Fiji’s Body Ideal Changed After Television Arrived

• In Fiji, a robust, nicely rounded body was traditionally the ideal for men and women
• “You’ve gained weight” was a compliment; “Your legs are skinny” was an insult
• Cable television arrived in 1995, carrying programs made elsewhere
• For the first time, eating disorders appeared among young people, especially young women (A. Becker 2007)

Culture Is Learned, Shared, and Transmitted

• Culture — the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior
• It includes the ideas, values, and artifacts of groups of people
• Not only the fine arts: a Rembrandt portrait and graffiti, slang words, ice-cream cones, and rock music are all culture

A Society Shares a Territory and a Common Culture

• Society — a fairly large number of people who live in the same territory, are relatively independent of people outside their area, and participate in a common culture
• A society is the largest form of human group
• A city, however populous, is not automatically a society; it depends on wider political, economic, and cultural institutions
• Members learn the culture and transmit it from one generation to the next

Culture Works as a Tool Kit of Taken-for-Granted Assumptions

• Culture supplies a tool kit of habits, skills, and styles for acquiring knowledge, dealing with kin, and entering the job market
• Without social transmission, each generation would have to reinvent communication, “not to mention the wheel”
• You assume theaters will have seats, physicians will keep your information confidential, and a red light means you should stop.

Murdock’s Cultural Universals

• Cultural universals — common practices and beliefs that all societies have developed
• Many are adaptations to essential human needs such as food, shelter, and clothing
• George Murdock (1945) listed athletic sports, cooking, dancing, visiting, personal names, marriage, medicine, religious ritual, funeral ceremonies, and trade
• The practice is universal; its expression varies between cultures and changes over time

Ethnocentrism Judges Other Cultures by Our Own Standards

• Ethnocentrism — the tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others (William Graham Sumner 1906)
• Everyday language carries it: underdeveloped, backward, primitive; what “we” believe is religion, what “they” believe is superstition
• Cultures who treat cattle as food may look down on India’s Hindu culture, which views the cow as sacred
• People from Kuwait may be surprised by the disrespect U.S. children show their parents

Cultural Relativism Views Behavior from Inside Its Own Culture

• Cultural relativism — viewing people’s behavior from the perspective of their own culture
• It places a priority on understanding other cultures rather than dismissing them as “strange” or “exotic”
• It employs the value neutrality Max Weber saw as essential to scientific study
• It does not require accepting every cultural variation; it requires a serious and unbiased effort to evaluate norms, values, and customs in their own context

Eating with Your Hands Can Follow Strict Etiquette

• An outsider may treat cutlery as the standard and eating with one’s hands as a lack of manners
• Across parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, eating with the hands has learned rules about which hand, which foods, sharing, and cleanliness
• The method is not “no etiquette.” It is a different system of etiquette (Mann et al. 2011)

Sociobiology Traces Social Behavior to Genetics

• Sociobiology — the systematic study of how biology affects human social behavior
• Sociobiologists assert that many cultural traits, such as the near-universal expectation that women nurture and men provide, are rooted in genetic makeup rather than learned

Most Sociologists Say Behavior, Not Genes, Defines Social Reality

• Sociobiologists study groups that share characteristics, not “why Fred is more aggressive than Jim”
• They stress the genetic heritage all humans share and show little interest in alleged differences between racial groups or nationalities
• Genetic markers linked to behavior are not deterministic: family cohesiveness and peer groups can override them (Guo et al. 2008)
• Most social scientists accept a biological basis for social behavior, yet hold that people’s behavior, not their genetic structure, defines social reality

Thinking Critically: Three Universals from a Functionalist View

• Why is each practice found in every culture?
• What function does it serve for the society?
• How does its expression here differ from its expression in a culture you know from travel, family, or media?

