Understanding Culture,

Society and Politics

 Grading System
Written Works - 25%
Performance Tasks - 50%
Quarterly Assessment - 25%
 Subject Requirements
2 Written Works and 1 Knowledge Test
3 Performance Tasks
1 Culminating Task
(Peer, Self and Teacher Assessement)
 Balitaan
News with topics about Culture, Society
and Politics.

Read the news and express your reactions

and insights about the news.
 Course Outline
1. Starting points for the understanding of
culture, society, and politics;
2. Looking back at Human Biocultural and Social
Evolution
3. Cultural, social and political institutions
4. Social and political stratification and changes
Starting points for the understanding of culture,
society, and politics
1. Sharing of social and cultural backgrounds of students as
acting subjects or social actors, agents, persons
2. Observations about social, political, and cultural
behavior and phenomena
3. Aspects of Culture
4. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism as orientations in
viewing other cultures
 Looking back at Human Biocultural
and Social Evolution

1. Biological and cultural evolution: from Homo habilis (or

earlier) to Homo sapiens sapiens in the fossil record
2. Cultural and sociopolitical evolution: from hunting and
gathering to the agricultural, industrial , and post-
industrial revolution
Cultural, social and political institutions

1. How society is organized

2. Kinship, marriage, and the household
3. Political and leadership structures
4. Economic Institutions
5. Non State institutions
6. Education
7. Religion and belief systems
8. Health
Social and political stratification and changes

1. Social desirables (wealth, power, prestige)

2. Social inequality
3. Social contradictions and tensions
4. New challenges to human adaptation and social
change
5. Responding to social, political, and cultural change
Sharing of Social and
Cultural Backgrounds
of Students

 Sharing of Social and

Cultural Backgrounds of Students

Gender
Socioeconomic Class
Religion
Ethnicity
Your take on "tambays" and "political dynasties".
Culture, Society,
and Politics
 Culture
Came from the Latin word colere (to inhabit, to
cultivate, or to honor).

It includes codes of manners, dress, language,

religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and
morality, and systems of belief.
 Culture
It is a complex of features held by a social group,
which may be as small as a family or a tribe, or as
large as a racial or ethnic group, a nation, or in the
age of globalization, by people all over the world.
 Culture
It generally refers to patterns of human activity and
the symbolic structures that give such activity
significance.

"Culture is to society what memory is to individuals."

 Culture
Culture, however, is not fixed or static; rather, it
involves a dynamic process as people respond to
changing conditions and challenges.
 Tangible Intangible
Includes architecture, Includes music, folklore,
books, art, artifacts, food, traditions, values, language,
clothing, and technology. knowledge, religion and
other beliefs.
 Society
An organized group or groups of people who
generally share a common culture, language and
territory, and who act together for collective survival
and well-being.

Diverse cultures may exist in a specific society.

 Society
Society arises only when individuals are knit together
in a network of relationships, which are distinctive,
culturally defined and limited, and affectively bonded
by common linguistic patterns, and other forms of
symbolic representations.
What distinguishes human
from non-human society?
 Society
Humans meet their needs for social survival primarily
thorough learned behavior, which is invented,
generally agreed upon, and transmitted through
various medium of communication; the most
prominent of which is the use of language.
 Activity#1: Position Paper
Each student must write about their stand, and their
proposed solution to one political issue given below:
Abortion in the Philippines
Is Activism a form of Terrorism?
Reserved Officers Training Course (ROTC) in College
Death penalty on heinous crimes
Abortion in the Philippines
Unsafe abortion carries significant risks for Filipino
women: About 1,000 die each year from abortion
complications, which contributes to the nation’s high
maternal mortality ratio. Tens of thousands of women
are hospitalized each year for complications from
unsafe abortion.
 ROTC in College
The mandatory ROTC program was scrapped in 2002
following the passage of Republic Act 9163, an act
establishing the NSTP.

