One of the first questions that is asked, from sociological perspective is “What are we looking at in society. What are the building blocks?” Values are described as a shared or collective goal that you don’t usually see unless you ask. Values are used as motivators, purpose and rewards and sometimes the reason we get out of bed in the morning. The building blocks of society are the challenges, values, norms, groups and roles. When there is an awareness of these building blocks a societal group is formed. Our status rank is the position we find ourselves within the group (for example the student vs. the professor). Norms and values are organized through structure (the social order or organization) of the group. When approaching values from a cultural perspective, culture is defined as a cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, roles and religion that is acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the totality of a person’s learned and accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or in other words, behavior that is acquired through social learning. A culture is a way of life for a group of people, passed along by communication from one generation to the next. Finally culture can be defined as the collective programming that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another. Taken one step further, multiculturalism is the view
Since the inception of human civilization there have been countless cultures and societies which have helped shape the current world today as we know it. The modern human race dates back more than 200,000 years and in that time frame many cultures have risen to great virtue and success only to deteriorate or cease to exist altogether. First before examining one of these cultures we must know what culture truly means. The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Culture Center defines culture as a “dynamic social system,” containing the beliefs, behaviors, values and norms of a “specific organization, group, society or other collectivity” learned, shared, internalized, and changeable by all members of the society (Watson, 2010). In
Culture can be defined as the behaviours and belief characteristics of a particular social, ethnic,
For the most part, culture is the shared of basic expectations learned by a group as it find possible alternatives or ways to solve its problems. On the contrary, diversity as stated in the textbook, is the different values and cultures among members, and is more than simply an understanding of black versus white. For instance, culture could by identify through artifacts which include visible signs on the wall, how people display emotions, and the ways people address one another. Although, diversity are differences among people that could impact a work environment due to a social identity. For example, there is an increasing number of women and people of color in the workforce.
Culture differences is defined as the integration of social values, beliefs and rules, which guide the behavior from one societal group to another. (Jackson, Guerra, 447) Social construction has shaped many societies, each of them have a different understanding on how social construction defines their life. Societies have practices, traditions, and values, which allows them to have a unique identity. Each one of us comes from diverse cultures that have shaped the way we understand, communicate and perceive the world.
Cultural Relativism – the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards, and not in comparison to another culture
Even though there are set values that are universally known to the public, people do not always follow those values within their groups. However, these people have to act in conformity and abide by the values in public. Although everyone assumes that “imagined communities” contain a common culture, in reality, they really do not due to the fact that there are many body of ideas and practices that are not shared. Many languages are spoken and countless number of religions are practiced in various countries, so these make the “common culture” idea a misconception among citizens of different countries. For example, people tend to think that America consists of culture that is common, but they do not know if the beliefs, values, and practices are universally shared by all Americans. Nonetheless, there was a time when a dominant culture in the United States actually existed. It was during when the religion of Christianity was prominent and when many countries in Europe spoke the English language. It should be known that black Americans, Chinese-Americans, and white Americans have a common culture because of everything they do and do not share. From the common culture would arise the social identity, which can cause problems in diversity. Diversity can be an issue because of the ignorance of all the contrasting values. These issues arise because racial and ethnic identities are compared to one another and both can also relate to genders and sexualities. Nevermore, distinct genders and sexualities often live together now with the same knowledge and values and can still grow into opposite racial identities. Ethnic identities are so different since they are created in family and community life and people want the solidarity from being unique to one
Culture is the system of shared values, beliefs, attitudes and norms that guides what is considered
“Among the elements of social and cultural structure, two are important for our purposes. These are analytically separable although they merge imperceptibly in concrete situations. The first consists of culturally defined goals, purposes, and interests … The second phase of the social structure defines, regulates, and controls the acceptable modes of achieving these goals." (Merton 672,673)
The first concept which I will explore is culture and what this means to different individuals. In simplified terms, culture refers to how we do things and also how we perceive things within a group. Culture is a shared set of assumptions, values, social conventions and perceptions, which are established on concepts of common language and
Social structures are constraints that affect the lives of both the affluent and the indigent members of society. Each society has its own set of social arrangements for example; class, gender and ethnicity are all constraints that each society has to deal with in one way or another. One of the most fundamental of the social structures would be class. Class structure is found in all societies and is the key source of economical inequality. Members of different class groups start their lives with unequal opportunities. This means that when someone is born into a poor household they will undoubtedly remain in the same economical situation they began in. Gender is another important
Culture is described as the symbols that individuals, groups and societies use to make decision of daily life and to assure their values. Culture is a model of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given organization as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal combination, which has worked well enough to think correctly and, so to instruct to new comers as the valid way to observe, consider and feel in relation to these problems. Culture consists of manner, mind-set, values, rituals, religious belief, law (written and unwritten), arts, ideas, custom, belief, ceremonies, social institutions, myths and legends, individual identity and behavior. Cultural pattern classifies are used to describe the dominant beliefs and values. Culture has been called the way of life for an entire society. It is a group or community living together and sharing a set of norms. Culture and society are coexistent. One does not or cannot exist without the other. Culture and society may have some common elements but the two are not the same; they are not identical.
The world is a complicated place and today's standards of society make it even more difficult to live and act in one's own way. I sometimes wonder what life would be like if we could start all over and build a brand new society - a society that guarantees social justice for all groups and full rights to every individual. Would there be a way to make everything and everyone equal? From the beginning society has been judgmental in one way or another, rather it is through racism, sexism, or classicism. There has always been a group of people who declared themselves righteous above all others and if one was not a part of this group he or she was discriminated against simply for not being the same as the dominating group.
The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.
Culture can be defined in many ways due to the fact that everyone can have their own distinct and traditional beliefs and values. “ Culture is fluid, it is not a static entity which one takes out of the box on occasion. It is with us daily” (Cultural Handout). Someone’s culture is set as the characteristics of the group practices in language, religion, types of food, social traits and habits, and the distinct arts and music. There are a variety of different cultures for example, Western Culture, Eastern Culture, Latin Culture, Middle Eastern Culture, and African Culture. All of these different cultures have their own ideas, values, and individualism, laws that are implied, civil rights, and even technology. In our, “ Culture Handout” culture is defined as the tool of the mind, “ it is an individual’s way seeing and interacting within the world. It encompasses one’s values systems, beliefs, and perceptions of the world around them. Race, socio-economic class gender, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location, age, religion language, etc. all impact the formation of culture, but these various context are not culture” (Cultural Handout).
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,