M.Sc Pakistan studies Notes Unit No 1

Prepared by H-M-ZAKRIA Lecturer 

GDC Parova, D.I.KHAN

PAKISTANI SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Unit # 1. Society and Individual:

# Culture and Society 

Culture is primarily an anthropological term. The field of anthropology emerged around the same time as Social Darwinism, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Social Darwinism was the belief that the closer a cultural group was to the normative, Western, European standards of behavior and appearance, the more evolved that group was. As a theory of the world, it was essentially a racist concept that persists in certain forms up to this day. If you have ever heard someone reference people of African descent as being from, or close to, the jungle, or the wilderness, you’ve encountered a type of coded language that is a modern incarnation of Social Darwinist thought.

During the late 19th and early 20th century time period, the positivist school also emerged in sociological thought. One of the key figures in this school, Cesare Lombroso, studied the physical characteristics of prisoners, because he believed that he could find a biological basis for crime. Lombroso coined the term atavism to suggest that some individuals were throwbacks to a more bestial point in evolutionary history. Lombroso used this concept to claim that certain individuals were more weak-willed, and more prone to criminal activity, than their supposedly more evolved counterparts.

n accordance with the hegemonic beliefs of the time, anthropologists first theorized culture as something that evolves in the same way biological organisms evolve. Just like biological evolution, cultural evolution was thought to be an adaptive system that produced unique results depending on location and historical moment. However, unlike biological evolution, culture can be intentionally taught and thus spread from one group of people to another.

Initially, anthropologists believed that culture was a product of biological evolution, and that cultural evolution depended exclusively on physical conditions. Today’s anthropologists no longer believe it is this simple. Neither culture nor biology is solely responsible for the other. They interact in very complex ways, which biological anthropologists will be studying for years to come.

Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. Behavior based on learned customs is not necessarily a bad thing – being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. However even the simplest actions – such as commuting to work, ordering food from a restaurant, and greeting someone on the street – evidence a great deal of cultural propriety.

Material culture refers to the objects or belongings of a group of people (such as automobiles, stores, and the physical structures where people worship). Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture (namely capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation). 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, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.

• These material and nonmaterial aspects of culture can vary subtly from region to region. As people travel farther afield, moving from different regions to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of our own culture – which might otherwise be invisible to us – and to the differences and commonalities between our culture and others.

• Societies are formed of our social groupings at varied levels, from small towns, through countries, to broader cultural groupings such as a Western society. Within such societies people tend to form particular cultures, formed of the ideas, customs, and social behaviours that make one society distinct from another.

• Unlike culture, which encompasses the tangible and intangible things of a people group, society is defined as a group of people who occupy a particular territory and who share a culture. Stating it simply, we would say that a society is a people of a culture. Whereas culture is what makes them them, society is, for lack of a better way of saying it, the actual them. It's the people living and interacting with one another in order to create a culture. It's people bonded together by their shared beliefs, attitudes, languages, and institutions; in other words, by their culture.

• In saying all this, it's important to note that people can belong to the same society, while also differing in their, shall we say, layers of culture. For instance, a Hasidic Jew living in New York City and a cowboy from Montana both are part of American society and American culture. However, one identifies himself with the subculture of being a New Yorker and a Jewish American, while the other may have never stepped foot in the Big Apple.

•  Subculture, 

• the way of life, customs, and ideas of a particular group of people within a society, which are different from the rest of that society. A subculture is a group of people within a larger culture, such as a country, who have something in common. They might share religious or political beliefs or be science fiction fans, for example.

 Counter culture 

• The counterculture emerged in the mid-1960s as a self appellation among young people within the middle-class youth movement as politics merged with cultural issues. The issues of racism, collusion of higher education institutions with the military and corporate worlds in support of the Vietnam War, and en loco parentis regulations in colleges and universities fused with struggles over hair length, communal living, musical tastes, drug use, gender roles, and sexuality (Foss, 1972). At the height of the middle-class youth movement, there emerged a new social type, self-designated as the ‘freak radical,’ whose opposition to the dominant institutions was as much cultural as it was political, and whose critique of state-supported corporate capitalism was total. Political radical Abbie Hoffman (1968) under the pseudonym ‘Free’ offered social revolution as the meaningful alternative to the structure and ethos of the dominant society that emphasized hierarchy, bureaucracy, competition, upward mobility, the work ethic, and drugs of consciousness constriction (e.g., alcohol and barbiturates).

# Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentrism: The tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture.

• Cultural relativism: Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: “…civilization is not something absolute, but… is relative, and… our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes. “

• Ethnocentrism, a term coined by William Graham Sumner, is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of your own ethnic culture and the belief that that is in fact the “right” way to look at the world. This leads to making incorrect assumptions about others’ behavior based on your own norms, values, and beliefs. For instance, reluctance or aversion to trying another culture’s cuisine is ethnocentric. Social scientists strive to treat cultural differences as neither inferior nor superior. That way, they can understand their research topics within the appropriate cultural context and examine their own biases and assumptions at the same time.

• This approach is known as “cultural relativism.” Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual person’s beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual’s own culture. A key component of cultural relativism is the concept that nobody, not even researchers, comes from a neutral position. The way to deal with our own assumptions is not to pretend that they don’t exist but rather to acknowledge them, and then use the awareness that we are not neutral to inform our conclusions.

