Culture and Types of Societies PDF

3.1. What Is Culture? 133 3.1. What Is Culture? Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens, nearly 200,000 yea...

3.1. What Is Culture? 133 3.1. What Is Culture? Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens, nearly 200,000 years ago, people have grouped together into communities in order to survive. Living together, people developed forms of cooperation which created the common habits, behaviours, and ways of life known as culture — from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food. Peter Berger (b. 1929) argued that culture is the product of a fundamental human predicament (1967). Unlike other animals, humans lack the biological programming to live on their own. They require an extended period of dependency in order to survive in the environment. The creation of culture makes this possible by providing a kind of protective shield against the harsh impositions of nature. Culture provides the ongoing transmission of knowledge and stability that enables human existence. It allows humans to know that one plant is poisonous and another plant is edible, and so on. This means, Figure 3.5 What is culture? (Image however, that the human environment is not nature per se but courtesy ofAlex-David Baldi/ Flickr.) CC culture itself. Humans live in a world defined by culture. BY NC-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Over the history of humanity, this has lead to an incredible by-nc-sa/2.0/) diversity in how humans have imagined and lived life on Earth, the sum total of which Wade Davis (b. 1953) has called the ethnosphere. The ethnosphere is the entirety of all cultures’ “ways of thinking, ways of being, and ways of orienting oneself on the Earth” (Davis, 2007). It is the collective cultural heritage of the human species. A single culture, as the sphere of meanings shared by a single social group, is the means by which that group makes sense of the world and of each other. But there are many cultures and many ways of making sense of the world. Through a multiplicity of cultural inventions, human societies have adapted to the environmental and biological conditions of human existence in many different ways. What do we learn from this? First, almost every human behaviour, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. In Canada, people tend to view marriage as a choice between two people based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other cases, through a direct system such as a mail-order bride. To someone raised in Winnipeg, the marriage customs of a family from Nigeria may seem strange or even wrong. Conversely, someone from a traditional Kolkata family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love as the foundation for the lifelong commitment of marriage. In other words, the way in which people view marriage depends largely on what they have been taught. Being familiar with these written and unwritten rules of culture helps people feel secure and “normal.” Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviours will not be challenged or 133 134 Chapter 3. Culture disrupted. Behaviour based on learned customs is, therefore, a good thing, but it does raise the problem of how to respond to cultural differences. Figure 3.6 The cultural norms governing public transportation vary in Canada, Austria, Mumbai, and Tokyo. How would a visitor from a rural Canadian town act and feel on this crowded Tokyo train? (Photo courtesy of Tokyoform/ Flickr.) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/) Second, culture is innovative. The existence of different cultural practices reveals the way in which societies find different solutions to real life problems. The different forms of marriage are various solutions to a common problem, the problem of organizing families in order to raise children and reproduce the species. As structural functionalists argue, the basic problem is shared by the different societies, but the solutions are different. This illustrates the point that culture in general is a means of solving problems. It is a tool composed of the capacity to abstract and conceptualize, to cooperate and coordinate complex collective endeavours, and to modify and construct the world to suit human purposes. It is the repository of creative solutions, techniques, and technologies humans draw on when confronting the basic shared problems of human existence. Culture is, therefore, key to the way humans, as a species, have successfully adapted to the environment. The existence of different cultures refers to the different means by which humans use innovation to free themselves from biological and environmental constraints. Third, culture is also restraining. Cultures retain their distinctive patterns through time and impose them on their members. In contemporary life, global capitalism increasingly imposes a common cultural playing field on the cultures of the world. As a result, Canadian culture, French culture, Malaysian culture, and Kazakhstani culture will share certain features like rationalization and  3.1. What Is Culture? 135 commodification, even if they also differ in terms of languages, beliefs, dietary practices, and other ways of life. There are two sides to the response of local cultures to global culture. Different cultures adapt and respond to capitalism in unique manners according to their specific shared heritages. Local cultural forms have the capacity to restrain the changes produced by globalization. Moreover, unique local cultures are transported around the world due to global migration, diasporas and media, leading to the diversification of cultural practices in countries like Canada, as well as to innovative forms of cultural blending and hybridization. On the other hand, the diversity of local cultures is increasingly limited by the homogenizing pressures of globalization. Economic practices that prove inefficient or uncompetitive in the global market disappear. The meanings of cultural practices and knowledges change as they are turned into commodities for tourist consumption or are patented by pharmaceutical companies. Globalization also increasingly restrains cultural forms, practices, and possibilities. There is therefore a dynamic within culture of innovation and restriction. The cultural fabric of shared meanings and orientations that allows individuals to make sense of the world and their place within it can change with contact with other cultures and changes in the socioeconomic formation, allowing people to reinvision and reinvent themselves. Or, it can remain stable, even rigid, and restrict change. Many contemporary issues to do with identity and belonging, from multiculturalism and hybrid identities to religious fundamentalism and white nationalist movements, can be understood within this dynamic of innovation and restriction. Similarly, the effects of social change on ways of life, from new modes of electronic communication to societal responses to climate change and global pandemics, involve a tension between innovation and restriction. 142 Chapter 3. Culture Figure 3.12 Angelina Jolie (2013): “My doctors estimated that I had an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.” (Photo courtesy of Georges Biard/Wikimedia Commons.) CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) Many misconceptions exist in popular culture about what a gene actually is or what it can do. Some of these misconceptions are funny — Duden and Samerski cite a hairdresser they interviewed as saying that her nail biting habit was part of the genetic programming she was born with — but some of them have serious consequences that can lead to the impossible decisions some individuals, including couples who are having a child, are forced to make. Informed decision making in genetic counseling often works with statistical probabilities of “defects” based on population data (e.g., “With your family history, you have a 1 in 10 chance of having a child with the genetic mutation for Down’s syndrome”), but what does this mean to a particular individual? The actual causal mechanism for that particular individual is unknown and it is unlikely that they will actually have 10 children, one of whom might have Down’s syndrome; therefore, what does this probability figure mean to someone who is pregnant? In this sense, the gene defines a set of cultural parameters by which people in the age of genetics make sense of themselves in relationship to their bodies. Like biological determinism in general, the gene introduces a kind of fatalism into the understanding of human life and human possibility. Cultural Universals Often, a comparison of one culture to another will reveal obvious differences. But all cultures share common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. One example of a cultural universal is the kinship system: Every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and the care of children (See Chapter 14. Marriage and Family (#part-chapter-14-marriage-and-family)). In comparison to primate kinship however, human kinship configurations recognize a far wider range of recognized kin including matrilineal and patrilineal members (mother’s and father’s side relatives), several generations of family members, and members who live together as well as those who do not (Chapais, 2014). So what exactly is universal about kinship? The significance of different types of relative varies and can be extremely complex — traditional Chinese kinship nomenclature has separate names for maternal and paternal lineages, relative age of siblings, gender of relatives, and nine generations of relative — but all human societies recognize a similar range of relations as kin. Four universal features of kinship systems include: 1. A lengthy childhood maturation process that requires at least one adult to commit to  3.1. What Is Culture? 