Chapter 3: Culture - sociology

1 unit 268 Culture AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES69 Chapter 3 CultureChapter 4 SocializationChapter 5 Social Structure and SocietyChapter 6 Groups and FormalOrganizationsChapter 7 Deviance and Social ControlEnrichment ReadingsChapter 3 James Gilbert Cultural Explanations for Teen Violence, page 106 Chapter 4 NCTA Report onTelevision Violence, page 136 Chapter 5 Wayne S. Wooden Social Functions of Malls, page 168 Chapter 6 George Ritzer The McDonaldization of Society, page 200 Chapter 7 Elijah Anderson The Police and the Black Male, page 236 CultureCultureCHAPTER370 YourSociologicalImaginationUSING71 SectionsLearning ObjectivesThe crowing rooster wakes Jabu veryearly. Her mother has already carrieda bucket of water from the communi-ty tap and put it on the fire to heat. Breadwrapped in newspaper and lying on theground is ready to cut and spread with wraps her crying baby brother in ablanket and ties him on her back, soothinghim with a melody as she begins her goats must be milked and the cattleneed to be watered and let loose to her chores, Jabu quickly washes up anddons her school uniform.

2 Her friends arewaiting for her on the dirt path. She gossipsand laughs with the girls as they half-walk,half-run the two miles to school. Jabu stopsto greet a village elder who inquires after herfather who is working in the distant diamondmines. By now she is worried because thetime is late. As she approaches the school,Jabu sees that the daily school assembly hasalready begun. Unluckily, the headmistressdecides to set an example and calls Jabu upfront to slap her hand with a ruler. Aftersinging hymns and the national anthem, Jabumoves quickly to her first class under a largeacacia tree in the first glance, Jabu s life appears very dif-ferent from yours. If you use your sociologi-cal imagination to look beyond the surfacedifferences, though, you will see that bothyou and Jabu attend school and church; obeyauthority figures; and have strong familybonds, supportive friends, parents who work,and ties to the larger community.

3 Whensociologists look at societies around theworld they discover similar patterns in allcultures. This Chapter will look at the com-mon elements that make up Culture . Basis of and and and Diversity andSimilarityAfter reading this Chapter , you will be able to explain how Culture and heredity affectsocial behavior. describe how language and Culture arerelated. name the essential components of Culture . discuss how cultural diversity is promotedwithin a society. understand the role of ethnocentrism insociety. identify similarities in cultures around OverviewVisit the sociology and YouWeb site at click on Chapter 3 Chapter Overviewsto preview Chapter 2 Culture and Social StructuresThe Basis Of CultureKey Terms Culture reflexes society drives instincts sociobiologyCulture and SocietyCultureconsists of the knowledge, language, values, customs, andphysical objects that are passed from generation to generation amongmembers of a group.

4 On the materialside, the Culture of the United Statesincludes such physical objects as skyscrapers, fast-food restaurants, cellphones, and cars. On the nonmaterialside, American Culture includesbeliefs, rules, customs, family systems, and a capitalist economy. Culture helps to explain human social behavior. What people do anddon t do, what they like and dislike, what they believe and don t believe, andwhat they value and discount are all based on Culture . Culture provides theblueprint that people in a society use to guide their relationships with is because of Culture that teenage girls are encouraged to compete for aposition on the women s basketball team. It is from Culture that teenage boyscome to believe that pumping iron is a gateway to defines how peo-ple in a society behavein relation to others and tophysical objects.

5 Althoughmost behavior among ani-mals is instinctual, humanbehavior is learned. Evenreflexes and drives do notcompletely determine howhumans will behave, becausepeople are heavily influencedby , values, customs,and physical objects that areshared by members of a societyComing from a different Culture than that of the other sunbathers doesn't prevent thisAmish family from enjoying a day at the 3 Culture73 Culture and society are tightly interwoven. One cannot exist without theother, but they are not identical. A societyis a group of people who live ina defined territory and participate in a common Culture . Culture is that soci-ety s total way of behavior, then, is based on Culture . Since people are not bornknowing their Culture , human cultural behavior must be learned. In this section we will examine the relative importance of biology in and HeredityInstinctsare genetically inherited patterns of behavior.

