ACTION ITEMS: Please read the two readings below for our next class. Both of them are about culture.
First, the Kohl reading is about American culture. It was written to help emigrants arriving in America adjust to cultural values that they may not be familiar with. For Americans, the reading provides interesting insight into the culture that surrounds us. Like fish who have never questioned water, we are engrossed in our cultural values so ubiquitously that we don't realize it. This reading will help us take a step back and view the ways that American culture shapes those within it. As you read, think about examples from your own life that illustrate the values Kohl highlights.
Second, the Thrive reading is from a book by Dan Buettner. Buettner travelled the world as sort of an ethnographer writing about people all over the globe. In Thrive, Buettner focuses on the places in the world that report the highest levels of happiness. The book focuses on a few happiness anomalies (Blue Zones) around the world: Denmark, Singapore, Mexico and San Luis Obispo (USA). This excerpt is Buettner's concluding chapter in which he tries to make sense of what the places all have in common and what we can learn from them to make our lives happier. As you read, look for areas of happiness that you had not thought about. Make a note of things that Buettner suggests that you can do right now in your own life as well as things you want to do as you get older.
Be ready to compare and discuss these readings after our next class.
Today's lesson: An ethnography of refugees; studying others to learn about ourselves.
In order to better understand the culture that we live in, sometimes it is easier to examine those in a different culture to find revelations about our own culture. Like the fishbowl metaphor, if the fishbowl is our culture, we are like the fish swimming in it. That makes it very difficult to notice the water. So, to help us become more sociologically mindful about the ways that our own culture influences us, let us examine refugees who are from a completely different culture. To do this, we will watch the documentary "God Grew Tired of Us."
This documentary is an ethnography of sorts where you get to follow Sudanese refugees to examine all the ways that they have to adjust to American culture. Pay special attention to the values that are so difficult to adjust to.
When I was in undergrad here at Loyola, we had a class where we got to meet with Lost Boys and hear about their struggle. Here is a website dedicated to the Lost Boys of Sudan in Chicago. This movie wasn't out yet though. But then, a few years ago my mom happened to meet and talk to one of the lost boys in the film and she recommended it to me for sociology. I'm so thankful to her for that. Anyway, in the movie we see numerous cultural differences.
To speak about culture in a more distinct way, think in terms of the way sociologists might explain all the components of culture; culture is made up of material culture as well as the nonmaterial: gestures, language, norms, mores, folkways, taboos, values.
As you watch the first part, please focus on the cultural differences that the boys must adjust to, especially, norms (folkways, mores, taboos) and language.
Describe the cultural differences that the Sudanese men experienced using those concepts.
Have you ever met anyone from a different country?
Did you notice or discuss any cultural differences?
What component of culture (from the terms above) did those differences fall under?
What is this day really about? We like to talk about it being a day to celebrate love, but it is really a day to celebrate romance. So often, I think Americans (and Westerners in general) equate the word "love" with romance and passion. However, many cultures view love and marriage differently. They view it more as being a good team member. It is more of a partnership between two people who care about each other. There is a recent article in the Atlantic called "Marry Him" about how too many women are looking for the perfect man who looks perfect, acts perfect shares the right interests and has that spark that makes their heart flutter. This is creating unrealistic expectations. Here is an interview with the author of the article. How do you feel about this? Do you think that our vision of love is too romantic and not practical enough?
Ray Short writes about the difference between love and infatuation in his book, Sex, Love or Infatuation. He explained that biologically, we have a rush of emotions when we "fall in love". This is romantic love and infatuation. But it isn't real love. It wears off. Biologically he said it will last for 6 months or so and then it wears off. After that, you see the other person more realistically and that means you have to make a conscious choice about being with this person. That is what real love is - it is a conscious choice to care about someone. Even when we are upset or angry with the other person we still choose to care about them and thus we still love them. The author of the book includes a list of a dozen or so key aspects of a relationship to examine. I found this blogpost that lists the key criteria to distinguish between real love and infatuation. The book was really a good source for me to sort through all of these emotions when I was going through high school and college. You can get it used from amazon for like $4.
For more sociological insight into Valentine's Day checkout this link and these posts from SocImages:
As we learned in our last lesson, humans are born to be nurtured. We are social beings born into communities of other people. The larger communities of people who share meaning in everyday life form a culture. So as babies we are born into a culture. Because culture is so omnipresent, it surrounds us before we are even born. And so, similar to how a fish has never known what it is like to live out of water, humans have been surrounded by culture their whole lives. Thus, culture is the first force of socialization, or nurture, that we are influenced by.
In the fishbowl metaphor, the baby is born into the bowl surrounded by both material and nonmaterial culture.
Culture Shock
Because we are so ingrained in culture, 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. In the example of the fishbowl, imagine bringing a fish home from a carnival or a pet store. When you dump the fish into the new bowl, it might be a shock - imagine how you feel when jumping into a cold swimming pool.
