Culture and its Variation, Civilization

1. How does globalization affect contemporary culture?

2. How has industrialization shaped modern society?
3. What happened to premodern societies?
4. How does human culture develop?
5. Explain the “nature/nurture” debate.
6. Why do sociologists disagree with the claim that biology is destiny?
7. Give examples of subcultures that are typical of American society.
8. What is the difference between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism?
9. What are two examples of cultural universals?
10.

Working Definition: The way of life, including knowledge, customs, norms, laws, and beliefs, which
characterizes a particular society or social group.

Origins of the Concept

 Because of its convoluted history, ‘culture’, like its presumed opposite, ‘nature’, is one of the
most complex words in the English language, and one of the most difficult to pin down.
 From the fifteenth century, one important meaning has been culture as in tending crops and
animals. Once this meaning expanded to take in people, culture came to mean the ‘culturing’ of
people’s minds.
 In eighteenth-century Germany, culture came to be opposed to ‘civilization’, with the former
seen as superior to the latter. By the nineteenth century, a recognition of ‘cultures’ or cultural
wholes developed, which was the start of modern social scientific usage.
 Culture in this sense refers to all of the elements of a society’s way of life that are learned,
among them language, values, social norms, beliefs, customs, and laws. However, culture has
not conventionally included material artifacts such as buildings or furniture, though this has
changed as sociologists have become increasingly interested in ‘material culture’. The
comparative study of cultures in this sense is a very broad enterprise.

Meaning and Interpretation

 For most of its history, sociology has studied culture as intimately bound up with social relations
and the structure of society.
 Marxist studies, for example, tended to view the entire edifice of culture and cultural
production as a superstructure standing on the foundations of the capitalist mode of
production. Hence, religious beliefs, dominant ideas, central values, and social norms were all
seen as providing support for and legitimizing an exploitative economic system of social
relations.
 Even before the age of television, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory argued that the
emerging mass culture was a form of social control that kept the masses inactive and
uncritical, constructing them as passive consumers of undemanding entertainment. The irony
of this Marxist critique is that it differentiated high culture from mass culture and saw more
value in the former, even though this was the province of the educated upper classes.

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 Cultural reproduction involves not just the continuation and development of language, general
values, and norms but also the reproduction of social inequalities.
 For example, on the face of it, education should be a ‘great leveler’, enabling capable people
from across gender, class, and ethnic lines to achieve their ambitions. However, a large body of
work over some forty years or so has shown that education systems work to reproduce existing
cultural and social divisions.
 Theory of cultural reproduction: The most systematic general theory of cultural reproduction to
date is that of Pierre Bourdieu (1986). This connects economic position, social status, and
symbolic capital with cultural knowledge and skills.
 The central concept in Bourdieu’s theory is capital, the various forms of which are used to gain
resources and give people an advantage. Bourdieu identifies social capital, cultural capital,
symbolic capital, and economic capital as the key forms.
 Social capital refers to membership of and involvement in elite social networks; cultural capital
is gained within the family environment and through education, usually leading to certificates
such as degrees and other credentials; symbolic capital refers to the prestige, status, and other
forms of honor, which enable those with high status to dominate those with lower status; while
economic capital refers to wealth, income and other economic resources.
 Bourdieu argues that these forms of capital can be exchanged. Those with high cultural capital
may be able to trade it for economic capital; during interviews for well-paid jobs, their superior
knowledge and credentials give them an advantage over other applicants.
 Those with high social capital may ‘know the right people’ or ‘move in the right social circles’ and
be able to exchange this for symbolic capital such as respect from others and increased social
status, which increases their power chances.
 These exchanges always take place within fields or social arenas that organize social life, and
each field has its own ‘rules of the game’ that are not transferable to others.
 Cultural capital can exist in an embodied state, as we carry it around with us in our ways of
thinking, speaking, and moving. It can exist in an objectified state in the possession of works of
art, books, and clothes. And it can be found in institutionalized forms such as educational
qualifications, which are easily translated into economic capital in the labor market.
 As many other sociologists have found, education is not a neutral field divorced from the wider
society. The culture and standards within the education system already reflect that society and
schools systematically advantage of those who have already acquired cultural capital in their
family and through the social networks in which it is embedded.
 In this way, the education system plays a crucial part in the cultural reproduction of existing
society with its embedded social inequalities.
 Since the 1980s, an increasing interest in the contours of the ‘consumer society’ has brought the
study of culture closer to the mainstream of sociology.
 Investigating the practices of buying and consuming products and services has meant revisiting
the critique of mass culture, but this time sociologists have approached this from the point of
view of the consumer and the audience.
 As the previously uniform mass culture has diversified to target smaller and niche markets, the
subject of taste and the existence of ‘taste cultures’ has arisen. Are people’s cultural tastes
directly related to class position, gender, and ethnicity or do they vary independently of these
structural positions?

