Understanding Culture: Material and Nonmaterial Aspects

• Study notes derived from flashcards are provided below

Culture

• Culture is the totality of learned customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior transmitted socially, representing a people's way of life and encompassing both material and nonmaterial aspects.

Material Culture

• Material culture includes physical objects created by a society that influence how people live and interact, such as food, clothing, architecture, and luxuries.

Nonmaterial Culture

• Nonmaterial culture comprises the intangible human creations of society that influence behavior, including values, beliefs, symbols, norms, funeral rites, and dating/courtship patterns.

Values

• Values represent a collective conception of what is considered good, desirable, and proper (or bad, undesirable, and improper) in a culture, such as success, independence, individual achievement, privacy, patriotism, and equality.

Norms

• Norms are established standards of behavior maintained by a society, with violations disrupting group order.

Folkways

• Folkways are everyday norms based on assumptions about conventional behavior.
• Their violations are considered rude or unconventional but not a serious threat to society.
• Sanctions for violating folkways are typically mild, such as disapproving looks or fewer social invitations.
  • Example: Not using turn signals

Institutionalized Norms

• Institutionalized norms are widely accepted patterns of behavior within a social institution, taken for granted in society.
• They become so ingrained that acting outside them is "unthinkable".
  • Example: In the economy, financial success is valued, with education, job, and work being the norm, and stealing not accepted.

Emotional Display Norms

• Emotional display norms are cultural rules governing the expression of emotions, which can be formal (e.g., politeness for flight attendants) or informal (e.g., sadness at funerals).

Feeling Rules

• Feeling rules concern cultural expectations about feelings.

Ethnocentrism

• Enthnocentrism is the tendency to assume that one's own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others.
  • Example: Nativism

Cultural Relativism

• Cultural relativism involves evaluating a people's behavior from the perspective of their own culture.

Cultural Appropriation

• Cultural appropriation occurs when members of a dominant group take cultural elements from a marginalized group for their advantage.

Social Research

• Social research aims to assess how society really works, requiring data to support theory.

Empirical Research

• Empirical research is conducted in the social (real) world.

Personal Billboards

• Personal billboards include symbols or phrases used to communicate personal information, such as graduation caps and gowns.

Correlation

• Correlation refers to a relationship or association between two or more things.

Causation

• Sociologists do not 'prove' or 'cause'.

Independent Variable

• The independent variable is hypothesized to cause or influence another variable.

Dependent Variable

• The dependent variable's action depends on the influence of the independent variable.

Quantitative Research

• Quantitative research is sociological research based on the collection of numeric data that uses precise statistical analysis.

Qualitative Research

• Qualitative research is sociological research based on nonnumeric information (text, written words, phrases, symbols, observations) that describes people, actions, or events in social life.

Research Ethics

• Research ethics include protecting research participants from harm.
• Ensuring anonymity and confidentiality.
• Obtaining permission from an institutional review board (IRB).
• Revealing sources of funding.

IRB (Institutional Review Board)

• Permission from an Institutional Review Board is needed for research.

Field Research

• Field research includes non-participant and participant observation.

Surveys

• Surveys are a form of social research in which the researcher asks subjects a series of questions verbally, online, or on paper.

Unobtrusive or Secondary Research

• Researchers examine existing data or evidence of social behavior that people have created or left behind, without any contact with the people being studied.
• Types:
  • Statistical analysis
  • Content analysis
  • Historical analysis
  • Visual analysis

Social Construction of Reality

• Social construction of reality is the process through which members of a society discover, make known, reaffirm, and alter a collective version of facts, knowledge, and 'truth'.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

• Self-fulfilling prophecies involve an assumption or prediction that causes the expected event to occur, thus seeming to confirm the prophecy's accuracy.

Moral Entrepreneurs

• Moral entrepreneurs are groups that work to have their moral concerns translated into law.

Hypothesis

• A hypothesis is a researchable prediction that specifies the relationship between two or more variables.

Indicators

• Indicators are measurable events, characteristics, or behaviors commonly thought to reflect a particular concept.
  • Example: Religious symbols in their house can indicate religiosity.

