Sociology Chapter 2
Horticulture
the use of hand tools to raise crops -appeared around 10,000 years ago. -Material surplus that allows expansion of societal roles -Increased belief in one God -make permanent settlements -more unequal, with some families operating as a ruling elite (P)
Hunting and Gathering
the use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation for food -From the time of our earliest ancestors 3 million years ago until about 1800, most people in the world lived as hunters and gatherers. Today, however, this technology supports only a few societies -Spend most of their time searching for game and edible plants -Their societies are small, generally with several dozen people living in a nomadic, family-like group, moving on as they use up an area's vegetation or follow migratory animals -Women usually gather vegetation—the primary food source for these peoples—while men do most of the hunting. Because the tasks they perform are of equal value, the two sexes are regarded as having about the same social importance -Do not have formal leaders -Provide important information about history
Culture
the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people's way of life
Cultural Universals
traits that are part of every known culture -George Murdock (1945) identified dozens
Chinese
(including Mandarin, Cantonese, and dozens of other dialects) is the native tongue of one-fifth of the world's people, almost all of whom live in Asia.
Structural-Functional Theory: Amish
-Consider the Amish farmer plowing hundreds of acres on an Ohio farm with a team of horses -His farming methods may violate our cultural value of efficiency, but from the Amish point of view, hard work functions to develop the discipline necessary for a highly religious way of life -Long days of working together not only make the Amish self-sufficient but also strengthen family ties and unify local communities -The hard work and strict religious discipline are too demanding for some, who end up leaving the community -Strong religious beliefs sometimes prevent compromise; slight differences in religious practices have caused the Amish to divide into different communities
Social-Conflict Theory: Inequality and Culture
-Cultural traits benefit some members at the expense of others -Many conflict theorists, especially Marxists, argue that culture is shaped by a society's system of economic production -Our cultural values of competitiveness and material success are tied to our country's capitalist economy, which serves the interests of the nation's wealthy elite -Understates the ways cultural patterns integrate members into society
Culture as Freedom
-Culture forces us to make choices as we make and remake a world for ourselves -No better evidence of this freedom exists than the cultural diversity of our own society and the even greater human diversity found around the world -Learning more about this cultural diversity is one goal shared by sociologists
Structural-Functional Theory: The Functions of Culture
-Explains culture as a complex strategy for meeting human needs -This approach considers values the core of a culture -Cultural values direct our lives, give meaning to what we do, and bind people together. -Cultural universals -Cultural diversity is ignored. -Importance of change is downplayed
Examples of Cultural Universals
-Family, which functions everywhere to control sexual reproduction and to oversee the care of children. -Funeral rites because all human communities cope with the reality of death -Jokes serve as a safe means of releasing social tensions
"Double Standard" of Sexual Behavior
-For healthy men, sperm represent a "renew- able resource" produced by the testes throughout most of the life course. -A newborn female's ovaries, however, contain her entire lifetime supply of eggs. -Men reproduce their genes most efficiently by being promiscuous -Thus efficient reproduction on the part of a woman depends on carefully selecting a mate whose qualities will contribute to her child's survival and, later, successful reproduction
Social-Conflict and Feminist Theories: What core questions does the approach ask?
-How does a cultural pattern benefit some people and harm others? -How does a cultural pattern support social inequality?
Structural-Functional Theory: What core questions does the approach ask?
-How does a cultural pattern help society operate? -What cultural patterns are found in all societies?
Elements of Culture: Symbols
-Humans transform elements of the world into symbols -Societies create new symbols all the time -Culture shock is really the inability to "read" meaning in strange surroundings -Symbolic meanings also vary within a single society
Rock-and-Roll: Race, Class, and Cultural Change
-In the 1950s, rock-and-roll emerged as a major part of U.S. popular culture -Before then, mainstream "pop" music was aimed at white adults -In the subcultural world of African Americans, music had sounds and rhythms reflecting jazz, gospel singing, and rhythm and blues. -A second musical subculture was country and western, a musical style popular among poorer whites, especially people living in the South. -Rock was a new mix of older musical patterns, blending mainstream pop with country and western and, especially, rhythm and blues -Rock was the first music clearly linked to the emergence of a youth culture -Presley became the first superstar of rock-and-roll not just because he had talent but also because he had great crossover power
Child Labor
-In the United States, childhood is thought as a time of innocence and freedom from adult burdens like regular work -In poor countries throughout the world, families depend on income earned by children
Real culture
-Is the way things actually occur in everyday life -Involves social patterns that only approximate cultural expectations
Ideal culture
-Is the way things should be -Involves social patterns mandated by values and norms
Social-Conflict and Feminist Theories: What is the foundation of culture?