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 Gaga’s songs have also addressed a varied range of all-time relevant issues, including love, loss,
romance, identity and self-introspection, sex, freedom, sexuality, drugs and money, mental health,
and bringing about a change in society and the challenges that are subsequently faced.
 Others argue that the real test of cultural taste is how it impacts on life chances, as Bourdieu
recognized.
 The 1980s ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences brought the study of culture into mainstream
sociology, and much of this work is insightful, exploring the roles of cultural production and
consumption in shaping lifestyles and life chances.
 Studying culture also shows us that the world of symbolic representations, entertainment, and
media can tell us much about social relations.
 The sociological study of culture began with Émile Durkheim in the nineteenth century and
soon became the basis of anthropology, a social science specifically focused on the study of
cultural differences and similarities among the world’s peoples. Early social scientists assumed
that “primitive” cultures were inferior, lagging far behind modern European “civilization.”
Sociologists and anthropologists now recognize that different cultures have their own
distinctive characteristics. The task of social science is to understand this cultural diversity,
which is best done by avoiding value judgments.
 When we use the term culture in daily conversation, we often think of “high culture,” such as
fine art, literature, classical music, or ballet. From a sociological perspective, the concept
includes these activities but also many more.
 Culture consists of the values held by members of a particular group, the languages they speak,
the symbols they revere, the norms they follow, and the material goods they create and that
become meaningful for them.
 Sociologists and anthropologists distinguish between two forms of culture: “nonmaterial
culture,” the cultural ideas that are not themselves physical objects, and “material culture,” the
physical objects that a society creates.
 Nonmaterial culture comprises the nonphysical components of culture, including values and
norms, symbols, language, and speech and writing.
 VALUES AND NORMS: Values are abstract ideals. For example, monogamy—being faithful to
one’s sole romantic partner—is a prominent value in most Western societies. In other cultures,
alternatively, a person may be permitted to have several wives or husbands simultaneously.
 Similarly, some cultures value individualism highly, whereas others place great emphasis on
collectivism.
 Within a single society or community, values may also conflict: Some groups or individuals may
value traditional religious beliefs, whereas others may favor freedom of expression, individual
rights, and gender-based equality.
 Norms are widely agreed-upon principles or rules people are expected to observe; they
represent the dos and don’ts of social life. Norms of behavior in marriage.
 Many of our everyday behaviors and habits are grounded in cultural norms. Movements,
gestures, and expressions are strongly influenced by cultural factors. A clear example can be
seen in the way people smile—particularly in public contexts—across different cultures.
 Values and norms work together to shape how members of a culture behave within their
surroundings. Even within a single culture, the norms of conduct differ by age, gender, and

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 other important social subgroups. Gender norms are particularly powerful; women are
expected to be more docile, more caring, and even more moral than men.
 In the 1930s, the anthropological linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf
advanced the linguistic relativity hypothesis, or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which argues that
the language we use influences our perceptions of the world.
 Language outlives any particular speaker or writer, affording a sense of history and cultural
continuity, a feeling of “who we are.”
 One of the central paradoxes of our time is that despite the globalization of the English
language through the Internet and other forms of global media, local attachments to language
persist, often out of cultural pride. For example, the French-speaking residents of the Canadian
province of Quebec are so passionate about their linguistic heritage that they often refuse to
speak English, the dominant language of Canada, and periodically seek political independence
from the rest of Canada.
 SPEECH AND WRITING: The invention of writing marked a major transition in human history.
 How Does Human Culture Develop?
 Begin to understand how both biological and cultural factors influence our behavior. Learn the
ideas of sociobiology and how others have tried to refute these ideas by emphasizing cultural
differences.
 Human culture and human biology are closely intertwined. Understanding how culture is related
to the physical evolution of the human species can help us better understand the central role
that culture plays in shaping our lives.
 Cultures in different environments varied widely as a result of adaptations by which people
fashioned their cultures to be suitable to specific geographic and climatic conditions. For
example, the cultures developed by desert dwellers, where water and food were scarce,
differed significantly from the cultures that developed in rainforests, where such natural
resources abounded. Human inventiveness spawned a rich tapestry of cultures around the
world.
 Because humans evolved as a part of the world of nature, it would seem logical to assume that
human thinking and behavior are the result of biology and evolution.
 Nature or Nurture?- In fact, one of the oldest and most enduring controversies in the social
sciences is the “nature/nurture” debate: Are we shaped by our biology, or are we products of
learning through life’s experiences, that is, of nurture?
 Sociologists no longer pose the question as one of nature or nurture. Instead, they ask how
nature and nurture interact to produce human behavior.
 Recent studies exploring the relationship between genetics and social influences have generally
concluded that although genetics is important, how genes might affect behavior depends largely
on the social context. For example, a study of obesity among adolescents found that social and
behavioral factors, such as a family’s lifestyle (for example, how much time a family spends
watching TV or how often a family skips meals), have a significant effect on the likelihood that
children will end up overweight, even when both parents are heavy (Martin 2008).
 Even alcoholism is strongly affected by social context: Although a specific gene has been
identified as increasing one’s propensity for alcohol dependence, a strong family support system
can greatly reduce that risk (Pescosolido et al. 2008).

