CHAPTER : 2

LESSON 3

ASPECTS OF CULTURE AND

Society
Society and culture is a complex whole.

Are most modern social scientists prefers a

broader understanding of culture?

- The answer is YES

But what is the danger for this?

- The danger is if we will fall to the common

temptation that concepts like family and
religion, culture are so familiar that few think
critically about its meaning or importance.
In a broader understanding of culture,
what are its 3 important aspects?

- In this lesson we ponder on the

broader understanding of culture
focused on three important aspects:
- (1) Shared;
- (2) Socially learned and;
- (3) Patterns of behavior.
SHARED
 Shared:
Culture is collective- it is shared by some group
of people.

"Shared by some group of people" is

deliberately vague because the "group" that"
shares" culture depends largely on particular
interest.

The term that describes this aspect of culture is

called diffusion.
What do we mean by DIFFUSION as an aspect of
culture?

- It is where people borrow ideas, materials,

products, and other inventions from other
societies.

- The process by which an idea, an invention, or

some other cultural item is borrowed from a
foreign source is called diffusion (Ferrante,
1995).
When does this particular opportunity to borrow
occurs?
- The opportunity to borrow occurs every time
two people from different cultures make
contact, whether it is by phone, travel, course
of attending school, or because an inventor
from one country files a patent in another
country.

- (Ferrante, 1995) Opportunities for cultural

diffusion between Spain and the Philippines
occur as a result of more than three hundred
years of Spanish colonization.
How cultural diversity emerged in other nations?

Most nations, and especially those with a history of

colonialism, contain a lot of cultural diversity within
their legal boundaries.

For example:
- the current national boundaries of most African
and South Asian countries are a product of their
history as colonies, not of their indigenous
cultural or ethnic identities.

- More often than not, colonizing powers created

boundaries between" their" colonies to further
their own interests rather than to reflect cultural
distinction and ethnic divisions (Bailey, G., &
Peoples, J. 2014).
Are countries who are ethnically homogenous can remain
culturally pure today?

Even if a given country was ethnically homogenous (similar)

in its past, few remain culturally "pure" today.

The Netherlands (Holland) once was almost entirely Dutch,

but today it contains many immigrants.

Migrants from North Africa, Turkey, South Asia, and other

regions where wages are low now work in European countries
like France, Germany, and Great Britain.

The immigrants enrich their host countries with their

cuisines, festivals, music and other cultural practices.

But they also take jobs, and some native European view
immigrants as a political threat and a danger to their own
way of life and react negatively to the presence of foreigners
(Bailey, G., & Peoples, J. 2014).
Socially Learned
 Socially Learned
Social learning -is the process by which
individuals acquire knowledge from others in
the groups to which they belong, as a normal
part of childhood.

What does enculturation and socialization

means?

The process by which infants and children

socially learn the culture of those around them
is called enculturation or socialization.
Is culture behavior in itself?

- Culture is not behavior itself but it is the knowledge

used to construct and understand behavior.

- It is learned as children grow up in society and

discover how their parents and others around them,
interpret the world.

- In our society we learn to distinguish objects such as

cars, windows, houses, children, and food; the
recognize attributes like sharp, hot, beautiful, and
humid; to classify and perform different kinds of acts;
to evaluate what is good and bad and to judge when
an unusual action is appropriate or inappropriate
(Spradley, J. P., & McCurdy, D. W. 1980).
Are culture transmitted genetically to the
new generations?

- The fact that culture is learned implies that

culture is not transmitted to new generation
genetically, by biological reproduction.

- Culture is not part of a particular human

group's biological makeup but is something
the people born into that group acquire while
growing up in their social environment.
Are cultural and biological differences independent
with one another?

- cultural differences and biological differences

are largely independent of one another.

• Biological/ genetic differences (including “racial" differences)

between human populations such as African, East Asians,
Europeans, and Native Americans do not differ in their culture
because they differ in their genetic makeup.

