Anthropological and sociological perspectives on culture and society?

Anthropology and sociology are two sides of the same coin. Sociology would talk about the
social relations of society and it's players while anthropology would probably wind the clock
back to ancient and historic social and cultural practices.

Anthropologically, society moved from simple to complex forms. One would say, as regards
production, society moved from hunting and gathering to horticultural society to commercial
and then, to industrial era.

Therefore, anthropology and sociology would describe this in so many ways that would
swing from how man adjusted to the society, how man used the resources around to benefit
himself and his family. It would also discuss the effect of the economic institution on other
relative institutions.

Describe society and culture as a complex whole.

A complex society is a concept that is shared by a range of disciplines

including anthropology, archaeology, history and sociology to describe a stage of social
formation. The concept was formulated by scholars attempting to understand how
modern states emerged, specifically the transition from small kin-based societies to large
hierarchically structured societies.[1]

A complex society is characterized by features such as:

 State with a large population wherein its economy is structured according to

specialization and a division of labor. These economic features spawn a
bureaucratic class and institutionalize inequality. [2]

 Archaeologically, features such as big architectural projects and prescribed burial

rites.[2]

 Large scale agricultural development, which allows members of society time for
specialized skill sets.

 Organized political structure.

Culture is that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a human being as a member
of society. Culture is viewed as the ways of doing, being, and explaining, as they exist
in each particular system.
 1. 3. CULTURE …. Is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals,
laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of
society.
2. 4. 4 aspects of complex whole BELIEFS – are conceptions that people accept as true about
how the world operates and where individuals fit in it.
3. 5. VALUES – are general and shared perception of what is god, right appropriate and
worthwhile, and important with regard to modes of conduct as in the case of self-reliance or
obedience; and what which concerns states of existence like freedom of choice or equal
opportunity.
4. 6. 3 elements that constitute the Filipino value system: 1. Halaga – it is the evaluative aspect
as to what Filipinos find most virtuous which constitute three dimension:
5. 7. (1) Pagkatao or selfworth (2) pakikipagkapwa-tao or dignified relationship with others (3)
Pagkamaka-tao or compasion
6. 8. 2. Asal it is the expression of the evaluative aspect of Filipino value system which
constitute three standards (1) Kapwa or relational (2) Damdamin or emotional (3) Dangal or
honor
7. 9. 3. Diwa – this refers to the kalooban or inner which in essence is intertwined reason and
emotion.
8. 10. NORMS All societies have guidelines that govern moral standards and even the most
routine aspects of life. Sociologist call the written and unwritten rules that specify the
behaviors appropriate to specific situations as norms.
9. 11. (1.) FOLWAYS – these are norms that apply to routine matters like eating, sleeping,
appearance, posture, use of appliances and relations to various people, animals and the
environment.
10. 12. (2.) MORES – are norms that people define as pivotal to the well-being of the group.
11. 13. SYMBOLS – is any kind of physical phenomenon – a word, an object, a color, a sound, a
feeling, an odor, a movement, a taste to which people assign a meaning or values.

Identify aspects of culture and society.

Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the
members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define
themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. Thus, culture
includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values, norms, mores, rules, tools,
technologies, products, organizations, and institutions. This latter term institution refers to
clusters of rules and cultural meanings associated with specific social activities. Common
institutions are the family, education, religion, work, and health care.

Popularly speaking, being cultured means being well‐educated, knowledgeable of the arts,

stylish, and well‐mannered. High culture—generally pursued by the upper class—refers to
classical music, theater, fine arts, and other sophisticated pursuits. Members of the upper class
can pursue high art because they have cultural capital, which means the professional
credentials, education, knowledge, and verbal and social skills necessary to attain the “property,
power, and prestige” to “get ahead” socially. Low culture, or popular culture—generally
pursued by the working and middle classes—refers to sports, movies, television sitcoms and
soaps, and rock music. Remember that sociologists define culturedifferently than they
do cultured, high culture, low culture, and popular culture.

Sociologists define society as the people who interact in such a way as to share a common
culture. The cultural bond may be ethnic or racial, based on gender, or due to shared beliefs,
values, and activities. The term society can also have a geographic meaning and refer to people
who share a common culture in a particular location. For example, people living in arctic
climates developed different cultures from those living in desert cultures. In time, a large variety
of human cultures arose around the world.

Culture and society are intricately related. A culture consists of the “objects” of a society,
whereas a society consists of the people who share a common culture. When the
terms culture and society first acquired their current meanings, most people in the world worked
and lived in small groups in the same locale. In today's world of 6 billion people, these terms
have lost some of their usefulness because increasing numbers of people interact and share
resources globally. Still, people tend to use culture and society in a more traditional sense: for
example, being a part of a “racial culture” within the larger “U.S. society.”

