WHAT IS CULTURE? Culture is the combination of all the physical and behavioral aspects of a society.

To study the people within a society, how they function, and what they value, gives the sociology student a more thorough understanding of society. Culture (Latin: cultura, lit. "cultivation")[1] is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.[2] However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group

McGrew suggests that we view culture as a process. He lists six steps in the process: 1. A new pattern of behavior is invented, or an existing one is modified. 2. The innovator transmits this pattern to another. 3. The form of the pattern is consistent within and across performers, perhaps even in terms of recognizable stylistic features. 4. The one who acquires the pattern retains the ability to perform it long after having acquired it. 5. The pattern spreads across social units in a population. These social units may be families, clans, troops, or bands. The pattern endures across generations.[18]

Characteristics of Culture
Culture Is An Adaptive Mechanism The first humans evolved in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa about 2.5 million years ago. Since then, we have successfully occupied all of the major geographic regions of the world, but our bodies have remained essentially those of warm climate animals. We cannot survive outside of the warmer regions of our planet without our cultural knowledge and technology. What made it possible for our ancestors to begin living in temperate and ultimately subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere after half a million years ago was the invention of efficient hunting skills, fire use, and, ultimately, clothing, warm housing, agriculture, and commerce. Culture has been a highly successful adaptive mechanism for our species. It has given us a major selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms. Culture has allowed the global human population to grow from less than 10 million people shortly after the end of the last ice age to more than 6.5 billion people today, a mere 10,000 years

later. Culture has made us the most dangerous and the most destructive large animal on our planet. It is ironic that despite the power that culture has given us, we are totally dependent on it for survival. We need our cultural skills to stay alive. Over the last several hundred thousand years, we have developed new survival related cultural skills and technologies at a faster rate than natural selection could alter our bodies to adapt to the environmental challenges that confronted us. The fact that cultural evolution can occur faster than biological evolution has significantly modified the effect of natural selection on humans. One consequence of this has been that we have not developed thick fat layers and dense fur coats like polar bears in the cold regions because our culture provided the necessary warmth during winter times. Culture is learned Human infants come into the world with basic drives such as hunger and thirst, but they do not possess instinctive patterns of behavior to satisfy them. Likewise, they are without any cultural knowledge. However, they are genetically predisposed to rapidly learn language and other cultural traits. New born humans are amazing learning machines. Any normal baby can be placed into any family on earth and grow up to learn their culture and accept it as his or her own. Since culture is non-instinctive, we are not genetically programmed to learn a particular one. Every human generation potentially can discover new things and invent better technologies. The new cultural skills and knowledge are added onto what was learned in previous generations. As a result, culture is cumulative. Due to this cumulative effect, most high school students today are now familiar with mathematical insights and solutions that ancient Greeks such as Archimedes and Pythagoras struggled their lives to discover. Cultural evolution is due to the cumulative effect of culture. We now understand that the time between major cultural inventions has become steadily shorter, especially since the invention of agriculture 8,000-10,000 years ago. The progressively larger human population after that time was very likely both a consequence and a cause of accelerating culture growth. The more people there are, the more likely new ideas and information will accumulate. If those ideas result in a larger, more secure food supplies, the population will inevitably grow. In a sense, culture has been the human solution to surviving changing environments, but it has continuously compounded the problem by making it possible for more humans to stay alive. In other words, human cultural evolution can be seen as solving a problem that causes the same problem again and again. The ultimate cost of success of cultural technology has been a need to produce more and more food for more and more people.

