3SocStructure, Lesson 3: Culture

Culture's Influence on Social Structure

Babies are born into a culture.  Culture is the shared meaning between individuals about their way of life.  Culture surrounds us and therefore, we don't even notice it.  There is no right or wrong culture, just different meanings from one culture to the next.   

Culture Shock

Because we are so ingrained in culture, our reality is deeply constructed by culture.  So, when we experience a different culture, it can affect us emotionally.  When we are exposed to a culture we have not lived in, we can experience culture shock, a feeling of astonishment and disbelief when experiencing a new culture.   

Google Form for this lesson.

1.  What was an example of culture shock? From the movie? From your life?

Ethnocentrism

If we are not in shock about the cultural difference, sometimes we judge other cultures by our own standards. This is called ethnocentrism.  

2.  What is ethnocentrism?  What is an ethnocentric view of the movie?

Cultural Relativity
Instead of judging other cultures, sociologists seek cultural relativity or trying to understand a culture from that culture's own standards.  This will help us to understand people better and be more empirical and less judgemental.  

Below is a graphic image called the Iceberg of Culture, originally printed in a 1984 American Foreign Service Handbook (cited by sociologist Robin DiAngelo, 2016 and digitally designed by Dr. Robert Sweetland on his website for educators.)  

Cultural Universals and Human Nature

Although the first glance of a new culture might lead us to an emotional response like culture shock or ethnocentrism, when sociologists (and anthropologists) take a step back, they find many general aspects of culture are similar around the world.  These similar cultural traits are called cultural universals.  Many of the components of the iceberg above can generally be considered cultural universals even though the expression of those universals are different.  Because culture universals are ubiquitous among humans, they might be considered innate, or part of our human nature.  Many of these relate to the interaction between humans.  It is in our human nature to be nurtured.  We need others to survive so we are wired to connect with other people.

3.  Apply cultural universals and human nature to Babies; what are examples of cultural universals in the documentary?  How are cultural universals an example of human nature and psychology?

Human Nurture

Although cultural universals might be similar to humans around the world, the specific way we express these universals might be different.  These differences result in different influences on us based on our culture; the meanings that we share are different based on our culture.  For example, what does it mean to bath? To be clean?  To eat? All of these have different meanings based on your culture, so individuals are nurtured differently depending on their culture.

4.  Apply nurture and socialization to Babies.  What are examples of cultural differences in the documentary? 

Material Culture

What are material items that share meaning in the culture in the movie? 

Nonmaterial Culture - Norms

Norms are what a culture considers normal, especially the behaviors and roles that we expect from people in our same culture.  Even before they can talk, babies learn norms.  Norms can be simple, everyday expectations about life and behavior.

Language and shared meaning

Language is also an important component of culture.  Language itself is a cultural universal and part of human nature.  But the different meanings of language shared within each culture is an example of nurture.  People learn different meanings from their language.

CLICK HERE to answer a few questions about language.

What is the importance of language?

Language is important because it affects how we think. When we think about something, we are using language inside of our heads so if we use certain words or do not have certain words, it may affect how think about things especially how we categorize something.   We even think based on how words sound.  For example, takete and malunga.  Takete sounds harsh and therefore angular.  Malunga sounds softer and rounded.  But these are just made up words.  

Shape A                    Shape B

What is the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis?

The importance of language was first highlighted by researchers, Saphir and Whorf.  Their hypothesis and conclusion was that language shapes how people think, especially when categorizing and naming.  For example, in the color samples above, Americans typically group the chips by blue and green, but Tarahumara people do not have a word for blue and green, instead they have words that mean the color of water and the color of night.  Because each group of people have different words with different meanings, it shapes how they think.

The NY Times ran a story about how the idea of language affecting our thoughts. See that article here. 

Another example of language's effects on our thinking is here (see page 43 of this doc), a lesson from Carol Mukhopadhyay on classifying in other cultures.  For each of the following sets, choose the item that does not belong:

Set 1. Auto, turtle, basket, bird

Students generally select auto or basket using the culturally familiar categorizing device of machines vs. non-machines or and movement vs. non-movement. At least some non-western cultural groups, however, would see birds as most different because their culture emphasizes shape and birds are relatively angular rather than rounded in shape. Our culture tends to emphasize use or functionality. Thus correctness would be culture-dependent.