One example of culture shock from my life was discovering the Japanese toilet. At first, the experience can be a culture shock as the traditional Japanese toilet is very different from ours:
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.
What is the shared meaning behind the Japanese toilet? Materially: what is it?
Non-materially: How to use it? Why use it?
The Japanese do have a "Western style" toilet that is more like the toilet that Americans 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.
Ethnocentrism
If we are not in shock about the cultural difference, sometimes we judge other cultures by our own standards. This is called ethnocentrism. For example, an American might travel to another culture and think, "Why would they want to squat to use the toilet? Isn't that uncomfortable? They should use a toilet the way we do - it's much better because it's more comfortable." That would be ethnocentric. In the fishbowl metaphor ethnocentrism is a person outside of the bowl looking in and judging the fish. "Why doesn't the fish go in the castle? That's what a castle is for."
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. When engaging in cross-cultural study, what should we be mindful of?
4. Instead, how should we approach culture?
Cultural Differences and 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 begin even before birth as the cultural norms of one group of people affect the expecting mother (and her baby). This results in different influences on us based on our culture. And that difference continues throughout our lives as we learn the shared meanings of our culture. For example, what does it mean to bath or "be clean"? To eat or have "food"? To get ready to go out or wear "clothes"? All of these have different meanings based on your culture, so individuals are nurtured differently depending on their culture.
Levine and Wolff published an article about different ways that social scientists researched time in various cultures. See the article called Social Time here.
Using the article, please answer these questions:
5. How did the author conduct cross-cultural research about time in the U.S. and Brazil? 6. What did he find quantitatively and qualitatively? 7. What does the social construction of the shared meaning of being "late" reveal? 8. What other data did researchers use to study time around the world?
What are norms?
Norms are the shared expectations about behavior - the meaning applied to how we interact with a group of people. Norms vary around the world. One example of this is the norms centered around time, as in the article you read for homework. How do people from different cultures think about time differently? What do they consider late or early? These are norms.
Why are norms important?
There are two important general lessons from norms:
When interacting with other cultures, recognizing norms is important because if we fail to acknowledge these differences, we run the risk of offending someone or even a whole culture of people.
Second, norms help us see that we have been shaped to behave a certain way; they are an illustration that we are socialized by our nurture. Norms an example of the shared meaning that we learn as we grow up.
And this graphic explains varying norms from around the world for business travelers:
Norms that are less important are called folkways. Folkways are not crucial to the order of society and if you were to violate a folkway people would not necessarily judge you. A folkway in the United States might be addressing adults by "Mr" or "Ms" or driving the speed limit. A folkway at a dinner party might be not putting your elbows on the table.
Mores (pronounce mor AYS) are norms important to the order of a society. If you violate them, it will cause a disruption in the social setting. It is worth noting that these mores, although very important to the society, are not necessarily laws. Similar to the ideas of time being a social construct, they are just the way that people operate and even though they are not written into laws, they are important to the function of society. The more of how to cross a street can be found in lots of videos on youtube. Watch this video of an intersection in India and think about who has the right of way? There may not be a law about it, but those drivers know what they are doing. Would an American know the more of how to cross the street? Note how the person crossing the street is aware of the norms of traffic and so the pedestrian successfully crosses without getting hit.
When I was in Italy, it took me six days to figure out how to cross the street. There were scooters and cars swerving everywhere and honking. Every time I tried to cross the street, cars would screech to a stop and swear at me in Italian. Then I figured out how to do it. Just walk a steady pace across the street and let them avoid you - and it worked! This knowledge of how to cross the street is an important norm, what sociologists call a more.
And a British explanation of Italian street crossing norms here.
Finally, the most serious norms are taboos. Taboos are things that you do not even want to think about because it is embarrassing to even imagine it. For example, look at this port-a-potty created by an artist in Switzerland. Would you be able to use it?
This is how it looks from the inside:
Would you be able to use a toilet if it looked like everyone could see you, even though you knew they could not? This is a taboo because even though people could not see us, the mere thought of them seeing us would make us hesitant. In other words, simply thinking about doing this is embarrassing and so we don't want to even think about it. Perhaps, that is why we have so many euphemisms for using the toilet: using the john, the restroom, the bathroom, the lavatory, the men's room, washroom, powder room?
Example of folkways, mores and taboos from a dinner date with significant other.
Example of norms from your life 9. Have you experienced a different set of norms from another culture either by traveling somewhere or by meeting a foreigner here in America? What was it like? Were there misunderstandings? Something else that you might want to inquire about is another culture's norms; where you would like to travel? What are all of the norms you should know if you travel there? Find out what unique norms exist in their culture. Here is a link to cultural etiquette around the world:
What are norms in general? How do the norms of folkways, mores and taboos differ?
