What is Culture

Latin word cultus civilization

the way of life which had been learned,

shared, and transmitted from one
generation to another by means of language
and symbols.
Culture is the most important concept in
anthropology (the study of all aspects of
human life, past and present).
Anthropologists commonly use the term
culture to refer to a society or group in
which many or all people live and think in
the same ways.
Likewise, any group of people who share a
common cultureand in particular,
common rules of behavior and a basic
form of social organizationconstitutes a
society.
Construction of Reality
- derived from Berger and Luckman -

New innovation

New experience
new habitualization

new sedimentation
new institutionalization
Literature as history: F. Sionil Jose
(lecture given at Cubberly Auditorium at Stanford, May 5, 2005)

Literature is mythmaking. For a young

nation, it is necessary mythmakers or
not, all artists are ego driven, impelled by
the human impulse to celebrate
themselves in the most personal manner
thereby achieving style, originality
I use history to impress upon my readers
this memory so that if they remember, they
will not only survive, they will prevail.
I also present a nobler image of ordinary
Filipinos, so that even if we are destitute
amidst the swirling tides of corruption, we
can raise our heads. With memory, we can
face our grim future with courage.
I remind our writers about flowering of New
England, how Emerson, Walt Whitman
and those innovative Yankees freed
themselves from 19th century European
romanticism to celebrate America and
give America a granite cultural foundation.
 The theory was originally developed by Bourdieu and
Passeron ("Cultural Reproduction and Social
Reproduction", 1973). Bourdieu in particular developed
the idea of situational constraints by using the concept of
cultural capital to demonstrate how the working classes
are systematically blamed for their relative failure within
the education system.

http://www.sociology.org.uk/tece1tf.htm

Retrieval date July 15, 2005

The theory of Cultural Capital in basic terms it argues that
everyone has a "cultural history", accumulated through
the primary and secondary socialisation process, which
includes anything that gives you an advantage or
disadvantage in certain situations.
For example, something as simple as your
biological sex or skin colour can, under certain
circumstances, be advantageous or
disadvantages for your life chances. In South
Africa during the Apartheid regime, for example,
to be classified as "non-white" was to be
considered a second-class citizen; non-whites
suffered discrimination and reduced life chances
when compared with those classified as "white".
Cultural Capital, therefore, can be considered to
be anything in your personal / social background
that helps or hinders you during your life. It can,
for example, be things like family background
and status, income, wealth, educational
qualifications or whatever. There is, in effect, no
limit to what can or cannot be considered
Cultural Capital - it depends, as they say, on the
context in which you are trying to achieve or
avoid something...
Cultural reproduction means, in this context, the
way schools, in conjunction with other social
institutions, help to perpetuate social and
economic inequalities across the generations.
For Bourdieu, the relationship between the
education system (considered as part of the
political / ideological superstructure in Capitalist
society), and the economic infrastructure (or
"base") is a dependent one:
 In Capitalist society, where the economic
infrastructure is highly stratified, and based upon
fundamental inequality, this stratification (and hence
inequality) will be reflected in the education system. In
basic terms, schools will always be forced to turn-out
students who can be differentiated in ways that fit them
into the economic system.

In basic terms, some students (the minority) will leave

school to go on to higher education and professional
work while others (the majority) will leave school to go
into lower paid, lower status work (including work within
the home).
In cultural / class terms, therefore, the
class that dominates economically (the
bourgeoisie) will also dominate all other
classes culturally and ideologically.
Schools are seen as agencies of cultural
and ideological transmission and the
dominant economic class (the class that
owns the Means of Production) dominates
culturally through the transmission of its
cultural values through the school.
 Types of Culture

Material culture (Anthropologists)

- Artifacts (physical objects such as arts,

tools, weapons, dwelling units, clothing
etc.). It refers to the concrete and tangible
that man creates and uses, from primitive
man to the most advanced postmodern
societies.
Non-material culture (Sociologists)

- General beliefs and patterns of behavior. It

consists of ideas, habits, behavior, laws,
and knowledge. It refers to the meaning
and substance inherent in the culture.
 Components of Culture

Norms and Language

Norms
- These are guides of behavior which tell us
what is proper and which are not,
appropriate or inappropriate, right or
wrong.
 Forms of Social Norms

Folkways

they are the repetitive or typical habits and

patterns of expected behavior followed within a
group of community. They are considered the
right way but are not rigidly enforced by
society.
 Forms of Social Norms

Mores

It embodies the code of ethics and

standards of morality in society. They
include standards of sex behavior, family
relations, attitudes towards authority etc.
as a consequence, violations of mores
result in strong disapproval and even
severe punishment.
 Forms of Social Norms

