Our culture is in the toilet...material culture

1 - please take out your ipads and search for a pictureof a thing that represents American culture.  Save that picture, then:

Yesterday we examined two metaphors for understanding culture: The card game and the fishbowl. Take a minute and think about how each of these is like a culture.
2. Turn to a person next to you, the older partner share how the card game was a metaphor for culture.
3.The younger partner share how the fishbowl is like a culture.

Today, let's examine a real life cultural situation. The Danish mother visiting NYC. For example, it is normal for Danish parents to leave their babies in a buggy while they eat inside a restaurant. American culture, especially New Yorkers do not accept this. But this is very accepted in many Scandanavian cultures. So when a Danish mom left her child outside in a baby buggy for over an hour while she ate dinner in a restaurant, it created quite a stir among New Yorkers.
 In this scenario, who experienced culture shock?  Ethnocentrism? And, who was culturally relative?

Could sociology have helped all of the participants to be more understanding of each other? Have you ever been to a foreign culture and experienced culture shock?


My best example of culture shock was the Japanese toilet. At first, the experience can be a culture shock as the traditional Japanese toilet is very different from ours. As we examine this toilet as well as other cultural components we must remember to be culturally relative. In other words, try not to be ethnocentric, but in stead understand each culture from its own perspective.

When understanding culture, sociologists examine material culture (things) and non-material culture (gestures, language, norms, values). Material culture often reflects non-material culture. 

In the case of the Japanese toilet, not only does it look and function differently from ours, but it also represents fundamentally different non-material culture. The Japanese are very germ conscious and they try hard not to spread germs. They also do not have a lot of furniture - they do not sit on furniture in their houses so why would they sit on a porcelain throne in a bathroom? And finally, they are used to sitting and squatting in positions difficult for westerners.






The Japanese do have a "Western style" toilet that  is more like the toilet we are used to however, it still represents differences in both - its material and non-material culture.

In either case, the point is that there is nothing natural about culture.  In other words, there are no weird ways of doing things that come quite natural to us.  There are only different ways of doing things.  And material culture, although physically different, often represents a different non-material culture, such as a different way of thinking about the world.

Back to the image you found at the start of class.  What non-material culture might this image represent?

Another example would be how people eat around the world.  That is, what utensils they eat with.

Speaking of toilets, here is an NPR story from Goats and Soda about toilets around the world.  checkout this post from NPR about a movie in India which stars a toilet! :-)



And here is a post from Nathan Palmer about how gendered material culture reflects nonmaterial culture.

And this post is about the cultural meaning of athletic wear like yoga pants.

Takeaway:
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What is material culture?

Why is it important?

           

For more info, see Ferris and Stein page 76.