Language and shared meaning
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.
Answer a few Questions about language without reading ahead:
10. One of the shapes below is called a "Takete" and the other is called a "Malunga." Take a guess which one is which:
Shape A Shape B
11. Which one of the color circles below does not belong with the other two?
12. Which word does not belong or is the most different for each set below:
Set 1. Auto, turtle, basket, bird
Set 2. Laundry, beer, clothing
Set 3. A chair, a spear, a couch
13. What are three words to describe this bridge:
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.
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 NY Times ran a story about how the idea of language affecting our thoughts. See that article here.
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.
1. What are some of the unseen ways that the tree below has been shaped?
There are two general categories of influences on the tree: Nature and Nurture.
The Nature and Nurture Dynamic
The tree begins with a seed that houses the tree's genetic material, an algorithm for how the tree should grow. But the rules of the algorithm interact with the environment that the seed lands in. For example, the tree's genes are programmed to grow towards the sunlight, but that depends upon what is around the tree and what happens to the tree.
The genetic material in the ash tree seeds creates an aptitude for the tree to grow like this:
Both of the ash trees above start from seeds like the ones pictured above. The seeds provide an aptitude for the tree to grow. The aptitude is the tree's potential for traits like height, branching, lifespan, etc... This is the tree's nature; its genes and biology. But this aptitude is dependent on the nurture that the tree gets from its environment; the tree is affected by its surroundings:
the light it receives
its surroundings like buildings and other trees
the soil composition
pollution
animals and insects nesting/affecting in the tree
And the tree is also affected by human activity:
pruning
fertilizing
people driving by the tree with trucks hitting the branches
All of the effects of the surroundings of the tree and the human activity is nurture; how interaction with surroundings and people affect growth. So the tree's growth is based on a dynamic interaction between both its nature and its nurture.
We are Arborescent- What goes Unseen Is at the very Root of ourselves. Distance can Distort our deepest Sense Of who We are, Leave Us Warped & wasted As winter's Wind. We will Not Walk From what We've borne We would Keep it For a while Sit silent & Swinging on its branches Like a child Refusing to come Home. We would Keep. Knowing how We would Again Give up Our World For this one.
2a. What does Gorman mean by "We are arborescent"? 2b. What are some things that "go unseen" that are "at the very root of ourselves"?
This lesson is the beginning of our third unit - Social Structure. For this unit, I want students to be able to answer the question: How has social structure shaped you? To begin this unit, this lesson will first examine evidence about how humans are programmed by their DNA and biology. If we are programmed to grow/be/act a certain way then that is not social structure, that is biology. Let's begin with an examination of biology v. society or nature v. nurture so that we can separate out what is social influence on people.
Like Gorman explains in her poem, people are like trees as well. Humans are born with biological nature - genes that provide an aptitude and a road map for growth. In other words, all living creatures from trees to humans are dependent on both nature and nurture. But humans are affected by their surroundings - their environment including both the physical environment and the social environment. Similar to trees, many animals are born with instincts and abilities to survive on their own.
Human Nature
But people are different than trees and animals in profound ways. If a tree's seed falls to the ground and takes root, left to itself, it grows. But if a human baby is born, left to itself, it is unlikely to survive. In other words, humans are deeply interdependent on other humans to survive. In other words, it is human nature to be nurtured. Humans need to be cared for, and that is why we are born with a biology and a psychology designed for social interaction.
Evidence for the connection between nature and nurture and the human social connection:
Dr. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States, recently wrote: “Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day”.
Social relationships—both quantity and quality—affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk. Sociologists have played a central role in establishing the link between social relationships and health outcomes, identifying explanations for this link, and discovering social variation (e.g., by gender and race) at the population level. Studies show that social relationships have short- and long-term effects on health, for better and for worse, and that these effects emerge in childhood and cascade throughout life to foster cumulative advantage or disadvantage in health. This article describes key research themes in the study of social relationships and health, and it highlights policy implications suggested by this research.
Social connections like these not only give us pleasure, they also influence our long-term health in ways every bit as powerful as adequate sleep, a good diet, and not smoking. Dozens of studies have shown that people who have social support from family, friends, and their community are happier, have fewer health problems, and live longer.
Dean Ornish's Reaserch Dr. Dean Ornish, a cardiologist who found through research that patients with medical issues, including surgeries like bypass surgery or mastectomies, healed quicker and more thoroughly if they had meaningful relationships in their lives.
Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic: drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation.
Love and intimacy — our ability to connect with ourselves and others, is at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it — yet, with few exceptions, we doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.
There is a deep spiritual hunger in this country. The real epidemic in our culture is not only physical heart disease, but also what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease. The profound sense of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture with the breakdown of the social structures that used to provide us with a sense of connection and community. It is, to me, a root of the illness, cynicism, and violence in our society.
