3.

2 The Elements of Culture

Culture was defined earlier as the symbols, language, beliefs, values, and artifacts that are part of
any society. As this definition suggests, there are two basic components of culture: ideas and
symbols on the one hand and artifacts (material objects) on the other. The first type,
called nonmaterial culture, includes the values, beliefs, symbols, and language that define a
society. The second type, called material culture, includes all the society’s physical objects, such
as its tools and technology, clothing, eating utensils, and means of transportation. These elements
of culture are discussed next.

Symbols
Every culture is filled with symbols, or things that stand for something else and
that often evoke various reactions and emotions. Some symbols are actually types
of nonverbal communication, while other symbols are in fact material objects.
Shared symbols make social interaction possible.

Let’s look at nonverbal symbols first. A common one is shaking hands, which is
done in some societies but not in others. It commonly conveys friendship and is
used as a sign of both greeting and departure. Probably all societies have nonverbal
symbols we call gestures, movements of the hands, arms, or other parts of the body
that are meant to convey certain ideas or emotions. However, the same gesture can
mean one thing in one society and something quite different in another society
(Axtell, 1998). In the United States, for example, if we nod our head up and down,
we mean yes, and if we shake it back and forth, we mean no. In Bulgaria, however,
nodding means no, while shaking our head back and forth means yes! In the United
States, if we make an “O” by putting our thumb and forefinger together, we mean
“OK,” but the same gesture in certain parts of Europe signifies an obscenity.
“Thumbs up” in the United States means “great” or “wonderful,” but in Australia it
means the same thing as extending the middle finger in the United States. Certain
parts of the Middle East and Asia would be offended if they saw you using your
left hand to eat, because they use their left hand for bathroom hygiene.

Some of our most important symbols are objects. Here the U.S. flag is a prime
example. For most Americans, the flag is not just a piece of cloth with red and
white stripes and white stars against a field of blue. Instead, it is a symbol of
freedom, democracy, and other American values and, accordingly, inspires pride
and patriotism. During the Vietnam War, however, the flag became to many
Americans a symbol of war and imperialism. Some burned the flag in protest,
prompting angry attacks by bystanders and negative coverage by the news media.

Other objects have symbolic value for religious reasons. Three of the most familiar
religious symbols in many nations are the cross, the Star of David, and the crescent
moon, which are widely understood to represent Christianity, Judaism, and Islam,
respectively. Whereas many cultures attach no religious significance to these
shapes, for many people across the world they evoke very strong feelings of
religious faith. Recognizing this, hate groups have often desecrated these symbols.

As these examples indicate, shared symbols, both nonverbal communication and

tangible objects, are an important part of any culture but also can lead to
misunderstandings and even hostility. These problems underscore the significance
of symbols for social interaction and meaning.

Language
Perhaps our most important set of symbols is language. In English, the
word chair means something we sit on. In Spanish, the word silla means the same
thing. As long as we agree how to interpret these words, a shared language and
thus society are possible. By the same token, differences in languages can make it
quite difficult to communicate. For example, imagine you are in a foreign country
where you do not know the language and the country’s citizens do not know yours.
Worse yet, you forgot to bring your dictionary that translates their language into
yours, and vice versa, and your iPhone battery has died. You become lost. How
will you get help? What will you do? Is there any way to communicate your
plight?

As this scenario suggests, language is crucial to communication and thus to any

society’s culture. Children learn language from their culture just as they learn
about shaking hands, about gestures, and about the significance of the flag and
other symbols. Humans have a capacity for language that no other animal species
possesses. Our capacity for language in turn helps make our complex culture
possible.
Language is a key symbol of any culture. Humans have a capacity for language that no other animal species has, and children
learn the language of their society just as they learn other aspects of their culture.
Bill Benzon – IMGP3639 – talk – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sociology Making a Difference

Overcoming Cultural and Ethnic Differences

People from many different racial and ethnic backgrounds live in large countries such as the
United States. Because of cultural differences and various prejudices, it can be difficult for
individuals from one background to interact with individuals from another background.
Fortunately, a line of research, grounded in contact theory and conducted by sociologists and
social psychologists, suggests that interaction among individuals from different backgrounds
can indeed help overcome tensions arising from their different cultures and any prejudices
they may hold. This happens because such contact helps disconfirm stereotypes that people
may hold of those from different backgrounds (Dixon, 2006; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005).