143 prolonged child nurturing and educating; 2. The presence of a socially recognized bond between two (or more) people that regulates their sexual and domestic relationship through time; 3. A gender based division of labour within the household; and 4. An incest taboo that prohibits sexual intercourse between close kin. Even so, there are many variations within these universals and each of the four are regularly broken in individual cases within societies. How the family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults will continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In Canada, by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit consisting of parents and their offspring. Anthropologist George Murdock (1897-1985) first recognized the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. As a structural functionalist, Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around the functional requisites all societies need to satisfy to ensure human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter. They also form around universally shared human experiences, such as birth and death, or illness and healing. Through his research, Murdock identified other universals including language, the concept of personal names, and, interestingly, jokes. Humour seems to be a universal way to release tensions and create a sense of unity among people (Murdock, 1949). Sociologists consider humour necessary to human interaction because it helps individuals navigate otherwise tense situations. Making Connections: Sociological Research Is Music a Cultural Universal? Imagine an audience sitting in a theatre, watching a film. The movie opens with the hero sitting on a park bench with a grim expression on her face. Cue the music. The first slow and mournful notes are played in a minor key. As the melody continues, the hero turns her head and sees a man walking toward her. The music slowly gets louder, and the dissonance of the chords sends a prickle of fear running down the audience’s spine. They sense that she is in danger. Now imagine that the audience is watching the same movie, but with a different soundtrack. As the scene opens, the music is soft and soothing with a hint of sadness. They see the hero sitting on the park bench and sense her loneliness. Suddenly, the music swells. The woman looks up and sees a man walking toward her. The music grows fuller, and the pace picks up. The audience feels their hearts rise in their Figure 3.13 Queenscliff Music Festival 2013. (Image courtesy of Tony chests. This is a happy moment. Proudfoot/Flickr.) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) Music has the ability to evoke emotional responses. In 144 Chapter 3. Culture television shows, movies, and even commercials, music elicits laughter, sadness, or fear. Are these types of musical cues cultural universals? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow declared in 1835 that “‘music is the universal language of mankind” (Longfellow, 1835). Is music a universal language? This is a matter of debate. From the perspective of sociobiology or evolutionary psychology, if music is universal then it must have a basis in the genetics of the human species. Ethnomusicologists point out, however, that even though music is widespread cross-culturally, the meanings, uses, behavioural functions and forms of music vary so widely as to be difficult to tie to any specific biological mechanism, adaptive function, or reproductive advantage. On the other hand, the Harvard Data Science Initiative conducted a comprehensive examination of every culture in the ethnographic record, 5000 detailed descriptions of song performances, and a random sample of field recordings (Mehr et al., 2019). They determined that music is universal, occurring in every society observed. Moreover, while music did vary between cultures, it varied along three variables of social context that were common to all cultures (degree of formality, degree of arousal, and degree of religiosity) and was associated with common behavioural contexts shared by all cultures such as lullabies, healing practices, dance and love. To understand what exactly is universal about music, they proposed that while a fixed biological response could not account for the cross-cultural variability in musical expression, the variability concealed regularities emerging from common underlying psychological mechanisms. Songs with similar behavioural functions in different societies, like infant care and healing, tended to have similar musical features (accent, tempo, pitch range, etc.). A lullaby or healing song in one culture was very similar to a lullaby or healing song in another culture. All cultures put words to their songs, all cultures danced to songs, all songs had tonal centers, and all melodies and rythyms found balance between monotony and chaos (Mehr et al., 2019). Similarly, in 2009, a team of psychologists, led by Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, studied people’s reactions to music they had never heard (Fritz et al., 2009). The research team traveled to Cameroon, Africa, and asked Mafa tribal members to listen to Western music and compared their reactions to Canadian interpretations of the same music. The tribe, isolated from Western culture, had never been exposed to Western culture and had no context or experience within which to interpret its music. Even so, as the tribal members listened to a Western piano piece, they were able to recognize three basic emotions: happiness, sadness, and fear. They rated the music as happy, sad and fearful similarly to Canadian listeners. Music, it turns out, is a sort of universal language. Researchers also found that music can foster a sense of wholeness within a group. In fact, scientists who study the evolution of language have concluded that originally language (an established component of group identity) and music were one (Darwin, 1871). Additionally, since music is largely nonverbal, the sounds of music can cross societal boundaries more easily than words. Music allows people to make connections where language might be a more difficult barricade. As Fritz and his team found, music and the emotions it conveys can be cultural universals. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism Despite how much humans have in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of particular language structures and conversational etiquette reveals tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. North Americans keep more distance, maintaining a large personal space. Even something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from culture to culture. If a professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do students assume she is drinking? In Canada, it is most likely filled with coffee, not black tea, a favourite in England, or yak butter tea, a staple in Tibet. The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. Some travelers, like celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain, pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, while others return home expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. Canadians might express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine, thinking it is gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig for example, while they do not question their own habit of eating cows or pigs. Such attitudes are an example of  3.1. What Is Culture? 145 ethnocentrism, or evaluating and judging another culture based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others (1906). Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric. For example, Canadians tend to say that people from England drive on the “wrong” side of the road, rather than the “other” side. Someone from a country where dogs are considered dirty and unhygienic might find it off-putting to see a dog in a French restaurant. A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy; a shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures, causing misunderstanding and conflict. This is even more significant when ethnocentrism works its way into social scientific perspectives and public policy decision making. Social scientists with the best intentions sometimes travel to another society to “help” its people, seeing them as uneducated or backward, essentially inferior. In reality, these scientists are guilty of cultural imperialism — the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture. Europe’s colonial expansion, begun in the 16th century, was often accompanied by a severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in the lands they colonized as uncultured savages who were in need of European governance, dress, religion, and other cultural practices. On the Northwest coast of Canada, the various First Nations’ potlatch (gift-giving) ceremony was made illegal in 1885 because it was thought to prevent Indigenous peoples from acquiring the proper industriousness and respect for material goods required by civilization. A more modern example of cultural imperialism was the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s in which international aid agencies introduced technologically intensive agricultural methods and hybrid crop strains from developed countries to improve agricultural output in Mexico, India, the Philippines, and Africa, while overlooking indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches that were better suited to the particular region. Ethnocentrism can be so strong that when confronted with all the differences of a new culture, one may experience disorientation and frustration. Sociologists call this culture shock. A traveler from B.C. might find the established “center of Canada” urban culture of Toronto restrictive. An exchange student from China might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other students ask questions — a practice that can be considered rude in China. Perhaps the B.C. traveler was initially captivated with Toronto’s centrality to intellectual and cultural life in Canada, and the Chinese student was originally excited to see a Canadian-style classroom firsthand. But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, their excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave appropriately in the new situation. Eventually, as people learn more about a culture, they recover from culture shock. Culture shock can occur when people do not expect to find cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when conducting participatory observation in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to join a local snowshoe race. He knew he would never hold his own against these experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own culture, he had learned to value victory. it was not worth participating if there was no chance of winning. To the Inuit people winning was enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their