Components of Culture

The following elements of culture render essential contributions to human social life:

1. NORMS – These are guidelines people are supposed to follow in their relation with one another; they are shared rules that specify what is right or wrong and the appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. They indicate what people should or should not do in a specific situation. They indicate what people should or should not do in a specific situation. They indicate the standards of propriety, morality, legality and ethics of a society that are covered by sanctions when violations are made. They also enable people to anticipate how others will interpret and respond to their words and actions. Example: We are supposed to be sad and depressed when a family member dies.

Among the social norms are:

a. Folkways – These are everyday habits; customs, traditions, and conventions people obey without giving much thought to that matter. They are the general customary or habitual ways and patterns of doing things which do not have particular moral and ethical significance. People who violate folkways are labelled slobs or eccentrics but as a rule they are tolerated. Example: barrio folks eat with their bare hands and walk along the streets barefooted. On the other hand, city folks eat using spoon and fork and walk wearing slippers or shoes.

b. Mores – These are the norms people consider vital to their wellbeing and most cherished values; they are special customs with moral and ethical significance, which are strongly held and emphasized. Mores are coercive and compulsory due to their strong moral and legal sanctions. They are society’s code of ethics, moral commandments, and standards or morality.

There are two kinds of mores:

1. Positive mores or duty of the “Thou shall behaviour.” – Duty refers to the behaviour, which must and ought to be done because they are ethically and morally good. Example: Giving assistance to the poor and the needy; “Thou shall love God above all.”

2. Negative mores or taboo or the “Thou shall not behaviour.” – Taboo refers to societal prohibitions on certain acts which must not be done because they are not only illegal, but unethical and immoral. Example: Prohibitions against incest, cannibalism and murder.

People who violate the mores are not only labelled as deviants and unfit for society but may be ostracized, beaten, punished, imprisoned, incarcerated, rehabilitated in mental or penal institutions, exiled, or executed. Examples: criminals who commit heinous crimes, such as rape, murder, plunder and economic sabotage.

c. Laws – These are formalized norms enacted by people vested with legitimate authority. They are group expectations, which have formal sanction by the state. Sanctions are socially imposed rewards and punishments that compel people to obey the norms. Example: The Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, Republic Acts, statutes, and Batas Pambansa.

2. IDEAS, BELIEFS, VALUES

Ideas are non-material aspects of culture and embody man’s conception of his physical, social and cultural world. Example: idea of a model community, idea of an educated person, idea of alternative marriage.

Beliefs refer to a person’s conviction about a certain idea; it embodies people’s perception of reality and includes the primitive ideas of the universe as well as the scientist’s empirical view of the world. Example: belief in spirits; belief in gravity, belief in life alter death.

Values are abstract concepts of what is important and worthwhile. They are the general ideas that individuals share about what is good or bad, right or wrong, desirable and undesirable. They provide the foundation that underlies a people’s entire way of life. The sociologist Robin M. Williams (1970) identified 15 American major value orientations, to wit: high value upon achievement and success, activity and work, humanitarianism, efficiency and practicality, progress, material comfort, equality, freedom, conformity, science and rationality, nationalism and patriotism, democracy, individuality, and racial and ethnic group superiority.

3. MATERIAL CULTURE. It refers to the concrete and tangible objects produced and used by man to satisfy his varied needs and wants. It ranges from prehistoric stone tools and weapons to sophisticated and modern spaceships and weapons of mass destruction. Artifacts refer to simple man-made tools and objects such as a knapped flint, which presents evidence of an ancient culture. A flint or a piece of stone becomes material culture only when it has been modified or fashioned in to tool, a part of a building, or a stone monument. Lundberg and Larcen, 1958, further elucidated this point thus: “An ordinary piece of ground is nothing on the view of point of culture, but if it has become a burial ground, a factory site, or a football field, then it has become a part of culture.”

4. SYMBOLS – It refers to an object, gesture, sound, color or design that represents something “other than itself.” People in a society must agree on the meanings of symbols if they have to be understood. Man’s ability to develop culture and transmit it derives from the human ability to manipulate symbols and to arrive at mutually shared meanings of events. In this regard, language – both oral and written – plays a significant role in the development and transmission of culture. Example: Cross for Christianity; dove for peace.

Different Viewpoints/ Perspectives on Culture

Culture is so complex and diverse that people develop certain procedures, perspectives, evaluations, and interpretations about their own culture and that of others. People develop particular ways of looking at culture. These perspectives include the following:

  1. Culture Relativism – the concept of cultural relativism states that cultures differ, so that a cultural trait, act, or idea has no meaning of function by itself but has a meaning only within its cultural setting. (Horton and Hunt, 1985). Culture is relative, and no cultural practice is good or bad by itself. Hence the elements of a culture should be viewed on their own terms rather that in terms of some assumed universal standard that holds across cultures. It implies that there are different interpretations of the same or similar behaviour by members of different cultures. Every cultural element must be received in terms of its meanings, function or significance in the culture of which it is a part. Example: Marriage is monogamy among the Christians but polygamy among the Muslims. Polygamy is considered immoral and sinful among the Christians but moral and appropriate among the Muslims.
  2. Culture Shock – It refers to the feeling of disbelief, disorganization, and frustration one experiences when he encounters cultural patterns or practices which are different from his. He becomes so accustomed to his cultural milieu that he finds himself disgusted, unsettled, troubled and disoriented when he enters another society with a different culture. David and Julia Jary (1995) define culture shock as the disruption with an unfamiliar or alien culture. Example: When a typical religious person enters a nudist camp, he may experience shock and show disbelief.
  3. Ethnoocentrism – It refers to the tendency to see the behaviors, beliefs, values, and norms of one’s own group as the only right way of living and to judge others by those standards. It is the feeling of superiority for one’s own culture and to consider other cultures as inferior, wrong, strange or queer. Example: Belief in the superiority of the white race; extreme Japanese nationalism, the Philippines as the Pearl of the Orient Seas.
  4. Xenocentrism – This refers to the idea that what is foreign is best and that one’s lifestyle, products or ideas are inferior to those of others. We call this case reverse ethnocentrism. Example: Mania for imported goods and foreign lifestyles; colonial mentality.
  5. Noble savage mentality – It refers to the evaluation of one’s culture and that of others based on the romantic notion that the culture and way of life of the primitives or other simple cultures is better, more acceptable, and more orderly. Example: Some urbanites say that rural lifestyle is better because they have simple needs; fresher air, food and sunshine and youngsters are not exposed to numerous crimes and temptations, which abound in the city.
  6. Subculture – This refers to smaller groups which develop norms, values, beliefs and special languages which make them distinct from the broader society. They arise as society becomes more complex and industrialized. These subgroups may be based on age, social class, occupational, political, educational, or religious affiliations, regions, nationality or ethnicity. Examples: Tagalogs, Ilokanos, Mangyans, Dumagats, Catholics, Protestants, teen-agers, senior citizens, urban dwellers, squatters or urban poor, the elite of exclusive villages.
  7. Counterculture or contra culture – It refers to subgroups whose standards come in conflict with and oppose the conventional standards of the dominant culture. These subgroups become a threat to the dominant society and are considered social problems. Examples: deviants, such as criminals, juvenile delinquents, racketeers, drug addicts, prostitutes, gunrunners and terrorists.
  8. Culture lag – It refers to the gap between the material and non-material culture. Material culture advances more rapidly and is more readily accepted by people such that the non-material culture lags behind. Example, The Muslims readily accept modern means of transportation and communication but remain steadfast in the religious faith; a new invention is introduced before the skills to utilize it are developed.