-Marx claimed that cultural patterns are rooted in a society's system of economic production. -Feminist theory says cultural conflict is rooted in gender.
Evaluation of Sociobiology
-Might be used to support racism or sexism -Little evidence to support theory -People learn behavior within a cultural system
Rules for Writing Differ
-Most people in Western societies write from left to right -People in northern Africa and western Asia write from right to left -People in eastern Asia write from top to bottom
Values Lower-Income Nations
-People place a great deal of importance on physical safety and economic security -Tend to be traditional, with values that celebrate the past and emphasize the importance of family and religious beliefs -These nations, in which men have most of the power, typically discourage or forbid practices such as divorce and abortion
Confronting the Yąnomamö
-Some 12,000 Yąnomamö live in villages scattered along the border of Venezuela and Brazil. -The Yąnomamö wear little clothing and live without electricity, automobiles, cell phones, or other conveniences -.Their traditional weapon, used for hunting and warfare, is the bow and arrow. Since most of the Yąnomamö knew little about the outside world, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon would be as strange to them as they would be to him.
Literacy
-Some 5,000 years ago, humans invented writing, although at that time only a privileged few learned to read and write -Not until the twentieth century did high-income nations boast of nearly universal literacy -Still, perhaps 10 percent of U.S. adults are functionally illiterate, unable to read and write in a society that increasingly demands such skills -In low-income countries of the world, at least one-third of adults are illiterate
Limitations to the Global Culture Thesis
-The global flow of goods, information, and people is uneven in different parts of the world -Urban areas have stronger ties to one another, while many rural villages remain isolated -The greater economic and military power of North America and Western Europe means that these regions influence the rest of the world more than the rest of the world influences them -The global culture thesis assumes that people everywhere are able to afford various new goods and services -Although many cultural practices are now found in countries throughout the world, people everywhere do not attach the same meanings to them.
A society's artifacts partly reflect underlying cultural values
-The warlike Yąnomamö carefully craft their weapons and prize the poison tips on their arrows -our society's emphasis on individualism and independence helps explain our high regard for the automobile
Culture shock is a two-way process
-Travelers experience culture shock when encountering people whose way of life is different -A traveler may inflict culture shock on local people by acting in ways that offend them
Values Higher-Income Nations
-Value individualism and self-expression -Tend to be secular-rational, placing less emphasis on family ties and religious beliefs and more on people thinking for themselves and being tolerant of others who differ from them -Women have social standing more equal to men and there is widespread support for practices such as divorce and abortion
Culture as Constraint
-We may be the only animal to name ourselves, but living in a symbolic world means that we are also the only creatures who experience alienation. -Culture is largely a matter of habit, which limits our choices and drives us to repeat troubling patterns -We know our world in terms of our culture
Culture shapes not only what we do but also what we think and how we feel—elements of what we commonly, but wrongly, describe as "human nature."
-Yąnomamö of the Brazilian rain forest think aggression is natural, but halfway around the world, the Semai of Malaysia live quite peacefully. -The cultures of the United States and Japan both stress achievement and hard work, but members of our society value individualism more than the Japanese, who value collective harmony
4 Principles of Natural Selection
1. All living things live to reproduce themselves 2. The blueprint for reproduction is in the genes, the basic units of life that carry traits of one generation into the next 3. Some random variation in genes allows a species to "try out" new life patterns in a particular environment 4. Over thousands of generations, the genetic patterns that promote reproduction survive and become dominant.
10 Key Values of U.S. Culture (Sociologist Robin Williams Jr.)
1. Equal opportunity 2. Achievement and success 3. Material comfort 4. Activity and work 5. Practicality and efficiency 6. Progress 7. Science 8. Democracy and free enterprise 9. Freedom 10. Racism and group superiority
The Global Culture Thesis
1. Global economy: the flow of goods 2. Global communications: the flow of information 3. Global migration: the flow of people
4 Major Levels of Sociocultural Development
1. Hunting and gathering 2. Horticulture and pastoralism 3. Agriculture 4. Industry
Cultural changes are set in motion in three ways
1. Invention 2. Discovery 3. Diffusion
Common sense may suggest that high culture is superior to popular culture, but sociologists are uneasy with such judgments for two reasons
1. Neither elites nor ordinary people share all the same tastes and interests; people within both categories differ in many ways 2. Do we praise high culture because it is inherently better than popular culture or simply because its supporters have more money, power, and prestige? -We should also remember that our country's culture is made up of the life patterns of all our people.