Set 2. Laundry, beer, clothing

Students generally, with great assurance, select beer as most different. Functionality places clothing and washing machines together. Yet, at least one culture views clothing as different because laundry and beer are both “foamy”. Visual appearance is most salient. US slang for beer (“suds”) also recognizes the attribute of foaminess.

Set 3. A chair, a spear, a couch 

Students again select the “wrong” answer—at least from the perspective of traditional West African cultures. US Americans tend to emphasize use, thus placing couch and chair together as types of sitting devices (i.e. “furniture”). Ashanti apparently would see the “couch” as the most different because both a chair and a spear can symbolize authority.

Evidence of different languages with genderized nouns shaping how people think about those things:

Lera Boroditsky, professor of cognitive science and cultural psychology has published research that concludes language affects how we think.  Her evidence is in the genderization of nouns in different cultures.  Here she is explaining her research at Ted.  Here is an explanation from NPR about Boroditsky's research and how language shapes our description of bridges.  This Psychology Today article explains more about the importance of genderizing nouns in language.  This NPR story highlights how language affects our thinking, especially for bilingual speakers.  

More evidence for the effect of language on thinking:

• The ASA's Society Pages shares research by sociologist Matt Wray highlighted on NPR's Code Switch.  Why would using the term "white trash" support white supremacy?
• This New Yorker article explains the research of professor Adam Alter on the hidden power of words and naming.
• Also, here is a study explaining that without language, numbers do not make sense.
• This episode of On Being from NPR is about Rabbi Heschel who insightfully explained "words create worlds."  Here is a link to a medium article about Heschel and words.  And this link to a passage about the importance of words from Heschel to William Blake. 
• David Treuer is an Ojibway translator who explains the power and importance of language on this episode of On Being.
• The episode Lost in Translation from NPR's Hidden Brain is a social science podcast from NPR and this episode explores how language shapes our thoughts.
• Also, see this post about politics and how the use of English frames every debate especially the debate over gun violence.
• Here is a list of untranslatable ideas about love from around the world.
• Here is a book that highlights untranslatable words from around the world.

1Soc Perspective 5: Hello, My Name is Max

While students show up please read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

Review from last lesson:  What does Marx's conflict paradigm focus on?

Apply to the Parent-Teen Conflict article:  How might the conflict paradigm be used to examine teens?

Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Max Weber's contribution to the development of sociology during the  Industrial Revolution

Max Weber (pronounced VAY-ber) studied the development of capitalism in European countries.  He found that countries that became more Protestant also became more capitalist.  This is peculiar because religion and economics seem to be separate.  But Protestants held shared meaning with each other about their wealth and finance.  They saw living within their means and investing their money as signs that they were living righteously within their Christian beliefs.  This created an economy that was based on investment.  It led to the creation and expansion of capitalism, investing profit to make even more profit.   It might seem strange for religion to be connected to the economy, but in their interaction with each other, it was real for them.  


The development of the symbolic interactionist paradigm 

Building off of Weber's work, two sociologists created a third paradigm for which sociologists view the world.   Weber showed symbolic meaning in the Protestants' lives and in their everyday interaction with other people.  Stemming from Weber's work, George Mead and other sociologists focused on the shared meaning in everyday life between people.  This paradigm became known as symbolic interaction.  It is more focused on face-to-face interaction, or small groups, as opposed to large scale institutions.  Much of our interaction with each other holds symbolic meaning to us.  The words we chose, our body language, our clothes all hold symbolic meaning for us.  They convey an identity we have to the world. 

Let's add Weber and symbolic interaction to the sociology framework graphic organizer:

How might symbolic interaction paradigm connect to names?

A name isn’t just a random set of syllables.  It has meaning.  

And it can be interpreted by people differently.  Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.  Please open it in a new window and fill it out as you continue.

1.  According to the authors of Conventional Wisdom Tells Us..., what are some examples of the different meanings that names hold?  

