shared culture

Examples of shared culture in the following topics:

• Race and Ethnicity

  • Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, are often controversial due to their impact on social identity and how those identities influence someone's position in social hierarchies (see identity politics).Ethnicity, while related to race, refers not to physical characteristics but social traits that are shared by a human population.
  • The term ethnicity focuses more upon a group's connection to a perceived shared past and culture.

• The Symbolic Nature of Culture

  • The symbolic systems that people use to capture and communicate their experiences form the basis of shared cultures.
  • This view of culture argues that people living apart from one another develop unique cultures.
  • Cultures are shared systems of symbols and meanings.
  • Alphabets are one example of a symbolic element of culture.
  • Relate the idea that culture is symbolically coded to arguments about the dynamism of cultures

• Cultural Universals

  • A cultural universal is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide.
  • The elements of culture include (1) symbols (anything that carries particular meaning recognized by people who share the same culture); (2) language (system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another); (3) values (culturally-defined standards that serve as broad guidelines for social living; (4) beliefs (specific statements that people hold to be true); and (5) norms (rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members).
  • There is a tension in cultural anthropology and cultural sociology between the claim that culture is a universal (the fact that all human societies have culture), and that it is also particular (culture takes a tremendous variety of forms around the world).
  • The idea of cultural universals—that specific aspects of culture are common to all human cultures—runs contrary to cultural relativism.
  • Discuss cultural universals in terms of the various elements of culture, such as norms and beliefs

• Theories of Culture

  • This model is of particular use in understanding the role of culture in sociological research because it presents two axes for understanding culture: one ranging from objective (society) to subjective (culture and cultural interpretation); the other ranging from the macro-level (norms) to the micro-level (individual level beliefs).
  • If used for understanding a specific cultural phenomenon, like the displaying of abstract art, this model depicts how cultural norms can influence individual behavior.
  • Culture can also be seen to play a specific function in social life.
  • According to Griswold, "The sociological analysis of culture begins at the premise that culture provides orientation, wards off chaos, and directs behavior toward certain lines of action and away from others. " Griswold reiterates this point by explaining that, "Groups and societies need collective representations of themselves to inspire sentiments of unity and mutual support, and culture fulfills this need. " In other words, culture can have a certain utilitarian function – the maintenance of order as the result of shared understandings and meanings.
  • Following Collins, sociologists thus explore whether or not the shared understandings and meanings maintained via cultural practice resist and / or reproduce the ongoing subordination of minority groups.

• Introduction

  • The simplest definition of society is a group of people who share a defined territory and a culture.
  • In sociology, a distinction is made between society and culture.
  • Culture is distinct from society in that it adds meanings to relationships.
  • All human societies have a culture and culture can only exist where there is a society.
  • Sociologists distinguish between society and culture despite their close interconnectedness primarily for analytical purposes: It allows sociologists to think about societal development independent of culture and cultural change (which are discussed in the next chapter in greater detail) even though societal change and development are contingent upon culture.

• Cultural Sociology: Researching Culture

  • How do sociologists study culture?
  • One approach to studying culture falls under the label 'cultural sociology', which combines the study of culture with cultural understandings of phenomena.
  • Because these two neighborhoods are distinct yet share a border, this research site provides numerous opportunities for the exploration of culture.
  • Not surprisingly, cultural conflict is an optimal scenario for the exploration of culture and cultural interaction.
  • First, he found a cultural border that presented cultural conflict.

• Cultural Evolution

  • For instance, the high culture of elites is now contrasted with popular or pop culture.
  • In this sense, high culture no longer refers to the idea of being cultured, as all people are cultured.
  • Most social scientists today reject the cultured vs. uncultured concept of culture.
  • The result is a belief in cultural relativism, which suggests that there are no "better" or "worse" cultures, just different cultures.
  • Biology and nature are deeply connected and share a complex relationship.

• Mechanisms of Cultural Change

  • The belief that culture can be passed from one person to another means that cultures, although bounded, can change.
  • Fundamentally, although bounded, cultures can change.
  • Cultural change can have many causes, including the environment, technological inventions, and contact with other cultures.
  • "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another .
  • The other is a reflection of his biology and his culture: he is human and belongs to a cultural group or sub-culture.

• Animals and Culture

  • Animal culture refers to cultural learning in non-human animals through socially transmitted behaviors.
  • Animal culture refers to cultural learning in non-human animals through socially transmitted behaviors.
  • The question of the existence of culture in non-human societies has been a contentious subject for decades due to the inexistence of a concise definition for culture.
  • This behavior is shared by a group of animals, but not necessarily between separate groups of the same species .
  • The acquisition and sharing of behaviors correlates directly to the existence of memes, which are defined as "units of cultural transmission" by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

• Culture and Society

  • Culture is what differentiates one group or society from the next; different societies have different cultures.
  • A culture represents the beliefs and practices of a group, while society represents the people who share those beliefs and practices.
  • Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas.
  • For instance, the high culture of elites is now contrasted with popular or pop culture.
  • In this sense, high culture no longer refers to the idea of being "cultured," as all people have culture.