Module 1:
Understanding Culture, Society and Politics- Some Key Observation
At the end
of this module the student should be able to:
-
Articulate observation on human cultural variations, social differences, and
social change and political identities
- Demonstrate
curiosity and an openness to explore the origins and dynamics of culture and
society and political identities.
- Trace the
link between behavior and culture through observation and analysis
Motivation:
Activity 1
Directions:
1. Get one whole sheet of paper.
2. Write
your name inside the circle.
3. Draw
figure 1 on the sheet of paper
4. Write
the following information of yourself in the 4 spaces:
a. gender
b. socio-economic class c. ethnicity d. religion
Directions:
Based on the output from the previous activity, the teacher will ask the
students to
discuss
their observations based on the following questions:
1. What are the similarities and differences
of every individual?
2. Do these similarities and differences
affect the life of the whole community? Why?
The teacher will give each group a
time frame of 2 minutes to present their answers group outputs. The processing of
answers shall follow.
Culture,
Society and Politics as Conceptual Tools
Culture,
society and politics are concepts. They exist in the realm of ideas and
thoughts. As such, they cannot be seen or touched and yet the influence the way
we see and experience our individual and collective social beings.
Concepts
are created and have been used to have a firm grasp of a phenomenon. Just like
any other words, concepts are initially invented as icons to capture phenomena
and in the process assist the
users/inventors
to describe facets of social experience in relation to the phenomena concerned.
What is
interesting about concepts is that as conceptual tools, they allow us to form
other concepts, or relate concepts to each other or even deconstruct old ones
and replace them with something new.
Students as
Social Beings
The way we
live our lives—or should we say, the way we are being steered to live our lives
presupposes omnipotent forces shaping the very fabric of our existence. The
categories that we possess as individuals—labels that are ascribed or given to
us individually and collectively—are a testament to the operation of these forces
which leave us unsuspecting of their intrusive and punitive implications in our
lives. Our categories as male/female, rich/poor, or tall/short and even the
problematic effect of the color of our skin is evidence of the operation of
these social forces.
Our sociality
is defined by the very categories that we possess, the categories assigned to
us by the society at large. These labels so to speak, function, as tags with
which our society read our worth and value. These categories that we possess are
not natural; rather they are socially constructed.
Identity is the distinctive characteristic that defines an individual or is
shared by those belonging to a
particular group. People may have
multiple identities depending on the groups to which they belong.
Module 2
The Scope of
Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science
Lesson 1:
The Need for Studying Social, Cultural, and Political Behavior through Science
At the
end of this module the student can
1.
appreciate the value of disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, and Political
Science as social
sciences.
2.
Understand the shared concerns of sociology, anthropology and political science
A. The
Holistic Study of Humanity: Anthropology
Definition
and Scope of Anthropology
Anthropology
is derived from two Greek words Anthropos and logos, which intensively
studies human and the respective cultures where they were born and actively
belong to. It is considered
the father or even grandfather of all social and behavioral sciences like
sociology, economics, and psychology, to name a few. The discipline had its
humble beginnings with early European explorers and their accounts which
produced initial impressions about the native peoples they encountered In their
explorations.
The father
of American anthropology, Franz Boaz, a
physicist, strongly believed that the same method and strategy could be applied
in measuring culture and human behavior while conducting research among humans
including the uniqueness of their cultures.
Two
American anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and William Henry Morgan became
prominent in their field since their specialization included the championing of
indigenous rights like traditional cultural preservation and ancestral domain
of the American Indian tribes, they intensively studied.
Historical
Beginnings
Ruth
Benedict became a specialist in anthropology and
folklore and authored the famous book Patterns of Culture.
The field
of anthropology offers several topics for relevant research and discussion in
various academic fields since its distinct way of data gathering from their
respondents apply participant observation which is central to ethnography.
Bronislaw
Malinowski is the founding father of this strategy.
B. The Study
of the Social World: Sociology
Sociology
and the Sociological Perspective
Sociology is the study of society, social institutions, and social
relationships. Sociology is interested in
describing and explaining human behavior, especially as it occurs within a
social context (Merriam-Webster).
