Understanding Culture
Understanding Culture
Understanding Culture
COURSE SYLLABUS:
B. Defining Culture and Society from the perspectives of anthropology and sociology
3. Aspects of Culture
a. Dynamic, Flexible, & Adaptive
b. Shared & Contested (given the reality of social differentiation)
c. Learned through socialization or enculturation
d. Patterned social interactions
e. Integrated and at times unstable
f. Transmitted through socialization/enculturation
g. Requires language and other forms of communication
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 revolutions
1. Enculturation/Socialization
a. Identity formation (identities, disciplines, and aspirations)
b. Norms and values
c. Statuses and roles (e.g. age, gender)
d. Family and the household Nuclear, extended, and reconstituted families (separated,
transnational)
3. Economic Institutions
a. Reciprocity
b. Transfers
c. Redistribution
d. Market transactions
e. Markets and state
4. Nonstate institutions
a. Banks and corporations
b. Cooperatives and trade unions
c. Transnational advocacy groups
d. Development agencies
e. International organizations
5. Education
a. Functions of education in society (formal and nonformal)
i. Productive citizenry
ii. Self-actualization
iii. Primary education as a human right
7. Health
c. Social inequality
i. Access to social, political, and symbolic capital
ii. Gender inequality
iii. Ethnic minorities
iv. Other minorities (e.g., persons with disabilities)
v. Global Inequality (relationships between states and nonstate actors in the global
community)
H. Cultural, Social, and Political Change Sources of social, cultural, and political
change
1. Innovation
2. Diffusion
3. Acculturation and assimilation
4. Social contradictions and tensions (e.g., Inter-ethnic conflicts, class struggle, armed
conflict, terrorism, protests, gender issues)