Why and how cultural relativism mitigates ethnocentrism?

"Cultural relativism" can mean several different things, and much of the debate over its
desirability can be traced to this ambiguity. Descriptive cultural relativism is basically
undeniable: Cultures do, in fact, differ in their social and moral norms. But normative culture
relativism is not as obviously true: It isn't clear how, if at all, our treatment of people in different
cultures should vary based on their culture's norms. So the normative sense of cultural
relativism that says we ought to judge other people by the standards of their own culture could
be right, but isn't necessarily. 

There is also methodological cultural relativism, which is a method that many sociologists and

anthropologists use to sort of temporarily suspend judgment about other cultures until they get
all the facts in. This is probably a good thing, but it's a very weak sense of relativism; in the end
they still go home and publish in Western academic journals according to Western cultural
norms. It doesn't even require any particular relativism: You can just have the norm in your own
culture that you don't judge other cultures until all the facts are in. 

"Ethnocentrism" can also be an ambiguous word. It normally means something quite negative---
the tendency to view people of your own culture as inherently superior and people of other
cultures as inherently inferior. It frequently results in hatred and even violence. But sociologists
also use "ethnocentrism" in a sort of technical sense, to mean simply that we judge people of
other cultures by the standards of our own culture. This latter is not obviously wrong---one
culture's ideas can in fact be more correct than another's, and it may turn out that we happen to
live in the culture that has the best ideas.

I think a key point to keep in mind here is that it matters why you are using the moral standards
you are. Is it simply because you grew up with them, and never questioned them? That is
probably ethnocentrism. But have you actually analyzed those norms, challenged them,
confronted them with evidence, and yet they still held up? Then what you are doing is definitely
not the negative kind of ethnocentrism, though it may be "ethnocentrism" in this broader more
technical sense.

Indeed, it's not clear that the strongest form of normative cultural relativism is
even coherent. Most cultures are not cultural relativists; that is, most people in most cultures do
not think that one should judge others only by the standards of the others' own culture. They
think that their standards are the objectively correct ones that everyone should use. So in order
to be a cultural relativist, you need to judge people only by their own culture, but the only culture
that actually tells you to do that is your own culture, namely the subculture of Western academic
sociologists. So you are in the end still judging based on your own culture, and you are still
faced with the question of why your culture's norms are better than anyone else's. Or in fact you
could justify being an imperialist, because Western culture has a historical tradition of
imperialism and you could simply be acting according to the norms of your own culture---so how
can anyone judge you as wrong?

Yet I understand where normative cultural relativism comes from; it is an attempt to respond to,
and in some sense atone for, the extreme violence and destruction created by colonialism and
imperialism. One of the things that our imperialist forebears did was judge other people based
on their own culture, so if we don't do that, maybe we won't be imperialists! But that doesn't
actually follow. That wasn't what made them imperialists, and indeed getting rid of it doesn't
necessarily stop us from being imperialists.

Identify forms of tangible and intangible heritage and the threats to these.

‘Tangible Cultural Heritage’ refers to physical artefacts produced, maintained and transmitted
intergenerationally in a society. It includes artistic creations, built heritage such as buildings and
monuments, and other physical or tangible products of human creativity that are invested with
cultural significance in a society. ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ indicates ‘the practices,
representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts
and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases,
individuals recognize as part of their Cultural Heritage’ (UNESCO, 2003). Examples of
intangible heritage are oral traditions, performing arts, local knowledge, and traditional skills.

Tangible and intangible heritage require different approaches for preservation and safeguarding,
which has been one of the main motivations driving the conception and ratification of the 2003
UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Convention
stipulates the interdependence between intangible Cultural Heritage, and tangible cultural and
natural heritage, and acknowledges the role of intangible Cultural Heritage as a source of
cultural diversity and a driver of sustainable development. Recognizing the value of people for
the expression and transmission of intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO spearheaded the
recognition and promotion of living human treasures, ‘persons who possess to a very high
degree the knowledge and skills required for performing or recreating specific elements of the
intangible Cultural Heritage’.