Studying sociology is practical and useful. A social being, we gain
understanding of how the social world operates and of our place in it. C.Wright
Mills (1959) calls it sociological
imagination which he defined as
“the vivid awareness of the relationship between private experience and the
wider society.”
Sociology’s
point of view is distinct from other sciences. Peter Berger
explains that the perspective of
sociology enables us to see “general patterns in particular events” (Macionis,
2010). This means finding general patterns in particular events. The first
systematic study on suicide provides a good example.
Emile
Durkheim’s pioneering study on suicide in the 1800s revealed that there are categories of people who are more likely to
commit suicide.
History of Sociology
as Science
Sociology
emerged with the two of the most significant social and political revolution in
the history.
The French
Revolution of 1789, along with the Industrial Revolution in England during the
18th century,
tremendously changed people’s lives.
Early
Thinkers
Auguste Comte
(1798-1857) is the person who “invented” sociology in
1842, by bringing together the Greek word socius or “companion” and the Latin word logy or “study”. He originally used “social physics” as a term for
sociology. Its aim was to discover the social laws that govern the development
of society. Comte suggested that there were three stages in the development of
societies, namely the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the
positive stage.
The founding mother of sociology is Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), an English writer and reformist. In her accounts in her
book How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), the deep sociological insights we call now ethnographic narratives
are fully expressed.
Karl Marx
(1818-1883), a German philosopher and revolutionary
further contributed to the development of sociology. Marx introduced the
materialist analysis of history which discounts metaphysical explanation for
historical development. Before Marx, scholars explain social change through
divine intervention and the theory of “great men”.
Marx is the forerunner of conflict theory. He wrote the Communist
Manifesto a book that is focused on the misery of
the lower class (working class) caused by the existing social order. He
reiterated that the political revolution was vital in the evolutionary process of society, the only means to achieve the improvement of social conditions.
Emile
Durkheim (1864-1920) a French a sociologist who put forward the idea that individuals are more products rather
then the creator of society; the society itself is external to the individual.
In his book Suicide, Durkheim proved
that social forces strongly impact on people’s lives and that seemingly
personal event is not personal after all.
Max Weber
(1864-1920) Weber stressed the role of
rationalization in the development of society. For Weber,
rationalization refers essentially to the disenchantment of the world. As
science began to replace religion, people also adopted a scientific or rational
attitude to the world. People refused to believe in myths and superstitious
beliefs.
C. The Study
of Politics: Political Science
Guide
Questions:
1. Why is
there a need for politics?
2. Can we
exist without politics?
Political
Science is part of the social sciences that deals
with the study of politics, power, and government. In turn, politics refers to
“ The process of making collective decisions in a community, society, or group
through the application of influence and power” (Ethridge and Handelman 2010, p.8).
Political
Science studies how even the most private and personal decisions of individuals are influenced by the collective decisions of a community. “The personal is
political.”
Politics
Generally,
politics is associated with how power is gained and employed to develop
authority and influence on social affairs. It can also be used to promulgate
guiding rules to govern the state. It is also a tactic for upholding
collaboration among members of a community, whether from civil or political organizations.
Concept of
Politics
Politics is
allied with the government which is considered as the ultimate authority. It is the
primary role of the government to rule society by stipulating and
transmitting the basic laws that will supervise the freedom of the people. Each
form of government possesses the power to attain order that should lead to
social justice.
Politics as
Science
Science is
commonly defined as the knowledge derived from experiment and observation
systematically done. Policy-making and government decisions should be done
through proper research, social investigation, analysis, validation, planning,
execution, and evaluation. Thus, politics is a science.
MODULE 3
Module:
Society as an Objective Reality
At the end of this module the student should be able to:
1. Explain how society and its institutions shape individuals
2. Describe the construction of society through the hidden rules of
society
Concept of Society
In order to concretize society mainstream
sociologists have tended to define it as a structure that is a recognizable network of inter-relating institutions. The word recognizable is crucial in its
context because it suggests that the way in which societies differ from one
another depends on the manner in which their particular institutions are
inter-connected.
The notion that societies are structured
depends upon their reproduction over time. In this respect the term institution
is crucial. To speak of institutionalized forms of social conduct is to refer
to modes of belief and behaviors that occur and recur are socially reproduced.
