SOC400 Lecture 4: Culture
Document Summary
Culture reinforces and creates conflicts between groups. Culture operates on symbols and how those are read"" by actors in different social interactions. The practice of moving back and forth between two languages or between two dialects or registers of the same language. Language and symbols as shapes of meaning. Different interpretations of behaviors in cross-cultural settings/cross-group settings can cause misunderstandings, confusion, problems. Same behavior + different context = different meanings. Culture helps us know what to expect in social interaction. It also helps us know how to deal with change. Culture, as a process, changes all the time. Within culture vs change from outside of the culture. Creates and reaffirms values governing human behavior. Nothing about culture is inevitable: culture is the result of millions of interactions over multiple years. Base human instincts, if acted upon at will, could impinge upon social equilibrium. Different languages carve up and name the world differently.
