Understanding Social Facts

• Social fact are collective thoughts, norms, and expectations influencing individual behavior.
• Social facts, including social roles, laws, values, customs, and rituals, exist outside individuals but shape actions and attitudes.

Definition & Examples

• Social facts exert external constraints on individuals.
• Social roles, norms, and laws are examples of social facts.
• Violation of a social fact results in sanctions like disapproval, fines, or legal punishment.

Durkheim's View

• Sociology studies social facts and their influence on society.
• Social facts are "supra-individual," existing beyond individual minds and shaping collective behavior.

Major Dimensions of Social Facts

• Norms & Values: Shared rules guide acceptable behavior, such as charity or religious practices.
• Socialization: The process of learning social norms and values through parenting styles or education.
• Social Outcomes: Social facts impact health, education, and employment. Suicide rates vary based on social integration.

Change Over Time

• Social facts evolve, such as the shifting expectation of financial independence for young adults in the U.S. due to economic conditions.
• Durkheim's work established sociology as a unique discipline, emphasizing collective influences on individual actions.

Culture

• Culture is shared beliefs, practices, and artifacts of a group while society refers to social structures and organization of people.
• Material Culture: Consists of physical objects such as food, clothing, and buildings.
• Nonmaterial Culture: Includes ideas, attitudes, and beliefs such as values, norms, and traditions.
• Cultural Universals: Traits common to all societies, including family units, language, and humor.

Elements of Culture

• Values & Beliefs: Values define what is important; beliefs are what people hold as true.
• Norms: Rules guiding behavior.
  • Mores: Norms with strong moral significance, like laws against theft.
  • Folkways: Everyday customs, for example, dress codes and table manners.
• Symbols & Language: Communication tools that include gestures, signs, and written/spoken language.
  • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Language shapes thought and perception.

Pop Culture, Subcultures, & Cultural Change

• High Culture: Associated with elite classes, like opera and classical music.
• Pop Culture: Mainstream culture, such as social media and sports.
• Subcultures: Groups within a larger culture, such as bikers or goths.
• Countercultures: Groups rejecting mainstream values, such as hippies or the punk movement.
• Cultural Change:
  • Innovation: Introduction of new objects or ideas, like smartphones.
  • Cultural Lag: Material culture changes faster than nonmaterial culture.
  • Globalization & Diffusion: The spread of cultural elements across societies.

Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

• Functionalism: Culture maintains social stability.
• Conflict Theory: Culture reflects social inequalities.
• Symbolic Interactionism: Culture is created through individual interactions.
• Culture shapes daily lives, influences social norms, and evolves over time.

Vocabulary

• Mainstream: Dominant cultural patterns, beliefs, and practices widely accepted by the majority of society.
  • Mainstream culture includes popular and widely shared aspects of a society's way of life: music, fashion, and social norms; celebrating Christmas in North America.
• Norm: Unwritten and written rules that guide behavior within a society, defining appropriate or acceptable behavior.
  • Formal norms are laws and rules while informal norms are social expectations; waiting in line is an informal norm.
  • Norms can be classified as mores which have strong moral significance, and folkways which are casual social expectations.
• Symbolic Interactionism: A sociological perspective focusing on how individuals create and interpret cultural symbols through social interactions.
  • Culture is shaped by everyday interactions, with the meaning of symbols like handshakes depending on context and individuals involved.

Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

• Sociologists analyze culture to understand its role in shaping society.
• The three major perspectives are functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism: Culture as Social Glue

• Culture maintains social stability and cohesion because cultural norms, values, and institutions serve important functions.
• Culture provides social integration by providing shared beliefs and practices.
• Norms and values guide behavior and reduce chaos.
• Cultural elements reinforce social solidarity by creating shared rituals, traditions, and identities.
• National holidays and patriotism bring people together through shared celebrations, reinforcing national identity and unity.
• Religious rituals give individuals a sense of belonging and moral guidance.
• Education systems teach academic knowledge and cultural values like discipline, teamwork, and respect for authority.
• Functionalism overlooks conflict in culture, assuming all practices benefit society equally.
• Functionalism ignores cultural oppression, such as gender roles that limit women's opportunities.

Conflict Theory: Culture as a Tool of Domination

• Culture is shaped by the powerful to maintain control, seen as a site of struggle between groups, especially the rich and poor.
• The ruling class creates cultural norms that benefit them and maintain social inequality.
• Culture justifies existing hierarchies, making inequality seem "natural".
• Subcultures and countercultures arise as forms of resistance against dominant cultural values.
• Large corporations control media and promote ideas that serve capitalist interests; poor people are portrayed as lazy rather than victims of inequality.
• Traditional gender roles reinforce male dominance; feminist movements challenge these norms.
• Western countries spread their culture (language, education, economy) to maintain control, such as the spread of English as a global language.
• Conflict theory focuses too much on power struggles and ignores positive aspects of culture like cooperation and unity.
• Conflict theory assumes culture is always imposed from above, overlooking grassroots cultural movements.

Symbolic Interactionism: Culture as Social Interaction

• Examines culture at the micro level, focusing on how individuals create, interpret, and modify it through everyday interactions.

• Culture is not static but evolves through social interactions and shared meanings.

• Symbols (gestures, language, fashion, art) shape cultural understanding.

• People actively construct and reinterpret culture based on their experiences.

• Wearing a suit symbolizes professionalism, while a hoodie symbolizes casualness or rebellion.

• Words evolve in meaning based on social interaction; "cool" now signifies something trendy.

• Online trends emerge as users interact, shaping internet culture.

• Symbolic interactionism focuses on small-scale interactions and ignores larger structural forces that shape culture.

• Symbolic interactionism struggles to explain long-term cultural stability and larger social trends.

• Functionalism explains how culture maintains order.

• Conflict theory shows who benefits from culture and who is oppressed.

• Symbolic interactionism explores how people shape and change culture in daily life.

• A complete understanding of culture requires looking at all three perspectives.