environment: How hard someone tried could mean the difference between life and 146 Chapter 3. Culture death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts, learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working together, two nonmaterial values, were indeed much more important than winning. During his time with the Inuit, Barger learned to engage in cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) argued that each culture has an internally consistent pattern of thought and action, which alone could be the basis for judging the merits and morality of the culture’s practices. In sociological research, cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider new values and norms. Insight into unfamiliar sociological phenomena requires the abandonment of preconceptions and prejudgements. The logic of cultural relativism is at the basis of contemporary policies of multiculturalism. However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies, such as Canada — societies in which women have (https://opentextbc.ca/ political rights and control over their own bodies — introductiontosociology3rdedition/wp-content/ would question whether the widespread practice of uploads/sites/164/2016/10/479px- female genital circumcision in countries such as Ruth_Benedict-239x300.jpg) Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted just because it Figure 3.14 American anthropologist Ruth Benedict: “The purpose of anthropology is to make the world has been a part of a cultural tradition. safe for human differences.” (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress/ Wikipedia.) No copyright Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural restriction known (gift from WT staff photographer.) relativism may struggle to reconcile aspects of their Public Domain (https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/ own culture with aspects of a culture they are 076_nyw.html) studying. Pride in one’s own culture does not have to lead to imposing its values on others or using them to evaluate another culture’s practices; A great deal of important information and insight can be overlooked or missed in this way. But nor does an appreciation for another culture preclude individuals from studying it with a critical eye. In the case of female genital circumcision, a universal right to life and liberty of the person conflicts with the neutral stance of cultural relativism. It is not necessarily ethnocentric to be critical of practices that violate universal standards of human dignity because these standards are cultural universals, contained in the cultural codes of all cultures, (even if they are not necessarily followed in practice). Not every practice can be regarded as culturally relative. Cultural traditions are not immune from power imbalances, disagreements, and emancipatory movements that seek to correct them. Research on female genital mutilation (FGM), for example, shows that when practicing communities themselves decide to abandon FGM, the practice can be eliminated very rapidly (WHO, 2020).  3.1. What Is Culture? 147 Feminist sociology is particularly attuned to the way that most cultures present a male-dominated view of the world as if it were simply the view of the world. Androcentrism is a perspective in which male concerns, male attitudes, and male practices are presented as “normal” or define what is significant and valued in a culture. Women’s experiences, activities, and contributions to society and history are ignored, devalued, or marginalized. As a result the perspectives, concerns, and interests of only one sex and class are represented as general. Only one sex and class are directly and actively involved in producing, debating, and developing its ideas, in creating its art, in forming its medical and psychological conceptions, in framing its laws, its political principles, its educational values and objectives. Thus a one-sided standpoint comes to be seen as natural, obvious, and general, and a one-sided set of interests preoccupy intellectual and creative work (Smith, 1987). In part, this is simply a question of the bias of those who have the power to define cultural values, and in part, it is the result of a process in which women have been actively excluded from the culture- creating process. It is still common, for example, to read writing that uses the personal pronoun “he” or the word “man” to represent people in general or humanity as a whole. The overall effect is to establish masculine values and imagery as normal. A “policeman” brings to mind a man who is doing a “man’s job,” when in fact, women have been involved in policing for several decades now. Making Connections: Social Policy and Debate Multiculturalism in Canada One prominent aspect of contemporary Canadian cultural identity is the idea of multiculturalism. Canada was the first officially declared multicultural society in which, as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared in 1971, no culture would take precedence over any other. As he put it, “What could be more absurd than the concept of an ‘all-Canadian’ boy or girl?” (Trudeau cited in Graham,1998). Multiculturalism refers to both the existence of a diversity of cultures within one territory, and to a way of conceptualizing and managing cultural diversity through social policy. As a policy, multiculturalism seeks to both promote and recognize cultural differences while addressing Figure 3.15 Multiculturalism tree planted in Stanley Park to bring the inevitability of cultural tensions. In the 1988 B.C.’s 2012 Multiculturalism Week to a close. The gesture of planting Multiculturalism Act, the federal government officially the tree is meant to “symbolize the deep roots and flourishing growth acknowledged its role “in bringing about equal access and of B.C.’s diverse communities.” Is multiculturalism just a gesture or is participation for all Canadians in the economic, social, it an effective means of recognizing and supporting Canadian cultural, and political life of the nation” (Government of diversity? (Image courtesy of the Province of British Columbia/Flickr.) Canada, as cited in Angelini & Broderick, 2012). CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 2.0/) However, the focus on multiculturalism and culture per se has not always been so central to Canadian public discourse. Multiculturalism represents a relatively recent cultural development. Prior to the end of World War II, Canadian authorities used the concept of biological race to differentiate the various types of immigrants and Indigenous peoples in Canada. This focus on biology led to corresponding fears about the quality of immigrant “stock” and the problems of how to manage the mixture of races. In this context, three different models for how to manage diversity were in contention: (1) the American “melting pot” paradigm in which the mingling of races was thought to be able to produce a super race with the best qualities of all races intermingled, (2) strict exclusion or deportation of races seen to be “unsuited” to Canadian social and environmental conditions, or (3) the Canadian “mosaic” that advocated for the separation and compartmentalization of races (Day, 2000). 148 Chapter 3. Culture After World War II, the category of race was replaced by culture and ethnicity in the public discourse, but the mosaic model was retained. Culture came to be understood in terms of the new anthropological definitions of culture as a deep-seated emotional-psychological phenomenon essential to social well-being and belonging. In this conceptualization, to be deprived of culture through coercive assimilation would be a type of cultural genocide. As a result, alternatives to cultural assimilation into the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture were debated, and the Canadian mosaic model for managing a diverse population was redefined as multiculturalism. Based on a new appreciation of the importance of culture, and with increased immigration from non-European countries, Canadian identity was re-imagined in the 1960s and 1970s as a happy cohabitation of cultures, each of which was encouraged to maintain their cultural distinctiveness. So while the cultural identities of Canadians are diverse, the cultural paradigm in which their coexistence is conceptualized — multiculturalism — has come to be equated with Canadian cultural identity. However, these developments have not alleviated the problems of cultural difference with which sociologists are concerned. Multicultural policy has sparked numerous, remarkably contentious issues ranging from whether Sikh RCMP officers can wear turbans to whether Mormon sects can have legal polygamous marriages. In 2014, the Parti Québécois in Quebec proposed a controversial Charter of Quebec Values that would, to reinforce the neutrality of the state, ban public employees from wearing “overt and conspicuous” religious symbols and headgear. In 2019, the Quebec ban on religious symbols was enacted by governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Party as Bill 21. This position represented a unique Quebec-based concept of multiculturalism known as interculturalism. Whereas multiculturalism begins with the premise that there is no dominant culture in Canada, interculturalism begins with the premise that in Quebec, francophone culture is dominant but also precarious in the North American context. It cannot risk further fragmentation. Therefore the intercultural model of managing diversity is to recognize and respect the diversity of immigrants who seek to integrate into Quebec society but also to make clear to immigrants that they must recognize and respect Quebec’s common or “fundamental” values. Critics of multiculturalism identify four related problems: Multiculturalism only superficially accepts the equality of all cultures while continuing to limit and prohibit actual equality, participation, and cultural expression. One key element of this criticism is that there are only two official languages in Canada — English and French — which limits the full participation of non-anglophone/ francophone groups. Multiculturalism obliges minority individuals to assume the limited cultural identities of their ethnic group of origin, which leads to stereotyping minority groups, ghettoization, and feeling isolated from the national culture. Multiculturalism causes fragmentation and disunity