2.  What are some ways that Cerulo and Ruane show these meanings affect people?

For more on names and symbolic meanings, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode by Wells, Katharine.  How Much Does Your Name Matter? Freakonomics Radio Podcast. April 8, 2013.

The episode draws from a Freakonomics chapter called “A Roshanda By Any Other Name”and includes a good bit of new research on the power of names. It opens with a conversation with NYU sociologist Dalton Conley and his two children, E and Yo. Their names are a bit of an experiment.  Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups of parents — blacks and whites, for instance — have different naming preferences. Stephen Dubner talks to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.  Names do, however, reveal a lot about the people doing the naming. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks about his new research (with co-authors Thomas Wood and Alexandra Bass) that looks at how children’s names are influenced by their parents’ political ideology.

If names do affect their bearers' chance of success, it may not always be because of the reactions they cause in other people (the "looking-glass self"), they might also be because of "implicit egotism", the positive feelings we each have about ourselves.  Brett Pelham cites the concept in explaining his finding that individuals called Virginia, Mildred, Jack and Philip proliferate in Virginia, Milwaukee, Jacksonville and Philadelphia - he believes they are drawn to live there.  

Another intriguing 2007 paper, entitled Moniker Maladies, found that people's fondness for the initials of their names could get in the way of success. Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons analysed almost a century of baseball strikeouts and found that hitters with the initial K had a higher strike-out rate ("K" denotes a strike-out in baseball). They also found that graduate students with the initials C and D had a slightly lower grade point average than A and B students, and A and B applicants to law school were more likely to go to better colleges.

Some students will say that their parents just chose the name because they liked it.  But closer research reveals that even this is not always the case.  The Social Security Administration Baby Names Database tracks all of the names babies are given each year.  You can view that data here: SSA Baby Name Database.   
Notice that the data shows that names go in and out of style, even if we don't notice it.  For example, my parents named me Christopher, but they just thought that they liked the name.  Looking at the data, it is now evident that Christopher was the second most popular name that year! 

Additionally, a respected sociologist from Harvard named Stanley Lieberson studied trends and fashions.  He used the Social Security Names database to study how names spread in popularity similar to how fashion spreads.  His research is an example of how the social institution of family creates stability.  The naming of new babies is not simply personal; families influence each other.  Read this NY Times[iii] article about Lieberson then try your own research with the data.  If you wish to markup this reading, download it here.  Lieberson found that:

• Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different.
• Names branch off of each other with similar suffixes or prefixes 
• Names reflect societal patterns like Mexican immigrants
• Names are changing more frequently than they used to reflect a stronger desire to be different.

5.  (OPTIONAL) Search the SSA Baby Name Database.  

Can you find examples of any of Lieberson's finds in the social security database?  Give a specific example.

Parent-teen conflicts and Weber's symbolic interaction paradigm

Think about the teen-parent conflict reading.  

3.  What are the meanings that the label "teen" might hold for parents?  For society?  

4.  How might the label of "teen" affect the face-to-face interactions between teens and parents, teachers, peers?   How did this meaning come about?


5. Do you understand how the sociologists view the world through a symbolic interaction perspective?  Any questions about that paradigm?

1Soc Perspective 4: Hello My Name is Karl

 As students arrive:

Please open the Google Form for today's lesson.  Please open it in a new window and answer the questions as you read along below.  

Review and apply yesterday's lesson:  

1.  What does Durkheim's structural-functional paradigm focus on?

2. Try to apply that to teens - How can you apply the structural-functional paradigm to the Parent-Teen Conflict article?  What parts of the article would a structural-functional sociologist focus on?



Karl Marx's Conflict Paradigm

The second paradigm that emerged from the changes of the industrial revolution is called conflict paradigm which developed out of the influence of Karl Marx.  He studied the inequalities in industrial Europe and how those inequalities affected individuals.  For example, Marx found that a working-class person lived an average of 25 years less than a wealthy person.  Like Durkheim, Marx concluded that his findings were not just the result of individual choices.  Instead, people were forced to work in unhealthy conditions and forced to yield to the demands of the wealthy owners of the factories.  

