Culture and social values

1. Meaning of culture

In everyday speech “cultured” means refined. In sociology every society has culture: it is the whole way of life of a people, learned and shared.

• E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871): culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.
• Bronislaw Malinowski: culture is the handiwork of man and the medium through which he achieves his ends; “an instrumental reality”.
• Robert Bierstedt: culture is the complex whole that consists of all the ways we think and do and everything we have as members of society.
• MacIver and Page: culture is “what we are” (values, art, religion), as against civilisation, which is “what we use” (technology, instruments).

2. Characteristics of culture

1. Culture is learned. It is not inherited biologically but acquired through socialisation. Eating with a spoon or with fingers is learned behaviour.
2. Culture is social. It is a product of group life, not of one individual.
3. Culture is shared by members of the group: language, festivals, dress.
4. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation, chiefly through language. This makes human culture cumulative.
5. Culture is continuous and cumulative. Each generation adds to the store it inherits.
6. Culture is symbolic. Words, gestures, flags and rituals carry meanings. Leslie White called man the symbol-using animal.
7. Culture varies from society to society and within a society (regional, caste and class sub-cultures).
8. Culture is dynamic and adaptive. It changes through invention, diffusion and contact, and helps man adapt to his environment.
9. Culture is gratifying. It satisfies biological and social needs; patterns that stop satisfying needs disappear.
10. Culture is integrated. Its parts fit together; a change in one (technology) affects others (family, values).
11. Culture is super-organic (Herbert Spencer, A.L. Kroeber): it exists beyond any individual and outlives him.

3. Elements of culture

• Cognitive elements: knowledge, beliefs and ideas about the world.
• Normative elements: norms — folkways, mores, laws — and values.
• Symbols and language: the vehicle of transmission.
• Material elements: tools, buildings, technology.

Units of analysis: a culture trait is the smallest unit (a handshake, a sari); a culture complex is a cluster of related traits (the Hindu wedding, cricket); a culture pattern is the arrangement of complexes into a way of life.

4. Types of culture: material and non-material

William F. Ogburn (Social Change, 1922) distinguished:

• Material culture — tangible products: houses, tools, vehicles, computers. It changes fast, its usefulness can be measured, and it is readily borrowed.
• Non-material culture — intangible: values, beliefs, customs, language, law, religion. It changes slowly and is harder to borrow.

Because material culture changes faster, non-material culture falls behind. Ogburn called the gap cultural lag. Example: mobile phones and social media spread rapidly in India, but norms and laws on privacy, cyber-bullying and data protection took longer to develop.

Related concepts

• Sub-culture — the culture of a group within a society: tribal, youth, professional.
• Counter-culture — a sub-culture opposed to the dominant culture.
• Ethnocentrism (W.G. Sumner) — judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own and regarding one’s own as superior.
• Cultural relativism — judging a practice in the context of its own culture.
• Acculturation and diffusion — taking on traits through contact.

5. Functions of culture

1. Makes man a human being; a child without culture (feral children) does not develop human behaviour.
2. Provides ready-made solutions to recurring problems of life.
3. Defines situations and tells us how to behave in them.
4. Shapes personality and attitudes.
5. Provides values and goals.
6. Gives a sense of identity and unites members into a group.
7. Acts as a means of social control through norms and values.
8. Enables adaptation to the environment.

6. Social values

Values are shared ideas about what is good, right and desirable. Norms are specific rules of conduct; values are the general standards from which norms are derived. The value of respect for elders produces the norm of touching their feet.

• Harry M. Johnson: a value is a conception or standard, cultural or merely personal, by which things are compared and approved or disapproved relative to one another.
• Characteristics: shared; learned; emotionally charged; relatively enduring; arranged in a hierarchy; vary across societies; give direction to behaviour.
• Types: individual and collective values; intrinsic (ends in themselves) and instrumental (means); traditional (purity, hierarchy, renunciation) and modern (equality, liberty, rationality, secularism). The Preamble sets out the modern values of the Indian Republic: justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.
• Functions: provide goals; give unity and solidarity; serve as standards for judging conduct; are the basis of norms and law; help integrate personality; act as instruments of social control.

How this is examined

Open with Tylor’s definition verbatim, add one more, then number the characteristics with an Indian example for each. If elements or functions are asked, add the cognitive, normative and material elements and Ogburn’s material and non-material culture with cultural lag. A short note on social values: definition, five characteristics, types and functions.