Understanding Culture and Social Heritage
Culture, also called social heritage, is a social process resulting from learning, which is passed from generation to generation. All societies, from the simplest to the most complex, have their own culture. There is no society without culture.
Culture is passed through the family, school (formal and systematic), coexistence, and informal or unsystematic education.
To educate is to give individuals the values, knowledge, skills, behavior patterns, and habits of life (culture of the group).
Two Sides of Culture
- Material culture consists of all kinds of vessels produced in a society: tools, machinery, etc.
- Non-material culture encompasses all aspects of moral and intellectual society, such as social norms, literature, arts, and religion.
Supporters of non-material culture: There is a close and constant interdependence between material and non-material culture.
Components of Culture
Culture is an organic whole, a system whose parts are closely related.
Main Aspects of a Culture
- Cultural traits: The smallest component representative of a culture. It can be a material object (e.g., the feather headdress worn by Indigenous peoples).
- Cultural complex: A combination of cultural traits around a basic activity (e.g., Carnival in Rio: samba schools, drums, dance, music).
- Cultural area: A region where predominant cultural complexes form a cultural area.
- Cultural pattern: A set of rules governing the behavior of individuals in a given culture or society. The cultural pattern has a direct relation to the socialization process of individuals.
- Subculture: Within one culture, significant differences may appear, characterizing the existence of a subculture (e.g., the Germans in Rio Grande do Sul).
Culture and Process
The whole process results from synthesizing new values with already completed cultural components.
Changes in Cultural Heritage
Developments, e.g., the steam train.
Cultural Diffusion
Occurs through the media.
Cultural Lag
Changes in the various components of culture do not occur at the same rate: some change faster than others. Inventions, for example, cause changes in material culture more accelerated than in non-material culture: tools, machines, and techniques are changing more rapidly than religion. This causes a mismatch.
The Phenomenon of Acculturation
When different groups of human beings come into direct and continuous contact, cultural changes generally occur, as the transmission of cultural traits from one society to another is verified. Some features are discarded, and others are accepted. This is a relationship of domination.
Cultural Marginality
When a group or person cannot fully integrate into any of the cultures around them.
Counterculture
When people object to certain cultural values, putting themselves completely against them.
Social Control
The set of means and processes by which a group or a social unit leads its members to adopt behaviors, norms, rules of conduct, and morals. Examples: family, church, school, and state.
Types of Social Control
- Diffuse (informal, occurs in small, isolated societies)
- Institutionalized (formal, there are bodies and social institutions responsible for implementation)
Functions of Social Control
- Social order: Implementation of rules and laws.
- Social protection: Compliance with rules that benefit the least protected sectors of society.
- Social efficiency: Rules and procedures that lead individuals to contribute productively to the welfare and development of society.