The Study of Society and Culture- Social Science - Lecture No-2

Subject: Social Science
Topic: Study of Society and Culture
Subject Code: HUM 4301
Teacher Name: Mohammad Akhteruddin

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The Study of Society and  Culture

 Three revolutions had to take place before the sociological imagination could crystallize: 

 

§ The scientific revolution (16th c.) encouraged the use of evidence to substantiate theories.

§ The democratic revolution (18th c.) encouraged the view that human action can change society.

§ The industrial revolution (19th c.) gave sociologists their subject matter. 

Sociology

Sociology is the systematic study of human society and social interaction. It is based on the idea that our relations with other people create opportunities for us to think and act but also set limits on our thoughts and action.

What is Sociology?

Sociology is also the study of rectification, or social constructions.
Sociology

• Howard Becker defined sociology as the study of people “doing things together.”
• This reminds us that society and the individual are inherently connected, and each depends on the other. 
  

 

A society is a large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Society

•Society is a group of people who shape their lives in aggregated and patterned ways that distinguish their group from other groups.

•A society is a group of people who share a culture and live more or less together. They have a set of institutions which provide what they need to meet their physical, social, and psychological needs and which maintain order and the values of the culture.

Social structures are the more or less stable patterns of people’s interactions and relationships.

Institutions are the principal social structures that organize, direct, and execute the essential tasks of living. 

Some institutions are:

Family,

Educational,

Economic,

Religion,

Law,

Political Systems

Sociological Imagination

•The ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society.

Cool Insights from Sociology

•Humans cannot be understood apart from social context (i.e. society)

 

Names that have gained the most popularity,

2004 – 2010

...Or, the names I’ll begin seeing all the time in 2022-2028

What Does Society Look Like? 

•While the idea of society is familiar, describing it can be difficult.  Ultimately society is made up of many different components, such as culture, race, family, education, social class, and people’s interactions.

•People who share a culture and territory

Types of Societies 

•Traditional society

•Transitional/Prismatic society

•Modern society

•Post-modern society

 

Max Weber’s Classification of Society

•Traditional society

•Charismatic society

•Rational legal

Karl Marx’s Classification of Society
 

•Ancient society

•Medieval society

•Modern society

Culture

•What is Culture?

•Components of Culture

•Language and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

•Variations in Culture

•Different ways of Viewing Culture

•Cultural Change

•American culture in perspective

 What is Culture?

•Culture is the entire way of life for a group of people (including both material and symbolic elements). 

•A set of rules set by social system, procedures, ideas and values.

•It is a lens through which one views the world and is passed from one generation to the next. 

•It is what makes us human.

What makes up culture?

•Sociologists see culture as consisting of two different categories: material culture (any physical object to which we give social meaning) and non material or symbolic culture (the ideas associated with a cultural group). 

Material Culture

•Material culture includes the objects associated with a cultural group, such as tools, machines, utensils, buildings, and artwork.  

 Symbolic Culture

•Symbolic culture includes ways of thinking (beliefs, values, and assumptions) and ways of behaving (norms, interactions, and communication).

 

 

 

Components of Culture

•One of the most important functions of symbolic culture is it allows us to communicate through signs, gestures, and language.

•Signs (or symbols), such as a traffic signal or product logo, are used to meaningfully represent something else. Gestures are the signs that we make with our body, such as hand gestures and facial expressions; it is important that these gestures also carry meaning. 

•Finally language, a system of communication using vocal sounds, gestures, and written symbols, is probably the most significant component of culture because it allows us to communicate. 

•Language is so important that many have argued that it shapes not only our communication but our perceptions of how we see things as well. 

•The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the idea that language structures thought, and that ways of looking at the world are embedded in language, supports this premise.

•Ex: snow, jam, Family Guy

•What we do is culture and what we are civilization

•Cultural integration

•Cultural lag

•Roles

•Roles conflict

•Values, shared beliefs about what a group considers worthwhile or desirable, guide the creation of norms, the formal and informal rules regarding what kinds of behavior are acceptable and appropriate within a culture. 

•Norms govern our behavior

 

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