which states
policy and law is enforced.
5.
circulation of vital information among the members
of a society.
6. Religion – an organized collection of beliefs
intended to explain the meaning origin, and
purpose of life and existence.
THE STUDY OF SOCIETY
1. Structural Functionalism Theory - Sees as a
society as a structure with interrelated parts design
to meet the biological and social needs of the
individuals in that society.
2. Conflict Theory – Society is in a state of
perpetual conflict because of competition for
limited resources.
3. Symbolic Interactionism – Focus on social
interaction everyday events in which people
communicate, interpret, and respond to each
other`s words and actions.
Lesson 2: Understanding Culture
Culture – is a complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
society. -Edward Burnett Tylor, 1871
ASPECTS OF CULTURE
1. Culture is dynamic, flexible, and adaptive.
2. Culture is shared and contested.
3. Culture is learned and transmitted through
socialization or enculturation.
4. Culture is a set of patterned social interactions.
5. Culture is integrated and at time.
6. Culture requires language and other forms of
communication.
TYPES OF CULTURE
1. Material Culture – Human`s material or physical
inventions and innovations such as tools, weapons,
instruments, artifacts, dwellings, food and artistic
expressions and the likes are all part of material
culture.
2. Nonmaterial Culture – Refers to the intangible
ideas that form within a society, including beliefs,
perceptions, religion, myths, legends, language,
and traditions.
VARIATION OF CULTURE
1. High Culture and Low/Pop Culture
A. High Culture – it is a collection of ideologies,
beliefs, thoughts, trends, practices and works—
intellectual or creative—that is intended for
refined, cultured and educated elite people.
B. Low/Pop Culture – Popular culture or
sometimes called low culture is the patterns of
behavior followed by the common people. In other
words, it`s the culture of the masses. Popular
culture is something that is always, most
importantly, related to everyday average people
and their experiences of the world; it is urban,
changing and consumeristic in nature.
2. Subculture and Counterculture
A. Subculture – Includes people who may accept
much of the dominant culture but are set apart
from it by one or more culturally significant
characteristics.
B. Counterculture – Are groups of people who
differ in certain ways from the dominant culture
and whose norms and values may be incompatible.
3. Ideal Culture and Real Culture
A. Ideal Culture – The ways in which people
describe their way of life. It is the standards society
would like to embrace and live up to.
B. Real Culture – Refers to the actual behavior of
people in the society. It is the way society actually
is, based on what occurs and exists.
COMPONENTS/ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
1. Symbol – Something to which people to attach
meaning and then use to communicate with one
another.
A. Gestures – The ways in which people use their
bodies to communicate with one another.
B. Language – A system of symbols that can be
combined in an infinite number of ways and can
represent not only objects but also abstract
thoughts.
2. Ideas – A thought or a collection of thoughts that
generate in mind.
A. Values – the standard by which people define
what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad,
beautiful or ugly.
B. Beliefs – represent man’s convictions about the
reality things.
3. Norms – A set of norm is a society’s standards of
acceptable behavior.
A. Folkways – are the accumulated and repetitive
patterns of excepted behavior which tend to be
self-perpetuating.
B. Mores – are social norms which are strongly
morally sanctioned.
C. Taboo – Refers to a norm so strongly ingrained
that even thought of its violation is greeted with
revulsion.
D. Laws – are formalized social norms enacted by
the people who are vested with political powers.
ORIENTATION IN VIEWING OTHER CULTURES/
THE CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
1. Enthocentrism – Pertains to the belief that one’s
native culture is superior to or the most natural
among other cultures. An ethnocentric person sees
and weighs another culture based upon the values
and standards of his/her own.
2. Xenocentrism – The belief that one’s culture is
inferior to another. A xenocentric person usually
has a high regard for other cultures but disdains
his/her own or embarrassed by it.
3. Cultural Relativism – The practice of viewing
another culture by its own context rather than
assessing it based on the standard of one’s own
culture to avoid personal biases and assumption in
studying culture.
Lesson 3: Humanization
CULTURAL EVOLUTION/HUMANIZATION
It refers to the changes or development in cultures
from a simple form to a more complex form of
human culture. A result of human adaptation to
the different factors like changes in climates or in
their environment and population increase.
