Indigenous People and Culture

Section 22, Article II of the 1987 Constitution

• Recognizes and promotes the rights of indigenous cultural communities within national unity and development

Indigenous People

• Refers to groups identified by self-ascription and recognized by others as indigenous
• Have continuously lived as an organized community on a defined territory
• Claim ownership since time immemorial with shared language, customs, and traditions
• Historically differentiated from the Filipino majority through resistance to colonization
• Covered in Section 3h, RA 8371 IPRA (Indigenous Peoples Rights Act)

Anthropological Perspective of Culture

• E.B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as the complex whole encompassing beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws, norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge, and everything a person learns and shares as a society member
• Culture is acquired and learned, not innate
• More focus on the material elements of culture

Sociological Perspective of Culture

• Culture is a dynamic medium for societies to create a collective way of life
• Culture shapes behavior, thought, and feelings
• Culture is transmitted through language from one generation to the next
• Culture defines appropriate and inappropriate behavior
• Culture comes from social interaction, focusing on non-material elements
• Essentially, culture is a "way of life"

Customs

• Repeated practices common to a particular place

Traditions

• Stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted

Elements of Material Culture

• Physical objects or artifacts created by humans by altering their environment
• Tangible things that humans create and use
• A key interest for anthropologists

Elements of Non-Material Culture

• Consists of words, habits, ideas, customs, and behaviors that a society professes
• Intangible
• The meaning and substance within culture
• A key interest for sociologists

How Culture is Learned

• Culture is learned and acquired through socialization and enculturation
• Humans are not born with culture, instead it is learned from others

Culture is Dynamic

• Culture is adaptive and flexible, constantly changing based on individual or generational needs and interests

Culture Sharing

• Culture is shared and transmitted through oral, written, or symbolic language

Culture Integration

• Culture is integrated and patterned via social interactions
• Interwoven to make a complex whole

Culture is Social

• Culture comes from human interaction

Culture Building

• Culture is cumulative
• Things are transmitted, acquired, or added across generations

Culture Transference

• Culture requires language and other forms of communication
• Language is the primary tool of cultural transference

Norms of Culture

• Specify appropriate and inappropriate behavior
• Shared rules dictating right and wrong
• Reinforced through punishment and reward

Folkways

• Violations of norms with no moral significance
• Tolerated violations regarded as "weird" or "eccentric"

Mores

• Violations of norms with moral significance
• Violators are called "deviants"

Laws

• Formalized norms created by formal institutions like the Congress in the Philippines
• Violators are considered "criminals"

Values

• Express ultimate ends, goals, or purposes of social action

Rationalism

• A belief in systematic planning to control and manipulate one's destiny
• Individuals are responsible for their own success or failure

Non-Rationalism

• Adjusting to nature, acceptance, reverence, and protecting traditions

Rationalism vs. Non-Rationalism in the Philippines

• Filipinos are still fundamentally non-rational and have little control
• Manifested in "Bahala Na," trusting spirits, divine beings, or fate to take care of everything

Personalism

• Prioritizes personal factors to guarantee intimacy, warmth, and security in relationships

Impersonalism

• Eliminates kinship or friendship influences in working situations

Personalism vs. Impersonalism in the Philippines

• Filipinos are personalistic due to "utang na loob"
• Results in nepotism, favoritism, and the use of "backers"

Particularism

• Focuses concern on subgroups like relatives, friends, or members of one's ethnic group

Universalism

• Focuses concern on the advancement of collective or national good

Particularism vs. Universalism in the Philippines

• Filipinos are particular and regionalist, identifying primarily as Bicolano or Tagalog before Filipino

Gestures

• Body movements indicating ideas, sentiments, or attitudes used to communicate
• Some cultural anthropologists state that there are universal gestures such as fear, sadness and anger.

Symbols

• Objects, gestures, sounds, colors, or designs representing something

Language

• The most important symbol; a structured system with specific and arbitrary meanings
• A chief vehicle for communication
• Principal means for humans to transmit culture

Subcultures

• Smaller groups with distinct norms, values, beliefs, and languages that differentiate them
• Follow dominant societal values and norms
• Known as a small culture within a culture which includes people of similar traits
• The 2D subculture in Japan is an example, involving romantic relationships with inanimate objects)

Countercultures

• Subcultures with standards conflicting with the norms within a society
• Norms and values contradict the dominant culture
• Behavior is considered "deviant" and is not shared by the majority
• Rejects dominant norms and values
• Drug addicts, gangsters, and prostitutes are examples

Culture Viewpoints

• Perspective on a new culture

Culture Shock

• Feelings of disbelief, disorganization, and frustration on encountering cultural patterns or practices
• Brought about by unfamiliarity and inability to communicate

Ethnocentrism

• Tendency to view one's own culture as the best and superior to others
• Belief that one's group is the center of everything leading to feelings of superiority
• Produced by training and interaction
• The idea that "My culture is the best culture" is the primary tenet

Xenocentrism

• Rejection of one's own group/culture
• Reverse of ethnocentrism
• Belief that another ethnic group is superior
• Centered on a product, idea or lifestyle
• The idea that "Your culture is the best culture" is the primary tenet

Cultural Relativism

• Culture is relative
• No cultural practice is inherently good or bad
• An alternative to ethnocentrism
• Particular cultural traits judged within their own cultural context
• Appropriate viewpoint
• There is no good nor bad culture

Noble Savage Mentality

• Evaluating one's own and others' cultures based on romantic notions that primitive cultures and ways of life are better

Society

• A concept and a tool to understand social phenomena
• Exists as a facticity only when people are interacting
• Seen as a deity because of its omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence

Structural Functionalism and Social Order

• Society is made up of parts with functions, per. Emile Durkheim

Social Conflict Theory

• Power plays in the society for control, per Karl Marx

Symbolic Interaction and Meaning-Making Theory

• Social construct born from interpretation of human interaction

Socialization

• Process of learning in the field of sociology

Enculturation

• Process of learning a new culture including the norms, values, language, etc.

Acculturation

• Practicing a new culture that has been learned

Herbert Mead's Development Theory

• Preparatory Stage: mimicking familial roles
• Play Stage: assuming specific roles
• Game Stage: understanding societal norms and expectations

Looking-Glass Self

• We imagine how we appear to others, then we change our behavior based on how others feel, per Charles Horton Cooley

Dramaturgy

• Person performs to social conventions, wears masks according to the person's role. In the backstage person acts differently from when performing for an audience, per Erwing Goofman

Agencies of Socialization

• Family, peer group, church, school, mass media, and workplace
• Total Institutions: a place where a perrson goes through re-learning, examples are military academies, the convent and prison

Gender Socialization

• Children learns about social and emotional societal expectations, attitude and behavior

Sex vs. Gender

• Sex is the difference between man and woman based on the reproductive system
• Gender is the difference between man and woman based on beliefs that society saying
• Gender is social construct