Culture: Values, Norms and Material Objects

The sociological study of culture focuses on values, norms, material objects, language, and cultural change. These cultural components, while not an exhaustive list, comprise the bulk of cultural activities and practices of interest to cultural sociologists. This article defines the main components of culture, provides examples, and explains the role these components plays in constructing a culture. This article explores the sociology of culture in three parts: An overview of values, norms; material objects, language, and cultural change; a description of the growth of cultural relativistic thought in cultural sociology, and; a discussion of the issues related to cultural sociology's relationships with the fields of cultural studies and traditional sociology.

Keywords Cultural Relativism; Culture; Immaterial Objects; Material Objects; Mores; Norms; Roles; Society; Values

Culture > Culture: Values, Norms & Material Objects

Overview

The sociology of culture, also referred to as cultural sociology, is an increasingly studied sub-field of sociology. While society remains sociology's primary object of study, sociologists do actively explore the ways in which culture operates in and shapes society. The term society refers to a group of people living and interacting in a defined area and sharing a common culture. Sociologists define culture as the set of customs, attitudes, values, and beliefs that characterize one group of people and distinguish them from other groups. Culture is the collection of customs, attitudes, values, and beliefs that characterizes one group of people and distinguishes them from other groups. Culture includes the products of a group of people. Culture is passed from one generation to succeeding generations through immaterial culture, such as values, norms, language, rituals, and symbols, and material culture, such as objects, art, and institutions.

Sociological Approaches to Cultural Study

Cultural sociology employs five distinct approaches to the study of culture. These approaches, including the organizational approach, social-systemic approach, culture-critical movement, sociological phenomenology, and semiotic approach, each offer a distinctive conception of culture.

• In the organizational approach, sociologists study the impact that the social relations of production, distribution, and consumption of culture have on culture.

• In the social-systemic approach, sociologists study the exchanges between culture as a whole and society as a whole.

• In the culture-critical movement approach, sociologists study a culture as a whole entity. In the sociological phenomenology approach, sociologists study the subjective meanings that the researcher or interpreter attributes to cultural elements, objects and acts.

• In the semiotic approach, sociologists study the meanings and definitions symbolic designs and social texts (Kavolis, 1985).

Despite variations in approach and focus to the sociological study of culture, cultural sociology recognizes that the main components of culture include values, norms, and material objects. Understanding the role culture plays in society is vital background for all those interested in the sociology of culture. This article explores the sociology of culture in three parts: An overview of values, norms; material objects, language, and cultural change; a description of the growth of cultural relativism in cultural sociology, and; a discussion of the issues related to cultural sociology's relationships with the fields of cultural studies and traditional sociology.

Values

Values refer to intangible qualities or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a given society. Values are distinct from attitudes, traits, norms, and needs. Values share the following characteristics and qualities:

• Values tend to be unobservable;

• Values tend to be conflated with other social and psychological phenomena;

• Values tend to have historical and cultural variability.

• Values express an idealized state of being.

Examples of modern U.S. values include achievement; success; independence; freedom; democracy; scientific discovery; progress; comfort; education; and ideas of racial, sexual, religious, or gender superiority and have found ten values shared by 70 cultures spread throughout the world. These ten values include hedonism, power, achievements, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, conformity, tradition, security.

Values influence individual and group action. Sociologists study the mechanisms through which values inspire, motivate and influence action in and by society. Sociologists have found that values must be activated in individual and group consciousness to effect action. Values, once activated, lead to varying levels of acceptance for certain actions. Values influence attention, perception, and interpretation within situations and ultimately influence the planning of individual and group action. Sociologists study how individuals learn values. Sociology currently speculates that an individual's values, shaped through late adolescence, tend to be stable across the life course (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004).

Norms

Norms refer to conditions for social relations between groups and individuals, for the structure of society and the difference between societies, and for human behavior in general. Norms are shared rules, customs, and guidelines that govern society and define how people should behave in the company of others. Norms may be applicable to all members of society or only to certain subsets of the population, such as students, teachers, clergy, police officers, or soldiers in warfare. Norms guide smooth and peaceful interactions by prescribing predictable behavior in different situations. For instance, in the United States, handshaking is a traditional greeting; in other countries, the expected protocol upon meeting someone might be to kiss both cheeks, bow, place palms together, or curtsy. Norms tend to be institutionalized and internalized. Most social control of individuals through norms is internal and guided by the pressures and restraints of cultural indoctrination. Individual cultures sanction their norms. Sanctions may be rewards for conformity to norms or punishment for nonconformity. Positive sanctions include rewards, praise, smiles, and gestures. Negative sanctions include the infliction of guilt, condemnation, citations, fines, and imprisonment (Opp, 1979).