Parallel Growth of the Human Population and Cultural Technology

The invention of agriculture made it possible for our ancestors to have a more controllable and, subsequently, dependable food supply. It also resulted in settling down in permanent communities. This in turn set the stage for further developments in technology and political organization. The inevitable result was more intensive agriculture, new kinds of social and political systems dominated by emerging elite classes, the first cities, and ultimately the industrial and information revolutions of modern times. City life brought with it the unexpected consequence of increased rates of contagious diseases. Large, dense populations of people make it much easier for viruses, bacteria, and other disease causing microorganisms to spread from host to host. As a result, most cities in the past were periodically devastated by epidemics. The rate of cultural evolution for many human societies during the last two centuries has been unprecedented. Today, major new technologies are invented every few years rather than once or twice a century or even less often, as was the case in the past. Likewise, there has been an astounding increase in the global human population. It is worth reflecting on the fact that there are people alive today who were born before cell phones, computers, televisions, radios, antibiotics, and even airplanes. These now elderly individuals have seen the human population double several times. The world that was familiar to them in their childhood is no longer here. It is as if they have moved to a new alien culture and society. Not surprisingly, they often have difficulty in accepting and adjusting to the change. The psychological distress and confusion that accompanies this has been referred to as future shock.

Cultures Change
All cultural knowledge does not perpetually accumulate. At the same time that new cultural traits are added, some old ones are lost because they are no longer useful. For example, most city dwellers today do not have or need the skills required for survival in a wilderness. Most would very likely starve to death

because they do not know how to acquire wild foods and survive the extremes of weather outdoors. What is more important in modern urban life are such things as the ability to drive a car, use a computer, and understand how to obtain food in a supermarket or restaurant. The regular addition and subtraction of cultural traits results in culture change. All cultures change over time--none is static. However, the rate of change and the aspects of culture that change varies from society to society. For instance, people in Germany today generally seem eager to adopt new words from other languages, especially from American English, while many French people are resistant to it because of the threat of "corrupting" their own language. However, the French are just as eager as the Germans to adopt new technology. Change can occur as a result of both invention within a society as well as the diffusion of cultural traits from one society to another. Predicting whether a society will adopt new cultural traits or abandon others is complicated by the fact that the various aspects of a culture are closely interwoven into a complex pattern. Changing one trait will have an impact on other traits because they are functionally interconnected. As a result, there commonly is a resistance to major changes. For example, many men in North America and Europe resisted the increase in economic and political opportunities for women over the last century because of the far ranging consequences. It inevitably changed the nature of marriage, the family, and the lives of all men. It also significantly altered the workplace as well as the legal system and the decisions made by governments.

People Usually are not Aware of Their Culture

The way that we interact and do things in our everyday lives seems "natural" to us. We are unaware of our culture because we are so close to it and know it so well. For most people, it is as if their learned behavior was biologically inherited. It is usually only when they come into contact with people from another culture that they become aware that their patterns of behavior are not universal. The common response in all societies to other cultures is to judge them in terms of the values and customs of their own familiar culture From an objective perspective, it can be seen that ethnocentrism has both positive and negative values for a society. The negative potential is obvious. Ethnocentrism results in prejudices about people from other cultures and the rejection of their "alien ways." When there is contact with people from other cultures, ethnocentrism can prevent open communication and result in misunderstanding and mistrust. This would be highly counterproductive for businessmen trying to negotiate a trade deal or even just neighbors trying to get along with each other. The positive aspect of ethnocentrism has to do with the protection that it can provide for a culture. By causing a rejection of the foods,

customs, and perceptions of people in other cultures, it acts as a conservative force in preserving traditions of one's own culture. It can help maintain the separation and uniqueness of cultures.

We Do Not Know All of Our Own Culture

No one knows everything about his or her own culture. In all societies, there are bodies of specialized cultural knowledge that are gender specific--they are known to men but not women or vice versa. In many societies there are also bodies of knowledge that are limited largely to particular social classes, occupations, religious groups, or other special purpose associations. Gender based skills, knowledge, and perceptions largely stem from the fact that boys and girls to some extent are treated differently from each other in all societies. While there may be considerable overlap in what they are taught, there are some things that are gender specific. In the Western World, for instance, it is more common to teach boys about the skills of combat and how machines work. Girls are more often exposed to the subtleties of social interaction and the use of clothing and makeup to communicate intentions. Not surprisingly, men are more likely to know how to fix their car or computer, while women generally are better at predicting the outcome of social interaction and make finer distinctions in fabric and color terms. You can test your own gender related cultural knowledge with the following pictures of relatively common items from North America:

