The Study of Culture
An Introduction
Topic Outline:
• What is Culture?
• Types of Culture
• Material Culture
• Non-material Culture
• Components of Culture
• Norms
• Values
• Language
• Characteristics of Culture
• Adaptation of Culture
• Modes of Acquiring Culture
• Cultural Variability
• Other Concepts of Cultural
Significance
I. What is Culture?
Definition of Culture:
• is derived from the Latin word “cultura” which
means care or civilization.
“Culture refers to that complex whole which
includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law,
customs, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man/woman as a member of society.”
-Edward Tylor
Robert Redfield
• Culture consists of patterns, explicits and implicit,
of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by
symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements
of human groups, including their embodiment in
artifacts.
• The essential core of cultural consists of traditional
ideas and thier attached values.
II. Types of Culture
Types of Culture
1. Material Culture
2. Non-Material Culture
Material Culture
• refers to the concrete and tangible things
that man creates and uses. They range
from the prehistoric stone tools of the
primitive man to the most advanced
computer of the modern man.
Non-material Culture
• consists of words people use; the habits they follow;
and the ideas, customs, and behavior that any
society professes and to which they strive to
conform. Laws, techniques, lifestyle, and
knowledge are included, too.
• The non-material aspect of culture is the meaning
and substance inherent in culture.
Non-material Culture:
A.Communication Components
B.Behavioral Components
C.Cognitive Components
Communication Components
• Symbols
• Language
• Writings
Behavioral Components
• Norms
–Folkways
–Mores
–Law
–Rituals
Folkways
• custom or practice or way of life which
members of a group share as part of
thier common culture.
• Traditional modes of conduct
• the learned behaviour shared by a
social group
Folkways
• The informal little rules that kind of go
without saying
Taboo
• a prejudice that prohibits the use or
mention of something because of its
sacred nature
–prohibition
–ban
–forbidden to use or say
Behavioral Components
Norms: Guidelines of people
are supposed to follow in their
relation with one another.
Cognitive Components
• Ideas
–Knowledge
• Beliefs
• Values
Examine the next picture.
Social Class
Filipinos' obsession
with titles
what is the proper usage of social and
profession titles?
According to manners expert Judith Martin
Miss Manners;
• Attorney
• Engineer
• Architect
are not legitimate professional titles
So what is the legitimate
title?
Characteristics of
Culture
Characteristics of Culture
Culture is;
–learned and acquired
–shared
–a group product (social)
–transmitted from generation to
generation
–patterned and integrated (unified)
Characteristics of Culture
Culture is;
–adaptive and maladaptive
–compulsory
–cumulative
–dynamic
–diverse
Learned and Acquired
culture is a result of a group's
habits and experiences, passed
on to succeeding generations for
posterity.
Learned and Acquired
Note: No one is born equipped
with a particular language or a
knowledge of religious belief.
Shared
social interaction is made
meaningful by the shared
beliefs, values and expectations
of people.
Shared
what is the primarily
components of culture used to
transmit onto generation to
generation ?
Shared
Language
and
Writings
Shared
The survival of a society requires
that the people provides means by
which their culture can be learned
and transmitted from one
generation to the next.
Shared
The survival of the particular
culture (Philippine Culture) is
in depend on the qualities of its
citizen.
a Group product (social)
• culture is a group product
developed by many persons
interacting in a group.
• This simply points out that no
society is static. It is ever dynamic.
transmitted from generation to generation
• Man improves on what his preceding
generation has accomplished. Culture
may be transmitted by formal
communication, mass
communication, suggestion and by a
system of rewards and punishments.
patterned and integrated (unified)
• A unified or integrated culture is one
where there is comformity between
ideal norms and actual behavior.
Modes of Acquiring
Culture
Modes of Acquiring Culture
• It is said that culture acquisition is
primarily an intellectual process.
• Its material aspects become meaningful
only because of the mind.
• by nature, Man possesses the ability to
learn his cultural environment.
Modes of Acquiring Culture
• Imitation (example)
• Indoctrination (formal training)
• Conditioning (system of reward
and punishment)
Imitation
• process socialization
• imitates the things around him
• language
• parent's behavior
• acquires the values
• imitates even the undesirable traits from peer
group.
• social environment.
Indoctrination
• formal teaching
• training
Conditioning
• The individual acquires a certain pattern of
– belief
– values
– behaviour; and
– action through the process of conditioning.
This process is further reinforced by a system of
reward and punishment.
Cultural Variability
Cultural Variability
These cultural variations within the
cultural universal categories that give rise
to two important concepts:
1. Ethnocentrism
2. Cultural Relativity or Relativism
Ethnocentrism
• universal phenomenon
• This arises from the fact that cultures vary
from one another and each culture defines
reality differently.
• People JUDGED other cultures in terms
of thier own ideas, norms, and values.
Ethnocentrism
• The members of a society have the tendency to
regard thier culture as the best and superior to
those of others.
• For example,
– racial discrimination arise because of the tendency of a
group to regard thier own race as superior to those of
the others.
Lee (1959)
• She argued that most people in general are
inclined to use their own standards to judge
the people of another culture.
• People consider their own mores to be always
good and for them there can be no questions
of the goodness or badness of their mores.
Cultural Relavity
• also known as cultural relativism.
• This concept was first formulated by
William Graham Summer in his book,
Folkways.
He argued;
• that there are no universal moral standards of right
and wrong and good and bad for evaluating cultural
phenomena.
• Standards are relative to the culture in which they
appear.
• Customs can only be judged by how well or how
poorly they fir it with other aspects of culture.
For example;
• Polygamy
– Polygyny
– Polyandry
• Abandoning the sick or the disabled elderly
• Mercy killing
• Vote buying
• Pork meat
• Death penalty
• Exotic foods
• Kissing in public
Other concepts of Cultural
Significance
1. Culture Shock
2. Cultural Lag
3. Cultural Dualism
Culture Shock
• People go to other societies very different
from theirs, they may lose familiar signs and
symbols of social intercourse and may
experience unpleasent events.
Culture Shock
• Culture shock may be experienced by migrants or
by professionals who go to other countries whose
culture they are not familiar with.
Culture Lag
• William Ogburn
• This means the dysfunctions in, or inability of
a given society to adopt a culture
immedediately as a result of the disparity in
the rate of change between the material and
non-material elements of the culture.
Cultural Dualism
• According to Corpuz (2007)
–“One thing that characterizes Filipino
culture dualism.”