There is a definite difference and distinction between values and norms. Values are individual or, in some instances, commonly shared conceptions of desirable states of being. In contrast, norms are generally accepted prescriptions for or prohibitions against behavior, belief, or feeling. While values can be held by an individual, norms cannot and must be upheld by a group. Norms always include sanctions but values never do. Norms tend to be based on and influenced by common values and they tend to persist even after the reasons for certain behaviors are forgotten. For instance, the habit of shaking hands when meeting another person has its origin in the practice of revealing that the right hand did not conceal a weapon (Morris, 1956).

Types of Norms

Sociologists divide norms into four types: Folkways, mores, taboos, and laws. These four types of norms are ranked from least restrictive to most compulsory.

• Folkways refer to norms that protect common conventions. Most people in a society follow traditional folkways but failure to conform to them is considered neither illegal nor immoral. Examples of common folkways found in the United States include having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner or mowing ones lawn.

• Mores refer to stronger norms with associated moral values. Examples of common mores found in the United States include prohibitions against murder, multiple spouses, or desecration of religious symbols.

• Taboos refer to the strongest types of mores. Taboos include the belief that certain activities, such cannibalism, are outside the bounds of cultural acceptance. Violations of mores and taboos tend to be treated with strong social disapproval or criminal consequences.

• Laws refer to the mores that are formally enforced by political authority and backed by the power of the state. Laws may enforce norms or work to change them. Examples of laws that worked to change existing norms include the liquor prohibition laws of the 1920s or civil rights legislation of the 1950s.

Ultimately, social norms are important, in part, because they enable individuals to agree on a shared interpretation of the social situation and prevent harmful social interactions. When individuals transgress against existing norms, they are engaging in a norm violation. Norm violations refer to public or private instances of transgression and deviance from culturally-sanctioned behaviors (Kiesler, 1967).

Material Objects

Material objects, also known as material culture, refer to items with physical substance shaped or produced by humans. Material culture includes all past and present human-made and human-altered forms. Examples of material objects include money, skateboards, billboards, ice cream, yurts, paintings, tattoos, gardens, armor, and highways. Sociologists study material culture to gain further insight into human relationships. For example, the sociology of consumption reveals data about the relationship between material and social relationships. The sociological study of material capital produces data about the social value of objects (Dant, 2006).

Material objects embody and impart ideas about cultures, regions, religions, nations, and individual and collective identities. Sociologists study the social, historical, and cultural aspects of objects; in particular, the production, circulation, and exchange cycle of objects. How we value and use objects is determined by the ways in which objects are made, their materials, and their mode exchange. Three aspects of consumerism, including the affordability, availability, and desirability, explain how the majority of material objects are bought and sold worldwide. Sociologists study the cultural forces associated with consumer desire and marketing.

Sociologists also examine the utilitarian and symbolic functions of material objects. For example, sociologists studying shoes as a material object would find that shoes have a utilitarian function of protecting feet from the environment and a symbolic function of communicating values about the wearer. Conventional functions refer to commonplace utilitarian and symbolic functions. The utilitarian and symbolic functions of material objects tend to change over time. Lastly sociologists study the cultural associations and impact of material objects. For example, a sociologists studying the cultural associations and impacts of cars on society would unpack associations of status, power, rebellion, masculinity, and progress (Burkhart, 2006).

Language

The sociological study of a culture often includes the systematic study of its language. Sociologists recognize that language is one of the primary ways in which individual's learn and transmit culture. Language shapes people's views of the world in which they live, permits humans to record history and accumulated knowledge, practices, and beliefs and defines the way people interpret their environment and reality. For example, the Eskimo language has more than 20 words for different kinds and states of snow. In contrast, the Aztec language had only one word to express snow, ice, cold, or frost.