Language Is a Component of Cultural Capital

• Language is one of the major elements of culture
• Cultural capital (from Bourdieu, chapter 1 lecture): noneconomic assets such as family background and past educational investments, reflected in a person’s knowledge of language and the arts
• A shared language simplifies daily exchange: you ask for a flashlight without drawing one; in England you would ask for a torch
• One term can still carry several meanings: a mouse may be an animal or a computer device; context tells you which one

How Many Languages Are Hiding Inside Kuwaiti Arabic?

Kuwaiti Arabic Records Trade, Migration, and New Technology

Seven Thousand Languages Carry Seven Thousand Cultures

• About 7,000 languages are spoken today, many more than the number of countries
• English makes extensive use of war vocabulary: “conquering” space, “waging war” on drugs, a “killing” on the stock market, “bombing” an exam
• The Sami people of northern Norway and Sweden have a rich diversity of terms for snow, ice, and reindeer (Haviland et al. 2015; Magga 2006)
• An outside observer could gauge what matters to a culture from the words it has multiplied

Language Is the Foundation of Every Culture

• Language — an abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture
• It includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and nonverbal gestures and expressions
• Because language is the foundation of every culture, the ability to speak other languages is crucial to intercultural relations
• During the Cold War, the U.S. government built special Russian-language schools for diplomats and military advisers
• Hospitals, airlines, schools, diplomacy, and international business all depend on people who can move accurately between languages

Language Shapes Reality, Not Only Describes It

• Most people from other cultures cannot make the Sami distinctions about snow and ice, so they are less likely to notice them
• Terms such as mailman, policeman, and fireman reflect, though do not determine, who is imagined in those jobs
• Language communicates a culture’s most important norms, values, and sanctions, which is why the decline of an old language is so sensitive

Interaction Increasingly Takes Place by Text

• More interaction now happens through mobile devices than face to face
• Social scientists are beginning to study how texting language varies across societies and cultures

Platforms Now Help Shape the Words People Use

• Algospeak — altered or substitute words created partly to avoid automated content moderation
• Examples include unalive for die or kill, and creative spellings that remain legible to people while trying to evade a filter
• Users respond to what they believe an algorithm will suppress; the rules are opaque, so the language keeps changing
• A platform is not only a channel for culture. Its technical rules can become a pressure on vocabulary (Steen et al. 2023)

Nonverbal Communication Is Learned, Not Inborn

• Nonverbal communication — the use of gestures, facial expressions, and other visual images to communicate
• Folding your arms in a meeting, hugging a friend in tears, high-fiving a teammate
• We learn these expressions from people who share our culture, including the basic expressions of happiness and sadness (Hall et al. 2019)
• Gently shaking an Arabic coffee cup tells the server, “I am finished”; returning it without the shake can invite another pour (UNESCO; KUNA 2008)
• In many Arab and Asian settings, deliberately showing someone the sole of a shoe can feel insulting; elsewhere it may pass unnoticed

Specialized Communities Build Nonverbal Vocabularies

• In noisy open-outcry trading pits, traders used hand positions to communicate buy or sell, price, quantity, and order type
• Palms toward the body meant buy; palms facing away meant sell
• Similar gestures could mean different things in different trading pits—another reminder that symbols require a shared code
• Watch: “Wall Street Trading Floor Hand Signals” (YancyFX)

Symbols Carry Meanings That Change with Context

• Symbols — the gestures, objects, and words that form the basis of human communication
• The thumbs-up gesture, a gold star sticker, and the smiley face in an e-mail are all symbols
• Many symbols are deceptively simple yet rich in meaning, and they may not mean the same thing in every social context

Thinking Critically: Communication as Cultural Capital

• Which accents, vocabularies, or greetings open doors in a job interview or a hospital ward?
• Which gestures or forms of address signal that someone “belongs”?
• Who had the chance to learn those codes early, and who is learning them now?