Culture Gives Us a Range of Permissible Behavior Patterns

Cultures commonly allow a range of ways in which men can be men and women can be women. Culture also tells us how different activities should be conducted, such as how one should act as a husband, wife, parent, child, etc. These rules of permissible behavior are usually flexible to a degree--there are some alternatives rather than hard rules. In North America, for instance, culture tells us how we should dress based on our gender, but it allows us to dress in different ways in different situations in order to communicate varied messages and statuses. The clothing patterns of women in this society can be particularly rich and complex. Their clothing can be intentionally business-like, recreational, as well as sexually attractive, ambiguous, neutral, or even repulsive. North American women are generally more knowledgeable than men about the subtleties of using clothing and other adornment to communicate their intentions. The wide range of permissible ways of being a woman in North America today makes women somewhat unpredictable as individuals when others are trying to understand their intentions but do not fully comprehend the cultural patterns. It is

particularly hard for men from other cultures to comprehend the subtle nuances. This at times can result in awkward or even dangerous situations. For instance, the easy friendliness and casual, somewhat revealing dress of young North American women in the summertime is sometimes interpreted by traditional Latin American and Middle Eastern men as a sexual invitation. What messages do the clothes and body language of the women in the pictures below communicate to you? How do you think they might be interpreted by members of the opposite gender and by people in other cultures? Do you think that the age of the observer might play a part in their interpretation? The range of permissible ways of dressing and acting as a man or woman are often very limited in strictly fundamental Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu societies. In Afghanistan under the Taliban rule during the late 1990's, men were expected to wear traditional male clothing and were beaten or jailed by morality police for not having a full beard, playing or listening to music, or allowing female family members to go out in public unchaperoned. Women were similarly punished for being in public without wearing a plain loose outer gown that covered their face and entire body including their feet. They also were not allowed to go to school or to work outside of the home. To the surprise of Europeans and North Americans, many of these conservative cultural patterns did not disappear with the end of Taliban control. They are deeply ingrained in the Islamic tradition of Afghanistan and in the more conservative nations of the Middle East.

Cultures No Longer Exist in Isolation

It is highly unlikely that there are any societies still existing in total isolation from the outside world. Even small, out of the way tribal societies are now being integrated to some extent into the global economy. That was not the case a few short generations ago. Some of the societies in the Highlands of New Guinea were unaware of anyone beyond their homeland until the arrival of European Australian miners in the 1930's. A few of the Indian tribes in the Upper Amazon Basin of South America remained unaware of the outside world until explorers entered their territories in the 1950's and 1960's. Members of these same New Guinean and Amazonian societies today buy clothes and household items produced by multinational corporations. They are developing a growing knowledge of other cultures through schools, radios, and even televisions and the Internet. As a result of this inevitable process, their languages and indigenous cultural patterns are being rapidly replaced. Virtually all societies are now acquiring cultural traits from the economically dominant societies of the world. The most influential of these dominant societies today are predominantly in North America and Western Europe. However, even these societies are rapidly adopting words, foods, and other cultural traits from all over the world.

The emergence of what is essentially a shared global culture is not likely to result in the current major cultures disappearing in the immediate future the same way many of the small indigenous ones have. Language differences and ethnocentrism will very likely prevent that from happening. There are powerful conflicting trends in the world today. At the same time that many people are actively embracing globalism , others are reviving tribalism . The break-up of the former empire of the Soviet Union into largely ethnic based nations is an example of the latter. Likewise, some of the nations in Africa whose boundaries were arbitrarily created by Europeans during the colonial era are now experiencing periodic tribal wars that may result in the creation of more ethnically based countries.

THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

I. Language. A. Language is a set of symbols used to assign and communicate meaning. It enables us to name or label the things in our world so we can think and communicate about them. B. Language as a social product. C. Language, communication and interaction. D. Language, cognition, and reality. E. Language and culture.

II.

Norms. A. Norms as humanly created rules for behavior. 1. The production of norms. a. The need for orderly, stable, predictable interactions. b. The role of power in the production of norms. 2. The reification of norms. 3. Renegotiating and changing norms. B. Types of norms. 1. Folkways. 2. Mores. 3. Taboos. 4. Rituals. C. Social Control. 1. Internal social control. a. Socialization and the internalization of norms. b. Ideologies, beliefs, and values. 2. External social control. a. Informal sanctions. i. Physical and verbal reactions.

D.

Embarrassment and stigma. Avoidance and ostracization. The importance of informal sanctions in small groups and organizations. b. Formal sanctions. i. Formal sanctions in large organizations. ii. Governments, laws, and police. iii. Courts, hearings, trials, and punishments. Theories of deviance. 1. Deviance as functional. 2. Social disorganization and anomie. 3. Control theory. 4. Structural strain theory. 5. Marxist theories. 6. Value conflict theory. 7. The social construction of deviance. 8. Labeling theory. 9. Cultural transmission and differential association.

ii. iii. iv.

III.

Values. A. Values are anything members of a culture aspire to or hold in high esteem. Values are things to be achieved, things considered of great worth or value. 1. Values are human creations. They are social products. 2. Values can and do become reified. 3. Values can be renegotiated and changed. B. While people and groups may disagree as to which are most important, Americans generally value the following. 1. Democracy, liberty, freedom, independence, autonomy, and individual rights. 2. Capitalism, competition, hard work, self-discipline, and success. 3. Wealth, prosperity, materialism, and consumerism. 4. Equity, fairness, and justice. 5. Equality of opportunity. 6. Love, compassion, humanitarianism, charity, service, and respect for others. 7. Tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance. 8. Faith, religion, family, conformity, and tradition. 9. Nationalism, patriotism, civic responsibility, and loyalty. 10. Health, happiness, and life. 11. Education, knowledge, science, technology, and innovation. C. Complimentary and conflicting values. 1. A groups values tend to compliment and support one another. They tend to be in agreement and make sense when considered together. A careful look at the values above reveals sets of values that seem to go together.

D.

However, it is also possible for values to contradict and conflict with each other, especially in complex modern industrial societies. For example, competition and success can be seen as contradictory to humanitarianism, compassion, service and self-sacrafice; while equity and justice contradict forgiveness and conformity and tradition contradict tolerance and acceptance. 3. In fact, many social and political problems can be seen as conflicts between groups emphasizing different values. The relationship between norms and values.

2.

IV.

Beliefs and ideologies. A. Beliefs are the things members of a culture hold to be true. They are the "facts" accepted by all or most members. Beliefs are not limited to religious statements, but include all the things a people know and accept as true, including common sense everyday knowledge. 1. Like all other cultural elements, beliefs are humanly created and produced. They are collective social agreements produced during interaction and reified over time. What is "true" or "factual" for a given people is what they collectively agree to be true at that point in time. 2. Beliefs can and do change, especially in modern industrial societies. Today we laugh at things our grandparents used to believe and chances are that our grandchildren will laugh at many of our beliefs as well. 3. This suggests that their is no absolute knowledge or absolute truth. All knowledge and truth is relative. B. Ideologies are integrated and connected systems of beliefs. Sets of beliefs and assumptions connected by a common theme or focus. They are often are associated with specific social institutions or systems and serve to legitimize those systems. 1. Some prominent American ideologies. a. Capitalism. b. Christianity (Protestantism). c. Individualism d. Sexism. e. Racism. 2. Ideologies are, themselves, often related and connected to each other in complex ideological systems, such that one ideology "makes sense" when considered with another. They also often serve to legitimize each other. Religious ideologies often encompass or subsume many of a culture's ideologies, giving them added legitimacy. 3. However, it is also possible for a culture to hold ideologies that are conflicting and contradictory.

C.

The relationship between beliefs and values.

V.

Social Collectives. A. Social collectives such as groups, organizations, communities, institutions, classes, and societies are also collectively produced symbolic social constructions. 1. Social collectives are symbolic entities. They are defined into existence when people define themselves as a group or are defined as a group by others. They can and do become reified over time, such that they are seen and treated as real objective entities. However, they remain fundamentally symbolic entities and as such can be renegotiated and redefined. 2. The symbolic nature of social collectives means that they are typically justified and maintained by ideological systems and ritualistic behavior. B. Although symbolic entities, social collectives have a real impact on our lives. 1. 2. 3. Collectives as contexts for interaction. Collectives and local cultures. Collectives, status, roles, identity, and the self.

b hH 2hH UnknownTimes New Roman Symbol ArialCourier NewWingdings"@ \\ 2WHAT IS CULTUREAdministratorAdministrator Statuses and Roles.

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Status, although related, is not a measure of a persons wealth, power, and prestige. To speak of "high" or "low" status is somewhat misleading. A status is a slot or position within a group or society. They tell us who people are and how they "fit" into the group. Status and group membership. Statuses as collective social agreements that become reified over time, but which can and do change. 3. Society as a network of inter-related statuses. 4. The multiplicity of statuses filled by individuals in modern societies. 5. Ascribed and achieved statuses. 6. Master statuses--age, sex, race, class. 7. Status, prestige, wealth, and power. 8. Status inconsistency. Roles are norms specifying the rights and responsibilities associated with a particular status. The term role is often used to mean both a position in society and role expectations associated with it. 1. Roles define what a person in a given status can and should do, as well as what they can and should expect from others. Roles provide a degree of stability and predictability, telling how we should respond to others and giving us an idea of how others should respond to us. 2. Roles are negotiated and produced during interaction, and often become reified over time. However, roles can be renegotiated and changed. 3. Role set, role strain, role conflict, and role transition. 4. Roles, identity, and the self. 1. 2.

B.

Cultural Integration.

A. B. C.

D. E.

Cultural integration refers to how interconnected, complimentary, and mutually supportive the various elements of culture are. Diversity, complexity, and integration. Variation within modern mass cultures. 1. Diversity in historical and cultural traditions. 2. Subcultures. 3. Counter-cultures. 4. Local cultures. The mass media and cultural integration. The relationship between beliefs, values, norms, and behavior. 1. The traditional deterministic view. 2. The culture as resource view.

Components of Culture: Symbols, Language, and Values

ASPECTS OF CULTURE: Values and norms

Values are relatively general beliefs that either define what is right and what is wrong or specify general preferences. A belief that homicide is wrong and a preference for modem art are both values. Norms, on the other hand, are relatively precise rules specifying which behaviors are permitted and which prohibited for group members. Note that in everyday usage, "norm" has a quite different meaning (it means average). Here again sociology has constructed its vocabulary by attaching a new meaning to a familiar word. When a member of a group breaks a group norm by engaging in a prohibited behavior, the other group members will typically sanction the deviant member. To sanction is to communicate disapproval in some way to the deviant member. Consider the following case. You feel very close to someone who has given you every reason to believe that he or she is a close friend. You then find out that that person has systematically lied to you in order to gain some advantage. How would you feel? Quite hurt, certainly. Most people would also feel that that persons behavior was wrong. Why? Because most people in this society believe that a close friend should neither deceive nor exploit. A behavioral norm that follows from this belief is that someone claiming to be your friend should not lie to you in order to gain some advantage. Note that your friend has probably not done anything illegal (that is, no laws have been broken), but you would consider his or her behavior to be wrong nonetheless. People in this culture, of course, like to think of themselves as practical, and so would probably attribute this aversion to bodily discharges to principles of good hygiene. What is wrong with such an explanation is the fact that this aversion was present in our culture long before we became aware that diseases could be spread by germs. Moreover, there are many pre-industrial cultures that have no notion of the germ theory of disease but that do have this same strong aversion. But the main point brought home by this example is that, although this norm is one that is rarely discussed or thought about in an explicit manner, it does regulate much of our behavior each day.