The sociological study of language is called sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics studies social life through the lens of language and linguistics by combining linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and linguistic geography. This subfield of sociology examines the connections between language and society. In particular, sociolinguistics focuses on the way individuals use language in different social situations. The field of sociolinguistics emerged, at least in part, in response to the social science's commitment to cultural relativism. Cultures, often with distinct languages, began to be studied in situ in the early 20th century as a means of studying the unique cultural processes of different societies (Tian, 2005).

Cultural Change

Cultures evolve and change over time. Incidents and periods of cultural change are a fundamental characteristic of culture itself. Sociologists study the phenomena of cultural change to understand which elements of culture are transient and mutable and which are fixed. For example, sociologists study the process of globalization, a complex series of economic, social, technological, and political changes that result as people and companies in different and often distant countries interact with increasing frequency, to understand how cultures change in contact with one another.

The history of sociology's concern with cultural change dates back to the nineteenth century. The publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (1859) was a culture changing publication that revolutionized the way social scientists understood cultural change and social evolution. Charles Darwin's contemporary, sociologist Herbert Spencer, developed a theory of social and cultural evolution and coined the term survival of the fittest as a metaphor for the process of social and cultural change. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), an English sociologist and philosopher, chose society as his object of study. He believed that societies moved from simple to complex and developed the analogy of society as an organism. According to Spencer, society, like an organism, represents a system with structures and functions as well as a certain level of evolutionary advancement based on its structural form. Spencer, a functionalist, believed that social structures function to meet the needs of society.

Spencer published three volumes of work: "Principles of Sociology" (1896), "Descriptive Sociology" (1873-81) and "The Study of Sociology" (1873). In "Principles of Sociology," a 2,240 page book, Spencer attempted to explain in a scientific manner the relations, co-existence, and sequence among social phenomena. Spencer's scientific approach to the study of social phenomena and society influenced the direction of the fields of sociology and anthropology.

Spencer viewed civilization as a natural evolution of human society and modernization as the process of change from a primitive to an industrial society. Modernization is a term that is often used to connote the actual reality of westernization, the process by which indigenous cultures disappear as members of their societies accept modes of dress and behavior typical of Western industrialized societies like those of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia (Carneiro & Perrin 2003).

Applications

Franz Boas

Sociological study of culture has lead to increased sensitivity to, understanding of and comfort with the existence of multiple cultures. Sociologists and anthropologists developed the theory (and ideal) of cultural relativism to express the need for a culture to only be understood fully in the context of its own norms and values. Franz Boas (1858-1942), a social scientist living in the United States at the turn of the century, developed the theory of cultural relativism. Boas believed that all cultures were complete and equally developed. He developed his theory of cultural relativism in reaction to the functionalist idea that all cultures moved through the same evolutionary stages. The respect for cultural differences that is characteristic of cultural relativism became the foundation for later perspectives in sociology such as interactionism, feminism, and social constructionism (Handler 1990).

George Murdock

Although the forms and details vary, certain practices are found in all societies. According to anthropologist George Murdock (1897-1985), cultural universals include those aspects that are present in all societies, although the forms and details may differ, including athletic sports, body adornment, cooking, cooperative labor, courtship, dancing, dream interpretation, family, feasting, folklore, food, incest taboos, funeral rites, games, gift giving, laws, medicine, music, myths, numerals, personal names, property rights, religion, sexual restrictions, toilet training, tool making, weaving, and attempts to control the weather. In 1949, Murdock became well known for his assertions about the universal functions of the nuclear family (Hendrix, 1975).

Invoking a cultural relativist stance, sociologists will study a culture's values, norms, material objects, and language without judgment and comparison to other cultural systems and logic. For example, a culture's norms are expressed by a culture's preferences regarding food, clothing, occupation, courtship, and sexual practices. A sociologist studying traditional Eskimo society will discover the enforced norm of absolute hospitality. Any stranger visiting an Eskimo household is entitled to make use of everything the host has to offer, including food, shelter, clothing, and even his wife. Although this practice is foreign and potentially shocking to a member of modern U.S. society, it makes more sense in the context of the frozen Arctic region, where the assurance of hospitality and comfort meant survival of people, trade, communication, and social networks. In the United States, such a situation is unnecessary because the hospitality industry fulfills the same function. Norms, sanctions, and values create social coherence and serve to maintain peace and order (Oswalt, 1963).