Modes of Research

• Experiments, Field Research, Surveys, and Unobtrusive Research.

Sampling

• Sampling involves selecting a subgroup for a study because its characteristics approximate those of the entire population.

Socialization

• Socialization is a lifelong learning process influenced by agents of socialization and targets of socialization.

Agents of Socialization

• Agents of socialization are various individuals, groups, and organizations that influence the socialization process.
  • Examples include parents, peers, and mass media.

Anticipatory Socialization

• Anticipatory socialization is the process through which people acquire the values and orientations found in statuses they will likely enter in the future.
  • Example: A major or an internship.

Resocialization

• Resocialization is the process of learning new values, norms, and expectations when an adult leaves an old role and enters a new one.
  • Example: Newly divorced or widowed. often takes place in "total institutions

The 'Self'

• The 'self' is a unique set of traits, behaviors, and attitudes that distinguishes one person from the next, serving as the active source and passive object of behavior.

Symbolic Interactionism

• Symbolic interactionism explains society and social structure through an examination of the microlevel, personal, day-to-day exchanges of people as individuals, pairs, or groups.

Cooley- Looking Glass Self

• The looking-glass self is a sense of who we are defined by incorporating the reflected appraisals of others.
  • A mirror reflecting what other reflect on to you (social mirror- not reality)

I and Me

• The 'I' and 'Me' represent the self from social interaction.

Generalized Other

• The generalized other is the perspective of the larger society and its constituent values and attitudes.

Self-esteem

• Self-esteem it is related to culture and social categories.

Social Institutions

• Social institutions are powerful institutional agents.
  • Examples include education and religion.

Tracking

• Tracking is the grouping of students into different curricular programs, or tracks, based on an assessment of their academic abilities.

Space

• Space is a geographical area that can be measured.

Place

• Places are spaces with attached social meanings and activities.

Newman's definition of self

• Newman defines the self as the unique traits, behaviors, and attitudes that distinguish one person from the next.
• The self is both an active source and a passive object.
• Active Source: Can initiate action, often directed towards others
• Passive Object: Can be perceived, talked to, evaluated, directed, or persuaded by others
• Reflexive Behavior: To have a self is to have the ability to plan, observer, guide, and respond to one's own actions.

Mead

• Mead focused on role-taking and the socialization of the self, from a symbolic interactionist perspective, noting that adults serve as role models for kids.
• Key Ideas:
  • Self as Active and Passive
  • Reflexive Behavior
  • Role Taking
• Stages of Development:
  • Play Stage: Taking the perspective of one person at a time.
  • Game Stage: Developing a more sophisticated form of self-control

Self in Individualistic Culture

• In individualistic cultures, the focus is on individual success and characteristics.

Self in Collectivist Culture

• In collectivist cultures, the individual self is less important than the collective self.

Social Class

• People in similar positions of power, privilege, and prestige constitute a social class ("birth lottery").
  • Working class associated with obedience and conformity
  • Middle and upper-middle classes associated with autonomy and reasoning

Racial/Ethnic Socialization

• Racial/ethnic socialization involves socializing individuals differently based on their race/ethnicity and gender, known as differential socialization.

Gender Socialization

• Parental expectations also play a role in gender socialization.
• Gender socialization also includes gendered images and stereotypes, and ideas of attractiveness vs. intelligence and toys
• It can also be impacted by gender fluidity.

Social Institutions: Education

• Education is the most powerful institutional agent.
• Issues include tracking, academic redshirting, conformity vs creativity.