in Canadian society. Minorities do not integrate into existing Canadian society but demand that Canadians adopt or accommodate their way of life, even when they espouse controversial values, laws, and customs (like polygamy or Sharia Law). Multiculturalism is based on recognizing group rights which undermines constitutional protections of individual rights. On the other hand, proponents of multiculturalism like Will Kymlicka (2012) describe the Canadian experience with multiculturalism as a success story. Kymlicka argues that the evidence shows: Immigrants in Canada are more likely to become citizens, to vote and to run for office, and to be elected to office than immigrants in other Western democracies, in part because voters in Canada do not discriminate against such candidates. Compared to their counterparts in other Western democracies, the children of immigrants have better educational outcomes, and while immigrants in all Western societies suffer from an “ethnic penalty” in translating their skills into jobs, the size of this ethnic penalty is lowest in Canada. Compared to residents of other Western democracies, Canadians are more likely to say that immigration is beneficial and less likely to have prejudiced views of Muslims. And whereas ethnic diversity has been shown to erode levels of trust and social capital in other countries, there appears to be a “Canadian exceptionalism” in this regard (Kymlicka, 2012). Media Attributions Figure 3.5 Queen Elizabeth’s Waving Hand Dolls, Windsor, England (https://www.Flickr.com/photos/alex-david/49508456127/in/photostream/) by Alex-David Baldi, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY NC-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-sa/2.0/) licence.  3.2. Elements of Culture 151 3.2. Elements of Culture Values and Beliefs Two crucial elements that define the variability between cultures are values and beliefs. Values are a culture’s standard for discerning desirable states in society (what is true, good, just, or beautiful). They are “culturally defined goals, purposes, and interests,” which comprise “a frame of aspirational reference” as Robert Merton put it (Merton, 1938). Values are deeply embedded and critical for transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs. Beliefs are tenets or convictions that people hold to be true. Individuals in a society have specific beliefs, but they also share collective values. To illustrate the difference, North Americans commonly believe that anyone who works hard enough will be successful and wealthy. Underlying this belief is the value that both work and wealth are good and desirable. In contrast, the Chinese Taoist concept of wu wei (not-doing or not-making) is based on the belief that “the way of things in the world” (the Tao) unfolds spontaneously. Therefore learning how to “not-work” and to allow life to unfold in the integrated and spontaneous way natural to it, without deliberate effort, is seen as a virtue (te) and is a shared, collective value. Values help shape a society by suggesting what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and what should be sought or avoided. Consider the value that North American culture places upon youth. Children represent innocence and purity, while a youthful adult appearance signifies liveliness and sexuality. Shaped by this value, North Americans spend millions of dollars each year on cosmetic products and surgeries to look young and beautiful. Sometimes the values of Canada and the United States are contrasted. Americans are said to have an individualistic culture, meaning people place a high value on individuality and independence. In contrast, Canadian culture is said to be more collectivist, meaning the welfare of the group and group relationships are primary values. As described below, Seymour Martin Lipset used these contrasts of values to explain why the two societies, which have common roots as British colonies, developed such different political institutions and cultures (Lipset, 1990). Values are not static; they vary across time and between groups as people evaluate, debate, and change collective societal beliefs. For example, the change in the laws (the Cannabis Act) governing cannabis use in Canada shifted from prohibition to legalization and regulation in October, 2018, largely because of a change in the underlying values of Canadians. Where cannabis consumption had been presented as a sign of immoral character in the early 20th century campaigns to prohibit it, law makers in the 21st century recognized that a majority of the population disagreed. Many in fact regarded it as medicinal, as a means to attain the positive value of health and well-being. Others regarded it as matter of personal choice or right within a sphere of personal autonomy that should not be interfered with by moral authorities or states. It appears that Canadian values changed priority: from the virtue of abstinence to the virtues of health or personal autonomy. Sociology is interested in the role values play in social life. Practically speaking, values influence or 151 152 Chapter 3. Culture guide choices of action. A person will choose to act in one way rather than another because of their values. However, as described in Chapter 2. Sociological Research (#part-chapter-2-sociological- research), the classical sociologist Harriet Martineau (1838) made a basic distinction between what people say they believe in or value and what they actually do, which are often at odds. Values often suggest how people should behave, but they do not accurately reflect how people do behave. It is easy to value good health, but it is hard to quit eating chips. Marital monogamy is valued, but many spouses engage in infidelity. Regardless, values (1) affect how one perceives or feels towards things (i.e.,they have a significant emotional content); (2) provide a “vocabulary of motives” that allows one to interpret and explain one’s own and other’s behaviour; and (3) create a basis for shared commonalities and trust — Durkheim’s “collective conscience” — that allow cooperation to take place through time. When values are not shared, there is mistrust, which makes collective concerted action more difficult (Thome, 2015). Norms So far, the examples in this chapter have often described how people are expected to behave in certain situations — for example, when buying food or boarding a bus. These examples describe the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are structured, or what sociologists call norms. As opposed to values and beliefs which identify desirable states and convictions about how things are, a norm is a generally accepted way of doing things. Norms define how to behave in accordance with what a society values and has defined as good, right, and important. They define the rules that govern behaviour. Just as values vary from culture to culture, so do norms. For example, cultures differ in their norms about what kinds of physical closeness are appropriate in public. It is rare to see two male friends or coworkers holding hands in Canada where that behaviour often symbolizes romantic feelings. But in many nations, masculine physical intimacy is considered natural in public. A simple gesture, such as hand-holding, carries great symbolic differences across cultures.  3.2. Elements of Culture 153 Most members of the society adhere to norms because their violation invokes some degree of sanction. Sanctions are a form of social control, a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms. They define the punishments and rewards that govern behaviour. These can be understood to operate at various levels of formality. Formal norms are established, written rules. They are behaviours worked out and agreed upon in order to suit and serve most people. Laws are formal norms, (https://opentextbc.ca/ but so are employee manuals, college entrance exam introductiontosociology3rdedition/wp-content/ requirements, and the “no running” rule at swimming uploads/sites/164/2016/11/ pools. Formal norms are the most specific and clearly Figure_03_02_01a-300x199.jpg) stated of the various types of norms, and the most Figure 3.16 In many parts of Africa and the Middle strictly enforced. But even formal norms are enforced East, it is considered normal for men to hold hands to varying degrees, reflected in cultural values. in friendship. How would Canadians react to these two soldiers? (Photo courtesy of Geordie Mott/ For example, money is highly valued in North Wikimedia Commons.) CC BY 2.0 America, so monetary crimes are punished. It is (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ against the law to rob a bank, and banks go to great deed.en) lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable possessions and install anti-theft devices to protect homes and cars. Until recently, a less strictly enforced social norm was driving while intoxicated. While it is against the law to drive drunk, drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behaviour. Though there have been laws in Canada to punish drunk driving since 1921, there were few systems in place to prevent the crime until quite recently. These examples show a range of enforcement in formal norms. There are plenty of formal norms, but the list of informal norms — casual behaviours that are generally and widely conformed to — is longer. People learn informal norms by observation, imitation, and general socialization. Some informal norms are taught directly — “kiss your Aunt Edna” or “use your napkin” — while others are learned by observation, including observations of the consequences when someone else violates a norm. Children learn quickly that picking their nose is subject to ridicule when they see someone shamed by others for doing it. Although informal norms define personal interactions, they extend into other systems as well. Think back to the discussion of fast food restaurants at the beginning of this chapter. In Canada, there are informal norms regarding behaviour at these restaurants. Customers line up to order their food, and leave when they are done. They do not sit down at a table with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or nap in a booth. Most people do not commit even benign breaches of informal norms. Informal norms dictate appropriate behaviours without the need of written rules. Robert Merton’s (1938) famous essay “Social