Norms Are Established Standards of Behavior

• “Wash your hands before dinner.” “Thou shalt not kill.” “Respect your elders.”
• Norms — the established standards of behavior maintained by a society
• For a norm to become significant, it must be widely shared and understood
• Application varies by context: moviegoers insist on silence during a serious film more than during a slapstick comedy or horror movie

Formal and Informal Norms

• Formal norms — generally written down; specify strict punishments for violators
• Law — “governmental social control”. Formal norms enforced by the state (Donald Black 1995)
• Laws are one example; parking restrictions and the rules of a football or basketball game are also formal norms
• Informal norms — generally understood but not precisely recorded, such as standards of proper dress; laughter is the likeliest response to a violation
• In Kuwaiti hospitality, immediately accepting an offered item can feel too eager; a polite refusal followed by the host’s insistence lets both sides display modesty and generosity

Mores and Folkways

• Norms are also classified by their relative importance to society
• Mores — norms deemed highly necessary to the welfare of a society, often because they embody its most cherished principles; violation brings severe penalties
• Kuwait, like other nation-states, has strong mores against murder, treason, and child abuse; these are also institutionalized as formal norms
• Folkways — norms governing everyday behavior; violation raises comparatively little concern, such as walking up a down escalator

Sanctions Are Penalties and Rewards

• A driver uses the emergency lane to pass traffic. Someone throws a bottle onto the pavement. A graduate wears shorts to a bank interview.
• Sanctions — penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm
• Positive sanctions: a pay raise, a medal, a word of gratitude, a pat on the back
• Negative sanctions: fines, threats, imprisonment, stares of contempt

Table 3-1: Norms and Sanctions

• Sanctions attached to formal norms tend to be formal: the team is penalized 15 yards; the driver pays a fine
• Sanctions for informal norms vary: the candidate in shorts may lose the job, or be so brilliant that the attire is overlooked

Sanctions Reflect a Culture’s Values and Priorities

• The entire fabric of norms and sanctions reflects a culture’s values and priorities
• The most cherished values are the most heavily sanctioned; less critical matters carry light, informal sanctions
• During the coronavirus pandemic, people debated whether governments should sanction failure to comply with distancing and face-covering orders

People Do Not Follow Norms in All Situations

• Weak enforcement invites evasion: drivers may use a phone at the wheel when they expect no camera or police officer
• Apparent violation can be conformity to a group’s norms: friends may pressure a driver to speed because “everyone on this road does it”
• Norms conflict: stopping to let another car merge may honor courtesy but violate the impatient expectations of drivers behind you

Acceptance of Norms Changes with Social Conditions

• Acceptance of norms shifts as the political, economic, and social conditions of a culture change
• A rule that once seemed natural can become inconvenient, contested, or unacceptable when everyday conditions change
• In 2020, refusing a handshake shifted quickly from seeming unfriendly to signaling care; elbow greetings and greater distance temporarily became normal
• The behavior did not change meaning by itself. The surrounding social condition changed its meaning

The Same Action Can Follow One Norm and Violate Another

• Which formal norm would the friend violate?
• Which informal peer norm might encourage the same action?
• What values collide: loyalty, fairness, honesty, compassion, or something else?
• Predict one sanction from the university and one from the peer group

Values Are Collective Conceptions of the Good and Desirable

• Values — collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper, or bad, undesirable, and improper, in a culture
• Values may be specific (honoring one’s parents, owning a home) or general (health, love, democracy)
• Members of a society do not uniformly share its values; angry political debates show that much
• Values, norms, and sanctions connect: a culture that values marriage may prohibit adultery and make divorce difficult; one that values private property has stiff laws against theft
• A culture that values public safety requires seat belts and fines dangerous driving
• A university that values learning and fairness requires attendance, cites sources, and sanctions plagiarism

Values Differ Across Cultures: Private Tutoring in Japan and South Korea

• In Japan, young children spend long hours with private tutors preparing for selective-school entrance exams; the services carry no stigma and are highly valued
• In South Korea, people complain that “cram schools” give affluent students an unfair advantage; since 2008 the government has limited their hours and imposed fees
• Some say the policy lowered expectations and tried to make South Koreans “more American” (Mani 2018; Ramstad 2011; Ripley 2011)

Culture Wars Cross Borders Through Media and Institutions

• Culture war — the polarization of society over controversial cultural elements
• The conflict may concern the language used in schools, what people may wear in public institutions, who owns museum objects, or what online platforms permit
• A local dispute can become global when news, entertainment, brands, and social media carry the symbols across borders
• Calling it a culture war can clarify the value conflict, but it can also exaggerate two unified camps when opinions are more varied

Do Cultural Values Divide the World into Civilizations?