Man’s Cultural Evolution
1.Paleolithic Age – (roughly 2.5 million years ago
to 10,000 B.C.), Early humans lived in caves or
simple huts or tepees and were hunters and
gatherers. They used basic stone and bone tools,
as well as crude stone axes, for hunting birds and
wild animals. They cooked their prey, including
woolly mammoths, deer and bison, using 4. Bronze Age – (about 3,000 B.C. to 1,300 B.C.),
controlled fire. They also fished and collected metalworking advances were made, as bronze, a
berries, fruits and nuts. (2) Ancient humans in this copper and tin alloy was discovered. Now used for
period were also the first leave behind art. They weapons and tools, the harder metal replaced its
used combinations of minerals, ochres, burnt bone stone predecessors, and helped spark innovations
meal and charcoal mixed into water, blood, animal including the ox-drawn plow and the wheel. (2) This
fats and tree saps to etch humans, animals and time period also brought advances in architecture
signs. They also carved small figurines from stones, and art, including the invention of the potter’s
clay, bones and antlers. (3) The end of this period wheel, and textiles – clothing consisted of mostly
marked the end of the last Ice Age, which resulted wool items such as skirts, kilts, tunics and cloaks.
in the extinction of many large mammals and rising Home dwelling morphed to so-called
sea levels and climate change that eventually roundhouses, consisting of a circular stone wall
caused man to migrate. with a thatched or turf roof, complete with a
fireplace or hearth, and more villages and cities
2. Neolithic Age – (roughly 8,000 B.C to 3,000
began to form. (3) Organized government, law and
B.C.),Ancient humans switched from
welfare as well as beginnings of religion, also came
hunter/gatherer mode to agriculture and food
into play during Bronze Age, perhaps most notably
production. They domesticated animals and
relating to the ancient Egyptians who built the
cultivated cereal grains. They used polished hand
pyramids during this time. The earliest written
axes, adzes for ploughing and tilling the land and
accounts, including Egyptian hieroglyphs and
started to settle in the plains. Advancements were
petroglyphs (rock engravings), are also dated to
made not only in tools but also in farming, home
this era.
construction and art, including pottery, sewing and
weaving. 5. Iron Age – The discovery of ways to heat and
forge iron kicked off the Iron Age (roughly 1,300
3. Copper Age – The 1,000-year-long Copper Age
B.C. to 900 B.C). At the time, the metal was seen as
is also known as the Chalcolithic Period. It lasted
more precious than gold, and wrought iron (which
from about 4,500 B.C. to 3,500., overlapping with
would be replaced by steel with the advent of
the early Bronze Age. Some cultures and individuals
smelting iron) was to manufacture than bronze. (2)
used Copper Age technology after the Copper Age
Along with mass production of steel, tools and
was over. The word Chalcolithic is derived from the
weapons, the age saw even complete with stables
Greek words “chalco” (copper) and “lithos” (stone).
for animals, joining more rudimentary hill forts, as
The oldest copper ornament dates back around
well as royal palaces, temples and other religious
8,700 B.C. it was found in present-day northern
structures. Early city planning also took place, with
Iraq. There is evidence for copper smelting and
blocks of homes being erected along paved or
recovery through processing of malachite azurite in
cobblestone streets and water systems out into
different parts of the world dating back to 5,000
place. (3) Agriculture, art and religion all became
B.C. Copper pipes used to carry water, dating back
more sophisticated, and writing system and written
to around 2,700 B.C., were found in one of the
documentation, including alphabets, began to
Egyptian pyramids. The Latin name for copper is
emerge, ushering in the Early Historical Period.
Cuprum (Cu). It is believed that it has originated
from the island Cyprus where the Romans used to
mine copper its rich copper mines. (2) Copper was
being fashioned into ornaments about 6,000 years
ago, 3,000 years before the Greeks and Roman
empires. Copper was the first metal to be worked
by man on a relatively large scale in part because
it is found in “large pure ingots in a natural state” in
many by simply hammering the metal; melting it
wasn’t necessary.