might impact less developed parts of the world.3 How can the spread of pop culture across the globe (a) bring different societies closer together and (b) cause tensions within and between societies?
Characteristics of Culture
Culture has certain characteristics in common that define and illustrate the purposes it serves for our societies. What are these common elements?
All people share a culture with others in their society.
Culture provides the rules, routines, patterns, and expectations for carrying out daily rituals and interactions. Within a society, the process of learning how to act is called socialization (discussed in Chapter 4). From birth, we learn the patterns of behavior approved in our society.
Culture evolves over time and is adaptive.
What is normal, proper, and good behavior in hunter-gatherer societies, where cooperation and communal loyalty are critical to the hunt, differs from appropriate behavior in the information age, where individualism and competition are encouraged and enhance one’s position and well-being.
The creation of culture is ongoing and cumulative.
Individuals and societies continually build on existing culture to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Your culture shapes the behaviors, values, and institutions that seem natural to you. Culture is so much a part of life that you may not even notice behaviors that outsiders find unusual or even abhorrent. You may not think about it when handing food to someone with your left hand, but in some other cultures, such an act may be defined as disgusting and rude.
The transmission of culture is the feature that most separates humans from other animals.
Some societies of higher primates have shared cultures but do not systematically enculturate (teach a way of life to) the next generation. Primate cultures focus on behaviors relating to obtaining food, use of territory, protection, and social status. Human cultures have significantly more content and are mediated by language. Humans are the only mammals with cultures that enable them to adapt to and even modify their environments so that they can survive on the equator, in the Arctic, or even beyond the planet.
Thinking Sociologically
Imagine playing a game of cards with four people in which each player thinks a different suit is trump (a rule whereby any card from the trump suit wins over any card from a different suit). In this game, one person believes hearts is trump, another assumes spades is trump, and so forth. What would happen? Try it with some friends. How would the result be similar to a society with no common culture?
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativity
“What’s morally acceptable? It depends on where in the world you live” (Poushter 2014). In a study of 40 countries around the world about what is morally acceptable—and not—researchers at the Pew Research Center found that 78% of respondents around the world say extramarital affairs are morally unacceptable (84% in the United States), compared with 46% responding that premarital sex was unacceptable (30% in the United States). Other morality issues included gambling (62% unacceptable), homosexuality (59%), abortion (56%), alcohol use (42%), divorce (24%), and contraception use (14%). The point is that what is morally acceptable varies across societies, causing judgments of others based on one’s own standards. The tendency to view one’s own group and its cultural expectations as right, proper, and superior to others is called ethnocentrism—ethno for ethnic group and centrism for centered on. However, even within a diverse society, what is considered morally acceptable can vary between subgroups and change over time. In the United States, for example, 56% of respondents in 2017 felt it is not necessary to believe in God to have good values, compared to 49% in 2011 (Smith 2017a). As you can see, social values, beliefs, and behaviors can vary dramatically within one society and from one society to the next. These differences can be threatening and even offensive to people who judge others according to their own perspectives, experiences, and values.
If you were brought up in a society that forbids premarital or extramarital sex, for instance, you might judge many from the United States to be immoral. In a few Muslim societies, people who have premarital sex may be severely punished or even executed, because such behavior is seen as an offense against the faith and the family and as a weakening of social bonds. It threatens the lineage and inheritance systems of family groups. In turn, some Americans would find such strict rules of abstinence to be strange and even wrong.
As scientists, sociologists must rely on scientific research to understand behavior. The scientific method calls for objectivity—the practice of considering observed behaviors independently of one’s own beliefs and values. The study of social behavior, such as that cited earlier by the Pew Research Center, requires both sensitivity to a wide variety of human social patterns and a perspective that reduces bias. This is more difficult than it sounds because sociologists themselves are products of society and culture. All of us are raised in a particular culture that we view as normal or natural. Yet not every culture views the same things as “normal.”
Societies instill some degree of ethnocentrism in their members because ethnocentric beliefs hold groups together and help members feel that they belong to the group. Ethnocentrism promotes loyalty, unity, high morale, and conformity to the rules of society. Fighting for one’s country, for instance, requires some degree of belief in the rightness of one’s own society and its causes. Ethnocentric attitudes also help protect societies from rapid, disintegrating change. If most people in a society did not believe in the rules and values of their own culture, the result could be widespread dissent, deviance, or crime.
Unfortunately, ethnocentrism can lead to misunderstandings between people of different cultures. The same ethnocentric attitudes that strengthen ties between some people may encourage hostility, racism, war, and genocide against others—even others within the society—who are different. Virtually all societies tend to “demonize” their adversary—in movies, the news, and political speeches—especially when a conflict is most intense. Dehumanizing another group with labels makes it easier to torture or kill its members or to perform acts of discrimination and brutality against them. We see this in the current conflict in Syria in which both sides in the conflict feel hatred for each other. However, as we become a part of a global social world, it becomes increasingly important to understand and accept those who are “different.” Despite current hostile images, bigotry and attitudes of superiority do not enhance cross-national cooperation and trade in the long run—which is what the increasing movement toward a global village and globalization entails. The map in Figure 3.2 challenges our ethnocentric view of the world.
▼ Figure 3.2 “Southside Up” Global Map
Source: Map by Anna Versluis.
Note: This map illustrates geographic ethnocentrism. U.S. citizens tend to assume it is natural that north should always be “on top.” The fact that this map of the world is upside down, where south is “up,” seems incorrect or disturbing to some people. Most people think of their countries or regions as occupying a central and larger part of the world.
Thinking Sociologically
What