Social Institutions: Religion

• Religion gives individuals a status in society.
• Religion provides cultural expectations.
• Religious institutions often have rites of passage that mark transitions in a person's life.
• Religion can create a sense of inclusion or exclusion.
• Mass media transmits values, such as individual succes

Social Aspect of Food

• Production and Distribution: This includes aspects like urban farms, "minority" farmers, and community solidarity
• Access to food effects health and well-being and also considers food insecurity and "food deserts"
• Environmental and Labor Issues: This can involve migrant work, and acquiring and owning land
• Preparation: This is influenced by culture, family life/household, gender, and economics.
• Consumption: People have a food self with "food boundaries"
• This is related to Newman's definition of self

Mores

• Rules: Norms that are taken very seriously by society and sometimes codified into laws
• Violations: Violations of mores can elicit severe sanctions and are seen as a threat to social order.
• Sanctions: Sanctions for violating mores can range from public ostracism to imprisonment
  • Example: public ostracism or exclusion from a group, as when one is excommunicated for going against the moral doctrine of one's church

Laws

• Rules: are explicit rules of conduct established by a governing body.
• Violations: Violations of laws are defined as crimes.
• Sanctions: Sanctions for breaking laws are formalized and can include fines, imprisonment, or other legal penalties
  • Example: armed robbery

Foodscapes

• The places and spaces where you acquire food, prepare food, talk about food, or generally gather some sort of meaning from food

Common Sense

• Everyday knowledge based on accepting things as real even if they can't be seen, touched, or proven.
• Influenced by culture
• Characteristics:
  • Often involves unquestioned cultural beliefs that can't be proven wrong, even with contradictory evidence (an "incorrigible proposition")
  • May be flawed; social research can correct flawed common sense
  • Helps maintain order in society
  • Can be influenced by those in positions of power
  • "Commonsense facts" don't always hold up under the weight of evidence provided by social research

Undo Wrong Common Sense

• Social research can be employed to correct flawed common sense since common sense involves accepting the existence of things that can't be seen, touched, or proved.
• Empirical research is needed to assess how society really works, since "commonsense facts" don't always hold up under the weight of evidence.

Why Do We Need Social Research

• To assess how our society truly functions.
• To correct flawed common sense
• To acquire a body of knowledge
• To understand the interplay between societal forces and personal characteristics
• To systematically amass a body of knowledge that can be used to assess how our society really works
• To avoid pitfalls of casual research
• To understand the social construction of reality
• To gain insight into the influence of social structure on everyday life
• To address social change
• To be able to critically examine the commonplace and the ordinary

Impression Formation

• It involves using observable cues such as physical appearance, behaviors, age, race, skin color, facial features, and eye shape to form impressions of others, often based on social group membership

Beauty Premium

• The economic advantages in some occupations based on appearance norms, with research indicating a salary difference between individuals based on their appearance.

Impression Management

• The act of projecting a particular identity to increase the likelihood of obtaining favorable outcomes in social situations using different methods.

Dramaturgy

• A sociological perspective where social life is analyzed as a stage, including concepts like front stage, back stage.

Props in Impression Management

• Objects, people, expressions, and postures used in the front stage.
  • Examples include clothing, guns, cigarettes, sunglasses, American flags, and family.

Collective Impression Management

• Impression management performed by groups or organizations.
  • Examples include performance teams, couples, and political campaigns.
• Organizations can also experience embarrassment or failed impression management.

Civil Inattention

• When an audience chooses to ignore an actor's failed impression management.

Stigma

• The permanent spoiling of one's identity, which can be based on defects of the body, defects of character, or membership in devalued groups.

Aligning Actions

• Actions taken to restore social order and overcome a spoiled identity.

Account

• A verbal statement designed to explain unanticipated, embarrassing, or unacceptable behavior.

Disclaimer

• A verbal assertion given before a potentially problematic action.

Embarrassment

• An emotional reaction that is short-term and sociologically significant, involving norm violations and the potential to disrupt social order.

Stigma vs Embarrassment

• Embarrassment is an emotional, short-term reaction that is sociologically significant.
• Stigma is the permanent spoiling of one's identity.

Differences Between Embarrassment and Stigma

• Embarrassment is an emotional reaction, short term, and varies.
• Stigma is long-term and arises from defects of the body, defects of character, or membership in devalued groups.

Explore the concept of culture, encompassing learned customs, knowledge, and material objects. Differentiate between material culture (physical objects) and nonmaterial culture (values, beliefs, norms). Examine the roles of values and norms in shaping societal behavior.