Week 5 - Our Cultural Lives Sociology 1210 PDF

Week 5 Our Cultural Lives Sociology 1210 Dr. Elisabeth Rondinelli Announcements Midterm exam October 15 in class (Week 7) Study guide will be available in Week 6 in Brightspace Reminder: there are weekly study guides in Brightspace. Use these weekly, and to study for...

Week 5 Our Cultural Lives Sociology 1210 Dr. Elisabeth Rondinelli Announcements Midterm exam October 15 in class (Week 7) Study guide will be available in Week 6 in Brightspace Reminder: there are weekly study guides in Brightspace. Use these weekly, and to study for exams No makeup exams will be scheduled unless you have a medical reason Multiple choice; true/false; short answer; questions can be from readings, lecture material, and case studies To prep for Thursday: read ‘goblin mode’ article, up under group work session – two - folder Learning Objectives Summarize how sociologists understand culture Define key elements of culture Understand deviance and how it is produced Explain what is meant by the “social construction of reality” Apply your understanding of culture to a real world case study (Thursday) How do sociologists define and think about culture? Culture The accumulated store of symbols, ideas, material objects and practices associated with social life For sociologists: There is no ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’ way of life All cultures are human constructions Culture is relative: Cultures differ in different places Cultures differ across different time periods Culture is tied to relations of power; there are struggles over culture to both change it and to preserve it (we therefore look at how certain cultural beliefs are justified or challenged)  Culture is useful to us People use culture to: create the world we live in make the world meaningful; to make sense of and order things, including ourselves interpret and understand our experiences Culture provides a limited range of possibilities of what to do, how to think, and how to relate to others in a given context  What are the key elements of culture?  Symbols Values Culture Beliefs Norms Symbols Objects, gestures, and words that represent something more than thing itself - When we give something a name, we create a relationship to it - If we don’t have a name for something, we tend not to notice it - Think here of rise of languages associated with disability - Without words/language: - There is no ability to form a relationship with the past; no ability to convey our experience of the world, or relate to the experience of others Symbols are the basic building blocks of culture “Take the Indian out of the child” Attempt to replace Indigenous symbols (dress, objects, linguistic culture) with ‘European’ symbols and language Beliefs A statement about reality or about what is regarded as true or false - Culture provides a way to know what to consider true and to consider false - What is obvious and true in one cultural context or historical period may not be obvious and true in another, or dismissed altogether - We often defend our beliefs rather than asking if they could be wrong or misguided, or more, based in falsehoods and injustice - This is because our beliefs are so rooted to what makes our lives meaningful, or to our identities “Kill the Indian, save the man” – military officer on belief of the importance of Residential Schools for Indigenous populations Indigenous cultures are doing harm to Indigenous people Mandatory boarding school for Indigenous children is good for them, and Canada These beliefs, against all challenge, were defended with law, with violence, and with government, church, and public support Values Ideas about the worth, goodness, desirability of things - Values are used to make choices; to choose between different courses of action – choosing one thing over another is often boiled down to what we value - Values therefore tell us how paths of least resistance form, because they shape how people participate in social systems - Provide hierarchical orders to aspects of social life; rank one thing as preferable to another - Values are used to rank entire categories of people, and also justify how they are treated and looked upon - Our personal wants and ambitions are connected to cultural values - We hardly recognize how cultural values limit our range of what we consider possible or preferable Christianity above Indigeneity (ways of being spiritual, of prayer, of understanding death and life) English above Indigenous languages European cultural practices above Indigenous cultural practices (for example, ways of eating, ways of dress, ways of greeting, ways of speaking) European ways of relating to nature above Indigenous relations to nature European familial ties and gender relations above Indigenous family and gender relations Norms A social rule of appearance or behaviour that links beliefs and values to rewards and/or punishments a value ‘with teeth’ (Johnson) Examples: students should engage in good time management; if not, there will be consequences employees should be pleasant with their customers; if not, there will be consequences  Norms exist on a spectrum of formality Formal norms of proper and Informal norms involve expectations improper behaviour that are in everyday life and interactions that codified and written in law or are not written down; such norms are rulebooks ‘generally understood’ rules of what is proper and improper Ex. Speed