[11] UCSP - Culture, Society, Politics

• Culture - complex whole which encompasses beliefs, practices, values, etc; seen as integral to everyday life; consists of patterns, behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, artifacts, traditions, etc.
• Characteristics of Culture

  • Learned
  • Relative
  • Shared
  • Symbolic
  • Changes from time to time
• Enculturation - whole process of learning, learned through participating and interacting
• Symbol - an object, word or action that stands for something else and is culturally defined
• Types of Culture

  • Material
  • Non-Material
• Material Culture - physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture; homes, neighborhoods, cities, schools, churches, offices, etc.
• Non-Material Culture - nonphysical ideas that people have about their culture; beliefs, values, rules, norms, morals, etc.
• Cultural Anthropology - tries to explain and to understand the biological and cultural origins of species; studies the culture itself, religion, politics, language, and the different environmental set-ups, as well as practices of people like rituals and ceremonies
• Cultural Studies - an interdisciplinary field drawing on theories and practices from a range of HUMMS disciplines; seeks to investigate ways in which cultures produce and are produced; helps understand the complexity of everyday life; provides you with a range of tools to analyze how cultural practices and meanings are produced, circulated, and exchanged
• Society - comes from Latin word "societas", from word "socius", meaning comrade, ally or friend; Group of people sharing a common culture
• Sociology - study of society
• Politics - activity through which people make, preserve, and amend the rules under which they live; comes from Greek word "polis" (city-state)
• Politics can be viewed in 4 ways:

  • As the art of government
  • As public affairs
  • As compromise and consensus
  • As power
• Public Sphere - people involved in governance and public affairs exclusively practicing politics
• Private Sphere - rest of society (businesses, educational institutions, families) and other citizens who were not involved in running the affairs of the state
• Political Science - study of politics