Recent studies of college students provide additional evidence that social contact can help
overcome cultural differences and prejudices. Because many students are randomly assigned
to their roommates when they enter college, interracial roommates provide a “natural”
experiment for studying the effects of social interaction on racial prejudice. Studies of such
roommates find that whites with black roommates report lowered racial prejudice and greater
numbers of interracial friendships with other students (Laar, Levin, Sinclair, & Sidanius,
2005; Shook & Fazio, 2008).
It is not easy to overcome cultural differences and prejudices, and studies also find that
interracial college roommates often have to face many difficulties in overcoming the cultural
differences and prejudices that existed before they started living together (Shook & Fazio,
2008). Yet the body of work supporting contact theory suggests that efforts that increase
social interaction among people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds in the long
run will reduce racial and ethnic tensions.

Norms
Cultures differ widely in their norms, or standards and expectations for behaving.
We already saw that the nature of drunken behavior depends on society’s
expectations of how people should behave when drunk. Norms of drunken
behavior influence how we behave when we drink too much.

Norms are often divided into two types, formal norms and informal norms. Formal
norms, also called mores (MOOR-ayz) and laws, refer to the standards of behavior
considered the most important in any society. Examples in the United States
include traffic laws, criminal codes, and, in a college context, student behavior
codes addressing such things as cheating and hate speech. Informal norms, also
called folkways and customs, refer to standards of behavior that are considered less
important but still influence how we behave. Table manners are a common
example of informal norms, as are such everyday behaviors as how we interact
with a cashier and how we ride in an elevator.

Many norms differ dramatically from one culture to the next. Some of the best
evidence for cultural variation in norms comes from the study of sexual behavior
(Edgerton, 1976). Among the Pokot of East Africa, for example, women are
expected to enjoy sex, while among the Gusii a few hundred miles away, women
who enjoy sex are considered deviant. In Inis Beag, a small island off the coast of
Ireland, sex is considered embarrassing and even disgusting; men feel that
intercourse drains their strength, while women consider it a burden. Even nudity is
considered terrible, and people on Inis Beag keep their clothes on while they bathe.
The situation is quite different in Mangaia, a small island in the South Pacific.
Here sex is considered very enjoyable, and it is the major subject of songs and
stories.

While many societies frown on homosexuality, others accept it. Among the
Azande of East Africa, for example, young warriors live with each other and are
not allowed to marry. During this time, they often have sex with younger boys, and
this homosexuality is approved by their culture. Among the Sambia of New
Guinea, young males live separately from females and engage in homosexual
behavior for at least a decade.

Other evidence for cultural variation in norms comes from the study of how men
and women are expected to behave in various societies. For example, many
traditional societies are simple hunting-and-gathering societies. In most of these,
men tend to hunt and women tend to gather. Many observers attribute this gender
difference to at least two biological differences between the sexes. First, men tend
to be bigger and stronger than women and are thus better suited for hunting.
Second, women become pregnant and bear children and are less able to hunt. Yet a
different pattern emerges in some hunting-and-gathering societies. Among a group
of Australian aborigines called the Tiwi and a tribal society in the Philippines
called the Agta, both sexes hunt. After becoming pregnant, Agta women continue
to hunt for most of their pregnancy and resume hunting after their child is born
(Brettell & Sargent, 2009).

Some of the most interesting norms that differ by culture govern how people stand
apart when they talk with each other (Hall & Hall, 2007). In the United States,
people who are not intimates usually stand about three to four feet apart when they
talk. If someone stands more closely to us, especially if we are of northern
European heritage, we feel uncomfortable. Yet people in other countries—
especially Italy, France, Spain, and many of the nations of Latin America and the
Middle East—would feel uncomfortable if they were standing three to four feet
apart. To them, this distance is too great and indicates that the people talking
dislike each other. If a U.S. native of British or Scandinavian heritage were talking
with a member of one of these societies, they might well have trouble interacting,
because at least one of them will be uncomfortable with the physical distance
separating them.

Rituals
Different cultures also have different rituals, or established procedures and
ceremonies that often mark transitions in the life course. As such, rituals both
reflect and transmit a culture’s norms and other elements from one generation to
the next. Graduation ceremonies in colleges and universities are familiar examples
of time-honored rituals. In many societies, rituals help signify one’s gender
identity. For example, girls around the world undergo various types of initiation
ceremonies to mark their transition to adulthood. Among the Bemba of Zambia,
girls undergo a month-long initiation ceremony called the chisungu, in which girls
learn songs, dances, and secret terms that only women know (Maybury-Lewis,
1998). In some cultures, special ceremonies also mark a girl’s first menstrual
period. Such ceremonies are largely absent in the United States, where a girl’s first
period is a private matter. But in other cultures the first period is a cause for
celebration involving gifts, music, and food (Hathaway, 1997).