About ___________ years ago, primates began to evolve along two different lines, setting humans apart from the great apes, our closest relatives
12 million
About __________ years ago, the founding of permanent settlements and the creation of specialized occupations in the Middle East (today's ____________ and ___________) marked the "birth of civilization."
12,000; Iraq; Egypt
______ percent of the U.S. population was born abroad
14
________ percent of Sweden's population with born abroad
16
About _______ percent of married people report having been sexually unfaithful to their spouses at some point in their marriage
17
________ percent of Canada's population with born abroad
21
By about ________ years ago, our own species, Homo sapiens (Latin for ____________), had finally emerged. Humans continued to evolve so that by about __________ years ago, people who looked more or less like us roamed the planet.
250,000; "intelligent person"; 40,000
________ percent of Saudi Arabia's population with born abroad
31
Scientists tell us that our planet is __________ years old. Life appeared about _________ years later. Fast-forward another _________ years, and we find dinosaurs ruling Earth. It was after these giant creatures disappeared, some __________ years ago, that our history took a crucial turn with the appearance of the animals we call ____________.
4.5 billion; 1 billion; 2 to 3 billion; 65 million; primates
Some __________ years ago, our distant human ancestors climbed down from the trees of Central Africa to move about in the tall grasses
5 million
________ percent of Bahrain's population with born abroad
55
the Census Bureau reports that __________ (21 percent) speak a language other than English at home. Of these, _____ percent speak Spanish and _____ percent speak an Asian language
62 million; 62; 16
________ percent of United Arab Emirates' population with born abroad
84
Does language shape reality? (Current View)
Although we do fashion reality out of our symbols, evidence supports the claim that language does not determine reality in the way Sapir and Whorf claimed. -Example: People can imagine new ideas or things before devising a name for them
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
An illness in infancy left her blind and deaf. Her social development was greatly limited. Only when her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, broke through her isolation using sign language did she begin to realize her human potential -The first word she learned was water
Culture and Human Intelligence: 12,000 years ago
Birth of civilization
Cultural Change
Change in one societal dimension of cultural system usually precipitates changes in others
Of the 7,000 languages in the world today, which is spoken most widely?
Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, and dozens of other dialects) is the most widely used first language, meaning that it is spoken at home by some 1.2 billion -English is the most widely spoken second language; it is used in most nations of the world
Women and Cultural Integration
College women are much more interested in making money because women are now far more likely to be in the labor force than their mothers or grandmothers were. Working for income may not change their interest in raising a family, but it does increase the age at first marriage, the age of first childbirth, and the divorce rate.
Structural-Functional Theory: What is the foundation of culture?
Cultural patterns are rooted in a society's core values and beliefs
Sociobiology Theory: What is the foundation of culture?
Cultural patterns are rooted in humanity's biological evolution
Structural-Functional Theory: What is culture?
Culture is a system of behavior by which members of societies cooperate to meet their needs
Sociobiology Theory: What is culture?
Culture is a system of behavior that is partly shaped by human biology
Social-Conflict and Feminist Theories: What is culture?
Culture is a system that benefits some people and disadvantages others
Culture and Human Intelligence: Today
Efficient survival scheme fashions natural environment resulting in cultural diversity
Oral Cultural Tradition
Every society has transmitted culture by using speech
How many languages globally?
Experts document more than 7,000 languages, suggesting the existence of just as many distinct cultures -About 4,000 of the world's languages now are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people
The Flow of Information
Few places left where worldwide communication is not possible
Feminist Theory: Gender and Culture
Gender is a crucial dimension of social inequality -Men have greater access to the workforce than women do and so men earn more income -Men also have greater power in our national political system -Our way of life reflects the ways in which our society defines what is male as more important than what is female
United States Languages on the Endangered List
Gullah, Pennsylvania German, and Pawnee
Gerhard Lenski argued that a society's level of technology is crucial in determining what cultural ideas and artifacts emerge or are even possible
He pointed to the importance of sociocultural evolution
Sociobiology Theory: What core questions does the approach ask?
How does a cultural pattern help a species adapt to its environment?
Is how we feel about abortion as "personal" an opinion as we may think?
If we compare the attitudes of people around the world, we see remarkable variation from country to country. By making global comparisons, we see that society guides people's attitudes on various issues, which is part of the way of life we call culture -Sweden: abortion is almost always justified -Colombia: almost never support this procedure -United States: abortion is an issue on which public opinion is fairly evenly divided
Critics of Multiculturalism
It encourages divisiveness rather than unity be- cause it urges people to identify with their own category rather than with the nation as a whole.
