Essential Question

The language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors and material objects that

are passed down from one generation to the next.

It is the lens through which

we perceive and evaluate what is

going on around us.

“The last thing a fish would ever notice would be

water”.-Ralph Linton, Anthropologist,

(1936)

How much of life do we take for granted?

The Culture within us

The Iceberg Theory of Culture

Like an iceberg, nine-tenths of culture is below the surface

The tangible objects that distinguish a group of people

• Jewelry• Art• Buildings• Weapons• Machines• Foods

• Fashion

Keep in mind the sociological imagination!

There is nothing “natural” about material culture.

Arabs wear gowns and Americans wear jeans.

Both feel NATURAL in doing so.

A group's way of thinking including its beliefs,

values -and-

its common patterns of behavior including

language and other forms of interaction.

-aka-

Symbolic Culture

Keep in mind the sociological imagination!

There is nothing “natural” about nonmaterial culture.

It is just as arbitrary to stand in line as it is to

push and shove.

The disorientation that people

experience when they come in

contact with a different culture

and can no longer depend on their

taken-for-granted assumptions about

life.

• The use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies.

• In general this leads to a negative evaluation of another group or culture’s values, norms and behaviors.

Keep in mind the sociological imagination!• Culture penetrates deep into our

thinking, becoming a taken-for-granted lens through which we see the world and obtain our perceptions of reality.

• Culture provides the fundamental basis for our decision making.

• The culture we have internalized becomes the “right” way of doing things.

• Coming in contact with a radically different culture challenges our basic assumptions about life.

• Culture is universal.

• All people are ethnocentric which has both positive and negative consequences.

Keep in mind the sociological imagination!