Boys have their own initiation ceremonies, some of them involving circumcision.
That said, the ways in which circumcisions are done and the ceremonies
accompanying them differ widely. In the United States, boys who are circumcised
usually undergo a quick procedure in the hospital. If their parents are observant
Jews, circumcision will be part of a religious ceremony, and a religious figure
called a moyel will perform the circumcision. In contrast, circumcision among the
Maasai of East Africa is used as a test of manhood. If a boy being circumcised
shows signs of fear, he might well be ridiculed (Maybury-Lewis, 1998).

Are rituals more common in traditional societies than in industrial ones such as the
United States? Consider the Nacirema, studied by anthropologist Horace Miner
more than 50 years ago (Miner, 1956). In this society, many rituals have been
developed to deal with the culture’s fundamental belief that the human body is
ugly and in danger of suffering many diseases. Reflecting this belief, every
household has at least one shrine in which various rituals are performed to cleanse
the body. Often these shrines contain magic potions acquired from medicine men.
The Nacirema are especially concerned about diseases of the mouth. Miner writes,
“Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall
out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers
reject them” (p. 505). Many Nacirema engage in “mouth-rites” and see a “holy-
mouth-man” once or twice yearly.

Spell Nacirema backward and you will see that Miner was describing American
culture. As his satire suggests, rituals are not limited to preindustrial societies.
Instead, they function in many kinds of societies to mark transitions in the life
course and to transmit the norms of the culture from one generation to the next.

Changing Norms and Beliefs

Our examples show that different cultures have different norms, even if they share
other types of practices and beliefs. It is also true that norms change over time
within a given culture. Two obvious examples here are hairstyles and clothing
styles. When the Beatles first became popular in the early 1960s, their hair barely
covered their ears, but parents of teenagers back then were aghast at how they
looked. If anything, clothing styles change even more often than hairstyles.
Hemlines go up, hemlines go down. Lapels become wider, lapels become
narrower. This color is in, that color is out. Hold on to your out-of-style clothes
long enough, and eventually they may well end up back in style.

Some norms may change over time within a given culture. In the early 1960s, the hair of the four members of the Beatles barely
covered their ears, but many parents of U.S. teenagers were very critical of the length of their hair.
U.S. Library of Congress – public domain.

A more important topic on which norms have changed is abortion and birth control
(Bullough & Bullough, 1977). Despite the controversy surrounding abortion today,
it was very common in the ancient world. Much later, medieval theologians
generally felt that abortion was not murder if it occurred within the first several
weeks after conception. This distinction was eliminated in 1869, when Pope Pius
IX declared abortion at any time to be murder. In the United States, abortion was
not illegal until 1828, when New York state banned it to protect women from
unskilled abortionists, and most other states followed suit by the end of the
century. However, the sheer number of unsafe, illegal abortions over the next
several decades helped fuel a demand for repeal of abortion laws that in turn
helped lead to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 that generally
legalized abortion during the first two trimesters.

Contraception was also practiced in ancient times, only to be opposed by early

Christianity. Over the centuries, scientific discoveries of the nature of the
reproductive process led to more effective means of contraception and to greater
calls for its use, despite legal bans on the distribution of information about
contraception. In the early 1900s, Margaret Sanger, an American nurse,
spearheaded the growing birth-control movement and helped open a birth-control
clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. She and two other women were arrested within 10
days, and Sanger and one other defendant were sentenced to 30 days in jail. Efforts
by Sanger and other activists helped to change views on contraception over time,
and finally, in 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that
contraception information could not be banned. As this brief summary illustrates,
norms about contraception changed dramatically during the last century.

Values
Values are another important element of culture and involve judgments of what is
good or bad and desirable or undesirable. A culture’s values shape its norms. In
Japan, for example, a central value is group harmony. The Japanese place great
emphasis on harmonious social relationships and dislike interpersonal conflict.
Individuals are fairly unassertive by American standards, lest they be perceived as
trying to force their will on others (Schneider & Silverman, 2010). When
interpersonal disputes do arise, Japanese do their best to minimize conflict by
trying to resolve the disputes amicably. Lawsuits are thus uncommon; in one case
involving disease and death from a mercury-polluted river, some Japanese who
dared to sue the company responsible for the mercury poisoning were considered
bad citizens (Upham, 1976).