While we may subscribe to the arguments
that society is both structured and reproduced the Marxist account attempts to
provide us with a basis for understanding how particular social formations
arise and correspond with a particular mode of production.
Society is not static or peace-fully
evolving structure but is conceived of as the tentative solution to the
conflicts arising out of antagonistic social relations of production.
Frequently social scientists emphasize the cultural aspect of social
relationships.
In doing so they see society as being
made possible by the shared understanding of its members. Because of human beings
exist in a linguistic and symbolic universe that they themselves have
constructed the temptation is to construe society as a highly complex symbolic
and communication system.
This stress on culture is associated with
the notion that society is underpinned by ideas and values. Society is a
process in which people continuously interact with one another, the key terms
are negotiation, self, other, reflexivity the implication being that society is
constituted and reconstituted in social interaction.
Society is not imposed upon people in the
processual definition rather it has to be accepted and confirmed by
participants. Each interaction episode contains within it the possibility of
innovation and change. So against the view of society that sees it as structure, the process view asserts that people make the structure.
Definitions
of Society
Auguste Comte
the father of sociology saw society as a
social organism possessing a harmony of structure and function.
Emile
Durkheim the founding father of the modern sociology
treated society as a reality in its own right.
According to Talcott Parsons Society is a total complex of human relationships in so far as they
grow out of the action in terms of means-end relationship intrinsic or
symbolic.
G.H Mead conceived society as an exchange of gestures which involves the use of
symbols.
Morris
Ginsberg defines society as a collection of
individuals united by certain relations or mode of behavior which mark them off
from others who do not enter into these relations or who differ from them in
behavior.
Cole sees Society as the complex of organized associations and institutions with a community.
According to Maclver and Page society is a system of usages and procedures of authority and mutual
aid of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behavior and
liberties. This ever-changing complex system which is called society is a web
of social relationships.
Social
Reproduction or How Societies Persist
If one defines society as “organization of groups that is relatively
self-contained,” then the next question is how societies manage to exist and
persist across time and space. The problem of explaining how societies manage
to exist over a long period of time is called reproduction by Louis Althusser. No society
can endure over time if it does not support its very own reproduction. To do
this all societies require the creation of institutions to perpetuate the
existence of the society.
Two types of institution that reproduce the condition of social life:
Ideological
State Apparatuses – are institutions
that is and used by society to mold its members to share the same values and
beliefs that a typical member of the society possess.
Repressive
state apparatuses – refer to those
coercive institutions that use physical force to make the members conform the
laws and norms society like courts, police, and prisons.
A-DAPTATION G-OAL
ATTAINMENT
Organism Personality
I-NTEGRATION L-ATENCY
Society Culture
Adaptation- is the capacity of society to take resources from society and
distribute them accordingly.
This function is carried out by the economy which includes gathering
resources and producing commodities to social redistribution.
Goal
Attainment- is the capacity to set goals and
mobilize the resources and energies necessary to achieve the goals set forth by
society. This is set by the political subsystem. Political resolutions and
societal objectives are part of this necessity.
Integration- or harmonization of the entire society to achieve consensus. Parsons
meant, the coordination, adjustment, and regulation of the rest of the subsystem
so that society will continue to function smoothly. It is a demand that the
values and norms of society are solid and sufficiently convergent.
The strength of the reproduction theory is also its weakness. It fails to
explain how people do not simply reproduce the very social conditions that they
are born with, but they also possess the power of agency. One can be born a slave
in a slave society, but it does not mean that being born a slave, one has no
power and opportunities to ameliorate and change the conditions of one’s birth.
People can also change the social structures that they themselves created. For
if societies simply reproduce their own existence, then no radical change is
forthcoming.
Evaluation
Write an analysis of your family using Parson’s AGIL scheme. How does
your family mobilize resources, set goals, integrate, and maintain intimacy among members? Who do you
think acts as the government in your family? How about the economy?
Defining
Culture and Society
At the end of this module, the student should be able to:
1.
Define and explain what culture is
2.
Describe culture and society a complex whole
3.
Identifies aspects of culture and society as a complex whole
4.
Discuss cultural diversity and human differences.
