DR. GLORIA D.

LACSON FOUNDATION COLLEGES

Castellano, San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija
NZCI Campus, Masinloc, Zambales

CHAPTER 2: CULTURE

A Paper
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
Dr. Gloria D. Lacson Foundation Colleges
NZCI Campus, Masinloc, Zambales

In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Subject

Foundations of Education Subject Code: Educ 200
of the Course Master of Arts in Education

By

Sandra E. Elad

Summer, 2018-2019

Dr. SAMSON G. CAVA

Instructor
 CONTENT

CULTURE
Characteristics of Culture

Categories of Culture

Approaches to Culture

Culture Change

Filipino Contemporary Counter- Productive

Culture
 TOPIC

What is Culture?

Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/) is the social behavior and norms found in human societies.
Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of
phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural
universals are found in all human societies; these include expressive forms
like art, music, dance, ritual, religion,and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shel-
ter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of
culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of
culture such as principles of social organization(including practices of political
organization andsocial institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature(both written an
d oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.

In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been
the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the
arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also
sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such
hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions
between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk
culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital.
In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic
markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other
such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to the mass-
produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th
century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have
argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the
lower classes and create a false consciousness, and such perspectives are common
in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical
perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the
material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical
survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions.
 Characteristics of Culture

1. Culture is learned
Culture is not inherited biologically but it is leant socially by man in a society. It
is not an inborn tendency but acquired by man from the association of others, e.g.
drinking, eating, dressing, walking, behaving, reading are all learnt by man.

2. Culture is social
It is not an individual phenomena but it is the product of society. It develops in
the society through social interaction. It is shared by the man of society No man can
acquire it without the association of others. Man is man only among men. It helps to
develop qualities of human beings in a social environment. Deprivation of a man
from his company is the deprivation of human qualities.

3. Culture is shared
Culture is something shared. It is nothing that an individual can passes but
shared by common people of a territory. For example, customs, traditions, values,
beliefs are all shared by man in a social situation. These beliefs and practices are
adopted by all equally.

4. Culture is transmitted
Culture is capable of transmitted from one generation to the next. Parents
papas cultural traits to their children and in return they pass to their children and son
on. It is not transmitted through genes but through language. Language is means to
communication which passes cultural traits from one generation to another.

5. Culture is continuous
It is continuous process. It is like a stream which is flowing from one
generation to another through centuries. “Culture is the memory of human race.”

6. Culture is accumulative
Culture is not a matter of month or a year. It is the continuous process and
adding new cultural traits. Many cultural traits are borrowed from out side and these
absorbed in that culture which adopt it, as culture is accumulative and combines the
suitable cultural traits.
7. Culture is integrated
All the cultural aspects are inter-connected with each other. The development
of culture is the integration of its various parts. For example, values system is
interlinked with morality, customs, beliefs and religion.

8. Culture is changing
It remains changing but not static. Cultural process undergoes changes. But
with different speeds from society to society and generation to generation.

9. Culture varies from society to society

Every society has its own culture and ways of behaving. It is not uniform every
where but occurs differently in various societies. Every culture is unique in itself is a
specific society. For example, values, customs, traditions, ideologies, religion, belief,
practices are not similar but different in every society. However the ways of eating,
drinking, speaking, greeting, dressing etc are differs from one social situation to
another in the same time.

10. Culture is responsive

Culture is responsive to the changing conditions of a physical world. It
intervenes in the natural environment and helps man from all dangers and natural
calamities e.g. our houses are responsible to give us shelter and safety from storm
and heavy rains.

11. Culture is gratifying

It is gratifying and provide all the opportunities for needs and desires
satisfaction. These needs may be biological or social but It is responsible to satisfy it.
Our needs are food, shelter, clothing and desires are status, fame, money, sex etc
are all the examples which are fulfilled according to the cultural ways. In fact it is
defined as the process through which human beings satisfy their need.

