ch. 8

Culture vs. Nature

• Culture is everything humans learn and share within a society, including actions and knowledge.

Learning and Sharing

• Learning and sharing are essential for culture.
• Biological behaviors and genetically inherited instincts are not considered culture, as they are not learned.
• Human nature is innate, physical nature exists outside our bodies, and culture reins in selfish desires.
• Natural elements like rivers and trees are nature, while man-made items like bridges, shirts, and altered foods are culture (material culture).

Major Elements of Culture

• Culture encompasses everything humans learn and share, considered a treasure box of elements.
• Values are society's ideas about what is worth pursuing and how.
• Values reflect desirable ends and means.
• Democratic societies value liberty, equality, and individual rights.
• Traditional societies often prioritize group rights over individual rights.
• Norms are the unwritten rules of behavior, guiding conduct.
• Norms are more specific than values, dictating acceptable behavior, like being polite to strangers.

Rituals

• Rituals are activities performed in a fixed sequence and repeated periodically.
• Utilitarian rituals have demonstrable useful outcomes, like daily baths.
• Symbolic rituals lack practical utility but are followed for tradition and have specific cultural meanings, like wedding rituals.

Customs

• Customs are ways of doing things.
• Customs can dictate things like when to wear certain clothes.
• Unlike rituals, customs aren't necessarily events; for example, wearing a black tie to a formal dinner is a custom.
• Violations of norms are strongly sanctioned, while violations of custom are merely ridiculed.

Myths

• Myths are stories expressing core societal values
• For example, the story of Santa Claus is a myth that expresses the value that if you live your life as a good person, then good things will come to you.

Knowledge, Science, and Technology

• Knowledge is fundamental to the beliefs on which actions are based
• Beliefs of curses were based on the lack of knowledge of disease
• Modern enlightenment and scientific advances set modern society apart culturally

Laws

• Laws are norms with legal sanctions
• Smoking in a friend's house may violate a norm but is not illegal
• Smoking on an airplane is illegal and punishable
• Societal values are reflected in laws
• Anti-cloning laws reflect values about human dignity

Arts

• Arts, music, painting, and literature are also culture
• Arts represent a society's aesthetic experience
• Arts represent a society's values, obsessions, and life conditions

Material Culture

• Material Culture consists of man made objects as part of culture
• They represent a society's affluence and progress as opposed to living entirely in nature
• Material culture includes chairs, cell phones, wine, beer, and toupees

Six Characteristics of Culture

• Culture is learned rather than innate; knowing when to cry/laugh is learned culture.
• Culture regulates society by setting norms and standards that determine appropriate behavior.
• Violations of norms lead to sanctions
• Culture makes living more efficient because shared knowledge means people don't have to learn everything anew.
• Culture is adaptive as a human response to the environment and its changes.
• Culture is environmental, enveloping everyone's life and often taken for granted.
• Cultures are hierarchical, with the larger group's culture shaping smaller groups within it.

Core Western Values

• Values are basic knowledge for every citizen
• Individualism: North American and Western European cultures believe individuals are responsible for their own success through individual effort.
• Acceptable to be self-oriented, serving and guarding personal interests
• Freedom: Individuals are free to practice any religion, support any political party, play any sport, participate in any peaceful protest
• Merit, Competitiveness, and Accomplishment: Individuals are expected to be competitive to gain success, it is a merit based society where you get what you deserve
• Materialism: Western Cultures value material success
• Change and Scientific and Industrial Progress: The belief in the power of science and technology to bring solutions to problems such as disease, aging, poverty, resource shortages, etc.

Belief in the Equity of Opportunity

• all persons are considered equal in the eyes of the law
• only equality of opportunity, not of status, position, or outcomes

Core Eastern Values

• Collective Identity: Individual personality is merged into the group identity, with individuals expected to consider the well-being of their family and group identity.
• Inner Harmony: Stability, harmony, and inner peace are valued rather than individual triumph at the cost of others.
• Pursuing spiritual triumph is favored over pursuing material acquisition.
• Respect for Tradition: Eastern societies value the past as sources of wisdom
• Respect for Hierarchy: Hierarchical relationships such as parent-child relationships are valued just as much as relationships among peers
• Particularism: In the east, matters are considered in a more personal way and favors are expected and routinely granted due to personal relationships

5 Universal Cultural Traits

• Individualism/Collectivism: Value self-interest over group interest
• Collectivism: Exhibit close ties between individuals, allow only a limited amount of personal freedom and seek the protection of the group

High Context/Low Context

• People communicate in a manner such that not special knowledge of that culture is required
• In other cultures, everyday speech is full of idioms and clever phrasing so that to understand, you need to be familiar with that culture
• High context: Requires cultural knowledge to understand meaning beneath the surface.
• High context cultures use symbols and nonverbal cues
• Low context: Meaning is explicit
• Asian societies are high context and western societies are low context cultures.
• If a western consumer did not like a product, they would simply announce to the salesperson
• A Japanese consumer, rejection is considered impolite, even in commercial settings

Power Distance

• The extent to which less powerful members accept authority of those with greater power
• To the extent to which the less powerful members of the society accept the authority of those with greater power
• The sources of power can be money, education, political positions
• People will act in a subservient way based on the power distance

Uncertainty Avoidance

• The extent to which ambiguous situations feel threatening
• Some societies accept "unknowability," but others desire predictability.

Masculinity vs Femininity

• Masculine cultures: Value money, success, power and mastery
• Feminine Cultures: Value harmony, peace of mind, caring for others, and quality of life

The Deeper Functions of Ritualistic Cultural Practices

• Achieving Sacredness: precisely because ritual practices cannot be explained logically, they acquire the status of sacredness
• Value Inculcation: rituals, customs, and myths inculcate value

Symbolic Functions of Culture to Communicate Meanings

• Meaning communication is a key function of culture
• symbolic function communicates something to the world
• clothing can signal class or self concept
• meanings are specific to a culture

The four types of functions

• Emblematic: communicates what social group you belong to
• Connective: connects us with people we like to join with
• Expressive: Express our self concepts
• Role Display: Reflect the roles we take on

Marketing Blunders to Avoid

• Differences in languages (obvious factor)
• avoid blunders with back translation
• Arabic is written and read from right to left
• various colors mean different things in different cultures
• Numbers have symbols meanings that differ across cultures

The Silent Language of Culture

• Acculturating in certain cultures require understanding how best to act
• Westerners are more informal, easterners approach with formality
• Western cultures form fast friendships, eastern cultures are very slow and require lifelong committment

Time

• there are differences in the sense of time across cultures
• some value fast and others value slow
• westerners are typically time conscious

Explicitness

• Westerners are generally more true to their word
• Easterners seem more hesitant because they do not want to hurt your feelings