Motivation:
List all things that make Filipino culture unique and different from
other cultures. Then explain why
Filipinos behave the way they do. Are these cultural traits
unchangeable or are they subject to historical
and social changes? Do all Filipinos share the same traits? Explain
The
complexity of Culture
Culture is a people’s way of life. This classic definition appears
generic, yet prefigures both the processes and structures that account not only
for the development of such a way of life, but also for the inherent systems
that lend it its self-perpetuating nature.
According to British literary scholar, Raymond Williams, the first
thing that one has to acknowledge in defining culture is that culture is
ordinary. This means that all societies have a definite way of life, a common
way of doing and understanding things. Culture consists of patterns, explicit
and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting
the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment, in
artifacts, ideas, and their attached values.
Elements of
Culture
To understand the culture, it is necessary to understand the different
elements that compose it:
Knowledge – It refers to any information received and perceived to be true.
Beliefs—The perception of accepted reality. Reality refers to the existence of
things whether material or nonmaterial
Social
Norms-- These are established expectations of
society as to how a person is supposed to act depending on the requirements of
the time, place, or situation.
Different
forms of Social Norms
Folkways—The patterns of repetitive behavior which become habitual and the conventional part of living.
Mores—The set of ethical standards and moral obligations as dictates of the reason that distinguishes human acts as right or wrong or good from the bad.
Values—Anything held yo be relatively worthy, important, desirable, or
valuable.
Technology—The practical application of knowledge in converting raw materials
into finished products.
Aspects of
Culture
Since culture is very complex, there are important aspects of culture
that contribute to the development
of man’s social interaction.
Dynamic, flexible and adaptive
Shared and contested
Learned through socialization or
enculturation
Patterned social interactions
Integrated and at times unstable
Transmitted through socialization
Requires language and other forms of
communication
Ethnocentrism
and Cultural Relativism
The range of variations between culture is almost endless and yet at
the same time cultures ensemble
one another in many important ways. Cultural variation is affected by
man’s geographical set-up and
social experiences.
Cultural
Variation refers to the differences in social behaviors
that different cultures exhibit around the world. There are two important
perceptions of cultural variability namely ethnocentrism and cultural
relativism.
Ethnocentrism-
It is a perception that arises from the
fact that cultures differ and each culture defines reality differently.
Judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one’s own
culture.
Cultural
Relativism- The attempt to judge behavior according
to its cultural context. The principle that an individual person’s beliefs and
activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual’s own
culture.
Xenocentrism
and Xenophobia
Xenocentrism
refers to preference for the foreign. In
this sense it the opposite of ethnocentrism. It is characterized by a strong
belief that one’s own products, styles, or ideas are inferior to those which
originate elsewhere.
Xenophobia- is the fear of what is perceived as foreign or strange.
Diversity of
Cultures
Traditionally, many anthropologists
believed that culture is a seamless whole that is well-integrated with the rest
of social system and structures. Hence, many students of culture believed that
within a given society there is little room for cultural diversity. However it
did not take long for students of culture to realize that culture is not merely
body of well-integrated beliefs and symbols. The culture in a given society is
also diverse.
There is no single culture but plural
cultures. In the sixties, the term “subculture” became prominent among scholars
of culture. The fieldworks done by the sociologists from the Chicago University
highlighted the unique character, if not, the fundamental differences between
mainstream American culture and subgroups within American society such as
migrants, homeless, “deviant” groups, black ghettoes, minorities, and those who
dwell on slum areas. In response to the growing unrest among youth, many
sociologists used the term subculture to define the unique character of youth
culture.
Subculture is used to denote the
difference between the parent and dominant culture from the way of life of the
younger generation. In particular, Milton Yinger (1960) defines subculture “to
designate both the traditional norms of a sub-society and the emergent norms of
a group caught in a frustrating and conflict-laden situation. This indicates
that there are differences in the origin, function, and perpetuation of
traditional and emergent norms, and suggests that the use of the concept contra-culture
for the latter might improve sociological analysis.”
In
other words, subculture is a response to the conflict between the values of the
dominant culture and the emerging values and lifestyle of the new, younger
generation. In England, the works of Birmingham Center for Contemporary
Cultural Studies, led by Stuart Hall and Jefferson, argue that in modem
societies the major cultural configurations are cultures based on social class,
but within these are subcultures which are defined as: “smaller, more localised
and differentiated structures, within one or other of the larger cultural
networks” (Hall and Jefferson 1975,p. 13).
