Understanding Culture, Beliefs, and Values in Society
Culture, Beliefs, and Values in Society
Understanding Cultural Beliefs
Each culture provides its members with implicit and explicit responses. Beliefs are ideas about reality, historically developed and socially transmitted. Some beliefs are specific, relating to particular aspects of the world, forming sets known as domains. Other beliefs concern the differences between domains or their boundaries and interrelationships.
Within each culture, beliefs are generally internally consistent and mutually reinforcing. This doesn’t mean there are no contradictions; belief systems are not always uniformly or completely integrated, but they tend toward internal consistency.
Beliefs are shared at different levels:
- Shared by the vast majority: Ideology
- Specific to a smaller group: Subcultures
- Held by some individuals: Aspects of personality
The concept of ideology has been idealized, even within social sciences. The term’s pejorative connotation of rigid values has broadened to encompass anyone with firm views, potentially leading to error. Ideology is part of the culture in which one lives, actively shaping beliefs and values. Ideology, like science and religion, is a cultural system. These systems transmit ideologies about social situations, but their conveyed ideologies differ significantly, even in the same situation. Science, for instance, conveys a transcendent dimension.
In most societies, people navigate life with a vague ideology, often called mentality. This doesn’t imply a lack of beliefs and values, but rather that their ideology is implicit in their social roles and institutions. Systematic ideologies emerge during times of tension or conflict, such as when basic social rules are questioned, and there are no guiding models for addressing the problems.
The Role of Values
The beliefs that shape an ideology are not random but fit into an integrated pattern, subordinate to each culture’s particular manifestations. Alongside beliefs are values—ideas about what should be. Values are relational; they are values for someone. They influence selective behavior in individuals.
Values are conceptions of the desirable, shaping individual choices. There’s a distinction between what is desired and what is desirable. A value is anything that matters to a human being—not the indifferent—but the world they inhabit, the objects and actions seen as true or false, virtues or vices. Values serve as criteria for selecting actions. People prefer one thing to another, choose specific actions, and judge the behavior of others based on their values.
Values are states of mind, not things or behavioral standards. They are standards of desirability, ideals by which people define goals, choose actions, and judge themselves and others. Values are criteria for accepting or rejecting social norms.
Like beliefs, values form coherent groups, although inconsistencies can exist. Along with values are norms, which should not be confused. Norms are rules of behavior, specifying what individuals should or should not do in specific circumstances. Norms provide exact behavioral specifications, while values represent models of desirability.
Types of Social Norms
Social norms can be divided into four groups:
- Popular usages: Accepted as conventional practice but not mandatory.
- Customs: Norms or institutions with moral sanctions.
- Habits: Usages established by time, accepted as appropriate conduct, sanctioned by tradition and group opinion.
- Laws: Rules established by political power, enforced by state institutions.
Perspectives on Society
Malinowski
Society is a complex of propositions enabling humans to efficiently solve problems of environmental adaptation and need fulfillment. This dynamic complex addresses numerous natural and artificial human problems, configured to solve those living within it, especially the more malleable.
Marion Levy
Society is a group of humans carrying a self-sufficient system of action, capable of surviving its individual members, at least through sexual reproduction. Four criteria define a society:
- Outlasting individual members’ lifespans.
- Increasing, at least partly, through sexual reproduction.
- Maintaining unity through accepted common activities.
- Being self-sufficient.
Self-sufficiency is the principle of any society, but it can sometimes lead to conflict with others.
Ivor Morrish
: For a society to be called as such, must meet these 8 criteria. 1.La society should provide the framework for relations with the environment and sexual reproduction of its members.
2.La society must draw the distinctions and roles of the various roles.
Society must provide 3.Lamedia members.
4.La society should provide knowledge and guidance shared.
5.La society must establish a set of shared goals and articulate.
Society must imperatively 6.La regular media
7.La society should regulate affective expression.
8.La society must socialize its members.