We have mentioned culture a few times already. Along with functionalist theory and conflict theory, cultural theory is one of the big theoretical perspectives in sociology.
Also, the textbook’s definition of society itself includes the concept of culture.
And in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber argued that Calvinists’ culture, and not only technology, economics, or power, contributed to the success of capitalism.
When we talked about differences between different countries, students said that different countries have different cultures.
But What is Culture? What does the word Culture mean?
One definition is that it is different from economic and political processes.
This might help, but it’s not a very good definition.
Most discussions of Culture start with the idea that people are different from animals because people have culture. Some animals use tools and some teach each other how to do things. But overall, non-human animals operate by instinct.
What are animals’ instincts? What are human instincts?
Food, water, sex, friendship, play, take care of young, aggression
Unlike most animals, humans are born incomplete; we need other people to teach us how to live. Our instincts are not enough. “Human nature” is not enough.
e.g. Blinking vs. Winking
instinct vs. culture
For example, in the 19th century scientists found feral children—wild children who grew up by themselves in the forest. They could not speak, and did not know how to live or how to interact with other people. No one taught them how to be social, how to eat, how to speak, how to read or write, etcetera. These were some of the only people ever found who had no culture.
Second definition: Culture is something we have to learn from people in our society (family, community, nation).
Social scientists talk about two kinds of culture:
1. material culture
tangible things people make in a society
cell phones, worry beads, houses, cars, clothing, food
2. non-material culture
ideas, meanings, beliefs, values, utopias, moral judgments
Components of culture, or What counts as culture and what doesn’t?
Blinking is not culture, winking is
Roughly five things are thought to count as culture
1. Symbols (or signs) (the difference is not important)
Anything that carries meaning for people who share culture
e.g. The Turkish flag is a symbol; it is meaningful, but it means different things to different people
e.g. a blink is not really a sign; a wink is a sign
Symbols and signs have two parts:
A. The signifier (e.g. the winking eye)
B. The signified (e.g. flirting)
Languages are systems of symbols
Without language, there would be no culture, because we could not pass on our culture to our children and to other people
Does language shape reality?
Two famous anthropologists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, thought so.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language shapes the way we think
different languages have different ideas, categories, distinctions
e.g. Hopi Indians had one word for everything that flies, including insects, planes, pilots
but there’s a different word for birds
e.g. Inuit Indians (eskimos) have many different words for different kinds of snow
Many words from one language cannot be translated into another language
What are some Turkish words or ideas that are hard to translate into other languages?
e.g. words for emotions are different in different languages
German Hindi
Angst Ludja
Shoddenfreude
Beliefs are specific statements that people think are true
e.g. God created the universe
Humans evolved from Apes
Values are standards about what is right and wrong
e.g. individualism versus collectivism
family values
tolerance
freedom
4. Norms
Rules about appropriate behavior
e.g. How do you treat guests? If you are a guest in someone’s home, how are you supposed to act?
Physical differences between cultures, e.g. in clothing, architecture, how people eat
high culture (elite culture)
popular culture (mass culture)
cultural capital (culture used for social climbing; Pierre Bourdieu)
Subcultures and Countercultures
alternative cultures within a nation; small cultures; cultures that rejection the mass culture
e.g. youth cultures; professions; street culture; ethnic groups
The idea that your culture is the main, central, or best culture
Seeing reality only through your own culture
Judging other cultures based on your own culture’s standards
e.g. Indian Suttee; homosexual rituals in
Hard to avoid
Trying to understand other cultures on their own terms
The belief that different cultures have different truths and different ways of being moral, and that no one culture is better than others
The idea that material changes in society occur quickly, while culture (ideas, values, customs, habits, norms) change more slowly.
Sociologist William Ogborn, 1920s and 1930s
Example of deforestation, slow shift to conservation methods
e.g. high price of gas, gradual shift in preferences toward small cars
Functionalism (again!)
combines functionalism that we saw before (structural-functionalism) with idealism (cultural functionalism)
different societies have different basic values
societies and cultures work hard to preserve these basic values.
pieces of culture (symbols, norms, language, material culture, etc.) function to preserve these values
e.g. Why do the Amish refuse to use high technology? Are they dumb?