Structure and Anomie” illustrates the difference and also some of the contradictions between values and norms. He argues that, in North American society, a common value is the accumulation of wealth as a sign of success. Success through possession of wealth is a value that “comprises a frame of 154 Chapter 3. Culture aspirational reference.” However at the same time he notes that, in a class and racially divided society, access to legitimate means of accumulating wealth is not equally distributed. “Social structure defines, regulates, and controls the acceptable modes of achieving these goals.” These “acceptable modes” are defined by norms, the “permissible and required procedures for attaining these ends,” and backed up with moral and institutional regulations. As a result, Merton argued that a social strain is built in to the structure of society in which people without access to inheritance, higher education, good jobs, stable living conditions, etc. are forced to either abandon the goal of success or choose illegitimate means like crime to attain it (see Robert Merton: Strain Theory in Chapter 6. Social Interaction (#part-chapter-6-social-interaction)). Crime is therefore the natural outcome of the contradiction between the value of success and the norms to achieve it. The extreme emphasis upon the accumulation of wealth as a symbol of success in our own society militates against the completely effective control of institutionally regulated modes of acquiring a fortune. Fraud, corruption, vice, crime, in short, the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, becomes increasingly common when the emphasis on the culturally induced success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis (Merton, 1938). Making Connections: Sociological Research Breaching Experiments Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011) studied people’s everyday interactions in order to find out how tacit and often unconscious societal rules and norms not only influenced behaviour but enabled the social order to exist (Weber, 2011). Like the symbolic interactionists, he believed that members of society together create a working consensus in different situations which produces social order. He noted, however, that people often draw on inferred knowledge and unspoken agreements to do so. His resulting book, Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), discusses the underlying assumptions and tacit knowledges that people rely on to navigate and make sense of the world. Ethnomethodology is a paradigm of interpretive sociology that studies “the body of common-sense knowledge and the range of procedures and considerations by means of which ordinary members of society make sense of, find their way about in, and act on the circumstances in which they find Figure 3.17 Harold Garfinkel, founder of ethnomethodology in sociology. (Image courtesy of Arlene Garfinkel/Wikimedia Commons.) themselves” (Heritage, 1984). CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) One of his research methods was known as a breaching experiment. His breaching experiments tested sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. In a breaching experiment, the researcher purposely breaks a social norm or behaves in a socially awkward manner. The participants are not aware an experiment is in progress. If the breach is successful, however, these innocent bystanders will respond in some way. For example, he had his students go into local shops and begin to barter with the sales clerks for fixed price goods. “This says $14.99, but I’ll give you $10 for it.” Often the clerks were shocked or flustered because the common sense norms of shopping had been broken. This breach reveals the  3.2. Elements of Culture 155 unspoken convention in North America that the amount given on the price tag is the price. It also breaks a number of other unspoken conventions which seek to make commercial transactions as efficient and impersonal as possible. How people respond to restore order or to provide an account of the norm violation that makes the situation “make sense” was a focus of these experiments. In another example, he had his students engage an acquaintance in conversation, but insist that the acquaintance clarify commonplace remarks. So in response to the question, “How is your girlfriend feeling?” one student experimenter responded “What do you mean, ‘How is she feeling?’ Do you mean physical or mental?” and so on. The exchange ended with the acquaintance feeling flustered, “What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?” In this case, the unspoken norm was the rule that people should not have to explain themselves in ordinary conversation. “What they are saying is understandable and ought to be understood” (Garfinkel, 1967). Certain things ‘go without saying,’ but what things, and why? How are things that “go without saying” communicated or known? Even though ordinary conversation is often ambiguous and full of gaps the norm is that each participant should go along with the understanding that everything is perfectly understood. If they do not go along they face consequences. The unspoken rules of common sense knowledge are very real in this sense. Moreover they have the character of a “self-fulfilling prophecy” to the degree that they are reinforced over and over again by “persons’ motivated compliance with these background expectancies” (Garfinkel, 1967). One has to “go along to get along.” The point of the experiments was not that the experimenter would simply act obnoxiously or weird in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette or common speech, and see what happens. Garfinkel suspected that odd behaviours would shatter conventional expectations, but he was not sure how. The reactions of outrage, anger, puzzlement, or other emotions to the breaking of relatively trivial norms, illustrated the deep level of unconscious investment people have in keeping this web of tacit conventions intact. They are essential in maintaining a common, shared sense of the orderliness and predictability of the world. Without them subjects were often flustered. The social situation threatened to become completely senseless unless the breach was rectified. To challenge the known-in-common background — “what should be plain for everyone to see” — leads to bewilderment. The take away is that society itself is only possible to the degree that bewilderment is kept at bay. There are many rules about speaking with strangers in public. It is okay to tell a woman you like her shoes. It is not okay to ask if you can try them on. It is okay to stand in line behind someone at the ATM. It is not okay to look over their shoulder as they make the transaction. It is okay to sit beside someone on a crowded bus. It is weird to sit beside a stranger in a half- empty bus. These cultural norms play an important role. They let people know how to behave around each other and how to feel comfortable in our community, but they are not necessarily rational. Why should we not talk to someone in a public bathroom, or haggle over the price of a good in a store? Breaching experiments uncover and explore the many unwritten social rules people live by. They indicate the degree to which the world people live in is fragile, arbitrary, and ritualistic; socially structured by deep, silent, tacit agreements with others of which people are frequently only dimly aware. Folkways, Mores, and Taboos Norms may be further classified as mores, folkways, or taboos. Mores (pronounced mor–ays) are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group. They are based on social requirements. Violating them can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal norms. In Canada, for instance, murder is considered immoral, and it is punishable by law (a formal norm). More often, mores are judged and guarded by public sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The mores of the Canadian school system require that a student’s writing be in the student’s own words or else the student should use special stylistic forms such as quotation marks and a system of citation, like APA (American Psychological Association) or MLA (Modern Language Association) style, for crediting the words to other writers. Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name: plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe, and can even result in expulsion. 156 Chapter 3. Culture Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral underpinnings. They are based on social preferences. Folkways direct appropriate behaviour in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. Folkways indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another person. They specify whether to wear a tie and a blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In Egypt, it is not acceptable. In northern Europe, it is fine for people to go into a sauna or hot tub naked. Often in North America, it is not. An opinion poll that asked Canadian women what they felt would end a relationship after a first date showed that women in British Columbia were pickier than women in the rest of the country (Times Colonist, 2014). First date deal breakers included poor hygiene (82%), being distracted by a mobile device (74%), talking about sexual history and being rude to waiters (72%), and eating with one’s mouth open (60%). All of these examples illustrate breaking informal rules, which are not serious enough to be called mores, but are serious enough to terminate a relationship before it has begun. Folkways might be small manners, but they are by no means trivial. Taboos refer to actions which are strongly forbidden by deeply held sacred or moral beliefs. They are the strongest and most deeply held norms. Their transgression evokes revulsion and severe punishment. In its original use taboo referred to being “consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean, or cursed” (Cook & King, 1784). There was a clear supernatural context for the prohibition; the act offended the gods or ancestors, and evoked their retribution. In secular contexts, taboos refer to powerful, moral prohibitions that protect what are regarded as inviolable bonds between people. Incest, pedophilia, and patricide or matricide are taboos. Many mores, folkways, and taboos are taken for granted in everyday life. People need to act without thinking to get seamlessly through daily routines; they can not stop and analyze every action (Sumner, 1906). They become part of routines, or cultural practices. As Dorothy Smith (1999) put it, the different levels of norm enable the “ongoing concerting and coordinating of individuals’ activities.” These different levels of norm help people negotiate their daily life within a given culture, and as such their study is crucial for understanding the distinctions between different cultures. Practices Even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety. Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether commuting in Dublin, Cairo, Mumbai, or Vancouver, many behaviours will be the same in all locations, but significant differences also arise between cultures. Typically in Canada, a passenger finds a marked bus stop or station, waits for the bus or train, pays an agent before or after boarding, and quietly takes a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might have to run, because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. Dublin bus riders are expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. When boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behaviour would be considered the height of rudeness in Canada, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity. In this example of commuting, the different cultural practices are seen as various solutions to a common problem, the problem of public transportation by bus. The problem is shared, but the solutions  3.2. Elements of Culture 157 are different. Practices in general are simply ways of doing things. The idea of a cultural practice indicates that a way of doing things is embedded in a particular culture. They express a particular way of seeing and interpreting the world, a particular type of know-how or practical knowledge, a particular set of social expectations and constraints, and a particular set of customs or traditions. Symbols and Language Figure 3.18 Some road signs are universal. But how would you interpret sign (b)? (Photo (a) courtesy of Taber Andrew Bain/Flickr, ; photo (b) courtesy of HonzaSoukup/Flickr.) CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) Humans, consciously and subconsciously, are always striving to make sense of their surrounding world. Symbols — such as gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words — are tangible marks that stand in for, or represent, something else in an act of communication. Through symbols an understanding of underlying experiences, statuses, states, and ideas is expressed and can be passed from one person to another. They symbolize these underlying contents and convey them as recognizable markers of meaning shared by societies. They are therefore necessarily social, otherwise they could not be used to communicate. In the words of George Herbert Mead (1934): Our symbols are universal. You cannot say anything that is absolutely particular, anything you say that has any meaning at all is universal. The social world is filled with symbols. Sports uniforms, company logos, and traffic signs are symbols. In North America, a gold ring on the fourth finger of the left hand is a symbol of marriage. In many European countries the wedding ring is worn on the right hand. Some symbols are highly functional; stop signs, for instance, provide useful instruction. A police officer’s badge and uniform are symbols of authority and law enforcement. The sight of a police officer in uniform or in a police car triggers reassurance in some citizens, but annoyance, fear, or anger in others. Some symbols are only valuable 158 Chapter 3. Culture in what they represent. Trophies, blue ribbons, or gold medals, for example, serve no purpose other than to represent accomplishments. It is easy to take symbols for granted. Few people challenge or even think about the signs on the doors of public restrooms, but the figures on the signs are more than just symbols that tell men and women which restroom to use. They also uphold the value, in North America, that public restrooms should be gender exclusive. Even though stalls are relatively private, it is still somewhat uncommon to encounter unisex bathrooms. Symbols often get noticed when they are used out of context. Used unconventionally, symbols convey Figure 3.19 Unisex toilet. Symbols are not free of the tensions, conflicts, and power structures of the wider strong messages. A society. (Image courtesy of Bart Maguire/Flickr.) CC stop sign on the BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/ door of a licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/) corporation makes a political statement, as does a semi-truck used as a baricade in a protest. Together, the semaphore signals for “N” and “D” represent nuclear disarmament and form the well-known peace sign (Westcott, 2008). Internet memes — images that spread from person to person through reposting — often adopt the tactics of detournement or Figure 3.20 An exercise in misappropriation used by the French Situationists of the 1950s and detournement in Barcelona 1960s. The Situationists sought to subvert media and political transforms the symbol for “do not messages by altering them slightly — “detouring” or hijacking them enter” into a hand holding a brick, — in order to defamiliarize familiar messages, signs, and symbols. a symbol for insurrection. (Image An ordinary image of a cat combined with the grammatically- courtesy of acb/Flickr.) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 challenged caption “I Can Has Cheezburger?” spawned the internet (https://creativecommons.org/ phenomenon “lolcats” because of the funny, nonsensical nature of its licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) non sequitur message. Even the destruction of symbols is symbolic. Effigies representing public figures are beaten or burned to demonstrate anger at certain leaders. In 1989, crowds tore down the Berlin Wall, a decades-old symbol of the division between East and West Germany, that was itself a symbol of the “Cold War” between communist and capitalist political blocs. Language While different cultures have varying systems of symbols, there is one that is common to all: the use of language. Language is a symbolic system through which people communicate and through which  3.2. Elements of Culture 159 culture is transmitted. Some languages contain a system of symbols used for written communication, while others rely only on spoken communication and nonverbal actions. For Emile Durkheim (1938), language is a prime example of a social fact. It exists only in people’s heads or in their usage of it, yet it exists externally to them “in its own right.” Language acts as an external constraint, it operates throughout a whole society and exists as an entity independent of its individual manifestations. Languages in a strange way are not created by individuals. They precede the individual and continue to exist after the individual is gone. They frequently impose detailed obligations on the individual that they are unaware of (vocabulary or the rules of correct word usage and grammar, for example). They operate independently of people’s wills as if endowed with an external coercive power that controls them (determining what can and cannot be said, or even what can and cannot be thought, for example), rather than the other way around. By entering into language, a child enters into a whole conceptual order in which a place — that of the “child” and the meanings of “child” — is already laid out for them. Some elements of language are fixed by codes. A code is a set of cultural conventions, instructions, or rules used to combine symbols to communicate meaning. Like the codes used in ciphers to encode secret messages, the sender of a message and the receiver of a message have to share the same instructions for how to encode and decode a message correctly or else communication cannot occur. Codes therefore govern combinations of symbols that are permitted (and thereby make sense) and combinations which are forbidden (and thereby produce nonsense). 160 Chapter 3. Culture Grammatical codes for example are sets of instructions that structure the choice of words — nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, etc. — that can be combined to make a meaningful sentence. “The boy cried” is coded correctly and conveys a clear image. “Boy the cried” is incorrectly coded and conveys no image. But codes are often more culturally complex than this in the sense that communication depends on being able to combine and interpret numerous cultural conventions, meanings, symbols, and connotations. For example, in a famous analysis of a Panzani pasta ad, Roland Barthes (1977) noted that in order to “get” the ad one had to be able to read the codes that signified the product’s “Italianness” and associate the product with the freshness of ripe tomatoes and the freedom of shopping in outdoor markets. People competently decode these types of message everyday. But how do they do it? How do they know the instructions that let them decode the messages? Figure 3.21 Panzani ad from One type of deep Barthes” Rhetoric of the Image.” cultural code that What is the ad trying to convince fixes the meaning of the viewer of? (Image from language is the Barthes, 1977.) Fair Dealing binary opposition. A (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/ binary opposition is a eng/acts/c-42/ set of paired terms, page-6.html#docCont:~:text=Exc eptions-,Fair%20Dealing,-Margi considered as nal%20note%3A)/ Canadian mutually exclusive Copyright Act and logical opposites, which structure a whole set or system of meanings. “Male/female” structures how people think about gender. “Culture/ nature” structures how people think about their relationship to nature. “Us/them” structures how people think about politics. Usually in a society one Figure 3.22 Light switch as binary opposition with term in the binary opposition is privileged over two options: On/off. (Image courtesy of Jeff Golden.) another in a way that makes the inequalities that CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ structure institutional organization seem natural. by-sa/2.0/) However, there are no binary oppositions in nature. They are products of a cultural distinction. Durkheim already noted how the opposition between sacred/profane — things that were holy and things that were ordinary — was the central organizing structure