AS Sociology For AQA

Culture is a significant concept for sociologists because it both identifies a fundamental set of ideas about what sociologists' study and suggests a major reason for the existence of Sociology itself – that human social behaviour can be explained in the context of the social groups into which people are born and within which they live their lives. In this Chapter we're going to explore a range of ideas relating to both culture and its counterpart, identity and to do this we need to develop both a working definition of culture and an understanding of its different dimensions. In the Introductory Chapter we offered a general definition of culture by representing it as a distinctive " way of life ". We also noted that culture involves teaching and learning (a socialisation process). However, in this Section we need to think a little more clearly about what we mean by " culture " and we can do this by noting that the concept encompasses a range of ideas and meanings relating to roles, values and norms as well as institutional structures (such as types of family, work, educational and political systems), beliefs and the variety of " arts and artifacts " produced by different cultures. In addition, we can add to this mix both Dahl's (2001) argument that culture is " a collectively held set of attributes, which is dynamic and changing over time " and the idea that societies develop mechanisms for the transmission of cultural signs, symbols and meanings (ideas we'll develop throughout this Chapter) from one generation to the next. Secondly, we can note a basic distinction between two dimensions of culture: Material culture consists of the physical objects (" artifacts "), such as cars, mobile phones and books, a society produces and which reflect cultural knowledge, skills, interests and preoccupations. Non-Material culture, on the other hand, consists of the knowledge and beliefs that influence people's behaviour. In our culture, for example, behaviour may be influenced by religious beliefs (such as Christianity, Islam or Buddhism) and / or scientific beliefs – your view of human evolution, for example, has probably been influenced by Darwin's (1859) theories. This distinction, while necessary, is not hard-and-fast because physical artifacts (such as mobile phones) have cultural meanings for the people who produce and use them. A house, for example, is not simply somewhere to live (although that, of course, is it's primary …