Lesson 1 Understanding and Appreciating The Interplay of UCSP

STARTING POINT FOR
UNDERSTANDING OF
CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND
POLITICAL IDENTITIES
Guide Question: What is the interplay
of culture, society, and political
identities?
Social Science as a discipline studies
the society and the manner in which
people behave and influence the
world around us. The uttermost goal
of social science is to answer different
questions and find solutions to
problems of the society to improve
human condition despite cultural,
social and political differences.
MANIFESTATION OF HUMAN
VARIATIONS THROUGH THE
CULTURAL DIVERSITY,
SOCIAL DIFFERENCES,
AND POLITICAL IDENTITIES
The creation of the global society puts
human into one plot where almost
everything is interlinked and the
change in one of it will affect the
other. However, despite the
emergence of the idea of one global
society, there remains visible
manifestation of human variations in
society.
Cultural Diversity
Culture plays a major role in our day to day
living. It refers to “that complex whole
which encompasses beliefs, practices,
values, attitudes, laws, norms, artefacts,
symbols, knowledge, and everything that a
person learns and share as a member of
society.” (E.B. Taylor 1920, 1871).It is a
strong part of people’s lives. It influences
their views, their values, their humor, their
hopes, their loyalties, and their worries and
fears.
While culture has the capacity to bond the
members of a society together, it is also a
source differences that exist between
people in society and between society in
the globe due to diversity in language,
dress and traditions, food preference, etc.
(ex. 20 Breakfast Around the World) is a
clear manifestation of this diversity in
culture. There are also significant
variations in the way societies organize
themselves, in their shared conception of
morality, and in the ways they interact with
their environment (e.g. subculture and
counterculture)
Cultures are internally affected by
both forces encouraging change and
forces resisting change. These forces
are related to both social structures
and natural events, and are involved
in the perpetuation of cultural ideas
and practices within current
structures, which themselves are
subject to change.
Social Differences
The society has various manifestations of
social differences based on unique social
characteristics or qualities like social class,
gender, age, educational attainment,
occupation, and the like. In sociology,
social differences is usually equated with
social stratification, this describes the
relative social position of persons in a
given social group, category, geographical
region or other social unit.
Classifying people according to resources
they enjoy, that is based on social class
(e.g. rich vs. poor) is the most visible as it
has the most impact in the lives of many.
As a whole, social stratification describes
power relations in the economic context.
While there are sociologists, structural
functionalist supporters, who consider
social stratification or dividing people into
different strata as a necessity, there are
others who see otherwise and just creating
conflict and tension among members or
groups in society.
Political Identities
The world is visibly divided into

different countries. Each country has
its own political system to run its
government. A government is the
system by which a state or
community is controlled so as to put
order.
On the surface, identifying a form of
government appears to be simple, as
all governments have an official form.
Every country in the world is ruled by
a system of governance to rule its
people or constituents; and in the
process people affiliates themselves
and defined their political identity as
they relate to other peoples of the
world from other countries.
States by their system of government
Legend:
Presidential republics
Republics with an executive president elected by a
parliament
Semi-presidential republics
Parliamentary republics
Parliamentary constitutional monarchies in which the
monarch does not personally exercise power
Dual system constitutional monarchies in which the monarch
personally exercise power (often alongside a weak
parliament)
Absolute monarchies
Single-party state
Countries in which constitutional provisions for government
have been suspended (e.g. Military dictatorships)
Countries which do not fit any of the above government
SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDYING
CULTURE, SOCIETY AND
POLITICS
In this modern globalized society,
social issues and social problems are
more complex than ever before and
the interplay of culture, society and
politics in the process could not be
denied. Looking at these social issues
and social problems from a disciplinal
or interdisciplinary perspective may
no longer be enough, thus the use of
multi-disciplinary and/or trans-
disciplinary are deem appropriate to
look into interplay of culture, society
and politics.
Social Science is a very complex
study. It divided into different areas
according to focus or subject. In this
subject, a special focus on the
interplay of Anthropology (culture).
Sociology (society), and Political
Science (political identities and
government) will be given focus with
the use of trans-disciplinary
perspective to understand and
explain social issues in the human
society.
Anthropology
Anthropology, is the holistic “science