Sumner (1940) long ago introduced two terms, folkways and mores, in order to capture this distinction. Folkways are those norms that do not evoke severe moral condemnation when violated. Wearing clothes is probably a folkway for most people. If you saw someone running around campus naked, you might feel embarrassed, amused, or titillated, but not morally outraged. Mores are those norms whose violation does provoke strong moral condemnation. Our strong moral condemnation of rape and murder, for instance, suggests that the norms prohibiting these behaviors are mores. the reaction the violation of the norm produces, and not in the content of the rule. For instance, one of the norms in our society is that "dogs should not be eaten" while one of the norms in contemporary India is that "cows should not be eaten.' These two norms are similar in content, but one is a folkway, the other a mos (singular of mores). You may be upset if you hear that someone has eaten a dog, but you are unlikely to be morally outraged. Yet that sense of moral outrage is exactly what would be evoked in India were someone to openly slaughter, cook, and eat a sacred cow. Incidentally, the prohibition against the eating of dogs is another good example of an implicit norm in this culture. Dogs are both edible, as evidenced by the fact that they are eaten in many cultures, and plentiful. Yet nobody reading this book is likely to have eaten one or to have known someone who has. Furthermore, most of you probably find the whole idea of eating a dog somewhat repulsive. That a behavior so easy to perform is rarely, if ever, observed in a group, and that group members find the very idea of that behavior to be repulsive, are sure indications that the behavior violates a group norm.

Social roles
A social role is a cluster of expectations about the behavior that is appropriate for a given individual in a given situation. For instance, most of us expect that a teacher will come to class prepared, will assign grades fairly, will not show up to class drunk, etc. These expectations, taken as a sum, define the role "teacher." (As an exercise, you might try to think of the expectations that define the role "student" at the college level.) Whether or not a particular social role exists depends upon the group under consideration. In studying roles we must always keep in mind that all social roles, without exception, are social definitions, and thus, to a certain extent, arbitrary. This means that roles that we take for granted in our own culture may not exist in the same form in other cultures. Here again a consideration of the mother" role is a particularly good example for making the general point. In our culture, the traditional definition of the 'mother" role suggests that mothers are supposed to provide their children with emotional support, especially when the children are hurt and frightened, to nurse them when they are first-born (with either breast or bottle), and to provide them with guidance as they grow. Some members of our society

might even regard these behaviors as natural, as resulting from an innate tendency in most women towards mothering. This is just not true. Remember the general point that these examples are meant to illustrate: every role is a cluster of expectations about behavior, but this clustering varies from culture to culture. That our own culture groups together certain behavioral expectations in order to form a particular role does not guarantee that other cultures will group those same expectations together in the same way to form the same role. Some additional terms At this point, it will be useful to introduce a few additional terms. The first of these terms is subculture, a group of people within a single society who possess, in addition to the cultural elements they share with the other members of their society, certain distinctive cultural elements that set them apart. (Given this definition, I have often thought that "subsociety" would be a more appropriate term than subculture, but subculture is too well entrenched in the sociological vocabulary for any changes to be suggested now.) Thus, Ukrainians, Jews, Italians, or Greeks living in Canada are often called a subculture because they share among themselves certain religious or ethnic beliefs and customs that are not characteristic of the Canadian population as a whole. When the members of a society or a subculture agree that a specific set of norms and values should regulate some broad area of social life, such as the economy, family life, religion, or politics, then that set of norms and values is called an institution. Finally, the term material culture refers to all the physical objects used and produced by the members of a society or a subculture. Thus, for instance, the material culture of a pre-industrial society would include its pottery, the tools it uses to gather and process food, and its sacred objects, while the material culture of our own society would include our televisions, books, automobiles, and houses. ASPECTS OF CULTURE Ever since the 19th century, three observations have been made by virtually every investigator concerned with the study of culture. They are: (1) that cultures exhibit enormous variation with regard to their values, norms, and roles; (2) that few cultural elements are common to all known societies; and (3) that the elements of culture in a given society are often interrelated. Cultural variation If we take an overview of the hundreds of societies that exist or have existed in the world, the first thing that strikes our attention is that there is tremendous variation with regard to the cultural traits found in these societies. Many societies have values and norms that are directly opposite to those that we might take for granted in this society.

