Notes on Culture

The social world consists of individuals who communicate with symbols and who come to share perspectives more or less in common. For example, as a member of a western culture, one knows that field mice are not considered "food." One knows the rules which regulate incest or pedophilia. One knows that cannibalism or headhunting would be considered immoral and taboo.

Individuals in society may lack geographic unity, but are held together primarily by this communication. For example, the readers of a particular magazine, or participants on on-line forums create a kind of social world based on shared perspectives and, to a degree, the communication of these perspectives. Based then on identity categories, such as "teens," "the elderly," "Asian-Americans," etc., subcultures form and individuals maintain attachments to them and are influenced by them. Individuals within the boundaries of subcultural identifications can engage in acts of negotiation, both within and across such boundaries, as they attempt to live and act meaningfully in correspondance to the culture's various norms.

Corresponding to such processes, we have what we conceptualize as culture. Culture is a key part of the evolution of society and from a functionalist perspective, provides societal maintenance functions - i.e., the idea that society continues because of shared culture.

Summing up: Culture -
*culture = shared perspective (a shared definition of reality)
*culture = the generalized other (this comes from G.H. Mead, and refers to how we learn, generally when we are young, general rules for living in society)
*culture arises in and through symbolic interaction; to observe this, observe kids at play.
*is central quality in any society
*important social object
*guides individual thinking and self-control
*maintains society
*is ever changing

The empirical challenge is to find instances of these features in real world cases and to study them in detail.