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 Sociologists argue that our preferences for particular body types are not biologically ingrained
but rather shaped by the cultural norms of beauty communicated through magazine ads,
commercials, and movies.
 Sociologists’ main concern, therefore, is with how our different ways of thinking and acting are
learned through interactions with family, friends, schools, television, and every other facet of the
social environment. For example, sociologists argue that it’s not an inborn biological disposition
that makes American heterosexual males feel romantically attracted to a particular type of
woman. Rather, it is the exposure they’ve had throughout their lives to tens of thousands of
magazine ads, TV commercials, and film stars that emphasize specific cultural standards of
female beauty.
 Because humans think and act in so many different ways, sociologists do not believe that
“biology is destiny.” If biology were all-important, we would expect all cultures to be highly
similar, if not identical.
 Surveys of thousands of different cultures have concluded that all known human cultures have
such common characteristics as language, forms of emotional expression, rules that tell adults
how to raise children or engage in sexual behavior, and even standards of beauty (Brown 1991)
 All cultures provide for childhood socialization, but what and how children are taught varies
greatly from culture to culture. An American child learns the multiplication tables from a
classroom teacher, while a child born in the forests of Borneo learns to hunt with older members
of the tribe. All cultures have standards of beauty and ornamentation, but what is regarded as
beautiful in one culture may be seen as ugly in another.
 However, some feminist scholars have argued that with global access to Western images of
beauty on the Internet, cultural definitions of beauty throughout the world are growing
narrower and increasingly emphasize the slender physique that is so cherished in many Western
cultures.
 SUBCULTURES: In the discussion of global migration in Chapter 10, practices and social processes
like slavery, colonialism, war, migration, and contemporary globalization have led to populations
dispersing across borders and settling in new areas. This, in turn, has led to the emergence of
societies that are cultural composites, meaning that the population is made up of groups from
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
 In modern cities, many subcultural communities live side by side. Some experts have estimated
that as many as 800 different languages are regularly spoken by residents of New York City and
its surrounding boroughs (Roberts 2010).
 Subculture does not refer only to people from different cultural backgrounds, or who speak
different languages, within a larger society. It can also refer to any segment of the population
that is distinguishable from the rest of society by its cultural patterns. Examples might include
goths, computer hackers, hipsters, Rastafarians, and fans of hip-hop. Some people might identify
themselves clearly with a particular subculture, whereas others may move fluidly among a
number of different ones.
 Culture plays an important role in perpetuating the values and norms of a society, yet it also
offers important opportunities for creativity and change.
 Subcultures and countercultures—groups that largely reject the prevailing values and norms of
society—can promote views that represent alternatives to the dominant culture.

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  U.S. schoolchildren are frequently taught that the United States is a vast melting pot into which
various subcultures are assimilated. Assimilation is the process by which different cultures are
absorbed into a single mainstream culture.
 Adherents to multiculturalism acknowledge that certain central cultural values are shared by
most people in a society but also that certain important differences deserve to be preserved
(Anzaldua 1990).
 Sociologists endeavor as far as possible to avoid ethnocentrism, or judging other cultures in
terms of the standards of their own.
 In studying and practicing sociology, we must remove our own cultural blinders to see the ways
of life of different peoples in an unbiased light. The practice of judging a society by its own
standards is called cultural relativism.
 Amid the diversity of human behavior, several cultural universals prevail. The institution of
marriage is a cultural universal, as are religious rituals and property rights. All cultures also
practice some form of incest prohibition—the banning of sexual relations between close
relatives, such as father and daughter, mother and son, and brother and sister.
 1. Explain the “nature/nurture” debate. 2. Why do sociologists disagree with the claim that
biology is destiny? 3. Give examples of subcultures that are typical of American society. 4. What
is the difference between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism? 5. What are two examples of
cultural universals?