Some of this cultural variation was apparent in our discussion of the mother role in a previous section. Other examples of such variation are not difficult to discover. In our society many individuals believe that there exists one God, responsible for all of creation, and they describe this God using imagery that is undeniably "male" Swanson (1960) found that about half the pre-industrial societies in the world also believe in a single God, responsible for creation, although that God is not always seen as a male. Among the Iroquois Indians, for instance, God was female, while among some South American Indians called the Lengua, God is a beetle. But the remaining societies in the world either believe in many gods, no one of which is responsible for all creation, or do not believe in personalized gods of any sort. Though far less common today, ethnocentrism of this sort still crops up now and again. For instance, someone who uses the term "primitive society" to refer to what is really only a pre-industrial society might be accused of ethnocentrism, since "primitive" now carries negative connotations that go far beyond a simple consideration of the type of economy found in society. Likewise, a comparison of the thought and behavior of adults living in pre-industrial societies and the thought and behavior of children in our own society (and this sort of comparison is made far more frequently than you might think) is hardly flattering to pre-industrial peoples, and might result from an implicit ethnocentric bias. The other sort of ethnocentrism, namely, the tendency to believe that what is true of your culture is true of other cultures, is usually harder to spot, even though it is probably the more common type of ethnocentrism. If you feel that you are unlikely to make such an obvious error, consider an example taken from the social evolutionary writings of the 19th century, discussed below. There are three ways of deciding who is and who is not your kin. You can trace descent through males only (patrilineal descent), through females only (matrilineal descent), or through sexes simultaneously (bilateral descent). (The bilateral method is the one used in contemporary Western society. These topics will be discussed more fully in the family chapter.) But in a social evolutionary sense, which manner of determining descent was the first to develop? Almost all sociological thinkers in the 19th century, including Marx and Engels, gave the same answer: matrilineal descent. Their explanation was simplicity itself: At the earliest stage of human evolution, there must have been few restrictions placed upon sexual behavior. Apart from the restrictions imposed by an incest taboo (the argument went), everyone had sexual intercourse with whomever they pleased. In such a situation, one could never be certain who the father of a child was, but the facts of biology always insured that one would know who the mother was. Hence, to trace out kinship relations, one would use a rule that traced descent through females (matrilineal descent). The final argument, then, is that 19th century social anthropologists were led to conclude that matrilineal descent evolved first because they implicitly assumed that the biological father and the social father must always be the same man. While, this may be