Laws

they are formalized social norms

Values

represent the standards we use to evaluate

the desirability of things.
 Standards used to determine the values of a
society

1. Achievements and success

2. Activity and work
3. Moral orientation (good judgment)
4. Humanitarianism
5. Efficiency and practicality
Values highly regarded by the Filipinos

1. Emotional closeness and security I the

family
2. The authority value
3. Economic and social betterment
4. Patience, suffering, and endurance
Language

A system of symbols that have specific and arbitrary meaning in a

society

Types

- Verbal (sound is the eventual product of uttered symbol) *animals

no system of symbolic thought, no rules of grammar & syntax only
sound patterns

- textual/written
Communication vs. Language

Language - System of communication

guided by the rules of syntax and
elements of grammar
Man is designed by nature to live in a
society is indicated by his possession of
the power to speech which enables him to
communicate his thoughts to others and
share with them his conception of what is
right and wrong, expedient and
inexpedient unlike the animals which can
only intimate experiences of pleasure or
pain with its cries.

- Aristotle-
 Characteristics of Culture

1. Is a product of human behavior

2. Transmitted through learning
3. Always gratifies human needs
4. Tends towards integrating a society
1. Culture is learned and transmitted

People are not born with culture; they

have to learn it. For instance, people
must learn to speak and understand a
language and to abide by the rules of a
society.
E.G

people must learn to produce and prepare

food and to construct shelters. In other
societies, people must learn a skill to earn
money, which they then use to provide for
themselves. In all human societies,
children learn culture from adults.
Anthropologists call this process
enculturation, or cultural transmission.
- through language and symbol
Symbols allow people to develop complex
thoughts and exchange those thoughts
with others.

- To convey new ideas, people constantly

invent new symbols

socialization
2. Culture is social social contract
All the people of a society collectively
create and maintain culture. Societies
preserve culture for much longer than the
life of any one person. They preserve it in
the form of knowledge, such as scientific
discoveries; objects, such as works of art;
and traditions, such as the observance of
holidays.
3. Culture is ideational man form ideas
and uses them to assign meanings to
his environment and experiences using
symbols
4. Culture gratifies human needs both
biological and socio-cultural
5. Culture is adaptive culture is dynamic
it tends to change over time

Cultural adaptation has made humans

one of the most successful species on the
planet. Through history, major
developments in technology, medicine,
and nutrition have allowed people to
reproduce and survive in ever-increasing
numbers.
6. Tends towards integrating a society
Promotes social solidarity

7. Culture is cumulative retention of certain

features of culture that are significant in
their relationship and interaction with their
fellow humans.
 Adaptations of culture

1. Parallelism independent development

of cultures
2. Diffusion - flow of transnational
experiences and lifestyles
3. Fission breakaways and development
of new cultural patterns
4. Convergence hybrid culture fusion
of two or more cultures into one which is
somewhat different from its predecessors
(dialectics) 1+1 = 1
 Functions of culture as a construct

1. As a general category for the

classification of phenomena

2. As a tool in prediction
 Specific functions of culture
1. Serves as trademark
2. Brings together, contains, and interprets the
values of a society in a more systematic
manner
3. Bases for social solidarity
4. As a blueprint
5. Personality as a product of ones culture
6. Provides behavioral patterns
7. Provides meaning and direction of his
existence
 Modes of Acquiring Culture

1. Imitation

2. Indoctrination formal teaching or

training takes place

3. Conditioning establishment of patterns

enhanced by reward-punishment model
 Concepts of Cultural Significance
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Members of a society who share culture

often also share some feelings of
ethnocentrism, the notion that ones
culture is more sensible than or superior to
that of other societies.
Ethnocentrism contributes to the integrity of
culture because it affirms peoples shared
beliefs and values in the face of other,
often contradictory, beliefs and values held
by people of other cultural backgrounds.
At its worst, ethnocentrism has led people to
commit ethnocide, the destruction of
cultures, and genocide, the destruction of
entire populations. This happened, for
example, to Jews living in Nazi Germany
in the 1940s
 Anthropologists, knowing the power of
ethnocentrism, advocate cross-cultural
understanding through a concept known
as cultural relativism. Someone
observing cultural relativism tries to
respect all cultures equally. Although only
someone living within a group that shares
culture can fully understand that culture,
cultural relativists believe that outsiders
can learn to respect beliefs and
practices that they do not share.
Cross-cultural exchange often results in
what anthropologists call acculturation,
when the members of one culture adopt
features of another.
Self-identity usually depends on culture to
such a great extent that immersion in a
very different culturewith which a person
does not share common ways of life or
beliefscan cause a feeling of confusion
and disorientation. Anthropologists refer to
this phenomenon as culture shock.
Subcultures

Some groups of people share a distinct set

of cultural traits within a larger society.
Such groups are often referred to as
subcultures.