Glossary

Sociobiology: An approach that attempts to explain the behavior of both animals and human beings in
terms of biological principles.

Instinct: A fixed pattern of behavior that has genetic origins and that appears in all normal animals
within a given species.

Biological determinism: The belief that differences we observe between groups of people, such as men
and women, are explained wholly by biological causes.

Subcultures are Cultural groups within a wider society that hold values and norms distinct from those of
the majority.

Countercultures are Cultural groups within a wider society that largely reject the values and norms of
the majority.

Assimilation: The acceptance of a minority group by a majority population, in which the new group
takes on the values and norms of the dominant culture.

Multiculturalism is the viewpoint according to which ethnic groups can exist separately and share
equally in economic and political life.

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at other cultures through the eyes of one’s own culture and
thereby misrepresent them.

Cultural relativism is the practice of judging a society by its own standards.

Cultural universals Values or modes of behavior shared by all human cultures.

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Q. What Happened to Premodern Societies?

 Premodern societies can actually be grouped into three main categories: hunters and gatherers,
larger agrarian or pastoral societies (involving agriculture or the tending of domesticated
animals), and nonindustrial civilizations or traditional states.
 The Earliest Societies: Hunters and Gatherers: For all but a tiny part of our existence on this
planet, human beings have lived in hunting-and-gathering societies, small groups or tribes often
numbering no more than thirty or forty people. Hunters and gatherers gain their livelihood from
hunting, fishing, and gathering edible plants growing in the wild.
 Compared with larger societies—particularly modern societies, such as the United States—most
hunting-and-gathering groups were egalitarian. Thus, there was little difference among members
of the society in the number or kinds of material possessions; there were no divisions of rich and
poor.
 The material goods they needed were limited to weapons for hunting, tools for digging and
building, traps, and cooking utensils. Differences of position or rank tended to be limited to age
and gender; men were almost always the hunters, while women gathered wild crops, cooked,
and brought up the children.
 Pastoral and Agrarian Societies: About 15,000 years ago, some hunting-and-gathering groups
turned to the raising of domesticated animals and the cultivation of fixed plots of land as their
means of livelihood. Pastoral societies relied mainly on domesticated livestock, while agrarian
societies grew crops (practiced agriculture). Some societies had mixed pastoral and agrarian
economies.
 Horticulture: At some point, hunting-and-gathering groups began to sow their own crops rather
than simply collecting those growing in the wild. This practice first developed as what is usually
called “horticulture,” in which small gardens were cultivated by the use of simple hoes or digging
instruments.
 Like pastoralism, horticulture provided for a more reliable supply of food than was possible from
hunting and gathering and therefore could support larger communities.
 Traditional Societies or Civilizations: From about 6000 BCE onward, we find evidence of
societies larger than any that existed before and that contrast in distinct ways with earlier types.
These societies were based on the development of cities, led to pronounced inequalities of
wealth and power, and were ruled by kings or emperors.
 Because writing was used and science and art flourished, these societies are often called
“civilizations.” The earliest civilizations developed in the Middle East, usually in fertile river areas.
The Chinese Empire originated in about 1800 BCE, at which time powerful states were also in
existence in what are now India and Pakistan.
 Q. Compare the two main types of premodern societies.
 Q. Contrast pastoral and agrarian societies.
 How Has Industrialization Shaped Modern Society?
 What happened to destroy the forms of society that dominated the whole of history up to two
centuries ago? The answer, in a word, is industrialization—the emergence of machine
production, based on the use of inanimate power resources (such as steam or electricity). The
industrialized, or modern, societies differ in several key respects from any previous type of social
order, and their development has had consequences stretching far beyond their European
origins.

