SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: William Graham Sumner, Social Control, Cultural Diversity

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1101
• Professor: Sam Alvaro

Document Summary

Culture consists of the beliefs, values behaviour and material objects that define a people"s way of life passed on from one generation to the next. Culture has two basic components: nonmaterial culture or the intangible creations of human society, and material culture, the tangible products of human society. Only humans depend on culture rather than instincts to ensure the survival of their kind. Culture gives us the ability to actively shape the natural environment for ourselves. Symbols are defined as anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share culture. The meaning of the same symbols varies from society to society, within a single society, and over time. Language is a system of symbols that allows members of a society to communicate with one another. Language is the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to the next. Through most of human history, cultural transmission has been accomplished through oral tradition.