Culture and Society in Batman the Dark Knight
Reflection Paper
Matt Chetham
Sociology 641: Reflection Paper
September 29, 2017
“Culture the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. With culture people they define themselves, conform to society’s values, and take part in society. Culture involves many different aspects with groups, organizations, language and institutions. With culture it can have a positive and negative influence on the people in it. Emile Durkheim is the “Father” of Sociology he was credited for the Functionalist Perspective. Society is like a machine, each person serves a function or a purpose. This relates to culture because with culture it builds a society. Everyone acts and reacts to society in their own way, in Sociology sociologist look for symbols and interaction in individuals to explain things that occur.
You can relate this with the movie Batman the Dark Knight with Gotham's culture and how Gotham’s culture shaped and created Batman. Gotham having a negative culture is what created Batman and he has a positive influence in Gotham's negative culture. With him cleaning up Gotham from all the copy-cats, small criminals, mobs, and just bad people like the Joker. With Joker the part he plays in Gotham’s culture is simple chaos and destruction. He has
Chapter 3 of The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology explains to the reader what culture is and goes into depth of the different concepts within culture. It defines culture as “the entire way of life for a group of people” (Ferris & Stein, 2010, p. 77). Culture is described as a “lens” through which one views the world and is passed from one generation to the next. This “entire way of life”, according to sociologists, consists of two major categories: material and symbolic culture. Material culture involves the entities associated with a cultural group, such as tools, machines, utensils, buildings, and artwork. When examining material culture, it can convey a great deal about a particular group or society. Symbolic culture embraces ways
This perspective originated with Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist, social psychologist, and philosopher, and the one who formally established and is considered the father of sociology, as the social sciences was not considered an independent field of study separate from philosophy at the time of his writings. Durkheim was interested in how social order and society as a whole remains stable, and used a scientific approach to study society. As Kenneth Allan quotes from Émile Durkheim (2005), “…if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men’s wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter” (p. 136). Using this view of society as a creation of a collective group of individuals that work toward a common objective, functionalism looks at the institutions of society and how they contribute to the society’s stability. These institutions include the government, family, education, medicine, the justice system, the military, mass media, and other similar formal organizations. Each of these institutions are organized to fulfill the different needs of society and are all interdependent. Functionalism focuses on the order and social stability of a society, and credits disorganization and a lack of adaptation to new and changing times as the causes of social
A second understanding that is fundamental to thinking sociologically is a sensitivity to culture. Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around
How culture affects our views Today’s culture changes how we behave and act. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings are excellent examples of this. For example, in The Lone Ranger the narrator is stopped by the police as they said “You’re making people nervous. You don’t fit the profile of the neighborhood."
Culture and society are related to the sociology because society is humanly created organization or system of interrelationships that connects individuals in a common culture. We experience society as something apart from the individuals and interactions that create
Culture refers to socially shared and transmitted patterns of ideas (values, norms, and beliefs) that are instantiated in everyday practices, institutions, and artifacts (Tsai, Levenson, & McCoy, 2006). Culture may play an important role in emotional regulation and expression. Of particular interest is the interplay between collectivistic and individualistic societies and social expectations and customs.
Culture makes up every aspect of person’s life and can range from moral ideas such as values, beliefs, and laws to physical traits like specific objects, behaviors, and symbols. Kerry Ferris and Jill Stein further explains, in The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology, that culture “acts as a lens through which one views the world” (73). Culture allows people with similarities to come together, and others with different cultural views to experience different perspectives. Giving people a sense of belonging, culture defines people’s way of life.
Sociology is a social science that studies social interactions and changes that happen in them. With this knowledge it is important that sociology can be viewed in three separate ways that are completely different. The first theory is Structural Functionalism, which views society as a whole in which a person might view a person as a fully functioning machine (Larkin, Chap 2. Par. 5). This view sees society as many parts called structures (Larkin, Chap 2. Par. 5). A second way to view society is the Conflict perspective, which sees society as branches and families that are in constant
Socio-culture is concerned with a society’s attitude and cultural values (Hitt et al., 2007, p. 47). Barney and Hesterly (2015) define culture as the values, beliefs, and norms that guide societal behavior (p. 30).
Culture directs human actions and the way person present themselves in the society in order to remain in the culture boundaries and accepted by the common community as a respected member of the society. According to David (2001) “Culture is often used to refer to ideas, beliefs, representation, behaviour pattern, practices, artifacts and so forth that are transmitted socially across generations within a group, resulting in pattern of within-group similarity and between group differences”. Moreover, culture is transmitted on an unconscious level from generation to generation, influencing day-to-day behavior and ensuring a people 's survival (Norma, 2001).
One sociological perspective is the Functionalist theory. Functionalism is one of the earliest sociological theories. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a professor and was interested in how society was possible and how society remains stable. This theory focuses on the macro-level of social structure rather than micro-level of everyday life. Functionalism sees society in parts which form a system, the parts depend on each other. Functionalist theory looks at the parts of society such as
Sociology is a science that seeks to explain why humans do the things they do. It is believed that everyone at some point in his life is influenced by one thing or another. For instance, in many homes, children are taught to brush their teeth at least three times a day. This practice is deemed hygienic. Furthermore, the practice of brushing teeth has positive results. In fact, over the years, several companies have produced many different products that can help persons brush their teeth faster, cleaner, electrically and the like. The end result however is more or less the same. Likewise, many sociologists have created several schools of thought, or views of how society works.
The study of culture is the idea of studying humankind. Social Darwinism laws emerged around the 19th and early 20th century and was advocated by Herbert Spencer along with a host of another sociological theorist. Behavior established or related to standard norms in the Western and European standards have evolved over centuries evolved. This idea was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. Distinguishing cultural, nonmaterial culture and material culture include a few elements to keep in mind. Culture (nonmaterial culture) is defined by language, beliefs, values, and symbols in a society. Anthropologist George Murdock (1945: 124) compiled a list of more than seventy cultural universals customs and practices that occur across all societies. Cultural transmission is also the process by which one generation passes culture to the next.
Sociology is the scientific study of social behavior and human groups. It looks at how others influence our behavior; how major social institutions like the government, religion, and the economy affects us, and how we ourselves affect other individuals, groups, and even organizations. Sociologists use their social imagination to understand the relationship between people and how the world shapes us humans. Sociologists use macro and/or microsociology to understand society and relationships. There is the functionalist perspective that believes that everything contributes to an organisms’ survival. They believe that everything fits a cycle. It is similar to Darwin’s theory of evolution in that functionalist say that if something does not improve
Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,