CULTURE • the stable patterns of collective rules, roles and

activities in a society or in one of its part

CULTURE
Social class is an example of social structure...
Social Institutions
• consists of a group of people who have come
together for a common purpose...these
institutions are a part of the social order of
society and they govern behavior and
expectations of individuals...
Social institutions include family, education, law,
religion, mass media, government and economics...

Culture is a whole system of knowledge, beliefs, ideas, Characteristics of Culture

values, powers, laws, rules and meanings that are • Culture is learned
shared by the members of a society, and together • Culture is a set of shared perceptions
form the foundation for the way they live. • Culture involves beliefs, values and norms
A particular culture is acquired and transmitted by people • Culture affects behavior
over the generations, through written means and • Culture involves large groups of people
oral traditions, participation in group activities and
the socialization of young children.
CULTURE AND RELATED TERMS
A shared culture enables people to communicate with
each other, behave in an accepted way and do things Culture and nation – nation refers to a government and
together towards common ends. a set of formal and legal mechanisms that have been
established to regulate the political behavior of the
people
SOCIETY Culture and race – race refer to genetic or biologically
• a group of people with common territory, based similarities among people, which are
interaction and culture distinguishable and unique and function to mark or
separate groups of people from one another
• a large group of people who live together in an
organized way, making decisions about how to do Culture and ethnicity – ethnicity is a term that is used
things and sharing the work that needs be done to refer to a wide variety of groups who might share
a language, historical origins, religion,
Social System identification with a common nation state, or
culture system
• consists of a plurality of individual actors
interaction with each other in a given situation Culture, subculture and coculture
(Talcott Parsons) subculture = a term sometimes used to refer to
racial and ethnic minority groups that share
• is composed of the patterned interaction of visual
both a common nation state with other
actors whose relations to each other are mutually
cultures and some aspects of the larger
oriented through the definition of the mediation
culture
of pattern of structured and shared symbols and
expectations (Charles P. Loomis) coculture = ocassionally employed in an effort to
avoid the implication of a hierarchial
Social Structure
relationship between the majority and
• the components of the social system minority
Culture, assimilation and pluralism
 assimilation = a process in which formerly  First Phase – relations are conflictual and
distinct and separate groups come to share a competitive
common culture and merge together socially  Second Phase – assimilation or the
“interpenetration and fusion” of groups
pluralism = exists when groups maintain their
individual identities *assimilation is inevitable in a democratic and
industrial society
MILTON GORDON’S EARLIEST STAGES OF *all groups secure equal treatment under the law
ASSIMILATION
*in an industrial economy, people tend to be judged
1. Acculturation (cultural assimilation) = the group on rational grounds –on the basis of their abilities and
learns the culture of the dominant group, including talents (not by ethnicity or race)
language and values
*as a society continues to modernize and urbanize,
2. integration (structural assimilation) ethnic and racial groups would gradually lose their
a.at the secondary level = members of the group importance
enter the public institutions and
organizations of the dominant society *the boundaries between groups would eventually
dissolve, and more rational and unified society would
b. at the primary level = members of the group emerge
enter the cliques, clubs and friendship
groups of the dominant society
3.intermarriage (marital assimilation) = members of Types of Pluralism
the group marry members of the dominant society CULTURAL PLURALISM – exists when groups have
on a large scale not acculturated and each maintains its own
identity.

ASSIMILATION AND PLURALISM STRUCTURAL PLURALISM (ACCULTURATION

WITHOUT INTEGRATION) – cultural
Excerpts from Joseph Healey’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender differences are minimal but the groups occupy
& Class different locations in the social structure.
Assimilation – a process in which formerly distinct and INTEGRATION WITHOUT ACCULTURATION –
separate groups come to share a common culture exemplified when a group that has had some
and merge together socially material success but has not been Americanized
…as society undergoes assimilation, differences among
groups decrease…
Pluralism exist – when groups maintain their individual
identities and when groups remain separate, and
their cultural and social differences persist over
time

Types of Assimilation
MELTING POT – a process in which different groups
come together and contribute in roughly equal
amounts to create a common culture, and a new
unique society
TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE – Robert Park –
intergroup relations go through a predictable set of
phases that he called “race relations cycle”