We are creatures of community. Those individuals, societies, and cultures who learned to take care of each other, to love each other, and to nurture relationships with each other during the past several hundred thousand years were more likely to survive than those who did not. Those people who did not learn to take care of each other often did not make it. In our culture, the idea of spending time taking care of each other and creating communities has become increasingly rare. Ignoring these ideas imperils our survival.
Awareness is the first step in healing, both individually and socially. Part of the value of science is to increase the level of awareness of how much these choices matter that we make each day. Not just a little, but a lot, and not just to the quality of life but also the quantity of life – to our survival. When we understand how important these issues are, then we can do something about it. These include:
• spending more time with our friends and family
• communication skills
• group support
• confession, forgiveness, and redemption
• compassion, altruism, and service
• psychotherapy
• touching
• commitment
• meditation
When we increase the love and intimacy in our lives, we also increase the health, joy, and meaning in our lives.
Blueprint by Nicholas Christakis
Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and medical doctor. In his 2019 book, Blueprint, he explains that humans are born with a nature that makes us be nurtured. This is what Christakis calls the "social suite:"
“At the core of all societies, I will show, is the social suite:
(1) The capacity to have and recognize individual identity (2) Love for partners and offspring (3) Friendship (4) Social networks (5) Cooperation (6) Preference for one’s own group (that is, “in-group bias”) (7) Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism (8) Social learning and teaching”
Watch Christakis briefly summarize his book on youtube here or on the embedded video below:
For more info., Christakis has a 30 min interview with the RSA here that explains how his work can inform us during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bruce Perry's Research
Another researcher, Bruce Perry, has written extensively about the importance of nurturing humans as they grow, especially empathy. Perry's research details the sad evidence that humans who are not nurtured by other humans will not grow and develop. There are numerous examples of kids who are fed and protected so that they survive, but they are isolated from other people and not shown love and caring. Humans need more than nutrition and shelter to grow and develop.
Watch both of the videos below about famous examples that are as revealing as they are sad:
The video below is about a girl named Genie that was locked in a bedroom alone for 12 years of her life. Here is what Susan Curtiss wrote about her in her book, Genie; A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day Wild Child.
Here is a brief clip from a documentary about Genie's story. And below are notes from one of the researchers studying Genie:
Genie was pitiful. Hardly ever having worn clothing, she did not react to temperature, either heat or cold. Never having eaten solid food, Genie did not know how to chew and had great difficulty in swallowing. Having been strapped down and left sitting on a potty chair she could not stand erect, could not straighten her arms or legs, could not run hop, jump or climb. In fact she could only walk with difficulty shuffling her feet and swaying from side to side. Hardly ever having seen more than a space of ten feet in front of her she had become nearsighted to exactly that distance....Surprisingly, however, Genie was alert and curious. She maintained good eye contact and...She was intensely eager for human contact.
3. What are the ways that Danielle and Genie both were not nurtured?
4. What are some of the results of their lack of nurturing?
Feral Kids Some people have been found to be living with wild (feral) animals. These feral people provide more evidence that humans are influenced by their surroundings. Check out this website for examples of feral children.
Socialization
The process of nurture that shapes humans is called socialization. There is evidence that this process begins even before birth! Even before birth, a baby is dependent on its parents for its genes.And then, as it develops in utero, it depends on its mother to make the baby's life viable; A prenatal infant can be impacted by the stress that the mother feels as well as the nutrition she gets, and the medical care she receives.
Another example of prenatal socialization is in identical twins who have the same exact DNA and biology. Because they are exactly the same, nurses will often paint the nails of twins differently so that they can quickly tell them apart. But, often the parents of these twins can tell them apart from their earliest days because they have already started developing different personalities even before being born.
The effects of alcohol and drugs on unborn babies are one example of prenatal effects on unborn babies that are well documented. Additionally, other examples are the effects of prenatal vitamins and stress on the mother.
Yet another example of socialization happening in utero is that babies are influenced by what mothers eat during their pregnancy. One study shows that the amniotic fluid around the baby can take on the flavor and smell of certain foods or spices. Babies show a correlation to those foods after being born. See more about this study here.
There is even more recent research that has found that the experiences a grandmother has can affect the genes that she passes down to her grandchild! In other words, the nurturing or socialization process that affects you, might start decades before you are even born! This multigenerational effect on genes is known as epigenetics. Here is a link to a PBS program called The Ghost in your Genes about epigenetics. The researchers theorize that social experiences can affect the genes of a person and, more amazingly, these genes can be passed down to a generation or two. So the grandchildren may experience the effects of their grandparents' lives on their genes. How amazing is that? They call it the "ghost in your genes," explained on the BBC here.
Can you explain what sociologist mean by nature and nurture?
What is the dynamic between the two?
Use evidence from the lesson above to support your answer.
