3 Culture
Sean Ashley
Almost every human behaviour, from gardening to marriage, is learned. In the France, marriage is generally seen as an individual choice, based on feelings of love and marked by a period of romantic exchange. In other countries, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families. To people from France, arranged marriages may seem to risk incompatibility or the absence of romantic love. But many people from cultures where marriages find a great deal of marital happiness in their relationships, emphasizing that choices made throughout a marriage are likewise important to one’s satisfaction (Bowman and Dollahite, 2014).
How we understand the world is shaped by culture. Culture is akin to a matrix of symbols and meanings that we acquire through social interaction. Culture can be material and nonmaterial. Train tickets and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are the buses, subway cars, and the physical structures of the bus stop. Think of material culture as items you can touch-they are tangible. Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. These are things you cannot touch. They are intangible. You may believe that a line should be formed to enter the subway car or that other passengers should not stand so close to you. Those beliefs are intangible because they do not have physical properties and can be touched.
Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture symbolizing education, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.
Although cultures vary, they also share common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. When someone says family, what do you think of? How has culture shaped this imagery for you?
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Although human societies have much in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of conversational etiquette reveals tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. While in Norway, people prefer that you stand at least an arm’s length away. Th