Issues

The Clash between Cultural Sociologists & Traditional Sociologists

While cultural sociology has grown into an established sub-field during the twentieth century, cultural sociology has an uneasy relationship with the larger field of sociology and the related field of cultural studies. Cultural studies refer to the multi-disciplinary study of cultural phenomena. Cultural studies, full of post-modern concerns with knowledge, subjectivity, reflexivity, meaning, power, action, and hegemony, alienates some sociologists who claim cultural studies lack theory and substance (Griswold, 1993). The lack of an alliance between cultural sociology (or the sociology of culture) and cultural studies has many possible causes. The friction between cultural sociology and cultural studies may be due to academic boundary issues; cultural sociology's resentment of cultural studies' possessiveness and monopoly of the culture concept; and cultural sociology's disdain for cultural studies' unscientific theoretical foundation and methodology (Hays, 2000).

Cultural sociologists have a strained relationship with the larger field of sociology due to their prioritizing of culture as their object of study as opposed to the focus of traditional sociologists on social structure and society. Social structures include statuses, roles, groups, and institutions.

• Status refers to the socially defined position of individuals in society.

• Roles are the actions associated with a person's status, and a person generally plays multiple roles in society. The roles people play reflect the status they occupy at any given time.

• All social interaction takes place within groups. A primary group constitutes a small number of people who know each other personally, such as a family, church congregation, or group of friends. Secondary groups are found in more complex societies and are organized to fulfill various functions.

• Institutions are stable groups with defining sets of values, norms, statuses, and roles that fulfill predictable and necessary functions in advanced societies.

Traditional sociology argues that cultural sociology is weakened by the subjective nature of cultural elements such as values and beliefs. For example, individuals may not always know or be able to explain what values they hold (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004).

In contrast, cultural sociologists consider culture rather than society to be a central influence on and factor in social existence. Culture is a structured symbolic system that changes and transforms over time. Culture includes language, symbols, rituals, every day practices, values, norms, ideas, thought and knowledge, material products, and institutional practices. Cultural sociologists argue that cultural structures and elements are as enduring and important as traditional social structures. Cultural sociologists find that cultural structures are as important to study as social structures such as capitalism, bureaucracy, the state, social networks, social classes, status groups, population dynamics, and the distribution of material resources (Hays, 2000).

Conclusion

This article defines the main components of culture, provides examples, and explains the role these components play in constructing a culture. In the final analysis, the sociological study of culture focuses on values, norms, material objects, language, and cultural change. These cultural components, while not an exhaustive list, comprise the bulk of cultural activities and practices of interest to cultural sociologists.

Terms & Concepts

Cultural Relativism: The idea that a culture can only be understood fully in the context of its own norms and values.

Culture: The set of customs, attitudes, values, and beliefs that characterize one group of people and distinguish them from other groups.

Immaterial Culture: The language, rituals, and symbols of a culture.

Material Objects: The physical products of a culture.

Mores: Strong norms with associated moral values.

Norms: Shared rules, customs, and guidelines that govern society and define how people should behave in the company of others.

Roles: The actions associated with a person's status.

Society: A group of people living and interacting in a defined area, such as a country or other geographic region, and sharing a common culture.

Sociology: The scientific study of human social behavior, human association, and the results of social activities.

Values: Intangible qualities or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a given society.

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Suggested Reading

Benard, S. (2012). Cohesion from Conflict: Does Intergroup Conflict Motivate Intragroup Norm Enforcement and Support for Centralized Leadership?. Social Psychology Quarterly, 75, 107-130. doi:10.1177/0190272512442397 Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=76331321&site=ehost-live

Calhoun, C. (1997). "Groups" and "cultures" as problems: A new sociology of knowledge. International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society, 11 , 361-365. Retrieved June 28, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11305013&site=ehost-live

Calhoun, C. (1992). Beyond the problem of meaning: Robert Wuthnow's historical sociology of culture. Theory & Society, 21 , 419-444. Retrieved June 28, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=10754910&site=ehost-live

Lindenberg, S., Joly, J. F., & Stapel, D. A. (2011). The Norm-Activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence. Social Psychology Quarterly, 74, 98-120. doi:10.1177/0190272511398208 Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=65439419&site=ehost-live

Wolff, J. (1999). Cultural studies and the sociology of culture. Contemporary Sociology, 28 , 499-507. Retrieved June 28, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=2375535&site=ehost-live