UCSP Understanding Culture, Society and Politics

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.