The most monocultural of all high-income countries
Japan
Flow of People
Knowledge means people learn about places where life might be better
Social-Conflict and Feminist Theories: What is the level of analysis?
Macro-level
Sociobiology Theory: What is the level of analysis?
Macro-level
Structural-Functional Theory: What is the level of analysis?
Macro-level
Flow of Goods
Material product trading has never been as important
Democracy and free enterprise
Members of our society believe that individuals have rights that governments should not take away.
Racism and group superiority
Most people in the United States still judge individuals according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class.
Multicultural
Nation and/or society where their people follow various ways of life that blend (and sometimes clash)
Mores
Norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance, include taboos -distinguish between right and wrong
William Ogburn (1964)
Observed that technology moves quickly, generating new elements of material culture (things) faster than non-material culture (ideas) can keep up with them. He called this inconsistency cultural lag
The creative power of humans is far greater than that of any other form of life and has resulted in countless ways of "being human."
Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct to create a way of life and ensure our survival
Activity and Work
Our culture values action over reflection and taking control of events over passively accepting fate
Achievement and Success
Our way of life encourages competition so that each person's rewards should reflect personal merit
Charles Schwab & Co
Responded to the growing about of Asian Americans in the United States by offering services in Asian languages. -Now manages a significant share of the investments made by Asian Americans, who spent about $325 billion in 2013.
Material comfort
Success in the United States generally means making money and enjoying what it will buy.
In the United States, how many cultures are there?
The Census Bureau lists 382 languages spoken in this country—almost half of them (169) are native languages, with the rest brought by immigrants from nations around the world
Spanish
The largest concentration of speakers is in Latin America and, of course, Spain. It is also the second most widely spoken language in the United States.
What accounts for the worldwide decline in the number of spoken languages?
The main reason is globalization itself, including high-technology communication, increasing international migration, and the expanding worldwide economy
Industry
The production of goods using advanced sources of energy to drive large machinery -The introduction of steam power, starting in England about 1775, greatly boosted productivity and transformed culture in the process -People work in large factories under the supervision of strangers -Pushes aside the traditional cultural values that guided family-centered agrarian life for centuries. -Higher living standard and life expectancy -More individualism but less sense of community -Schooling becomes the rule because industrial jobs demand more and more skills -Reduce economic inequality and steadily extend political rights
If almost any kind of behavior is the norm somewhere in the world, does that mean everything is equally right?
There are no simple answer, but when confronting an unfamiliar cultural practice, it is best to resist making judgments before grasping what people in that culture understand the issue to be -Remember also to think about your own way of life as others might see it.
In the tall grasses (5 million years ago), distant human ancestors, walking upright, learned the advantages of hunting in groups and made use of fire, tools, and weapons; built simple shelters; and fashioned basic clothing.
They mark the point at which our ancestors set off on a distinct evolutionary course, making culture their primary strategy for survival
Changes in attitudes among first- year college students between 1969 and 2013
Today, as a generation ago, most men and women look forward to raising a family. But today's students are less concerned with developing a philosophy of life and much more interested in making money.
The most multicultural of all high-income countries
United States
Progress
We are an optimistic people who, despite waves of nostalgia, believe that the present is better than the past.
Equal opportunity
We believe that our society should provide everyone with the chance to get ahead according to individual talents and efforts
Science
We believe we are rational, logical people, and our focus on science probably explains our cultural tendency (especially among men) to look down on emotion and intuition as sources of knowledge
Freedom
We favor individual initiative over collective conformity.
Practicality and Efficiency
We value the practical over the theoretical, what will "get us somewhere" over what is interesting "for its own sake."
Does language shape reality? (Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf)
Yes, since each language has its own distinctive symbols that serve as the building blocks of reality. They noted that each language has words or expressions not found in any other symbolic system.