or code that defined all religion (see Chapter 15. Religion (#part-chapter-15-religion)). The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1978) expanded on this to argue that irreconcilable opposites were at the heart of all cultural systems. They were “the invariant elements among superficial differences” (Levi-Strauss, 1978). This explained the underlying similarities in myths observed in the ethnographic record between vastly divergent groups. Levi-Strauss argued that myths use stories to resolve problems of binary opposition that are common to the human condition: How are animals and gods different than humans? Why are some people heroes and other people villains? How can humans survive in a harsh and unpredictable nature? The analysis  3.2. Elements of Culture 161 of deep structures of meaning like binary oppositions behind the manifestations of culture — stories, belief systems, values, practices, etc. — became known as structuralism. Language is also constantly evolving. Rules for speaking and writing vary even within cultures, most notably by region and level of formality. Does one refer to a can of carbonated liquid as a soda, pop, or soft drink? When leaving a restaurant, does one ask the server for the cheque, the ticket, l’addition, or the bill? Language also changes as societies create new ideas. In this age of social media technology, people have adapted almost instantly to new nouns such as email, internet and cyberspace, and verbs such as download, text, tweet, google, and blog. Thirty years ago, the general public would have considered these words gibberish. Even while it constantly evolves, language continues to act as a “social fact” to shape social reality. This insight was established in the 1920s by two linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. They believed that reality is culturally determined, and that any interpretation of reality is based on a society’s language. To prove this point, the sociologists argued that every language has words or expressions specific to that language. In Western societies, for example, the number 13 is associated with bad luck. Fear of Friday the 13th is referred to as paraskevidekatriaphobia, high rise buildings often do not have 13th floors, and some evidence even indicates that hospital admissions due to traffic accidents increase on Friday the 13th (Scanlon et al., 1993). In many Asian societies, however, the number four is considered unlucky, since it is pronounced similarly to the word for death in many Asian languages. Consequently, buildings often do not have a fourth Figure 3.23 Elevator in Thailand floor, it is difficult to buy things in sets of four and some research missing buttons 4, 13, 14, 24, 34. In indicates that Asian people are more likely to have heart attacks Vancouver, the chief building officer for on the 4th of the month (Phillips et al., 2001). the city had to issue a bulletin to stop the superstitious practice of skipping The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is based on the idea that people floors because this proved confusing toexperience their world through their language and that they, emergency services (Lee, 2015). (Image therefore, understand the world through the culture embedded in courtesy of Dushan Hanuska/Flickr.) their language. The hypothesis, which has also been called CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ linguistic relativity, states that people initially develop language by-sa/2.0/) to express concepts that emerge from their direct experience of the world, but afterwards language as a system of meaning comes back to shape their experience of the world (Swoyer, 2003). Studies have shown, for instance, that unless people have access to the word “ambivalent,” they do not recognize an experience of ambivalence due to conflicting positive and negative feelings about one issue. If a person cannot describe the experience, the person cannot have the experience. Similarly, at the beginning of this chapter, in Wade Davis’ (2007) discussion about the ethnosphere — the sum total of “ways of thinking, ways of being, and ways of orienting oneself on the earth” — each language is understood to be more than just a set of symbols and linguistic rules. Each language is an archive of a culture’s unique 162 Chapter 3. Culture cosmology, wisdom, ecological knowledge, rituals, beliefs and norms. Each contributes a unique solution to the question of what it means to be human. The compilers of Ethnologue estimate that currently 7,105 languages are used in the world (Lewis et al., 2013). This would suggest that there are at least 7,105 distinct cultural contexts through which humans interpret and experience the world. The Sapir- Whorf hypothesis would suggest that their worlds differ to the degree that their languages differ. However Davis notes that today half of the world’s languages are no longer being passed down to children. When languages die out or fail to be passed on to subsequent generations, whole ways of knowing and being in the world die out with them and the ethnosphere is diminished. Norris (2007) reports that at least 10 once flourishing Indigenous languages have become extinct in Canada over the past 100 years. Of the 11 remaining Indigenous language families, 7 were listed as endangered, mostly endangered or uncertain. Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World Is Canada Bilingual? In the 1960s it became clear that the federal government needed to develop a bilingual language policy to integrate French Canadians into the national identity and prevent their further alienation. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1965) recommended establishing official bilingualism within the federal government. As a result, the Official Languages Act became law in 1969 and established both English and French as the official languages of the federal government and federal institutions such as the courts. Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s governments of the late 1960s and early 1970s had an even broader ambition: to make Canada itself bilingual. Not only would Canadians be able to access government services in either French or English, no matter where they were in the country, but also receive French or English education. The entire country would be home for both French or English speakers Figure 3.24 Starbucks on Rue University, Montreal. (Image courtesy (McRoberts, 1997). of 12th St David/Flickr.) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 However, in the 1971 census 67% of Canadians spoke (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) English most often at home, while only 26% spoke French at home and most of those were in Quebec. Approximately 13% of Canadians could maintain a conversation in both languages (Statistics Canada, 2007). Outside Quebec, the province with the highest proportion of people who spoke French at home was New Brunswick at 31.4%. The next highest were Ontario at 4.6% and Manitoba at 4%. In British Columbia, only 0.5% of the population spoke French at home. French speakers had widely settled Canada, but French speaking outside Quebec had lost ground since Confederation because of the higher rates of anglophone immigrants, the assimilation of Francophones, and the lack of French-speaking institutions outside Quebec (McRoberts, 1997). It seemed even in 1971 that the ideal of creating a bilingual nation was unlikely and unrealistic. What has happened to the concept of bilingualism over the last 50 years? According to the 2011 census, 58% of the Canadian population spoke English at home, while only 18.2% spoke French at home. Proportionately the number of both English and French speakers has actually decreased since the introduction of the Official Languages Act in 1969. On the other hand, the number of people who can maintain a conversation in both official languages has increased to 17.5% from 13% (Statistics Canada, 2007). However, the most significant linguistic change in Canada has not been French-English bilingualism, but the  3.2. Elements of Culture 163 growth in the use of languages other than French and English. In a sense, what has happened is that the shifting cultural composition of Canada has rendered the goal of a bilingual nation anachronistic. Today it would be more accurate to speak of Canada as a multilingual nation. One-fifth of Canadians speak a language other than French or English at home; 11.5% report speaking English and a language other than French, and 1.3% report speaking French and a language other than English. In Toronto, 32.2% of the population speak a language other than French and English at home: 8.8% speak Cantonese, 8% speak Punjabi, 7% speak an unspecified dialect of Chinese, 5.9% speak Urdu, and 5.7% speak Tamil. In Greater Vancouver, 31% of the population speak a language other than French and English at home: 17.7% of whom speak Punjabi, followed by 16.0% who speak Cantonese, 12.2% who speak an unspecified dialect of Chinese, 11.8% who speak Mandarin, and 6.7% who speak Philippine Tagalog. Today, the government of Canada still conducts business in both official languages. French and English are the dominant languages in the workplace and schools. Labels on products are required to be in both French and English. But increasingly a lot of product information is also made available in multiple languages. In Vancouver and Toronto, and to a lesser extent Montreal, linguistic diversity has become increasingly prevalent. French and English are still the central languages of convergence and integration for immigrant communities who speak other languages — only 1.8% of the population were unable to conduct a conversation in either English or French in 2011 — but increasingly Canada is linguistically diverse rather than bilingual in the two official languages. (https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology3rdedition/wp-content/uploads/sites/ 164/2016/10/4414065031_f57df3f5f6_z-300x225.jpg) Figure 3.25 Nowadays, many signs — on streets and in stores — are multilingual. Is this just a more effective way to communicate information or does it signal a shift to a multilingual society? What effect does it have on our culture? (Photo courtesy of Michael Gil/Flickr.) CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) Media Attributions Figure 3.16 Soldiers Holding Hands (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Soldiers_Holding_Hands.jpg) by Geordie Mott, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en) licence. Figure 3.17 Garfinkel2 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garfinkel2.TIF) by Arlene Garfinkel, via Wikipedia, is used under a CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/  3.3. Culture as Innovation: Pop Culture, Subculture, Global Culture 167 Figure 3.26 Pop culture heroes from the early days of pulp fiction. The term “pulp” refers to the cheap and disposable wood-pulp paper the books and magazines were published on. (Image painted by Howard V. Brown, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) Public Domain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/public_domain) In the introduction to this chapter, culture was defined as the source of the shared meanings through which people interpret and orient themselves to the world. While cultural practices are in some respects always a response to biological givens or to the structure of the socioeconomic formation, they are not determined by these factors. Culture is innovative. It expresses the human imagination in its capacity to go beyond what is given, to solve problems, to produce innovations — new objects, ideas, or ways of being introduced to culture for the first time. At the same time, people are born into cultures that pre- exist them and shape them. Languages, ways of thinking, ways of doing things, and artifacts are elements of culture people do not invent but inherit. They are ready-made forms of life that people fit themselves into. Culture can, therefore, also be restrictive, imposing ways of life, beliefs, and practices on people, and limiting the possibilities of what they can think and do. As Karl Marx (1852) said, “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” The next two sections of this chapter will examine aspects of culture which are innovative — high culture and popular culture, subcultures, and global culture — and aspects of culture which are restrictive — rationalization and consumerism. High Culture and Popular Culture Does a person prefer listening to opera or hip hop music? Do they like watching horse jumping or NASCAR? Do they read books of poetry or magazines about celebrities? In each of these choices, one type of entertainment is considered high culture and the other low culture. Sociologists use the term high culture to describe forms of cultural experience that are meant to cultivate and refine people’s sensibility: their ability to appreciate and respond to complex emotional, intellectual, or aesthetic influences. High cultural forms are characterized by formal complexity, eternal values, originality, and authenticity such as is provided by Beethoven’s string quartets, Picasso’s paintings, Sergei Diaghilev’s ballets, or James Joyce’s Ulysses. People often associate high culture with intellectualism, aesthetic taste, elitism, wealth, and prestige because it is not immediately accessible and requires cultivation or education to appreciate. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) argues further that high culture is not only a symbol of cultural distinction, but a means of maintaining status and power distinctions through the transfer of cultural capital: the knowledge, skills, tastes, mannerisms, speaking style, posture, material possessions, credentials, etc. that a person acquires from their family and class background. Events considered high culture can be expensive and formal — attending a ballet, seeing a play, or listening to a live symphony performance — and the people who are in a position to appreciate these events are often those who have enjoyed the benefits of an enriched and exclusive educational background. Their sophistication is the product of an investment in cultural refinement that serves as the basis of status distinctions in society. Nevertheless, high culture itself is a product of focused and intensive cultural innovation and creativity. The term popular culture refers to forms of cultural experience and attitude that circulate in mainstream society: cultural experiences that are well-liked by “the people.” Popular culture events might include folk music, hip hop, parades, hockey games, or rock concerts. Some popular culture 168 Chapter 3. Culture originated in folk traditions like quilting, carnival festivities, fiddle music, spirit dancing, commedia dell’arte and religious festivals. Other pop culture is considered popular because it is commercialized and marketed to a wide audience. Rock and pop music — “pop” is short for “popular” — are part of modern popular culture that developed first with the publication of sheet music and then with recordings. In modern times, popular culture is often expressed and spread via commercial media such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, bestseller publishers, and corporate-run websites. Unlike high culture, popular culture is known and accessible to most people. One can expect to be able to share a discussion of favourite hockey teams with a new coworker, or comment on a current TV show when making small talk in the check-out line at the grocery store. But if you tried to launch into a deep discussion on the classical Greek play Antigone, few members of Canadian society today would be familiar with it. Although high culture may be viewed as artistically superior to popular culture, the labels of high culture and popular culture vary over time and place. Shakespearean plays, considered pop culture when they were written, are now among Canadian society’s high culture. In the current “Second Golden Age of Television” (2000s to the present, the first Golden Age was in the 1950s and 1960s), television programming has gone from mass audience situation comedies, soap operas, and crime dramas to the development of “high-quality” series with increasingly sophisticated characters, narratives, and themes that require full attention and cultural capital to follow (e.g., The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Crown). Contemporary popular culture is frequently referred to as a postmodern culture. This is often presented in contrast to modern culture, or modernity. The term modernity refers to the culture associated with the rise of capitalism in which the world came to be experienced as a place of constant change and transformation, and Figure 3.27 Celebration Town Hall in the Walt Disney culture as a sequence of new or contemporary town of Celebration, Florida, is an example of postmodern “nows” in which the things of today are architecture that playfully borrows and blends elements “modern” and those of yesterday old and no from historical styles (Greek stoa left, grain silo right) longer relevant (Sayer, 1991). instead of inventing new styles in the modern tradition. The Town Hall is also, perhaps unintentionally, ironic In the era of modern culture, or modernity, the because the town has no mayor or local municipal distinction between high culture and popular government. Disney Corporation directly administers the culture framed the experience of culture in a town, which is modelled on Walt Disney World resort’s nostalgic image of small-town America. (Image courtesy ofmore or less a clear way. One side of high trevor.patt/Flickr.) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 culture in the 19th and 20th century was (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) experimental and avant-garde, seeking new and original forms in literature, art, and music to authentically express the elusive, transient, ever-changing experiences of modern life. The other side of high culture was the tradition of conserving and passing down the highest and most refined expressions of human cultural possibility: the eternal values and noble sensibilities contained in the “great works” of culture. High culture had a civilizing mission to either capture and articulate new forms of experiencing the world, or to preserve, pass down and renew what was eternal in the tradition. In both forms, high culture appealed to a limited but sophisticated audience.  3.3. Culture as Innovation: Pop Culture, Subculture, Global Culture 169 Popular culture, on the other hand, was simply the culture of the people; it was immediately accessible and easily digestible, either in the form of folk traditions or commercialized mass culture. It had no pretension to be more than entertainment and the site of momentary enthusiasms and fads — hit songs, bestsellers, popular film stars, fashion trends, house decor styles, dance crazes, etc. In postmodern culture — the form of culture that comes after or ‘post’ modern culture — this distinction begins to break down, and it becomes more common to find various sorts of mash-ups of high and low: Serious literature combined with themes from zombie movies; pop music constructed from recycled samples of original hooks and melodies; symphony orchestras performing the soundtracks of cartoons; architecture that playfully borrows and blends historical styles instead of inventing new ones; etc. Rock music is now the subject of many high brow histories and academic analyses, just as the common objects of popular culture are transformed into symbols with depth of meaning as high art (e.g., Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or Marvel Studios epics based on kid’s comic books of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s). The dominant sensibility of postmodern popular culture is both playful and ironic, as if the blending and mixing of cultural sources, like in the television show The Simpsons, is one big in-joke based on references that only people ‘in the know’ will get. Postmodern culture has therefore been referred to as a “culture of quotations” (Jameson, 1985) in the sense that instead of searching for new, authentic forms, as in avant-garde modernism, or preserving and revering high cultural sensibilities, as in the classics, it recycles and remixes (i.e., quotes) elements of previous cultural production, often with a tongue in cheek ironic attitude. Frederic Jameson (1985) argues that the mixing and blending of postmodern culture is not just a cultural trend or fashion, but reflects an underlying shift in the nature of culture itself. From a historical materialist perspective, if the culture of modernity was tied to the rise of industrial capitalism, the culture of postmodern