This came after the March 2001 killing of University of

Santo Tomas student Mark Wilson Chua, allegedly by
his ROTC handlers after he had exposed the
corruption in the ROTC corps.
Death penalty on heinous crimes
For years, the Philippines put people to death,
particularly in cases of so-called heinous crimes. But
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, under pressure
from the Catholic Church, abolished the death
penalty in 2006.
The Duterte government’s overwhelming majority in
Congress and continuing efforts to promote its
campaign against illegal drugs means the justice
committee is likely to support death penalty bills
"If state killings are justified,
every will killing will now be
justified".
Is Activism a form of Terrorism?
On 3 July 2020, the Congress passed an Anti-
Terrorism Law, signed off by the President. The
vague way in which “terrorism” is defined in this law
means that it violates the right to free speech, bans
the right to protest, and sets harsh penalties for
alleged acts of terrorism, including life imprisonment
without parole.
 Politics
From the Greek word "politiká" meaning "affairs of the
cities".
Set of activities that are associated with making
decisions in groups, or other forms of power
relations among individuals, such as the distribution of
resources or status.
 Politics
The institution that sets up the social norms and values
as to who will possess "the monopoly of legitimate
use of physical force within a given territory," how
that power is acquired and maintained, and how that
power is organized and exercised, comprises the
state
Society and Culture
According to the
Three Disciplines
 Sociology

Political Anthropology
Science
 Anthropology
“Anthropos” means human.
"The study of humans"; the social science that seeks to
understand human origins and adaptation, and the
diversity of cultures and worldviews.
It examines and provides explanations for the
existence of different cultural patterns as well as the
similarities and differences between different cultures.
Relativistic Ethnocentric
Approach Approach
 Relativistic Approach
Considers cultures as equal. This view holds that there
are no "superior" and "inferior" cultures, and each is
unique in its own way.
 Ethnocentric Approach
The belief that one's native culture is superior to other
cultures.
Ethnocentrism diminishes or invalidates "other" ways of
life and creates a distorted view of one's own. As a
result, this could affect individual behavior and
relationships with other cultures.
 Xenocentrism
Some societies that have the tendency to consider
their culture as inferior to others.
Some Filipinos share the perception that some aspects
of Philippine culture are inferior compared to foreign
cultures, particularly those of our former colonizers.
 Sociology
Sociology is the systematic study of relationships
among people.
Sociology relates culture with the overall context of
social order.
Structural Functionalism
The perspective which describes the society as a
social system that has a social structure of its own,
made up of different parts which are interconnected
and works together in harmony to achieve balance or
social equilibrium.
 Symbolic Interactionism
Emphasizes that human behavior is influenced by
definitions and meanings that are created and
maintained through symbolic interaction with others.
 Symbolic Interactionism
1. Human beings act toward things on the basis of the
meaning that things have for them.
2. Through interaction with others, the individual
identities the common meaning linked or connected
with the symbols, but may be modified or changed as
time passes by.
 Political Science
It is the “master science”. Everything happening in
the society is based on politics.

Politics defined as the “study of Power”.

 Multiculturalism
Entails the establishment of political groups and
institutions comprised of people from diverse cultures.
This view challenges the idea of the nation-state and
the advancement of nationalist and ultranationalist
policies.
Aspects of
Culture
Do we have our own culture
or is it just a 'borrowed
culture'?
Dynamic, Flexible, and Adaptive
Cultural behaviors allow people to fit into and adapt
to their respective environments.
The cumulative and social nature of human ideas,
activities, and artifacts gives a tremendous potential
source of variability in adaptation.
 Shared and Contested
This concept means that various members of a society
or group commonly share ideas, activities, and
artifacts. Hence, the behavior of people in a group or
society often becomes socially and conventionally
standardized in form and manner.
 Learning through
Socialization or Enculturation
Behavior patterns that constitute a specific culture are
not genetically or biologically determined. Every
normal infant has the potential to learn any culture as
he or she grows and survives the various stages of life.
Patterned Social Interaction
Social interaction, as commonly viewed, implies
theories of reciprocity, complementarity, and
mutuality of response.
For example: A question implies an answer. A
statement implies acknowledgement of the
communication.
 Transmitted through
Socialization or Enculturation
Acquired through learning, cultural ideas, activities,
and artifacts are handed down from generation to
generation as a super organic inheritance, which
means it is inherently passed on through generations
 Requires Language and
Other Forms of Communication
Language is a shared set of spoken (often written)
symbols and rules used in meaningful ways. Language
has been called "the store house of culture."
Language is the most important means of cultural
transmission, the process by which one generation
passes culture to the next.
Activity#2: Aspects of Culture
As a group of three or four, provide at least one example
per aspect on how it is observed in the society and
explain.
Cultural Threats
Activity#2: Aspects of Culture
Create a campaign to promote awareness on the
condition and preservation of tangible cultural heritage in
the Philippines particularly structures such as churches,
buildings, ancestral houses. You may choose one of the
following:

1. Infographic;
2. A video minimum of 45 seconds