The Sociological Imagination Chapter One: The Promise C. Wright Mills (1959)

Nowadays people often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within
their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often
quite correct. What ordinary people are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by
the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up
scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieux, they move vicariously and remain
spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats
which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel. Underlying this
sense of being trapped are seemingly impersonal changes in the very structure of continent-
wide societies. The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the
failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a
worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a
person is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a person
takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesperson becomes a
rocket launcher; a store clerk, a radar operator; a wife or husband lives alone; a child grows up
without a parent. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood
without understanding both. Yet people do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms
of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not
usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the
intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history,
ordinary people do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of people they
are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not
possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of individuals and society, of
biography and history, of self and world. They cannot cope with their personal troubles in such
ways as to control the structural transformations that usually lie behind them. Surely it is no
wonder. In what period have so many people been so totally exposed at so fast a pace to such
earthquakes of change? That Americans have not known such catastrophic changes as have
the men and women of other societies is due to historical facts that are now quickly becoming
'merely history.' The history that now affects every individual is world history. Within this scene
and this period, in the course of a single generation, one sixth of humankind is transformed from
all that is feudal and backward into all that is modern, advanced, and fearful. Political colonies
are freed; new and less visible forms of imperialism installed. Revolutions occur; people feel the
intimate grip of new kinds of authority. Totalitarian societies rise, and are smashed to bits - or
succeed fabulously. After two centuries of ascendancy, capitalism is shown up as only one way
to make society into an industrial apparatus. After two centuries of hope, even formal
democracy is restricted to a quite small portion of mankind. Everywhere in the underdeveloped
world, ancient ways of life are broken up and vague expectations become urgent demands.
Everywhere in the overdeveloped world, the means of authority and of violence become total in
scope and bureaucratic in form. Humanity itself now lies before us, the super- nation at either
pole concentrating its most coordinated and massive efforts upon the preparation of World War
Three. The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of people to orient themselves in
accordance with cherished values. And which values? Even when they do not panic, people
often sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings
are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary people feel they
cannot cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they
cannot understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That - in defense of selfhood
- they become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private individuals? Is it any
wonder that they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap? It is not only information that
they need - in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their
capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that they need - although their
struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy. What they need, and what
they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop
reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may
be happening within themselves. It is this quality, I am going to contend, that journalists and
scholars, artists and publics, scientists and editors are coming to expect of what may be called
the sociological imagination. The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand
the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a
variety of individuals. It enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their
daily experience, often become falsely conscious of their social positions. Within that welter, the
framework of modern society is sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety
of men and women are formulated. By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals is
focused upon explicit troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed into involvement
with public issues. The first fruit of this imagination - and the first lesson of the social science
that embodies it - is the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and gauge
her own fate only by locating herself within her period, that she can know her own chances in
life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in her circumstances. In many ways it is a
terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of humans
capacities for supreme effort or willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or
the sweetness of reason. But in our time we have come to know that the limits of 'human nature'
are frighteningly broad. We have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation
to the next, in some society; that he lives out a biography, and lives it out within some historical
sequence. By the fact of this living, he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this
society and to the course of its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push
and shove. The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the
relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. To recognize this task
and this promise is the mark of the classic social analyst. It is characteristic of Herbert Spencer -
turgid, polysyllabic, comprehensive; of E. A. Ross - graceful, muckraking, upright; of Auguste
Comte and Emile Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl Mannheim. It is the quality of all that
is intellectually excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to Thorstein Veblen's brilliant and ironic
insight, to Joseph Schumpeter's many-sided constructions of reality; it is the basis of the
psychological sweep of W. E. H. Lecky no less than of the profundity and clarity of Max Weber.
And it is the signal of what is best in contemporary studies of people and society. No social
study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections
within a society has completed its intellectual journey. Whatever the specific problems of the
classic social analysts, however limited or however broad the features of social reality they have
examined, those who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of their work have
consistently asked three sorts of questions: (1) What is the structure of this particular society as
a whole? What are its essential components, and how are they related to one another? How
does it differ from other varieties of social order? Within it, what is the meaning of any particular
feature for its continuance and for its change? (2) Where does this society stand in human
history? What are the mechanics by which it is changing? What is its place within and its
meaning for the development of humanity as a whole? How does any particular feature we are
examining affect, and how is it affected by, the historical period in which it moves? And this
period - what are its essential features? How does it differ from other periods? What are its
characteristic ways of history-making? (3) What varieties of men and women now prevail in this