limits; employee protocol manuals; hotel check in policies; ‘no Ex. Avoiding taboo subjects in running at the pool’ signs conversation; standards of proper dress; where to appropriately stand or sit: keeping maximal distance in an elevator; where you sit on a bus  All norms (formal and informal) have consequences for us, because they maintain social control: the enforcement of norms through the use of agents of social control and the process of internalization Two ways that social norms are enforced and reproduced: Agents of social control: people or institutions that play an important role in ensuring that individuals internalize and conform to norms Internalization: process through which a norm becomes part of a person’s sense of self and daily practice; leads to conformity For sociologists, what is deviance and how is it produced?  We know what deviance means when we understand the power of following norms Deviance is an instance of norm violation; it involves actions, appearances, and behaviours that violate social norms (informal and formal) In the English language, words like ‘wrong’, ‘bad,’ ‘problematic’ ‘not normal’/’abnormal’, ‘weird’ ‘perverted’, and ‘unnatural’ are tools to create and label deviant behavior; fear of being labelled this way compels us to avoid certain practices, appearances, and behaviours because we know it will generate disapproval, exclusion, ostracization Crime is an instance of norm violation that is codified in law The sociological view of deviance is different from psychology Sociologists argue instead that: No act or person is intrinsically deviant Deviance is an attribute and product of a society, not the individual What is considered deviant changes from culture to culture and throughout history What is considered deviant today is being contested right now and will change What is considered deviant is different depending on the social statuses a person holds (intersectionality); example: a Black man is expected to conform to different social norms than a white woman, and can be labelled as deviant according to different norms (when we think of disproportionate violence against Black and Indigenous people, for instance, what does a Black man have to do to be considered deviant by police? A white woman?) Physical and verbal abuse resulting from deviating away from European self-presentation, norms of the school, religious practices, and dominant and valued forms of knowledge Shame associated with and attached to Indigenous cultural knowledge and ways of life. This shame endures, according to survivor accounts  Name some informal norms that impact you, and ask: what happens, when we don’t follow these informal rules of what is proper and improper appearance and behaviour? What consequences? How are we treated? We are witnessing a cultural reframing/ Cultural Reframing reclamation What happened was genocide, a collusion between church and state violence Reclamation of symbols, language, and cultural practices in relation to family, gender identity, and the natural environment, governance Why is the study of culture important? Culture establishes status quos, normality, and what comes to be seen as ‘obvious’ – here, the sociologist steps in and examines the assumptions and constructions that make such truths possible, and what cultural elements are used to make certain ‘truths’ appear obvious The sociologist denaturalizes values and the hierarchical orders that accompany them. We ask about how cultural values are associated with exclusion, devaluation, oppression for some and the inclusion, elevation and privilege of others (40) “What is at stake is the dignity and worth of human beings” as well as the “cultural justifications for privilege and oppression” (41) What is the social construction of reality? “Using culture to construct reality lies at the heart of what makes us human” (33) Social construction of reality refers to the process by which language and other symbols are used, shared, and constructed to shape people’s perceptions of what is considered to be real What we believe to be real is shaped by our social interactions and our experience with other people Language is essential to this process Thomas theorem: When cultures define something as real, it will have real consequences, regardless of whether it is actually true Culture is not simply used to describe reality; it constructs reality Acknowledging the social construction of reality allows us to see and understand competing worldviews: a connection of interconnected beliefs, values and attitudes, images, stories, memories that converge to construct a sense of reality and which is maintained in a social system and in the minds of the people who adopt it At root, worldviews are constructions of reality Examples: The American Dream, Christianity Acknowledging the social construction of reality allows us to see how we evaluate and hierarchize cultures Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency to view ideas and practices of other cultures as inferior or incorrect Eurocentrism refers to the tendency to view European ideas and practices as superior to those of other cultures Example of Residential Schools can be seen as rooted to Eurocentric ideas Week 5 Key Concepts Culture Deviance Symbols Crime Beliefs Social construction of reality Values Thomas theorem Norms Ethnocentrism Formal and informal norms Eurocentrism Social control Agents of social control Internalization