of man”, a science of the totality of
human existence. Anthropology has
two broad fields: Physical
Anthropology and Cultural
Anthropology.
Anthropology or sometimes called
Biological Anthropology mainly
concerns about how humans
emerged and evolved through times.
This is under the study of human
paleontology. The second concern of
Physical Anthropology is how human
beings differ biologically.
This is under the study of human
variation. Cultural Anthropology
basically concerns the difference of
cultures from time to time.
Three main branches of Cultural
Anthropology are Archeology which
studies past cultures through tangible
or material remains. They help
reconstruct the life and cultures of the
humans in the prehistoric time,
Anthropological Linguistics which is
the anthropological study of language.
They explain the difference of
languages by culture and how it is
constructed, and last is
Ethnology which is the study of recent
or present cultures. They try to
explain the difference of cultures
before and the recent through various
researches.
Sociology
Sociology is the study of relationships
among people. It is the study of the
society and the behaviour of people in
the society. In order to fully understand
society, a perspective called the
sociological imagination, an idea of C.
Wright Mills in “The Promise” should be
use.
According to Mills (1959) “The
sociological imagination enables us to
grasp the connection between history
and biography within society.”
In the sociological imagination, history
means what is happening or the events
in time while biography means the
personal experience of individuals. Both
of which can influence one another.
History or the events happening can
influence the Biography or personal
experience and vice versa. This just
means that C. Wright Mills gave a
perspective that would explain human
behaviour without rigorous research and
tests. With sociological imagination, one
can explain individual and societal
phenomena.
Two major approaches to examine the
human society:
Macro-level perspective
Micro –level perspective
Macro-sociology examines the social
structure, the social institutions, social
organizations and social groups while
micro-sociology places more emphasis
on the role of the individual in society.
Macro-sociology uses the structural
functionalist perspective and the conflict
perspective in examining the larger
social structure while the
micro-sociology uses the symbolic
interactionist perspective to look into the
interactions between or among
individuals in society.
Political Science
Political science deals with systems of
government and the analysis of political
activity and political behaviour.
It deals extensively with theory and
practice of politics which is commonly
thought of as the determining of the
distribution of power and resources.
Political science is a very big discipline
that is why it is divided into subfields
RATIONALE FOR STUDYING
ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICAL
SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY –
THE TRANSDICIPLINARY
APPROACH
Understanding the focus of
Anthropology, Sociology and Political
Science would not be enough, but
emphasizing the interlink or the interplay
of the three will be the approach to be
used in examining a social issue in
society. By transdisciplinarity, it permits
a learning strategy that crosses many
disciplinary boundaries to create a
wholistic approach to learning and a
better appreciation of the learning
experience.
Disciplinary: Epistemologies,
assumptions, knowledge, skills,
methods within the discipline. E.g.
Physics, History, Psychology.
Multidisciplinary: Using the
knowledge /understanding of more
than one discipline. e.g. Physics and
History, Biology and Architecture.
Interdisciplinary: Using the
epistemologies/methods of one
discipline within another.e.g.
Biochemistry, ecophilosophy,
Astrophysics.
Transdiciplinary: Focus on an issue
such pollution, poverty, or hunger
both within and beyond discipline
boundaries with the possibility of one
perspective.
Showing respect and recognition of the
existence of different levels of reality
governed by the different types of logic
embraced by the different disciplines is
inherent in the transdisciplinary attitude.
Beyond this,
is the acceptance of the unknown, the
unexpected and the unforeseeable that
maybe unveiled by using the
transdisciplinary perspective. Thus,
the use of a lense or perspective that
embraces interplay of many disciplines to
examine the sources and consequences of
change is imperative.

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STARTING POINT FOR

The world is visibly divided into

Anthropology, is the holistic “science

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