The larger cultural configuration is
referred to as the ‘parent culture’. Subcultures, while having different focal concerns
from the parent culture, will share some common aspects with the culture from
which they were derived. To distinguish subculture from the dominant culture,
one has to look into the language or lingo and symbolic elements of the group.
Subcultures coalesce around certain
activities, values, uses of material artifacts, and territorial space. When
these are distinguished by age and generation, they are called ‘youth
subcultures’. Some, like delinquent subcultures, are persistent features of the
parent culture, but others appear only at certain historical moments then fade
away.
These latter subcultures are highly
visible and, indeed, spectacular (Burke and Sunley 1998, p. 40). Some examples
of subcultures include the “skinheads,” “punks”, “heavy metal,” and gay
subculture. Spectacular subcultures that appear only during certain historical
moments would include some fans club around certain pop icons or artists. They
have to be distinguished from “fads” and “fashions” that are regular part of
social life. Fads are short-lived collectively shared fascination with being
cool such as playing the Japanese electronic pet Tamaguchi during the 1980s.
Fads may also cover the popularity of certain songs and hairstyles of certain artists
among young people like Michael Jackson and Madonna in the 1980s, Justin Bieber
and Lady Gaga most recently. The popularity of the language jejemon (popularly
known for typing jejejeje in social networking sites) is also a fad. Usually,
these fads are short-lived.
While subcultures may co-exist with the
parent culture peacefully, sometimes they become radical and extreme. They are
called counterculture or contra-culture. The term counterculture is attributed
to Theodore Roszak (1969), author of The Making of a Counter Culture.
Typically, a subculture may expand and grow into a counterculture by defining
its own values in opposition to mainstream norms. In the early 1970s, the young
college Americans who rejected the dominant values of American society, and
championed anti-Vietnam war sentiments advocated free love and psychedelic
experience through drugs could be considered as expressions of counter-culture.
Other than the dominant or parent culture, a certain type of culture tends to
be widespread and appreciated by a large mass of people beyond geographical
confines. This is popular culture. The term “popular culture” is a
controversial concept in the social sciences.
An obvious starting point in any attempt
to define popular culture is to say that popular culture is simply a culture that
is widely favored or well-liked by many people (Storey 2009). This definition
separates popular culture from “high culture” or the culture that is shared
only by an elite group within the wealthy echelons of society. Hence, popular
culture is often seen as inferior or a product of mass production for people
with a bad artistic taste. In the Philippines, those who patronize popular
culture are often labeled as jologs or bakya crowd. Their taste is supposed to
be “baduy” —originally referring to the promdi (a person from the province) way
of combining clothing style in a wrong way: Ang baduy manamit. Popular culture
is often equated with cheaply made box-office movies, while better taste is
reserved for those who watch Oscar-winning films or movies shown in Cannes
festival. So, somebody who watches Jolina Magdangal’s movie is a jolog, but
someone who wears green shirt with red pants is baduy.
So, popular culture is controversial. But
many students of media studies and culture now realize the value and importance
of popular culture. Many scholars believe that popular culture cannot easily be
distinguished from high culture. For instance, many people from the lower class
also enjoy the music of the late Luciano Pavarotti, an Italian operatic tenor.
And many middle-class persons enjoy popular culture. This is the postmodern
analysis of popular culture. According to postmodern analysis of culture, the
distinction between what is low and high in culture cannot be rigidly established.
With the advent of mass production —music, CDs, DVDs, used clothing’s (ukay),
Internet, YouTube, torrents, file sharing, etc.— many elements and cultural
styles once enjoyed by the middle and upper classes are now easily accessible
to the people from lower classes and vise-versa.
Evaluation
A. My
Culture My Heritage
Identify two Philippine cultural heritage under threat—one tangible
and one intangible. For both,
identify the threats and their sources, and then come up with a plan
of action on how to deal with
these threats. Write your output on the table.
Heritage Threats Plan of Action
B. Genocide
Events
List down 3 notorious genocide events and killings in history. You may
consider past and recent
events.
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