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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Sociology and the study of culture


Sociology - The Study of Culture

Sociology deals with society and every society has its own culture. Sociologists have collected information on different cultures like the culture we have in the United States. So what is culture and why do we have it?

Culture is the things that are passed on to the future generations of society like material objects, behaviors, beliefs, language, values, and norms. The material components of culture are objects or items that can be touched, felt, and tasted. The nonmaterial components of culture are behaviors, beliefs, language, values, and norms and these components are the nonphysical products of society. Every culture has many different values even in the United States.

Robin Williams says there are fifteen core values in the United States. The first one is achievement and success. The people in the United States value winners over the losers. People tend to remember the people like Michael Phelps, who won the 2008 olympics, and forget the people who were his competition. The second value is activity and work and one of the reasons is because in the United States a common belief is that if you do enough hard work then you can achieve success. This is also evident through the fact that people in the United States spend more time on the job than most people in the industrialized world. The third value is moral orientation or the ethical judgements regarding what is good, bad, right, or wrong. The people of the United States have toward absolute ethical judgments. The forth value is humanitarianism meaning many people are generous, value philanthropy, and help when there is a crisis. The fifth value is efficiency and practicality which makes people in the United States seek out the most benefit for the least amount of effort. Efficiency and practicality are a value because it helps achieve goals quickly and easily. The sixth value is progress and is the belief that making changes and proposing ideas will improve society. The seventh value is material comfort and is why many people in the United States want more things even if they already have lots of material stuff. The eighth value is equality or the notion that all people, regardless of skin color, gender, social class, and religious background, should be treated equally. The ninth value is freedom or the ability to do what you want, as long as you do not hurt other people.The tenth value is external conformity or the want to fit in with people. The eleventh value is science and secular rationality. This means that the use of the scientific method, which uses logic, order, and rational thought, is what people believe in to attain knowledge. The twelfth value is nationalism and patriotism or civil religion when it takes on an almost religious context. The thirteenth value is democracy or the ability to vote for the people who will represent you. The fourteenth value is individual personality or looking at the world as an individual instead of a group. The fifteenth value is racism and related group superiority and although it is not a good value it is an issue in the United States. Even though the United States has its own unique values it still has different cultures within its society.

Culture is the things that are important enough to pass down to the next generation. Subcultures are subsets of cultures that have there own specific beliefs, norms, and values. Countercultures are groups that go against the dominant cultures values. This means that even though there is a culture that everyone sort of follows, there are subcultures within that take a slightly different approach.Then there are countercultures that go against what the culture of the area dictates. Although they are all forms of culture. There are several terms that go along with what culture is about.

These are six terms that will help explain what culture is in some since. The first term is values which are the standards that a culture uses to determine what is good, bad, right, or wrong. The second term is norms which are conditional and they are rules that tell you the appropriate behavior to use depending on the cultures values. The third term is sanctions which are the punishment or reward you receive based on if you go with or against the norm. The forth term is folkways which are informal and less series than norms. The fifth and sixth terms are closely related but opposites of each other and they are mores and taboos. Mores are the most important norms and taboos are acts that are socially unacceptable.

These are some of the things that sociologists know about culture and why we have it. There are many different kinds of cultures in the world. All of the cultures are different in some way but they all have the same basic concepts like behavior, language, and values.

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