It’s everything around us minus nature. All our beliefs, ideas, morals, traditions, the physical items we produce and the way we practice them often within a certain group or area. They are all human-produced. How would you define your culture? What we are experiencing we see as pretty normal, at least too us. Something as simple as an outfit, style of hair, type of music, certain body language or behavior could be taboo elsewhere. How would we fit in where things are not what we are used to? We could be violating the traditions and beliefs of a culture without knowing. How would we be perceived by them? Social norms vary based on location, sometimes even within the same society.
There are two primary types of culture:
Material culture is our physical items and things we mostly can touch. Nowadays that also includes our technological advancements. Like the cloud or wireless networks.
Our non-material culture is comprised of our beliefs, morals, customs and the norms within the location that we live. Pretty simple right? Well yes and no. Some items can take on both meanings. Mainly this is what tells us about a person’s positioning in that culture, or maybe it is an item used or associated with a punishment. An example could be a police car. It shows meaning and status of the police officer and if the lights and sirens are going off, it would imply someone did something to warrant getting pulled over and they are in trouble. In this case, the police car is both material and non-material culture due to its double meaning in our society.
The nice thing about culture is that it can change in different ways over time both in good and bad ways. some things may stay the same or completely take on a whole new meaning. We’ve seen this a lot with technological advancements over the years and fads and trends in clothing. Some things we look at as dangerous or harmful may have been common practice somewhere else. Foot binding is a great example of that or men originally being the ones to wear high heels, not women. Foot binding isn’t practiced anymore and for the most part, woman have taken over wearing high heels.
Things get slightly more complicated as we branch out further into culture. We have our subcultural groups that aren’t completely separate from the main group in society, but they have their own ideals and norms that make them stand out a bit since they have distinct characteristics in common. Some examples are bodybuilders, polygamy groups, those who participate in cosplay, BSDM groups, “metalheads”, goths, and so many more make up segments of our society.
Many items affect how we thrive in a society and our place in it. Patriarchal views, hierarchy, gender, race, location, education and social class are a few that come into play. It's important for us to remember not to practice ethnocentrism and be open to other cultures and reasons why they practice certain traditions or how their beliefs can vary compared to ours. Keep in mind the judgments and assumptions you’re making about them could easily be done by them as well. When traveling it’s important to understand another locations customs beforehand.
It would be a cultural shock to travel to new Papa New Guinea and hear about polygyny or bride-prices being paid to cultivate exogamy and their goal of establishing allies based on this practice, in case a war would occur. Here in the states that is not practiced. Some people would be more accepting of these differences and while they understand they are different then our own practices they accept its part of the culture of this location. The may even find similarities within in subcultures of our own. In this case, polygamy although it's not legal in the states it still is practiced by select groups. This practice is called cultural relativism. We can apply that even within our own culture when it comes to customs and traditions others have. With that said try to be open-minded and understanding of differences. There is a lot we can learn if we choose to be understanding rather then as critical and bias about our methods being “better” or the only way.
Sources:
Conley, D. (2017). You may ask yourself: an introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W.W. Norton.
Elements of Culture [Digital image]. (2010, June 27). Retrieved December 5, 2017, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/13964815@N00/4740150135/
Believed to be from an old Social Studies book
Papua New Guinea. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.everyculture.com/No-Sa/Papua-New-Guinea.html
[Subculture scene]. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2017, from http://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Subcultures-header.png