• They do not differ culturally because they differ

biologically.
- Any human infant is perfectly capable of
learning the culture of any human group or
biological population, just as any child can
learn the language of whatever group she or
he happens to have been born into.

- The main point is, cultural differences and

biological differences are largely independent
of one another.
Is culture socially learned?

• More than just learned, culture is socially

learned.

Can culture be learned by humans through trial

and error?

• Humans do not learn culture primarily by trial and

error.
How do children learn culture?

• The main way children learn culture is by :

- observation,
- imitation,
- communication, and
- inference.

• One important way in which humans

differ in degree, though not in kind, from
other primates is our ability to learn by
imitating and communication with other
humans.
What are the advantages of humans’ reliance on
social learning rather than trial than trial-and-error
learning?

- There are enormous advantages :

First,: anything that one individual learns can be

communicated to others in a group, who can take
advantage of someone else's experience.

 A tasty or nourishing new food discovered by

someone can be incorporated into an entire group's
diet and potentially become part of their cuisine.

 A new way of making an arrowhead that penetrates a

deer's hide more deeply can be adopted by other
group members and thus become part of their
technology.
Second:

The culture than any generation has acquired is

passed down to the next generation, which
transmits it to the third generation, and so on.

 Thus,the knowledge and behavior acquired by

one generation are available to future
generations.

 Bythis process of social learning, over many

generations knowledge accumulates.

 People who invent or discover new things often

receive a lot of social recognition and material
rewards, but every invention grows out of
countless others that make each new possible.
 Therefore, people alive today live largely (not
entirely) from knowledge acquired by previous
generations.

 Members of new generation socially learn such

knowledge through enculturation and, in
modern societies, through formal education in
schools and colleges.

 Probably, all this seems commonsensical and

not all remarkable to you- until you try to
imagine how your life and the entire world
would be different without social learning
(Bailey, G., & Peoples, J. 2014).
Patterns of
Behavior
 Patterns of Behavior:

Even within a single culture, the behavior of

individuals is quite variable.

 Inpart, people act differently because of the

distinctions their cultures make between
males and females, old and young, rich and
poor, nieces and uncles, plumbers and
attorneys, and so forth,

 Actions appropriate for women may not

suitable for men, and vice versa.
 In
addition to the distinctions a culture makes
between kinds of people are those it makes
between kinds of situations or social context:

 a woman acts differently depending on whether she is

interacting with her husband, her daughter, her priest,
her employee, a clerk, and so forth.

Added to this complexity is the fact that each person is

unique: one woman's relationship with her husband is
not exactly the same as that of another's even within
the same culture.
Despite such complications, within a group that
shares culture, there are usually behavioral
regularities or patterns of behavior.
 These patterns often surprise other groups.
 For instance, if in the 1970s you had visited the Yanomamo, an
Amazonian rain forest people, you would have been shocked by
some of the things they do.
 By most cultures' standards of "normal," the Yanomamo- called
"The Fierce People" by ethnographer Napoleon Chagnon- are
unusually demanding and aggressive. Slight insults often meet
with violent responses.
 Quarreling men may duel by engaging in a chest- pounding
contest, during which they often put rocks in their hands and
take turn beating one another on the chest.
 Serious quarrels call for clubs, with which men bash one another
on the head. Fathers encourage their sons to strike them (and
anyone else) by teasing and goading, all the while praising the
child for his fierceness.
If, on the other hand, you had visited the Semai, a
people of Malaysia, you might have been surprised
at their refusal to express anger and hostility.
 Indeed, according to the standards of most
cultures, they are too docile.

 One adults should never strike another- "Suppose

he hit you back?" they ask.

 The Semai seldom physically punish their

children- "How would you feel if he or she died?"
they ask. Whe:n children misbehave, the worst
physical punishment they receive is a pinch on the
cheek or a pat on the hand
The contrasting behavioral patterns of Yanomam and
Semai illustrate another important characteristic of most
human behavior: its social nature.
 Humans are supremely social animals. We seldom do
anything alone, and even when we are by ourselves,
we rely on our cultural upbringing to provide us with
the knowledge of how to act.