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 The Industrialized Societies: Industrialization originated in eighteenth-century Britain as a result
of the Industrial Revolution, a complex set of technological changes that affected the means by
which people gained their livelihood. These changes included the invention of new machines
(such as the spinning jenny for weaving yarn), the harnessing of power resources (especially
water and steam) for production, and the use of science to improve production methods.
Because discoveries and inventions in one field lead to more in others, the pace of technological
innovation in industrialized societies is extremely rapid compared with that of traditional social
systems.
 By contrast, a prime feature of industrialized societies today is that the large majority of the
employed population work in factories, offices, or shops rather than in agriculture. And over 90
percent of people live in towns and cities, where most jobs are to be found and new job
opportunities are created.
 A further feature of modern societies concerns their political systems, which are more
developed and intensive than forms of government in traditional states. In traditional
civilizations, the political authorities (monarchs and emperors) had little direct influence on the
customs and habits of most of their subjects, who lived in fairly self-contained villages. With
industrialization, transportation and communication became much more rapid, making for a
more integrated “national” community.
 Industrialized societies are made of nation-states. Nation-state A particular type of state,
characteristic of the modern world, in which a government has sovereign power within a defined
territorial area and the population comprises citizens who believe themselves to be part of a
single nation or people.
 The application of industrial technology has been by no means limited to peaceful processes of
economic development. From the earliest phases of industrialization, modern production
processes have been put to military use, and this has radically altered ways of waging war,
creating weaponry and modes of military organization much more advanced than those of
nonindustrial cultures. Together, superior economic strength, political cohesion, and military
superiority account for the seemingly irresistible spread of Western ways of life across the world
over the past two centuries.
 Q. What relationship does militarism have with industrialization?
 Sociology first emerged as a discipline as industrial societies developed in Europe and North
America and was strongly influenced by the changes taking place at that time.
 The major nineteenth-century sociological theorists (Durkheim, Marx, and Weber) all sought to
explain these sweeping changes. Although they differed in their understanding and their
predictions about the future, all shared a belief that industrial society was here to stay and that,
as a result, the future would in many ways resemble the past.
 Global Development:
 From the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, the Western countries established
colonies in numerous areas previously occupied by traditional societies. Although virtually all
these colonies have now attained their independence, colonialism was central to shaping the
social map of the globe as we know it today. In some regions, such as North America, Australia,
and New Zealand, which were only thinly populated by hunting-and-gathering or pastoral
communities, Europeans became the majority population. In other areas, including much of
Asia, Africa, and South America, the local populations remained in the majority. Societies of the

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 first of these two types, including the United States, have become industrialized. Those in the
second category are mostly at a much lower level of industrial development and are often
referred to as less developed societies, or the developing world. Such societies include
 India, most African countries (such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Algeria), and those in South America
(such as Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela). Because many of these societies are situated south of the
United States and Europe, they are sometimes referred to collectively as the Global South and
contrasted to the wealthier, industrialized Global North.
 THE GLOBAL SOUTH:
 The majority of countries in the Global South are in areas that underwent colonial rule. A few
colonized areas gained independence early, such as Haiti, which became the first autonomous
Black republic in January 1804. The Spanish colonies in South America acquired their freedom in
1810; Brazil broke away from Portuguese rule in 1822.
 Some countries that were never ruled by Europe were nonetheless strongly influenced by
colonial relationships. China, for example, was compelled from the seventeenth century on to
enter into trading agreements with European powers, which assumed government control over
certain areas, including major seaports. Hong Kong was the last of these.
 Most nations in the Global South have become independent states only since World War II—
often following bloody anticolonial struggles. Examples include India, which, shortly after
achieving self-rule, split into India and Pakistan; a range of other Asian countries (such as
Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore); and countries in Africa (such as Kenya, Nigeria, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Algeria).
 Although they may include people living in traditional fashion, developing countries are very
different from earlier forms of traditional society. Their political systems are modeled on systems
first established in the societies of the West—that is to say, they are nation-states. Most of the
population still live in rural areas, but many of these societies are experiencing a rapid process of
city development.
 Although agriculture remains the main economic activity, crops are now often produced for sale
in world markets rather than for local consumption. Developing countries are not merely
societies that have “lagged behind” the more industrialized areas. They have in large part been
created by contact with Western industrialism, which has undermined the earlier, more
traditional systems that were in place.
 THE EMERGING ECONOMIES: Although the majority of countries in the Global South lag well
behind societies of the West, some have now successfully embarked on a process of
industrialization. Referred to as emerging economies, they include Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong,
South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.
 Emerging economies are characterized by a great deal of industry and/or international trade.
The rates of economic growth of the most successful emerging economies, such as those in East
Asia, are several times those of the Western industrial economies.
 The emerging economies of East Asia have shown the most sustained levels of economic
prosperity. They are investing abroad as well as promoting growth at home.
 China is investing in mines and factories in Africa, elsewhere in East Asia, and in Latin America.
South Korea’s production of steel has increased by more than 30 percent in the last decade, and
its shipbuilding and electronics industries are among the world’s leaders (World Steel
Association 2017).