6 Nonhuman animals,especially insects, are highly dependent on instincts for survival. Humaninfants, in contrast, cannot go very far on instincts alone. Instincts are notenough to solve the problems that humans is Culture more important than instinct in determininghuman behavior?If humans were controlled by instinctsalone, they would all behave in the same way with respect to thoseinstincts. If, for example, women had an instinct for mothering,then allwomen would want children, and all women would loveand protect their children. In fact, some women do not want tohave children, and some women who give birth abuse or aban-don their instincts to dictate the type of shelter to build, thekind of food to eat, the time of year to have children, or when tomate, humans are forced to create and learn their own ways ofthinking, feeling, and behaving.

7 Even for meeting basic needs suchas those involving reproduction, food, and survival, humans rely onthe Culture they have does heredity affect behavior?Of course, Culture is notthe only influence on human behavior. Genetic inheritance plays arole. For example, you may have heard people argue about how muchof personality is a result of heredity and how much is the product ofthe environment. (This is sometimes called the nature versus nurture argument.) Using studies of identical twins, researchers have determined thatabout half of your personality traits are determined by your genetic makeupand about half by environmental factors (Tellegen et al., 1993).In addition, humans have reflexes simple, biologically inherited, auto-matic reactions to physical stimuli. A human baby, for example, cries whenpinched; the pupils of the eyes contract in bright light.

8 We also have bio-logically inherited drives,or impulses, to reduce discomfort. We want to eat,drink, sleep, and associate with others. You should realize, however, that genetically inherited personality traits,reflexes, and drives do not control human social behavior. Culture channelsthe expression of these biological characteristics. Boys in some NativeAmerican cultures, for example, are taught not to cry in response to is very different from boys in Jewish and Italian cultures, who are taughtto pay more attention to physical discomfort and express it more openly(Zborowski, 1952, 1969).instinctsinnate (unlearned) patterns ofbehaviorreflexautomatic reaction to physicalstimulusdriveimpulse to reduce discomfortStudies of identical twins show thatabout half of your personality traitsare specific territory inhabitedby people who share a common culture74 SociobiologySociobiologyis the study of the biological basis of human behavior.

9 Itcombines Darwin s theory of natural selection with modern do sociobiologists view human behavior? According to Darwin stheory of evolution, organisms evolve through natural selection. The plantsand animals best suited to an environment survive and reproduce, while therest perish. Sociobiologists assume that the behav-iors that best help people are biologicallybased and transmitted in the genetic code(Degler, 1991; Wright, 1996). Behaviorsthat would contribute to the survival ofthe human species include parentalaffection and care, friendship, sexualreproduction, and the education do not draw asharp line between human andnonhuman animals. They claim thatnonhuman animals also act onknowledge as when baboons uselong sticks to pull ants from ananthill for a meal. Many non-human animals, claim socio-biologists, show intelligenceof a kind formerly thought to be unique to humans, such as the ability to use lan-guage (Begley, 1993; Linden,1993a).

10 What are some criti-cisms of sociobiology?The major criticism of socio-biology is that the impor-tance placed on geneticscould be used as a justifica-tion to label specific races assuperior or inferior. Critics ofsociobiology also point out that there is too much variation in societiesaround the world for human behavior to be explained on strictly biologicalgrounds. They believe that the capacity for using language is uniquelyhuman and that humans have created a social life that goes far beyond whatheredity alone could there a middle ground? Some common ground has emerged in thisdebate. A growing body of sociologists believe that genes work with culturein a complex way to shape and limit human nature and social life. Theywould like this relationship to be further examined (Lopreato, 1990; Weingart,1997; Konner, 1999).