generally true of our own society, these early researchers were being ethnocentric in assuming it to be true of all societies. An appreciation of cultural diversity does help us to avoid ethnocentrism, but unfortunately not all sociologists or their students develop that appreciation. In fact, most do not. At best, sociology briefly mentions such diversity in the "culture" chapter of introductory textbooks; actual courses in sociology that present data dealing with preindustrial and preliterate societies are relatively uncommon. This suggests that students who intend to go on in sociology and who wish to avoid ethnocentrism (in both senses of the word) would do well to include a few courses in anthropology in their schedules. Cultural universals So far we have been concerned only with cultural diversity. But amongst all the diversity that exists in the world, are there any cultural universals? That is, are there any elements of culture found in every single known society? There do seem to be a few. Every society, for instance, has some rules limiting sexual behavior, though the content of these rules varies greatly from society to society. In every known society there is a division of labor by sex, with certain tasks being assigned to females and other tasks to males. The task-assignments to either men or women, however, vary among societies. One of the most important of all cultural universals has to do with the relative status of men and women. There are many societies in which men, on the average, have more political power and more social prestige than women. These societies are usually called patriarchies. Then there are a fair number of known societies in which men and women are roughly equal in social status, either because one group does not on the average, have more power and prestige than the other, or because greater male power and prestige in certain areas of social life is balanced by greater female power and prestige in other areas of social life. Yet in all the societies of the world, there has never existed a true matriarchy, that is, a society in which women have more political power and more social prestige than men. The Amazons of myth and legend are just that, myth and legend. What we are dealing with here, then, is a negative universal, that is with something matriarchy, that is universally absent from all known societies. The most important point to make in connection with cultural universals, however, is that the number of such universals is relatively small, at least as compared to the ways in which cultures vary. Cultural integration Before closing this section it is necessary to point out that many of the elements of a given culture are interrelated, so that a change in one such element can produce changes in other elements. The best way to illustrate this process is to consider an extreme case, where a single cultural change, made with the best of intentions, had massive and disastrous consequences.

In Australia, members of an aboriginal society called the Yir Yoront traveled throughout various regions in Australia in small bands. Each band acted as a cooperative unit that hunted animals and gathered various plants for food. In the early decades of this century, the Anglican Church set up a mission with the goal of converting the Yir Yoront to Christianity. To reward those individuals who came to the mission and took instruction, these missionaries passed out something that they thought would be useful: axes with steel heads. Prior to this time, the Yir Yoront had used axes with stone heads that they had made themselves. A few years after the coming of the Anglican mission, many Yir Yoront bands had ceased to function as cooperative social units and their members had become completely dependent upon handouts from the mission. What happened? For Sharp (1952), the key lay in the impact of those steel axes upon Yir Yoront culture. To understand this impact you need to know more about that culture. Most of us probably formed our first impression of what life in a preliterate culture is like from the movies. Most movies portray tribal societies as having a "chief" of some sort. The notion that a small band of individuals should have a single leader strikes us as being perfectly natural and obvious (and strikes the sociologist as perfectly ethnocentric). But in fact, small bands do not always have a single leader. The Yir Yoront did not have "chiefs." In this society, any two individuals might confront each other and would determine who had authority over the other by using a complicated system of rules. Basically, these rules specified that older people had authority over younger people, that men had authority over women, and that blood relatives had some authority over other blood relatives. Though these rules tended to concentrate authority in the hands of the older males within a given kinship group, the system was complicated enough that the lines of authority were not always clear. To solve this problem, the Yir Yoront had devised a very concrete procedure for constantly reinforcing these lines of authority. This procedure involved the stone-headed axes that they had traditionally used. The case of the Yir Yoront is the extreme. Cultures are never so tightly integrated that any change will have widespread ramifications. Whether a particular cultural change introduced within a group will have further cultural ramifications will depend upon the pattern of interrelationships among the group's cultural traits. Tracing out the relationships linking the culture traits in various groups is one of the primary tasks of the sociologist and the social anthropologist.

Successful cultural technology for adapting to very cold winter environments

Expanding human geographic range into new environmental zones made possible by the evolution of culture (The ranges during later time periods include those of earlier periods)

Agriculture based ancient city (Thebes, Egypt)

Modern post-industrial city (New York)

Our ethnocentrism causes us to be shocked and even disgusted at attitudes about other animals in different cultures. This North American woman considers her dog to be a close friend and essentially a member of her own family. In the Muslim world, dogs are generally considered to be dirty animals that are likely to be kicked if they get in the way. In some areas of Southeast Asia, dogs have multiple functions, including being a source of food for people.

Masai women

North American woman in a job that formerly would not have been open to women Conservative Muslim women in the Middle East. They are fully covered for modesty in public and are being escorted by a male relative (Note: women in some predominantly Muslim countries lead lives that are much less constrained by tradition.)

Australian Aborigine wearing European style clothes