 Relationships between people are therefore

enormously important in all cultures.

 Anthropologists pay special heed to the regularities

and patterning of these social relationships, including
such things as how family members interact, how
females and males relate to one another, how political
leaders deal with subordinates, what shamans and
priests do.
The concept of role is useful to describe and analyze
interactions and relationships.

 We commonly say that individuals "have a role" in some

group. Roles usually carry names or labels. Examples are"
mother" in a nuclear family, "student" in a classroom,
"accountant" in a company, and "headman" of a Yanomamo
village.

 Attached to roles are the group's expectations about what

people who hold the role should do. Learning to be a
member of a group includes learning its expectations.

 Expectations include rights and duties. The lights (or

privileges) I have as someone who has a role include the
benefits I and other group members agree I should receive
as a member. My duties (or obligations) as the holder of a
role include what I am expected to do for other members
or for the group as a whole.
Rights and duties are usually reciprocal: My right over you is
your duty to me, and vice versa.

And my duties to the group as a whole are the group's rights

over, and vice versa. If I adequately perform my duties to the
group as a whole, the other members reward me, just as I
reward them for their own role performance.

By occupying and performing a role in a group, I get some of

my own wants and needs fulfilled, and I do so by behaving in
ways that others find valuable and satisfying.

Conversely, failure to live up to the group's expectations of

role performance is likely to bring some sort of informal or
formal punishment. Among Yanomamo, young men who
refuse to stand up for themselves by fighting are ridiculed
and may never amount to anything.
During enculturation into a particular culture,
children learn the kinds of roles that exist and
the expectations people have about the rights
and duties of those roles.

Shared knowledge of roles and expectations

that peoples share are partly responsible for
pattern behavior. (Bailey & Peoples, 2014)
ACTIVITY 1
Identify :

Define the following terms:

1. Diffusion
2. Socialization
3. Culture as shared
4. Culture as socially learned
5. Culture as patterns of
behavior
Expound :

1. Explain why culture is shared.

2. Discuss examples to prove that

culture is socially learned.

3. Discuss the patterns of behavior in

a typical Filipino practice called as
"pamamanhikan."
Accomplish:

In a whole sheet of paper,

write a short essay about the
enormous advantages of
humans' reliance on social
learning rather than trial-and-
¬error learning based on your
own experience and those you
observed from others.
Undertake
A. Let's Go Online! Interactive online activity:
1. Through the search engine of
www.OurHappySchool.com. look for the article, "On
Excision."
2. Read the article and other students'
comments.
3. Answer the question under 'Let's Discuss.'
Write your answer (2-3 sentences) on the FB
comment section below the page using the hash
tags #JudgingOtherCultures and #Excision. >
4. Ask at least two friends (preferably from other
countries) to post comments on your answer.
5. Print screen your published comment and its
thread. Submit it to your teacher.
B. Let's Get Ready!

Read about sociologist

George Ritzer and his
concept called
McDonaldization.

What is it all about?

EVALUATION
Modified TRUE or FALSE.
Write TRUE if the statement is correct. If not, change the underlined
word/ s to make it correct using the space provided before each
number.
___ 1. People borrow ideas, materials, products, and other
inventions from other societies.
___ 2. More often than not, colonizing powers created boundaries
between /I their" colonies to further their own interests rather than
to reflect cultural distinction and ethnic divisions.
___ 3. The process by which infants and children socially learn the
culture of those around them is called diffusion.
___ 4. The fact that culture is learned implies that culture is
transmitted to new generation genetically, by biological
reproduction.
___ 5. One important way in which humans differ in degree, though
not in kind, from other primates is our ability to learn by imitating
and communication with other humans.
Accomplish
Complete the following matrix:
 END OF
CHAPTER 2
Lesson 3