Marx's Focus   

Marx's focus led sociologists to examine who had power in society and who did not.  The natural extension of that became the effects of power on groups of individuals and how those in power gained and maintained that power.  Initially, Marx's focus was on social class, especially in Europe, but early sociologists in the U.S. like W.E.B. Dubois applied the conflict paradigm to race, while others like Alice Paul applied it to gender in the U.S.   Oftentimes, the study of inequality and the fight for equal rights led to overlapping movements such as social class and gender led by Chicago's Jane Addams and other overlapping movements such as race and gender which was led by Chicago's Ida B. Wells.  In fact, the University of Chicago was the first sociology department in North America (1892) and Chicago was a leader in sociology for the next 50 years leading to what became known as "the Chicago school" of sociology.

Open your framework chart from yesterday, and add Marx's paradigm to the lower left:

Applying conflict paradigm to names

3. Hypothesize:  What are some ways that names might create power or inequality?


Small group discussion (based on this lesson from Rabow, et al...):
4.  Has your name ever been mispronounced?  By who? When? How often?


5.  Has anyone had their name changed or taken on a  nickname because of mispronunciation?  If so, were there any benefits to the new name?  Were there any negative consequences?


Race and names
These articles provide research-based evidence of the importance of conflict perspective in examining names and power:

Emily and Greg v. Lakisha and Jamal

In a study from 2003, called Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan sent nearly 5,000 CVs in response to job advertisements in Chicago and Boston newspapers. The CVs were the same, but half were given fake names that sounded like they belonged to white people, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half were given names that sounded African American, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. The call-back rate from employers was 50% higher on the "white" names then the "black" names. The effects were noted even for federal contractors with "affirmative action" policies, and companies boasting they were "equal opportunities" employers.  The researchers inferred that employers were using first names to discriminate unfairly against black candidates, perhaps at an unconscious level. Those same prejudices might also come into play at the interviewing stage, but a black applicant called Greg Baker, who receives an invitation to an interview, has at least got his foot in the door.

Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan

There is also striking evidence of names triggering different outcomes for schoolchildren.

David Figlio, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the scores of some 55,000 children in a school district of Florida. Instead of just distinguishing between "white" and "black" names, he codified what aspects of names meant that they were more likely to belong to black children and children from low-income families. This allowed him to create a sliding scale, which went, for example, from Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan. Figlio found that the further along this scale he went, the worse the school test scores and the less likely the student was to be recommended for the schools' program for "gifted" students. Strikingly, this held true for brothers within a family, and even - although the sample size was small - for twins. Figlio believes that the fault lies with the expectations of schoolteachers and administrators - at schools with more black teachers, the effects were less marked.  In separate research, Figlio used the Florida school data to show that black boys who are given names more common among girls are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach puberty. The problems increase significantly when there are girls in the same year group with the same name.

Both of the above is an example of how conflict sociologists view society and how inequality is created and maintained.  Read the following and look for how studying names can be viewed through a conflict paradigm.

Ethnicity, immigration and names

From American Immigrants and the Dilemma of the White Sounding Name in the Atlantic (2019),

A lot of research on immigration and names examines the subject from an economic perspective. A 2016 paper in the American Sociological Review looked at the first names given to the generation that came after the wave of immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. “Native-born sons of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrant fathers who were given very ethnic names ended up in occupations that earned, on average, $50 to $100 less per year than sons who were given very ‘American’ names,” the researchers wrote. “This represented 2 to 5 percent of annual earnings.” (They determined the “ethnic-ness” or “American-ness” of a name based on how frequently it was given in each immigrant and native-born population at the time.) 

Some of this effect, the researchers estimated, was due to class differences among parents (which remain a strong determinant of a child’s future job prospects), but most of it had to do with the symbolism of the name itself. Interestingly, the economic advantage that came with having a “more American” name still applied to people with surnames that clearly indicated their parents’ foreign origins. The researchers surmised that American-sounding first names, then, functioned more as a signal of “an effort to assimilate” than a means of “hiding one’s origins.” 