society and in this period? And what varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they
selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of
`human nature' are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in this society in this
period? And what is the meaning for 'human nature' of each and every feature of the society we
are examining? Whether the point of interest is a great power state or a minor literary mood, a
family, a prison, a creed - these are the kinds of questions the best social analysts have asked.
They are the intellectual pivots of classic studies of individuals in society - and they are the
questions inevitably raised by any mind possessing the sociological imagination. For that
imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another - from the political to the
psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national
budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from
considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range
from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the
human self - and to see the relations between the two. Back of its use there is always the urge
to know the social and historical meaning of the individual in the society and in the period in
which she has her quality and her being. That, in brief, is why it is by means of the sociological
imagination that men and women now hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to
understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biography
and history within society. In large part, contemporary humanity's self-conscious view of itself as
at least an outsider, if not a permanent stranger, rests upon an absorbed realization of social
relativity and of the transformative power of history. The sociological imagination is the most
fruitful form of this self-consciousness. By its use people whose mentalities have swept only a
series of limited orbits often come to feel as if suddenly awakened in a house with which they
had only supposed themselves to be familiar. Correctly or incorrectly, they often come to feel
that they can now provide themselves with adequate summations, cohesive assessments,
comprehensive orientations. Older decisions that once appeared sound now seem to them
products of a mind unaccountably dense. Their capacity for astonishment is made lively again.
They acquire a new way of thinking, they experience a transvaluation of values: in a word, by
their reflection and by their sensibility, they realize the cultural meaning of the social sciences.
Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between
'the personal troubles of milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure.' This distinction is an
essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science.
Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his or her immediate
relations with others; they have to do with one's self and with those limited areas of social life of
which one is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the resolution of
troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the scope of one's
immediate milieu - the social setting that is directly open to her personal experience and to
some extent her willful activity. A trouble is a private matter: values cherished by an individual
are felt by her to be threatened. Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local
environments of the individual and the range of her inner life. They have to do with the
organization of many such milieu into the institutions of an historical society as a whole, with the
ways in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social
and historical life. An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be
threatened. Often there is a debate about what that value really is and about what it is that really
threatens it. This debate is often without focus if only because it is the very nature of an issue,
unlike even widespread trouble, that it cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate
and everyday environments of ordinary people. An issue, in fact, often involves a crisis in
institutional arrangements, and often too it involves what Marxists call 'contradictions' or
'antagonisms.' In these terms, consider unemployment. When, in a city of 100,000, only one is
unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of
the individual, his skills and his immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million
employees, 15 million people are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its
solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of
opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of
possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society,
and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals. Consider war.
The personal problem of war, when it occurs, may be how to survive it or how to die in it with
honor; how to make money out of it; how to climb into the higher safety of the military apparatus;
or how to contribute to the war's termination. In short, according to one's values, to find a set of
milieux and within it to survive the war or make one's death in it meaningful. But the structural
issues of war have to do with its causes; with what types of people it throws up into command;
with its effects upon economic and political, family and religious institutions, with the
unorganized irresponsibility of a world of nation-states. Consider marriage. Inside a marriage a
man and a woman may experience personal troubles, but when the divorce rate during the first
four years of marriage is 250 out of every 1,000 attempts, this is an indication of a structural
issue having to do with the institutions of marriage and the family and other institutions that bear
upon them. Or consider the metropolis - the horrible, beautiful, ugly, magnificent sprawl of the
great city. For many members of the upperclass the personal solution to 'the problem of the city'
is to have an apartment with private garage under it in the heart of the city and forty miles out, a
house by Henry Hill, garden by Garrett Eckbo, on a hundred acres of private land. In these two
controlled environments - with a small staff at each end and a private helicopter connection -
most people could solve many of the problems of personal milieux caused by the facts of the
city. But all this, however splendid, does not solve the public issues that the structural fact of the
city poses. What should be done with this wonderful monstrosity? Break it all up into scattered
units, combining residence and work? Refurbish it as it stands? Or, after evacuation, dynamite it
and build new cities according to new plans in new places? What should those plans be? And
who is to decide and to accomplish whatever choice is made? These are structural issues; to
confront them and to solve them requires us to consider political and economic issues that
affect innumerable milieux. In so far as an economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the
problem of unemployment becomes incapable of personal solution. In so far as war is inherent
in the nation-state system and in the uneven industrialization of the world, the ordinary individual
in her restricted milieu will be powerless - with or without psychiatric aid - to solve the troubles
this system or lack of system imposes upon him. In so far as the family as an institution turns
women into darling little slaves and men into their chief providers and unweaned dependents,
the problem of a satisfactory marriage remains incapable of purely private solution. In so far as
the overdeveloped megalopolis and the overdeveloped automobile are built-in features of the
overdeveloped society, the issues of urban living will not be solved by personal ingenuity and
private wealth. What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often
caused by structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieux
we are required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes
increase as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately
connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with
sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able
to do that is to possess the sociological imagination.