12. Linked with society

Last but not the least one of the characteristics of culture that culture and
society are one and the same. But if we say that these turn two are twin sister, it
would not be wrong. Society is a composite of people and they interact each other
through it. It is to bind the people within the society.
 Categories of Culture

1. Material Culture

Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects

and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation,
and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects
create or take part in. Some scholars also include other intangible phenomena that
include sound, smell and events, while some even consider language and media as
part of it. The term is most commonly used in archaeological and anthropological
studies, to define material or artifacts as they are understood in relation to specific
cultural and historic contexts, communities, and belief systems. Material cultural can
be described as any object that humans use to survive, define social relationships,
represent facets of identity, or benefit peoples' state of mind, social, or economic
standing.

The scholarly analysis of material culture, which can include both human
made and natural or altered objects, is called material culture studies. It is
an interdisciplinary field and methodology that tells of the relationships between
people and their things: the making, history, preservation, and interpretation of
objects. It draws on both theory and practice from the social
sciences and humanities suchas arthistory, archaeology, anthropology, history, histo
ric preservation, folklore, archival science, literary criticism and museum studies,
among others.

2. Social Culture

A complex set of meanings, habits, values and behaviours adopted by one or

more social formations.

Approaches to Culture

1. Cultural Pattern is the way of behavior of the people. A large number of

people following certain behavior make it a custom. This custom when growing
 popular among the people becomes a precedent and a rule of social life. This
rule of social life is pattern of culture.

2. Cultural Determinism (Relativism) is the belief that the culture in which we are
raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. It contrasts
with genetic determinism, the theory that biologically inherited traits and the
environmental influences that affect those traits dominate who we are.

Yet another way of looking at the concept of cultural determinism is to

contrast it with the idea of environmental determinism. The latter is the idea that the
physical world- with all its constraints and potentially life-altering elements-is
responsible for the make-up of each existing culture. Contrast this with the idea that
we (humans) create our own situations through the power of thought, socialization,
and all forms of information circulation.

It is also used to describe the concept

that culture determines economic and political arrangements. It is an idea which has
recurred in many cultures over human history, from ancient civilizations through the
present.

Culture Change

It is a term used in public policy making that emphasizes the influence of cultural
capital on individual and community behavior. It has been sometimes called
repositioning of culture, which means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a
society. It places stress on the social and cultural capital determinants of decision
making and the manner in which these interact with other factors like the availability
of information or the financial incentives facing individuals to drive behavior.

These cultural capital influences include the role of parenting, families and close
associates; organizations such as schools and workplaces; communities and
neighborhoods; and wider social influences such as the media. It is argued that this
cultural capital manifests into specific values, attitudes or social norms which in turn
guide the behavioral intentions that individuals adopt in regard to particular decisions
or courses of action. These behavioral intentions interact with other factors driving
behavior such as financial incentives, regulation and legislation, or levels of
information, to drive actual behavior and ultimately feed back into underlying cultural
capital.

In general, cultural stereotypes present great resistance to change and to their

own redefinition. Culture, often appears fixed to the observer at any one point in time
because cultural mutations occur incrementally.[3] Cultural change is a long-term
process. Policymakers need to make a great effort to improve some basics aspects
of a society’s cultural traits.

Filipino Contemporary Counter-Productive Culture

1. Culture of Toleration (Hayaan mo na)

The culture of toleration is deeply rooted in religion. When someone is abused

or maltreated in any form by someone, the grived person is usually counselled:
Ipagpasa-Diyos mo na lamang yan or hayaan mo na. This kind of mental and
emotional conditioning affects much the personality of an individual or group.

2. Culture of Survival (basta mabuhay lang)

When one speaks of survival, ethics and morality are usually marginalized. If
not alienated. Any action is considered true and right in Machiavellian point of view –
the end justifies the means – especially when somebody has to feed himself and his
family. There is no classification of work for so many as long as it earns money to
suppory one’s life.

3. Culture of Gapang and Lusot

To most Filipinos there is no impossible thing that they cannot perform or

operate in any manner anywhere, anytime. Filipinos are known as taong maparaan,
maraming maramimg gapangan and mahusay lumusot. Gapang maybe translated
as crawling underneath hidden from knowledge of others to escpae (lusot)