Chapter 4 Culture and Socialisation Solutions
Question - 1 : - How does the understanding of culture in social science differ from the everyday use of the word ‘culture’?
Answer - 1 : -
Culture refers to widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations.
In social perspective culture refers to the products of socialisation with an organised group, society or nation and involves a set of rules, norms and customs that are agreed by the members of that group.
In general terms, culture refers to acquiring etiquettes of society and liking for fine arts like music, painting, folk songs, folk dances etc. Therefore, basic term is used as people being cultured or uncultured.
For a sociologist, the culture of a society is the way of life of its members, the collection of ideas and habit which they learn, share and transmit from generation to generation. It is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of the society.
Question - 2 : - How can we demonstrate that the different dimensions of culture comprise a whole?
Answer - 2 : -
Culture has many dimensions, parts and units but they are interrelated and interdependent. They can’t emerge or function in vacuum, instead all the dimensions function as an organisation.
Culture maintains a balance. Culture has three components i.e., cognitive, normative and material. Cognitive part is related to understanding and information; e.g. books and documents. Normative component is the customs, convention and folkways and material component of culture is linked with man-made part of the environment
i. e. dams, roads, electric and electronic gadgets, automobiles etc.
All the above mentioned components are complementary to each other and coordinate to function as a whole.
Question - 3 : - Compare two cultures with which you are familiar. Is it difficult not to be ethnocentric?
Answer - 3 : -
We are quite aware of eastern particularly Indian and Western cultures. Both the cultures are quite different from each other.
Indian culture is based on agriculture and people are dependent on each other. This is a collectivistic society and emphasises on socialisation.
In collectivistic societies the boundaries between self and the group are flexible and people can intrude/interfere in each other’s life.
In such type of societies various concepts are different e.g. human body is determined by natural elements and criteria of being intelligent is very comprehensive e.g. It requires cognitive, social, emotional and entrepreneurial competencies.
Whereas western culture is technologically advanced and is individualistic society. This is based on urbanisation, schooling and child rearing practices. They emphasise on individual liberty.
The boundaries between self and group are rigid. They believe that body is a fully functioning machine. Their criteria of being intelligent demands only the cognitive competence.
Ethnocentrism refers to the use of our own ethnic group as basis for judgements about other ethnic group. There is a tendency to view the beliefs, customs and behaviours of our own group as ‘normal’ and those of other ethnic groups as ‘strange’ or ‘deviant’. There is the implicit assumption in all of this that own ethnic group is somehow superior to the others that we are judging it against.
Ethnocentrism is a natural social process because we all affiliate our silver with a larger group. For reassurance that my behaviour is right, to maintain consistency in behaviour and a belief that majority is always right we conform to the group norms. Gradually we become conditioned to the prevailing group norms in their in-group. We develop an in-group bias.
But it is not difficult to reduce ethnocentrism i.e. in-group bias.
These can minimise opportunities of learning prejudices, changing negative attitudes, deemphasising a narrow social identity based on the in-group and discouraging self-fulfilling prophecy, positive attitude, objectivity and empathy we can reduce ethnocentrism.
Question - 4 : - Discuss two different approaches to studying cultural change.
Answer - 4 : -
- Changes in religion, art, language or literature in turn effect interest and faith which in turn effect social relationships.
- Cultural change is primarily responsible for new discoveries, inventions and change in cultural activities.
- Scope of cultural change is large.
- Cultural changes influence social change.
- Cultural changes can be categorised as natural changes and revolutionary changes.
- Natural changes can bring absolute change in any society. Natural calamities like earthquake, tsunami, flood, famine, earthquake etc. may bring physical changes.
- Revolutionary changes bring quick changes in the values and economy of a particular place. These changes come due to political interference and significantly bring changes in the society e.g. Islamic influence on Indian culture or Western influence on Indian culture due to invaders.