Artifacts
The last element of culture is the artifacts, or material objects, that constitute a
society’s material culture. In the most simple societies, artifacts are largely limited
to a few tools, the huts people live in, and the clothing they wear. One of the most
important inventions in the evolution of society was the wheel. Figure 3.9
“Primary Means of Moving Heavy Loads” shows that very few of the societies in
the SCCS use wheels to move heavy loads over land, while the majority use human
power and about one-third use pack animals.
Figure 3.9 Primary Means of Moving Heavy Loads

Source: Data from Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

Although the wheel was a great invention, artifacts are much more numerous and
complex in industrial societies. Because of technological advances during the past
two decades, many such societies today may be said to have a wireless culture, as
smartphones, netbooks and laptops, and GPS devices now dominate so much of
modern life. The artifacts associated with this culture were unknown a generation
ago. Technological development created these artifacts and new language to
describe them and the functions they perform. Today’s wireless artifacts in turn
help reinforce our own commitment to wireless technology as a way of life, if only
because children are now growing up with them, often even before they can read
and write.

The iPhone is just one of the many notable cultural artifacts in today’s wireless world. Technological development created these
artifacts and new language to describe them and their functions—for example, “There’s an app for that!”
Philip Brooks – iPhone – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sometimes people in one society may find it difficult to understand the artifacts
that are an important part of another society’s culture. If a member of a tribal
society who had never seen a cell phone, or who had never even used batteries or
electricity, were somehow to visit the United States, she or he would obviously
have no idea of what a cell phone was or of its importance in almost everything we
do these days. Conversely, if we were to visit that person’s society, we might not
appreciate the importance of some of its artifacts.

In this regard, consider once again India’s cows, discussed in the news article that
began this chapter. As the article mentioned, people from India consider cows
holy, and they let cows roam the streets of many cities. In a nation where hunger is
so rampant, such cow worship is difficult to understand, at least to Americans,
because a ready source of meat is being ignored.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris (1974) advanced a practical explanation for India’s

cow worship. Millions of Indians are peasants who rely on their farms for their
food and thus their existence. Oxen and water buffalo, not tractors, are the way
they plow their fields. If their ox falls sick or dies, farmers may lose their farms.
Because, as Harris observes, oxen are made by cows, it thus becomes essential to
preserve cows at all costs. In India, cows also act as an essential source of
fertilizer, to the tune of 700 million tons of manure annually, about half of which is
used for fertilizer and the other half of which is used as fuel for cooking. Cow
manure is also mixed with water and used as flooring material over dirt floors in
Indian households. For all of these reasons, cow worship is not so puzzling after
all, because it helps preserve animals that are very important for India’s economy
and other aspects of its way of life.
 According to anthropologist Marvin Harris, cows are worshipped in India because they are such an important part of India’s
agricultural economy.
Francisco Martins – Cow in Mumbai – CC BY-NC 2.0.

If Indians exalt cows, many Jews and Muslims feel the opposite about pigs: they
refuse to eat any product made from pigs and so obey an injunction from the Old
Testament of the Bible and from the Koran. Harris thinks this injunction existed
because pig farming in ancient times would have threatened the ecology of the
Middle East. Sheep and cattle eat primarily grass, while pigs eat foods that people
eat, such as nuts, fruits, and especially grains. In another problem, pigs do not
provide milk and are much more difficult to herd than sheep or cattle. Next, pigs
do not thrive well in the hot, dry climate in which the people of the Old Testament
and Koran lived. Finally, sheep and cattle were a source of food back then because
beyond their own meat they provided milk, cheese, and manure, and cattle were
also used for plowing. In contrast, pigs would have provided only their own meat.
Because sheep and cattle were more “versatile” in all of these ways, and because of
the other problems pigs would have posed, it made sense for the eating of pork to
be prohibited.

In contrast to Jews and Muslims, at least one society, the Maring of the mountains
of New Guinea, is characterized by “pig love.” Here pigs are held in the highest
regard. The Maring sleep next to pigs, give them names and talk to them, feed
them table scraps, and once or twice every generation have a mass pig sacrifice
that is intended to ensure the future health and welfare of Maring society. Harris
explains their love of pigs by noting that their climate is ideally suited to raising
pigs, which are an important source of meat for the Maring. Because too many pigs
would overrun the Maring, their periodic pig sacrifices help keep the pig
population to manageable levels. Pig love thus makes as much sense for the
Maring as pig hatred did for people in the time of the Old Testament and the
Koran.
Key Takeaways
 The major elements of culture are symbols, language, norms, values, and artifacts.
 Language makes effective social interaction possible and influences how people conceive
of concepts and objects.
 Major values that distinguish the United States include individualism, competition, and a
commitment to the work ethic.

1.
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