• Some scholars interpret international conflict as a clash of civilizations (Huntington 1993)
• The main idea: cultural and religious identities, rather than national or political loyalties, are becoming the prime source of international conflict
• Critics say that political interests, institutions, and inequality cannot be reduced to culture
• Speaking of a single “civilization” also disguises major differences within every large religious, national, or regional category (Said 2001)

Functionalists: Shared Values and Norms Provide Stability

Functionalists Ask What a Cultural Practice Does

• Traffic rules coordinate strangers who may never speak to one another
• Shared calendars and timetables let schools, workplaces, and families plan together
• Hospitality rituals build trust and define obligations between host and guest
• Graduation ceremonies mark a transition and reaffirm the value placed on education

Conflict Theorists: Culture Maintains the Privileges of Powerful Groups

• A common culture may exist, but it serves to maintain the privileges of certain groups
• While protecting their self-interest, powerful groups may keep others in a subservient position
• Dominant ideology — the set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests
• First used by Georg Lukács (1923) and Antonio Gramsci (1929); in Marx’s view, a capitalist society’s dominant ideology serves the ruling class

Hegemony and Culture Industry

• Hegemony — leadership maintained partly by winning consent, so one group’s view of the world comes to feel natural or simply “common sense”
• Schools, media, workplaces, and other institutions can help reproduce dominant ideas about what is normal, legitimate, or desirable.
• Culture industry — described mass-produced entertainment that standardizes cultural goods and consumer desires
• We may appear to have enormous choice, while repeatedly encountering similar formats, stories, celebrities, and ideas
• A streaming service may offer thousands of titles while promoting the same formats, stars, and story structures

Can a Complex Society Have a Core Culture?

• A core culture would be a set of widely shared values and practices that helps coordinate social life
• Complex societies also contain regional, generational, occupational, religious, and digital subcultures
• Culture is not the same as nationality or language: two people may share both and still have very different cultural backgrounds
• Ann Swidler (1986): culture supplies a tool kit that people use to build different strategies of action—even when they disagree
• The useful question is not simply “one culture or many?” but which practices are widely shared, which are contested, and which institutions give some greater influence

Fiji Through Two Perspectives

• Functionalist question: What function did the older body ideal serve, and what was destabilized?
• Conflict question: Whose interests could the imported ideal serve, and through which institution?

Shared Nationality Does Not Mean Identical Culture on Campus

Cultures Adapt to Climate, Technology, Population, and Geography

• Despite universals such as courtship and religion, great diversity exists among the world’s cultures
• Inuit hunters in northern Canada, dressed in fur, share little with farmers in Southeast Asia dressed lightly for hot, humid rice paddies
• Cultures adapt to specific circumstances: climate, level of technology, population, and geography
• Within a single nation, segments of the population develop patterns that differ from the dominant society, a culture within a culture

Subcultures Share a Distinctive Pattern Within the Larger Society

• Subculture — a segment of society that shares a distinctive pattern of customs, rules, and traditions that differs from the pattern of the larger society
• Rodeo riders, residents of a retirement community, workers on an offshore oil rig
• Members participate in the dominant culture while engaging in unique and distinctive forms of behavior
• Many subcultures are characteristic of complex societies

Argot Marks Insiders from Outsiders

• Argot — specialized language that distinguishes a subculture from the wider society
• Parkour runners do King Kong vaults and tic tacs (Kidder 2012); vapers distinguish substitutes from cloud chasers (Tokle and Pedersen 2020)
• Argot lets insiders understand words with special meanings and creates patterns of communication outsiders cannot follow
• Interactionists emphasize that language and symbols let a subculture feel cohesive and maintain its identity

