SOCY111+Study+Unit+4+Culture+_English_.pdf

Sociology about culture

1. Study Unit 4
Culture, Socialisation &
Identity

2. Outcomes
After engaging with the materials and activities in this study unit you should be
able to:
•Define and explain the concepts, “culture”
•define and discuss relevant concepts and theoretical approaches on culture and
socialisation;
•describe the elements of culture (non-material & material culture);
•Cultural diversity including “counterculture”, “subculture”, “ethnocentrism”, “cultural
relativism”
•Define and explain concept of socialisation;
•discuss the nature-nurture debate, including a focus on the importance of social
contact;
•discuss agents of socialisation (Primary and secondary socialisation)
•explain the theories of George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman and Charles Cooley on
socialisation and identity;
•discuss the impact of globalisation on identity

3. Readings


Stewart, P. & Zaaiman, J. 2020.
Sociology: A Comprehensive South
African Introduction. Second edition.
Cape Town: Juta Publications.
•Chapter: 3 and 6

Ferrante (2016):
PDF on eFundi

4. Introduction
•Definitions of culture
•Theoretical perspectives on understanding culture
•Elements of culture
•Cultural diversity
•Socialisation/how does culture inform socialisation

5. Complex definition of culture
•Many definitions
•1952-1964 different definitions being used
•Ways culture has been used
•The “old” & “new” ideas of culture
•The old (geographical, checklist of defined attributes)
•The new contemporary S.A (culture no longer defined by geography)
•Culture as a way of life distinctive to a particular group brings dilemma
•Current def: Patterns that we have for living
•Beliefs we hold about how to live in the social world
•Practices, behaviours and material objects that accompany them
•Changes over time, but has elements of continuity with past
•Patterns of culture vary from place to place, across time
•All humans assume some form of culture
•Symbols (e.g. language or religion)
•Material things (books or churches)

6. Theoretical approaches on culture
•Ideas of culture in structural functionalism
•Society comprised of institution/structures working
together to maintain order
•Culture seen as stabilising mechanism
•Value and norms
•Shape and bring together members of society to work towards
common goals
•Values are standards held of what is considered good or bad
•Norms are behaviours accompanying the value system (rules:
what is the normal or correct way of doing things)
•E.g. Family
•Nuclear family (normal in the west)
•Extended family (likely to be normal in the rural areas of S.A)
•Culture is defined/fixed/no room for change

7. Theoretical approaches on culture
•Symbolic interactionism on culture
•Concerned with the individual (micro sociology)
•Society viewed as a space to develop meaning
•Symbols
•Shared cultural representation of reality
•E.g. Language (words stand for objects, behaviours or places)
•Clothes: carry meaning for the one wearing them
•Culture as a way in which humans create meaning and
make sense of their social worlds
•Emphasis on how one makes and finds meaning in their social
world through shared symbols
•Unlike structural functionalism, there is room for change
due to different meanings and interpretations.

8. Theoretical approaches on culture
•Conflict perspective on culture
•Power tussles in society
•Different groups with different interests and who are in
opposition with one another
•Clash in interest of different social classes, genderes,
nationalities, sexualities
•Little or no access to social power
•Marxism, feminism, queer theory, post-colonial theories
•Society is not equal (groups privileged more than
others), S.A one of the most unequal countries
•Apartheid conflated race and culture
•Eg being black or white meant it was assumed you carried with
you a particular way of acting and doing.

9. Theoretical approaches on culture
•Conflict perspective on culture cont.
•S.A still has a ‘racial habitus’
•Habits and attitudes are affected by race
•‘Cultural hegemony’
•Though composed of diverse interest groups, one way of being or
a set of interest comes to be held more important than others
•The values and interests of one group become imposed on and
considered a norm or universal.

10. Theoretical approaches on culture
•Post-colonial perspective on culture
•Culture in colonised and previously colonised spaces
worked to maintain hierarchies of privilege
•Post-colonial theorists
•Recognition that people in post-colonial settings needed to
reclaim cultural autonomy
•Make decisions about what is valuable
•Post-colonial spaces as hybrid
•Mixture of cultural form
•E.g biomedical + traditional healers to deal with illness

11. Elements of culture
•Cultural forms vary but contains universals which
will exist in all cultural settings
•Culture divided into non-material & material forms
•Non-material culture
•Symbols and behaviours we use daily (Beliefs, values, norms,
symbols and language )
•Material culture
•Things that accompany these practices (clothing, food,
churches)
•Culture changes
•Links can be made to the past, template for the present
and map to the future

12. Cultural diversity/multiculturalism
•Groups within one geographical setting may have subgroups who
perform life differently be it language or religious beliefs
•Exacerbated by rise in migration & urbanisation
•Allows us to analyse how structures of societies work
•Dominant culture (influential cultural group)
•Subcultures/minority (follow slightly different patterns to the
dominant)
•Counter-culture (ways of being directly oppose the widely
accepted)
•The problem of ethnocentrism
•Evaluating others from the view point of your culture instead of understanding
the different set of norms
•Solution to ethnocentrism= cultural relativism
•Culture judged within its own terms
•E.g. Christianity and polygamy vs Traditional African communities
•Xenophobia (fear of strangers or foreigners)

13. Culture summary
•Culture challenging to define
•Many theoretical approaches on culture
•Structural functionalism
•Symbolic interactionalism
•Conflict perspectives
•Post-colonial perspective
•Elements of culture
•Cultural diversity

14. Thank you.