• An example of cultural relativism might include slang words from specific languages (and even from particular dialects within a language). For instance, the word “tranquilo” in Spanish translates directly to “calm” in English. However, it can be used in many more ways than just as an adjective (e.g., the seas are calm). Tranquilo can be a command or suggestion encouraging another to calm down. It can also be used to ease tensions in an argument (e.g., everyone relax) or to indicate a degree of self-composure (e.g., I’m calm). There is not a clear English translation of the word, and in order to fully comprehend its many possible uses, a cultural relativist would argue that it would be necessary to fully immerse oneself in cultures where the word is used.

# Socialization through role and status 

• Status describes the position a person occupies in a particular setting. We all occupy several statuses and play the roles that may be associated with them. A Role is the set of norms, values, behaviors, and personality characteristics attached to a status. An individual may occupy the statuses of student, employee, and club president and play one or more roles with each one.

Example: Status as student

• Role 1: Classroom: Attending class, taking notes, and communicating with the professor

• Role 2: Fellow student: Participating in study groups, sharing ideas, quizzing other students

Status as employee

Role 1: Warehouse: Unloading boxes, labeling products, restocking shelves

Role 2: Customer service: Answering questions, solving problems, researching information

• Role Conflict results from the competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our time and energy. The more statuses we have, and the more roles we take on, the more likely we are to experience role conflict.

A member of a non industrialized society generally has just a few statuses, such as spouse, parent, and villager. A typical middle-class American woman, meanwhile, probably has many statuses, and therefore many roles. She may be a mother, wife, and neighbor, member of the PTA, employee, boss, town council president, and part-time student. Because people in modernized societies have so many roles, they are more likely than people in non industrialized societies to experience role conflict.

• Example: A working father is expected at work on time but is late because one of his children is sick. His roles as father and employee are then in conflict. A role for his father status dictates that he care for his sick child, while a role for his employee status demands that he arrive at work on time.

Achieved Status

• An achieved status is one that is acquired on the basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen and reflects a person's skills, abilities, and efforts. Being a professional athlete, for example, is an achieved status, as is being a lawyer, college professor, or even a criminal.

Ascribed Status

• An ascribed status, on the other hand, is beyond an individual's control. It is not earned, but rather is something people are either born with or had no control over. Examples of ascribed status include sex, race, and age. Children usually have more ascribed statuses than adults, since they do not usually have a choice in most matters.

• A family's social status or socioeconomic status, for instance, would be an achieved status for adults, but an ascribed status for children. Homelessness might also be another example. For adults, homelessness often comes by way of achieving, or rather not achieving, something. For children, however, homelessness is not something they have any control over. Their economic status, or lack thereof, is entirely dependent on their parents' actions.

# Social control formal and informal methods of social control 

• Formal: The means by which individuals are induced or compelled to on form to the usages and life values of the group are so numerous and varied that a classification is not possible, E.A. toss has described a number of means that have been employed by social groups throughout the human history to keep individuals under control. The important among them are public opinion, law, custom, religion, morality, social suggestion, personality, folkways and mores. E. C. Hayes, another American sociologist, distinguished between control by sanctions and control by suggestion and imitation. By control by sanctions he meant a system of rewards and punishments.

• According to him, education s the most effective means of control and the family is the most significant agency. Karl Mannheim distinguished between direct means of social control and indirect means of social control. Kimball Young classified the means of social control into positive and negative means. Reward is a positive means while punishment is a negative means.

Informal Means:

• The informal means of social control grow themselves in society. No special agency is required to create them. The Brahmins do not lake meat. They lake meals only after bath. The Jains do not take curd. They take their dinner before sunset. The Hindu women do not smoke. One can marry only in one’s caste. The children should respect their parents. All this is due to informal social control.

It is exercised through customs, traditions, folkways, mores, religion, ridicule etc. Informal control prevails over all the aspects of man’s life. Though it is said that people are not afraid of informal social control, yet informal means of social control are very powerful particularly in primary groups.

# Characteristics of deviation 

• When most of us think of deviant behavior, we think of someone who is breaking the law or acting out in a negative manner. 'Different' or 'unexpected' are words often used to describe deviance from a sociological perspective. For our purposes, deviant means departing from the norm, and to a sociologist, that can be biased toward the positive or negative. While there are crimes that are certainly deviant because they are outside the norm (such as murder, rape, etc.), there are also crimes that are not deviant. Take speeding for example. It isn't at all unexpected to see someone speeding. From a sociological perspective, speeding would not be considered deviant in most cities in the United States.

• The act of violating a social norm is called deviance. Individuals usually have a much easier time identifying the transgression of norms than the norms themselves. For example, few Americans would think to tell a sociologist that it is a social norm to hold the door open for a fellow pedestrian entering a building if within a particular distance. However, someone might remark that another person is rude because he or she did not hold the door open. Studying norms and studying deviance are inseparable endeavors.

• Prepared by H-M-ZAKRIA 
• Lecturer GDC Parova, D.I.KHAN
•    hmzakriakhan@gmail.com
•   Information point
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• Like deviance, norms are always culturally contingent. To study norms and deviance, one must contextualize the action, or consider the action in light of all of the circumstances surrounding it. For example, one cannot merely say that showing up nude to a job interview is a violation of social norms. While it is usually social convention to show up in some manner of (usually professional) dress to a job interview, this is most likely not the case for someone interviewing to be a nude model. To understand the norm, one must understand the context.