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  Singapore is becoming the major financial and commercial center of Southeast Asia. Taiwan is an
important player in the manufacturing and electronics industries.
 All these changes have directly affected the United States, whose share of global steel
production, for example, has dropped significantly since the 1970s. In fact, the “rise of the rest”
(Zakaria 2008) is arguably the most important aspect of global economic change in the world
today.
 1. What does the concept of industrialization mean?
 2. How has industrialization hurt traditional social systems?
 3. Why are many African and South American societies classified as part of the Global South?
 How Does Globalization Affect Contemporary Culture?
 As the world rapidly moves toward a single, unified economy, businesses and people are moving
about the globe in increasing numbers in search of new markets and economic opportunities. As
a result, the cultural map of the world is changing: Networks of peoples span national borders
and even continents, providing cultural connections between their birthplaces and their
adoptive countries (Appadurai 1986). A handful of languages come to dominate, and in some
cases replace, the thousands of different languages that were once spoken on the planet.
 The forces that produce a global culture are discussed below:
 Television, which brings U.S. culture (through networks such as MTV and shows such as The Big
Bang Theory) into homes throughout the world daily.
 The emergence of a unified global economy, with businesses whose factories, management
structures, and markets often span continents and countries.
 “Global citizens,” such as managers of large corporations, who may spend as much time
crisscrossing the globe as they do at home, identifying with a global, cosmopolitan culture rather
than with their own nation’s culture.
 A host of international organizations, including UN agencies, regional trade and mutual defense
associations, multinational banks and other global financial institutions, international labor and
health organizations, and global tariff and trade agreements, that are creating a global political,
legal, and military framework.

Culture is a complex and multifaceted concept that encompasses the shared

beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, customs, and artifacts that characterize a
particular group of people. It plays a crucial role in shaping individuals'
identities, influencing their perspectives, and guiding their interactions within
a society. The study of culture, known as anthropology, examines how
different groups of people create, transmit, and adapt their cultural practices
over time.

Variation in culture occurs on multiple levels, and it can be observed both

within and between societies. Here are some key aspects of culture and its
variation:

1. Cultural Elements:

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  Language: One of the most fundamental aspects of culture,
language not only facilitates communication but also reflects the
worldview and social structures of a group. There are thousands of
languages spoken worldwide, each with its own unique grammar,
vocabulary, and nuances.
 Values and Beliefs: Cultural values are the principles or standards
that a group considers important, while beliefs are specific ideas
that individuals within the culture hold to be true. These can vary
widely between cultures, influencing attitudes towards family,
authority, religion, and more.
 Norms and Customs: Norms are societal rules that define
appropriate behavior, while customs are traditional practices or
rituals. Both norms and customs contribute to the social order
within a culture and can vary significantly from one group to
another.
2. Cultural Variation:
 Geographic Variation: Cultures often vary based on geographic
location. Different climates, resources, and historical events can
shape the way people live and the customs they develop. For
example, the nomadic lifestyle of some indigenous groups
contrasts with the settled agricultural practices of others.
 Historical Variation: Cultures evolve over time due to historical
events, technological advancements, and social changes. The
impact of colonization, wars, and globalization has led to the
adaptation and sometimes the transformation of cultural
practices.
 Subcultures and Countercultures: Within a larger culture, there
may be subcultures with distinct practices and norms.
Countercultures, on the other hand, actively reject or oppose
certain aspects of the dominant culture. This variation adds layers
of complexity to the cultural landscape.
3. Cultural Exchange:
 Globalization: Increased interconnectedness through trade,
travel, and communication has led to the exchange of cultural
elements on a global scale. This can result in the blending or

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 hybridization of cultures, as people incorporate elements from
different cultures into their own.
 Cultural Diffusion: The spread of cultural traits from one society
to another, often through migration, trade, or media, contributes
to cultural variation. This diffusion can lead to the adoption of new
practices or the modification of existing ones.

Understanding cultural variation is essential for fostering cross-cultural

understanding, promoting tolerance, and addressing global challenges.
However, it's crucial to approach the study of culture with sensitivity,
recognizing that cultures are dynamic, diverse, and constantly evolving.


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