Multiculturalism
a perspective recognizing the cultural diversity of the United States and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions
Nation
a political entity, a territory with designated borders, such as the United States, Canada, Peru, or Zimbabwe
Materialism
a society's system of material production (such as our own capitalist economy) has a powerful effect on the rest of a culture
Molefi Kete Asante
a supporter of multiculturalism, argues that "like the fifteenth-century Europeans who could not cease believing that the Earth was the center of the universe, many today find it difficult to cease viewing European culture as the center of the social universe"
Language
a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another
Sociobiology
a theoretical approach that explores ways in which human biology affects how we create culture -Is rooted in Charles Darwin and evolution -Proposes living organisms change over long periods of time based on natural selection
Artifacts
a wide range of physical human creations
William Graham Sumner (1959, orig. 1906)
an early U.S. sociologist, recognized that some norms are more important to our lives than others, coined the term mores
Symbol
anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture -Example: A word, a whistle, a wall covered with graffiti, a flashing red light, a raised fist
Social Control
attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behavior
Instincts
biological programming over which the species has no control -No particular way of life is "natural" to humanity, even though most people around the world view their own behavior that way. -Every other animal, from ants to zebras, behaves very much the same all around the world
Popular Culture
cultural patterns that are widespread among a society's population
High Culture
cultural patterns that distinguish a society's elite
Subculture
cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society's population -Involve not just difference but also hierarchy -
Counterculture
cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society
Values
culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living -Are sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict, Change over time, and Vary from culture to culture
Afrocentrism
emphasizing and promoting African cultural patterns
The biological forces we call instincts had mostly disappeared, replaced by a more efficient survival scheme:
fashioning the natural environment for ourselves
Standards of beauty
including the color and design of everyday surroundings, vary significantly from one culture to another. -Ndebele couple in South Africa dresses in same bright colors they use to decorate their home. -Members of North American and European societies, by contrast, make far less use of bright colors and intricate detail, so their housing and clothing appear much more subdued.
Discovery
involves recognizing and understanding more fully something already in existence
English
is the native tongue or official language in several world regions (spoken by 5 percent of humanity) and has become the preferred second language in most of the world
Technology
knowledge that people use to make a way of life in their surroundings -The more complex a society's technology, the easier it is for members of that society to shape the world for themselves
Han
language on the endangered list spoken in northwestern Canada
Oro
language on the endangered list spoken in the Amazon region of Brazil
Sardinian
language on the endangered list spoken on the European island of Sardinia
Nu Shu
language on the endangered list, a language spoken in southern China that is the only one known to be used exclusively by women
Wakka Wakka
language on the endangered list, as well as several other Aboriginal tongues spoken in Australia
Aramaic
language on the endangered list, the language of Jesus of Nazareth, still spoken in the Middle East
The best way to identify cultures
languages
Agriculture
large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or more powerful energy sources -Around 5,000 years ago -Historians call this era the "dawn of civilization." -Agrarian people can live in permanent settlements -More powerful energy sources and large food supplies -Use of money as common exchange -Social life more individual and impersonal; more social inequality -Most people live as serfs or slaves, but a few elites are freed from labor to cultivate a "refined" way of life based on the study of philosophy, art, and literature. At all levels, men gain pronounced power over women.
Folkways
norms for routine or casual interaction -draw a line between right and rude
E pluribus unum
out of many, one (the motto of the US).
Culture Shock
personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life -May occur within domestic and foreign travel
Sanctions
rewards or punishments that encourage conformity to cultural norms
Norms
rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members
Beliefs
specific thoughts or ideas that people hold to be true
Cyber-symbols
symbols developed along with our increasing use of computers for communication
Elements of Culture
symbols, language, values, and norms
Cultural Integration
the close relationships among various elements of a cultural system
Pastoralism
the domestication of animals -Material surplus that allows expansion of societal roles (H) -remain nomadic -more unequal, with some families operating as a ruling elite -Increased belief in one God (H)
Eurocentrism
the dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns
Cultural Lag
the fact that some cultural elements change more quickly than others, disrupting a cultural system
Sociocultural Evolution
the historical changes in culture brought about by new technology—which unfolds in terms of four major levels of development: hunting and gathering, horticulture and pastoralism, agriculture, and industry. -There is also an evolution that goes beyond Lenski's 4 levels, postindustrialism
Sapir-Whorf thesis
the idea that people see and understand the world through the cultural lens of language
Nonmaterial Culture
the ideas created by members of a society -ideas that range from art to Zen
Society
the organized interaction of people who typically live in a nation or some other specific territory
Gender
the personal traits and social positions that members of a society attach to being female or male
Material Culture
the physical things created by members of a society -everything from armchairs to zippers.
Cultural Relativism
the practice of judging a culture by its own standards -It requires not only openness to unfamiliar values and norms but also the ability to put aside cultural standards we have known all our lives
Ethnocentrism
the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture -Members of every cultural system tend to prefer what they know and are wary about what is different
Cultural Transmission
the process by which one generation passes culture to the next
Invention
the process of creating new cultural elements
Postindustrialism
the production of information using computer technology -Centers on computers and other electronic devices that create, process, store, and apply ideas and information -No longer are mechanical abilities the only key to success -Capacity to create symbolic culture increases
Diffusion
the spread of cultural traits from one society to another