Why do some Indian communities practice Suttee?
Because cultural practices reflect basic values.
e.g. individual freedom, hard work, community, family, tradition
Like Weber (at times), cultural anthropologist view culture as a system.
Their analyze “cultures” in synchronic, not diachronic, terms. This is part of what makes cultural anthropology unique.
Their approach and methods are interpretive; they see cultures as texts that are open to interpretation, and contain recurring themes and symbolism
Cultural anthropology can tend to be functionalist in its thinking.
Everything in a culture serves a function
Everything in a culture is part of an integrated whole
Society is a system of mutual interdependence that must be kept in equilibrium
Cultures are necessary for human life, serve concrete needs:
For rearing and socializing children
For creating social solidarity and harmony
An implication of these functionalist views is that indigenous cultures should be protected or preserved
i.e. if Westerners tamper with one part of an indigenous culture, they may destroy the whole thing
This view was crucial for anthropology during its early years in the 20th century, when Western powers still operated systems of colonial control in “3rd world” countries.
Conflict (again!)
Marx: culture is determined by whomever has control over the means of production
Critical theory (The
The
a group of intellectuals who were associated with a research institute in
I will focus on Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
They were members of the German cultural elite, and Adorno moved to
saw Nazi populist propaganda, then in
A and H, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, argued that the project of the European Enlightenment had reached an end, and had led to a world of narrow pragmatic rationality and a mass society of passive, uniform consumers
Popular media produced by the culture industry appeals to the lowest common denominator, simple likes and dislikes, in the interest of maximum profits
“No independent thinking must be expected from the audience”
Audiences are zombie-like and amused, but unthinking and gullible
Classical and avante-garde art, however, is much better
Antonio Gramsci (Italian Communist): Elites, and especially the state, have hegemony (total power) over popular culture. This allows them to rule the people without using too much force. Hegemony creates consensus.
Individual psychology and meaning
The need for MEANING is unique to humans, and is only addressed by culture/religion
His perspective is similar in some ways to Durkheim’s, but where Durkheim looks at communities and societies, Berger looks more at individuals
For individuals, religion provides a “sacred canopy” of meaning in an otherwise meaningless and dangerous world
Humans need life to be meaningful, and need to know what is sacred and what is profane; this is thought to be a basic need of humans, but not of other animals
So Peter Berger expects people to turn to religion during times of personal difficulty and uncertainty
When life is difficult, religion gives a sense of security and permanence
e.g. people turn to religion during times of illness, natural disasters, and war
e.g. people turn to cults and new religions because of the stresses and difficulties of modern society
Weber’s sociology of religion/culture
Religious cultures provide comprehensible ideas of theodicy and salvation for laypeople
Why did these societies become more rationalized than others? Why did they develop industry, capitalism, democratic governments, corporations, factories, and high technology earlier than the rest of the world?
Why not the
These were all massive, powerful empires. Before the early 19th century, these areas were much more powerful than
Marx does not have a strong answer to this question, but Weber does.
Weber argues that rationalization is associated with capitalism. It is important to keep in mind that capitalism is different from buying and selling things to make a profit. How is it different?
It is different because in capitalism, the money you make is saved up and then invested in new business ventures. This money that is saved and invested is called capital. Since money was invented in Mesopotamia and
Weber’s answer lies in Protestant Christianity, specifically Calvinism, a sect of Protestantism. Weber’s mother was a devout Calvinist, so naturally he knew a lot about this religion.
Most religions in the world at this time were other-worldly
Good moral behavior in this world is rewarded by going to heaven when you die.
For example, in Catholicism, if you paid enough money to the Church, you would be allowed to go to heaven.
Or if you gave money to poor people, you would make God happy.
Or in Hinduism, by having a good reincarnation.