Immigrants in that era frequently felt pressured to change their own first name. A separate study, also from 2016, found that “at any given time between 1900 and 1930,” about 77 percent of immigrants had an American-sounding first name, and it was the norm for them to have dropped their original name within a year of entering the U.S. There were economic overtones here too: Male immigrants were more likely to change their name if they lived in counties where other immigrants had trouble getting jobs.

School and Conflict Paradigm

From PBS's, Why Getting a Student's Name Right Matters

For more info, you might want to visit the My Name, My Identity website[vi].

For students, especially the children of immigrants or those who are English-language learners, a teacher who knows their name and can pronounce it correctly signals respect and marks a critical step in helping them adjust to school.  But for many ELLs, a mispronounced name is often the first of many slights they experience in classrooms; they’re already unlikely to see educators who are like them, teachers who speak their language, or a curriculum that reflects their culture.

It can also hinder academic progress.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

• Mispronunciation can hinder academic progress, and make students feel invisible.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn’t raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r’s.

Mispronouncing a student’s name essentially renders that student invisible, Fariña said Teachers Please Learn Our Names! Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom, is littered with stories of students who endured shame, anxiety, or embarrassment, and sometimes a mix of all three, when their names were called in class.

There’s the tale of a Portland, Oregon-area student with a traditional Chinese name who had her name garbled by a vice principal during an honors ceremony. Set to present the student with an award, the principal laughed at his mistake, drawing chuckles from the audience.  To avoid embarrassment, the student slumped in her seat, refusing to rise to receive the prestigious award. She later skipped her graduation.  The mispronunciation wasn’t an isolated event. Having endured years of slights, she felt the need to become invisible long before the principal’s laughter marked the tipping point.  The woman, who went on to become an educator, changed her first name to ‘Anita.’ “If someone mispronounces your name once as a high school student, you might correct them,” said Kohli, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. “But if this has been your entire existence in education, what do you do?”  Kohli’s own brother had a teacher mispronounce his traditional South Asian name, Sharad (‘shu-rudth’) as Sharub during a ninth grade class. The teacher and the students decided it was easier to call him Shrub, and it stuck for the rest of high school. The nickname forced him to check part of his identity at the door.

While the diversity of the nation’s public school student body has exploded in the last few decades, the number of African-American, Latino, and Asian teachers hasn’t kept pace. Gonzalez, a former teacher in school districts in Kentucky and Maryland, said she often observed a ‘these people’ attitude from her mostly white female colleagues. “They approached it like, ‘It’s your fault for having a weird name,'” Gonzalez said. To some degree, Gonzalez understands the struggle students face. She grew up with a Russian surname, Yurkosky, that befuddled teachers and classmates. She said it rhymes with “her-pots-ski,” minus the “t” sound in pots. “But I did not experience all the other stuff and other ways that a person can feel discriminated against,” said Gonzalez, who is white.

Butchered names are not just a problem for English learners and immigrants; students from a number of cultural backgrounds have their names garbled or ridiculed. Hawaiian and African-American students, with names that link to their ancestry, also shared stories of how constant mispronunciations made them feel uncomfortable with their names.

• Names can even lead to direct mocking of a student:

In an extreme case, a teacher in Wayne Township, New Jersey, lost her tenure status and job in 2015 for mocking a student’s name on Facebook. Several letters in the student’s name spelled out a profane word, legal documents show. More often, the mocking is more direct and reflexive: laughing off pronunciation, asking the student to take on a nickname, or making a spectacle of their name, Kohli said. “It matters what you do when you’re in front of a child and struggling with their name,” Kohli said. “Is it framed as my inability to say someone’s name or is it framed as the student doing something to make your life more difficult?”

The episode called "Substitute Teacher" from Key and Peele is a funny take on how student names can be messed up by a teacher and how that can affect students.

Applying conflict paradigm to teens

6.  Finally,  apply conflict paradigm to the teen-parent conflict article.  What are some ways that you can analyze Coontz's Teen-Parent Conflict excerpt through Marx's lens of inequality and power?  

HW (optional):  Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from Cerulo and Ruane.