Gangs Can Develop Subcultures

• Some gangs develop their own roles, rules, slang, symbols, loyalty expectations, and sanctions
• A member may conform closely to the group’s norms while violating laws or the wider society’s mores
• Recruitment, crime, labeling, and social control return in the later chapter on deviance

India’s Call Centers Formed a Subculture of Virtual Migration

• Young Indian employees serving U.S. and European customers must be fluent in English and adopt Western values and the grueling U.S. work pace
• They live in virtual migration: not quite in India, not in the United States
• Days off come only on U.S. holidays such as Thanksgiving, not on Diwali; when they are free, no one else is
• They formed a tight-knit subculture of hard work, Western luxury goods, and shared contempt for the slow, often rude callers they serve (Krishnamurthy 2018)

Culture Shock Can Be Mutual

• Culture shock — feeling disoriented, uncertain, out of place, or even fearful when immersed in an unfamiliar culture
• Visiting a Japanese home, you remove your shoes. Entering the bathroom, you see identical slippers and put on a pair. Your host reacts with horror: you have worn the toilet slippers into the living room (McLane 2013)
• In Kuwait, a guest may politely refuse an offer before accepting after the host insists. A visitor who says “yes” immediately may seem eager; a visitor who treats the first “no” as final may seem ungenerous
• A guest who does not shake the finjan may keep receiving coffee; the server is following the code, not ignoring the guest
• The visitor’s habits may shock the host as much as the host’s shock the visitor
• Customs that seem strange to us may be normal and proper elsewhere, and ours may look odd from there

Powerful Forces Link Us to Cultures Elsewhere

• Despite our preference for our own way of life, students may study Leo Tolstoy’s novels, Pablo Picasso’s art, or Nancy Meyer’s films
• They may watch Korean dramas, Turkish series, Indian films, or follow social movements abroad through satellite TV and social media
• Two social processes make these links possible: innovation and diffusion

Innovation: Discovery and Invention

• Innovation — the process of introducing a new idea or object to a culture
• Discovery — making known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality: the structure of DNA, a new moon of Saturn
• Invention — combining existing cultural items into a form that did not exist before: the bow and arrow, the automobile, television, Protestantism, democracy
• Sharing the new knowledge with others is a significant part of discovery

Diffusion Spreads Cultural Items Between Societies

• Diffusion — the process by which a cultural item spreads from group to group or society to society
• People in Asia are discovering coffee; North Americans discovered sushi, now a supermarket item
• The move changed sushi: Americans treat it as take-out, while the authentic way is to sit at the bar and talk with the chef about the day’s catch
• Diffusion travels through exploration, military conquest, missionary work, mass media, tourism, the Internet, and the fast-food restaurant

A Smartphone Makes the Global Village Concrete

• Its minerals, components, assembly, software, financing, and marketing may connect workers and firms across several countries
• The same device carries Korean music, Turkish dramas, Arabic podcasts, U.S. platforms, and messages from family in Kuwait
• Globalization does not erase the local: users select, translate, remix, and regulate what arrives
• It also distributes gains and risks unevenly, which is why functionalists and conflict theorists ask different questions about the same phone

Let’s Discuss: How Does Globalization Affect You?

• How are you affected by globalization? Which aspects do you find advantageous, and which objectionable?
• How would you feel if the customs you grew up with were replaced by another country’s culture or values?
• How might you try to protect your culture?

Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society

McDonald’s Had to Localize Its Menus

• Until 2001, McDonald’s ran overseas operations from headquarters in suburban Chicago
• After false starts, executives relied on local advice to develop menus and marketing
• Japan, more than 3,700 restaurants: the Mega Tamago Burger (beef, bacon, fried egg); India: the vegetarian McAloo Tikki potato burger, and vegetarian-only restaurants since 2013 (Gasparro and Jargon 2012; Ritzer 2018)

Technology Accelerates Diffusion and Transmits Culture

• Technology — “cultural information about the ways in which the material resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires” (Nolan and Lenski 2015)
• New developments no longer wait for journals; press conferences carried on the Internet announce them
• Platforms and recommendation systems make some languages and cultural products much more visible than others
• The English language and North American culture have disproportionate online visibility, steering the direction of diffusion
• Translation, subtitles, and short-form video accelerate diffusion, but access and visibility remain uneven

Language and Algorithms Create Partly Separate Online Worlds

• The Internet is shared infrastructure, but it is not one shared cultural experience
• Language, location, searches, follows, and watch history help recommendation systems decide what becomes visible
• People in the same city can therefore inhabit different media worlds and know different versions of life around them
• Translation can cross a language boundary—but first the content has to reach someone who wants to translate it

Ogburn: Material and Nonmaterial Culture

• William F. Ogburn (1922) distinguished two elements of culture
• Material culture — the physical or technological aspects of daily life: food, houses, factories, raw materials
• Nonmaterial culture — ways of using material objects, plus customs, beliefs, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication
• A road contains both: cars, lanes, and signals are material; “red means stop,” where pedestrians look, and driver etiquette are nonmaterial
• Nonmaterial culture is generally more resistant to change than material culture

Culture Lag: When Nonmaterial Culture Struggles to Catch Up

• Culture lag — the period of maladjustment when the nonmaterial culture is still struggling to adapt to new material conditions
• In 2010, manufacturers introduced electronic cigarettes; airlines, which ban smoking, and the Food and Drug Administration scrambled to respond (Kesmodel and Yadron 2010)

Kuwait’s Daily Life Uses Several Language Repertoires

• Formal Arabic, Kuwaiti Arabic, English, and many migrant languages meet in classrooms, hospitals, shops, homes, and workplaces
• Bilingualism uses two languages in a setting and treats both as legitimate; multilingualism extends that question beyond two
• People also code-switch. They move between languages or varieties as the audience, topic, and setting change
• The sociological question is not only which languages people know, but which variety carries authority in each institution

Foreigner-Directed Arabic and Gulf Pidgin Arabic Are Not the Same

• Foreigner-directed Arabic, also called Arabic Foreigner Talk (AFT), is when an Arabic speaker adjusts or simplifies how they speak for someone they think has limited Arabic
• Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) developed when people with different first languages repeatedly needed a shared way to communicate in Gulf workplaces and households
• The difference: AFT is one speaker adjusting their Arabic in a conversation; GPA is a shared way of speaking that grows through repeated contact across a community (Dashti 2013; Salem 2013; Avram 2014)
• Calling either one merely “broken Arabic” hides the adaptive work speakers do to communicate

Three Perspectives Ask Different Questions About Multilingualism

• Functionalist: How does a shared language coordinate schools, hospitals, and workplaces? Where are interpreters or common terms necessary?
• Conflict: Who decides which language counts as professional or legitimate? Who bears the cost of adapting?
• Interactionist: How do a word choice, accent, greeting, or switch into English change the meaning of a face-to-face encounter?

Initiating Policy: Nations Vary in Their Tolerance for Many Languages

• China extends Mandarin instruction in Tibet from high school down into elementary schools
• Singapore makes English the medium of instruction but lets students study their mother tongue: Chinese, Malay, or Tamil
• Québec: the French-speaking Québécois are 83 percent of the province but 25 percent of Canada; a 1978 law mandated French-language schooling
• In the 1995 referendum, Québec voted to remain in Canada by only 50.5 percent; language both unifies and divides this nation of 37 million

Before You Leave

• Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior. It feels like nature because you learned it so early
• Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by our standards; cultural relativism understands them from inside, without surrendering judgment
• Norms set standards, sanctions enforce them, and values explain why some norms are guarded so fiercely
• Functionalists see culture as shared stability; conflict theorists ask whose interests a dominant ideology serves
• Culture is plural (subcultures, countercultures) and always moving (innovation, diffusion, culture lag)