Calvinism was founded by the 16th-century writer and preacher John Calvin. It is different from most religions because in Calvinism, God is all-powerful. Humans cannot change their fate by changing their behavior or paying money to the Church. God decides what will happen to you. You cannot change your fate.
This idea is called predestination. Your destiny is preordained. This is a bit tough on people, because they have no way of knowing whether they will go to heaven or hell. And even if they knew, there would be nothing they could do about it.
So people wanted to know whether they would go to heaven or hell. And they came to believe that an individual’s material success in this world was a sign from God. God must have made some people rich because those people were chosen to go to heaven. So making money became a sign of being chosen by God.
What about poor people?
They are poor because God has not chosen them.
So rich Calvinists did not give their money to the poor. It’s not because they were mean or greedy. They thought God would not want them to give money to people he had chosen to go to hell. It would be a sin to give money to the poor.
It would also be a sin to be self-indulgent, to live a life of luxury. One’s life should be devoted to God, not to oneself.
1) So early Calvinists became very good at making money, because they saw it as a sign of being chosen by God.
2) They did not share their money with the church or with poor people.
3) They did not spend their money on luxuries.
4) They accumulated money and reinvested it in their businesses. And they kept careful accounts of their money, because they believed that making money was a holy endeavour. They made money the way an Imam reads the Koran or a Jewish Rabbi reads the Torah. With total religious intensity.
5) Later generations of Calvinists lost the old religion as they encountered science and modern thought (
They lost their Protestant Ethic, but kept a strong work ethic.
So capitalists were really good at making money, saving money, and doing accounting.
This led to a general rationalization of society in Protestant countries. After all, Calvinists were so good at making money that they ended up owning lots of factories and businesses. And they became powerful in politics. They were in charge.
They owned factories and integrated them, creating large-scale organizations that were independent of the Catholic Church. In
Calvinists encourage personal discipline among all workers. Individuals should be disciplined internally, not by force.
Calvinists encourage precise time scheduling.
They encourage technical competence.
They encourage impersonality in business. Social connections are less important than individual discipline and technical competence.
Keep in mind how different this argument is from Marx’s understanding of society, where religion is an effect of economic processes, not a cause of economic processes.
Emile Durkheim, the father of French sociology, explained religion sociologically. All societies and all religions, he thought, divided the world between the sacred and the profane
The Sacred The Profane (in Latin, profane means “outside the temple”)
Pure Things that are normal
Magical, have special powers Everyday things
Holy Nothing special
Clean Can be dirty; doesn’t matter
Set apart
Contagious—makes you sacred Contagious—makes you unholy if you tough it
Inspires awe, fear, reverence Boring or disgusting
e.g. in Hinduism, cows are sacred; Brahmins are more sacred than untouchables, who are profane and dirty
in Judaism and Islam, pigs are profane
The Koran and the Torah are sacred
Mosques and Synagogues are sacred
Communities, not individuals, draw lines between what’s sacred and what’s profane
These lines are social and cultural
Different communities draw different lines
Communities do rituals so that they can show themselves what is sacred and what is profane
e.g. Baptists, who are a Christian sect in
Hindus bathe in the
Muslims go to
Christians drink the wine and eat the wafer, which symbolize the body and blood of Christ
Durkheim’s functionalism
Durkheim defined totems as objects a community defines as sacred
They can be anything: a piece of wood, a book, a place, a mountain, a building, an animal, a word, even a person
Religions are based on totems, rituals, and on the distinction between the sacred and the profane
Together, these things create a religion, and religions have several functions for society. Religion turns individuals into a community.
1. Social cohesion
religion unites people
defines what is ethical, defines the rules of the game of life
religion channels our emotions (love, hatred)
2. Social control
Elites can control people through religion
Religion encourages conformity
Religion makes the political system seem legitimate
3. Meaning and purpose
For individuals, religion makes life meaningful
We are all going to die, and we are all going to suffer many times in our live, even the lucky ones like us; religion makes death and suffering meaningful and thus less painful
For Durkheim, “God” is another word for “society”