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The Definition Of Culture

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Throughout different countries there are different cultures, but do we actually know the definition of culture? Mifflin states that culture is “the total of the inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared bases of social action” (Mifflin, 2005), meaning that a group of people come together with a total amount of ideas and traditions which are shared among them. Therefore, it links to humanity because if humans didn’t had any ideas, beliefs, morals, custom etc. there wouldn’t be no such thing as culture since it is everything that makes a person an entire way of living. The sociology text book states that “culture is both our link to the past and our guide to the future.” (John, 2010) Culture also have some common …show more content…

According to the text book norms are “rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members.” (John, 2010) It states that there are formal norms called “mores” and informal norms called “folkway”. Mores refer to the standards of behaviour which are considered the most important in any society, while on the other hand folkways refer to the standards of behaviour that are considered less important but still influence by how they behave in that particular society. (John, 2010) Therefore, norms and values may be totally different from one culture to the next.
The book also states three theoretical analysis of culture. One would be the social-conflict analysis which “sees culture as a dynamic arena of inequality and conflict.” (John, 2010) It benefits a group of people while affecting others. For instance, this can be related to “crash” the part where the old, chine man is trafficking people (human trafficking) that benefits him and his wife but it affects the people who are harmed by his incident. (cheadle, et al., …show more content…

It is the concept of “right” or “wrong”, meaning that things that could be moral in a society can be immoral in another, but that doesn’t give the right to no one to judge them. (John, 2010) For instance, in the movie “Crash” after Jean Cabot is robbed she becomes very irrational and paranoid about everyone around her. She insists on getting the locks changed again because Daniel is of the Spanish race and has tattoos. Therefore, from his appearance she assumed that he was a gangbanger and would return to rob her house. (cheadle, et al., 2005) Some might not agree with them, but yet they should respect others beliefs and way of thinking. An example of cultural relativism would be homosexual. For instance we know that homosexuality have gotten out of the shelves, for them it is right what they are doing, men and men as well as women and women. However, for others that is totally wrong, they dislike to see it, especially in their society. For some cultures it is sin, for others it just not right, yet they need to respect others belief and ideas. They say it is sin because God made a man and a woman so that each of them have company and also they can reproduce and make a family, so that their gene can pass on. Homosexual people doesn’t see it that way. They have other point of view but they must be respected since no one has the right to judge one another. (John,

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