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SA REVIEWER Chapter 3: The Study of Culture Culture - Latin word culture = care/ cultus = civilization - Culture consists of material

things (e.g. art, tools, weapons) and non-material aspects (e.g. general beliefs, patterns of behavior) - Robert Redfield said: Culture is an organized body of conventional understandings manifest in art and artifacts, which, persisting through tradition, characterizes a human group. Types of Culture A) Material culture - Refers to the concrete and tangible things that man creates and uses. B) Non-material culture - Consists of words people use, the habits they follow, the ideas, customs, behavior, of any society profess to which they strive to conform. Components of Culture 1. Norms = social norms = guides or models of behavior which tell us what is proper and which are appropriate or inappropriate, right or wrong. = usually in the form of rules, standards, or prescriptions a. Folkways customary/repetitive patterns/habits of everyday life that specify what is socially correct and proper in everyday life. b. Mores extremely important and are considered vital for the groups welfare and survival. It defines what is morally right and morally wrong. c. Laws enforced formally by a special political organization. Regulates and controls peoples behavior and conduct. 2. Values = represent the standards we use to evaluate the desirability of things = defines what is right, good and moral = Robin Williams identified the major value orientations of many societies: a. Achievement and Success b. Activity and work c. Moral Orientation d. Humanitarianism e. Efficiency and practically = Jaime Bulatao, SJ, discovered the ff. values held highly by the Filipinos: a. Emotional closeness and security in the family. b. The authority value. c. Economic and social betterment. d. Patience, suffering, endurance. 3. Language = refers to a system of symbols that have specific and arbitrary meaning in a given society. = it enables us to talk and think about the past and the future 4. Fashions, fads, crazes = they are more short-lived social norms with which people are expected to comply with Characteristics of Culture 1. Culture is learned and acquired. 2. Culture is shared and transmitted. 3. Culture is social. 4. Culture is ideational. 5. Culture gratifies human needs. 6. Culture is adaptive. 7. Culture tends toward integration. 8. Culture is cumulative. Adaptations of Culture = According to Joseph Fichter, here are four principal ways in which process of culture adaptation occurs. A) Parallelism -Refers to the independent development of a culture characteristic in two widely separated cultures. B) Diffusion - Common process of patterns coming back and forth from one culture to another. C) Fission - A process that can be traced historically when a long established society breaks up into two or more independent units.

Functions of Culture = Culture has two major uses: (1) as a category and (2) as a tool in prediction. = other functions: 1. Culture serves as trademark or special feature that distinguishes one society from another. 2. Culture brings together, contains, and interprets the values of society in a more or less systematic manner. 3. Culture provides one of the most important bases for social solidarity. 4. Culture provides a blueprint of, as well as the materials for social structure. 5. The culture of any society is the dominant factor in establishing and molding the social personality. 6. The culture of a society provides behavioral patterns. = Culture provides individuals with the meaning and direction of his existence. Modes of Acquiring Culture 1. Imitation 2. Indoctrination = formal teaching or training 3. Conditioning = reward and punishments found in the cultural system Cultural variability A) Ethnocentrism = a universal phenomenon = Dorothy Lee pointed out that ethnocentrism is a 2-way stress. B) Cultural relativity = also known as cultural relativism = this theory was formulated by William Graham Sumner in his book Folkways = the attempt to judge behavior according to its cultural context Other Concepts of Cultural Significance A) Subcultures B) Culture shock C) Cultural lag = expounded by William Ogburn = inability of a given society to adopt a culture immediately as a result of the disparity in the rate of change between the material and nonmaterial elements of the culture. D) Culture dualism

= According to Onofre D. Corpuz, one thing that characterizes Filipino culture is cultural dualism.

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