Anthropologist agreed with describing it rather than defining it.
Material culture: Tangible, you can see and touch e.g. house, food, car, traditional dress…
Nonmaterial culture: Way of doing things, thinking e.g. language, body language, custom …
Elements of culture
-Knowledge
-Value
-Language
-Gesture/Nonverbal Communication
-Norms
-Belief
Sanctions: penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm.
Sanctions may be either positive or negative, Formal/non-formal.
Feature of culture are
Learned : Person will learn and obtain it
Shared : Group of people doing the same
Transmitted : One generation to another
Changing : it is not permanent!
Cultural universal:
Subculture: a segment of society that shares a distinctive pattern of mores, folkways, and values that differs from the larger society.
A subculture is a culture existing within a larger, dominant culture.
E. g. Cosplay
Argot : specialized (languages) Idiomatic vocabularies which are
shared among particular class or group of people
A counterculture is types of subculture. It is created when a subculture conspicuously and deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture.
Ethnocentrism: the assumption that one’s own culture represents the norm or is superior to all others.
Cultural relativism views people’s behaviors from the perspective of their own culture.
Xenocentrism: an extension of cultural relativism; it is the belief that the products, styles, or ideas of one’s society are inferior to those that originate elsewhere.
Verstehen: The German for understanding or insight.
Max Weber stressed the need for sociologists to take into account people’s emotions, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes.