Culture and Social Structure

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Questions We Will Explore

What is culture? What are subcultures? What are structural conditions?

Discuss the functional and conflict views for understanding how structural conditions affect intergroup relations.

What is the relationship between ethnicity and social class?

What is meant by the culture of poverty? What criticisms exist about this thinking?

Discuss the functional and conflict perspectives of ethnic stratification.

Discuss the major theories of minority integration. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Culture and Cultural Change Culture (the values, attitudes,

customs, beliefs, and habits shared by members of a society) provides the definitions by which members of a society perceive the world about them.

Language and other forms of symbolic interaction provide the means through which this knowledge is perceived and transmitted.

A society, unless it is isolated from the rest of the world, undergoes change through cultural contact and the diffusion of ideas, inventions, and practices (i.e.: cultural change). Copyright

© Allyn & Bacon 2003

Culture and Cultural Change (cont’d)

Within large societies there are subcultures. A subculture is a group that shares in the overall culture of a society while retaining its own distinctive traditions and lifestyle.

Subcultures may gradually be assimilated (convergent subcultures), or they may remain distinct (persistent subcultures). Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Structural Conditions Structural conditions - large scale

factors affecting society, such as industrialization, economic vitality, and stratification which influence people’s perceptions of the world. Note: social stratification is the hierarchy within a society based upon the unequal distribution of resources, power, or prestige.

Distribution of power resources and compatibility with the existing social structure greatly influence dominant-minority relations. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Structural Conditions (cont’d)

The functionalist, conflict, and interactionist theories provide bases for understanding how structural conditions affect intergroup relations.

Functionalists explain how economic, technological and other conditions affect intergroup relations.

Conflict theorists emphasize the conscious, purposeful actions of dominant groups towards maintaining inequality.

Interactionists concentrate on perceptions of cultural differences (instead of structural conditions) as they affect intergroup relations. Copyright © Allyn &

Bacon 2003

Relationship between Ethnicity and Social Class

The interplay between the variables of ethnicity and social class is important for understanding how some problems and conflicts arise.

A feature interpreted as an attribute of ethnicity may, in fact, be a broader aspect of social class.

Because many attitudes and values are situational responses to socioeconomic status, a change in status or opportunities will bring about a change in those attitudes and values regardless of one’s ethnicity. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Culture of Poverty: Viewpoint and Criticisms

Culture of Poverty - the disorganization and pathology of lower-class culture is self-perpetuating through cultural transmission.

Criticisms ( Ryan and Valentine): intergenerational poverty results from discrimination, structural conditions, or stratification rigidity. Fatalism, apathy, low aspiration, and other similar orientations found in lower-class culture are situational responses within each generation, and not the result of cultural deficiencies transmitted from parents to children. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Culture of Poverty (continued)

Other critics (Liebow, Rodman, and Della Fave) of the culture of poverty viewpoint argue that all people would desire the same things and cherish the same values if they were in an economic position to do so. Because they are not, they adopt an alternative set of values in order to survive. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Ethnic Stratification Ethnic stratification - the structured

inequality of different groups with different access to social rewards as a result of their status in the social hierarchy. It is common in a diverse society.

Functionalists: ethnocentrism of those in the societal mainstream leads to discrimination to cause stratification along racial and ethnic lines.

Conflict analysts: stress the subordination of minorities by the dominant group because that group benefits from such ethnic stratification. Two conflict theories of ethnic stratification are the power-differential theory and the internal-colonialism theory. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

The Power-Differential Theory

Neither conflict nor assimilation is inevitable.

The relative power of indigenous and migrant groups determines events. If the migrant group is superordinate, early conflict and colonization will occur. If the indigenous group is superordinate, the results will be occasional labor and racial strife, legislative restrictions, and pressures on the minority to assimilate.

In a paternalistic society, the dominant group has almost absolute power to control societal order as it wishes.

A competitive society is somewhat vulnerable to political pressures and economic boycotts. Copyright © Allyn &

Bacon 2003

The Internal-Colonialism Theory

America’s treatment of its black population resembles past European subjugation and exploitation of non-Western peoples.

Black ghettos are more nearly permanent than immigrant ghettos.

Black ghettos are controlled economically, politically, and administratively from the outside.

Continual exploitation produces conflict and confrontation.

Mexican American and Native Americans may also fit this model. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

3 Theories of Minority Integration

Assimilation (majority conformity) theory -

the functioning within a society of racial or ethnic minority-group members who lack any marked cultural, social or personal differences from the people of the majority group.

Physical or racial differences may persist, but they do not serve as the basis for group prejudice or discrimination.

In effect, members of the minority group no longer appear to be strangers because they abandoned their own cultural traditions, and successfully imitated the dominant group. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon

2003

Minority Integration Theories (continued)

The amalgamation (melting pot) theory -

all the diverse peoples blend their biological and cultural differences into an altogether new breed—the American.

The accommodation (pluralistic) theory -

minorities can maintain their distinctive subcultures and simultaneously interact with relative equality in the larger society. This combination of diversity and togetherness is possible to varying degrees because the people agree on certain basic values. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2003

Summary

Culture provides the definitions by which members of a society perceive the world about them.

Structural conditions, also, influence people’s perceptions of the world.

The interplay between ethnicity and social class is important for understanding how some problems and conflicts arise.

Ethnic stratification is common in a diverse society.

There are three theories of minority integration. Copyright © Allyn & Bacon

2003