...Science, Lecture sheet-5, Culture & Society ❖ Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior. It includes the ideas, values, customs and artifacts (as well as the sailboats, comic books and birth control devices) of groups of people. In sociological terms, culture does not refer solely to the fine arts and refined intellectual taste. It consists of all objects and ideas within a society, including ice cream cones, rock music, and slang words. Culture is a matter of what people in a society know to be true (Goodenough, 1957). That’s why knowledge and belief are at the core of the definition of culture. According to Vander zanden, “Culture refers to the social heritage of a people-those learned patterns for thinking, feeling, and acting that are transmitted from one generation to the next, including the embodiment of these patterns in material items.” Culture provides the fabric that enables human beings to interpret their experiences and guide their actions. Material culture refers to the physical or technological aspects of our daily lives, including food items, houses, factories, clothing, literary and musical works, inventions and raw materials. Non material culture refers to ways of using material objects and to customs, beliefs, values, knowledge, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication or rules concerning behavior. One important point is that no society is without culture. For reasons every society requires some degree of...
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...Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79. It is a dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal with an attractive, bright yellow color and luster that is maintained without tarnishing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements, solid under standard conditions. The metal therefore occurs often in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, such as with tellurium as calaverite, sylvanite and krennerite. Gold resists attacks by individual acids, but it can be dissolved by aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), so named because it dissolves gold. Gold also dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which have been used in mining. It dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys; is insoluble in nitric acid, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property that has long been used to confirm the presence of gold in items, giving rise to the term acid test. This metal has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recorded history. Gold standards have sometimes been monetary policies, but were widely supplanted by fiat currency starting in the 1930s. The last gold certificate and gold coin currencies were issued in the U.S. in 1932. In Europe, most countries left the gold standard with...
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...UAE Society & Culture The United Arab Emirates is home to a rich cultural heritage that has been strongly influenced by its unique environment. The region's varied terrain, desert, oasis, mountains and coast, dictated the traditional lifestyles that evolved over the centuries. A resilience and resourcefulness necessary to survive in these harsh conditions was fostered by society’s age-old tribal structure: each family was traditionally bound by obligations of mutual assistance to his immediate relatives and to the tribe as a whole. Among the tribe an individual's selfless hospitality was the source of his honour and pride. A common religion, Islam, also provided the cement that held society together. The UAE’s rich history is rooted in trade and tied to Islam, which came to the region in AD 630. For centuries, the region was home to small fishing towns and a nomadic Bedouin people. Eventually, its location between Europe and the Far East attracted merchants from India and China and was prized by Europeans. And over time, cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai became large trading hubs. In the 19th and early 20th century many inhabitants were semi-nomadic, pearling in the summer and tending date gardens in the winter for trade. Today, the seven Emirates have forged a distinct national identity combining the traditional with the modern. The UAE’s culture is rooted in the traditions of a nomadic, desert people. The tribe has been the principal building block of UAE society since...
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...BUSINESS SOCIETY & CULTURE Businesses interact with wider society they are part of. Businesses are affected by society, for example in the kind of goods and services they expected to produce and businesses affect society by their activities. It is a two-way process. Some of the ways in which business affect societies are negative, and usually governments limit these activities by law. For example, some business activities damage the environment. In addition, there are ethical constraints set by the wider expectations of society. For example, it is legal to sack workers for some actions, but society may think the sacking is unreasonable, and the business may feel pressured to not do it. CULTURE is comprised of many different elements that have been passed down for generations, including knowledge, belief systems, experiences, values, attitudes, religion, art, ideas, law, morals, customs and way of perceiving the world. Some aspects of culture are visible, such as the way people dress or the food that they eat, while other elements of culture are invisible, such as the importance of religion, belief surrounding the role of family in a society, or the way people think and feel about certain issues. While the visible aspects of culture are often easy to spot, it usually takes much more time and efforts to understand and appreciate the importance of the invisible. However, it is usually the invisible elements of the culture that have the most impact on the way people view the...
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...Asceticism has been revolutionizing since the fifteenth century and will continue to throughout the present day in the social order. The human mind is faced with demanding means of transformation sustained in our culture through material and ideological conditions. Jeremy Rifkin and Karl Polanyi focus their work on production and exchange in terms of social relations also known as material conditions. Theodore Roszak and Reinhard Bendix direct their literature on the values and actions which individuals adhere otherwise known as ideological conditions. Ideological and material conditions coincide in respect to one another. Human values and worth differentiate when challenged by unpredictable social surroundings. Each journalist captures on central idea that shapes our perception and understanding of the world. The concept of work is seldom understood. From the establishment of the primitive societies work has always been in existence. Jeremy Rifkin states in his exposition “The End of Work”, that “for the first time, human labour is being systematically eliminated from the production process” (Rifkin 214). The introduction of machinery is pushing the global economy to a new generation of information and communication technologies leading us to the Third Industrial Revolution. “35 million people are currently unemployed and an additional 15 million have given up looking for work or unwillingly accepted a part time job” (Rifkin 220). Machinery is replacing human labour and...
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...As a society we value many qualities as a culture. Many things in today’s society are acceptable that would not have been acceptable not even ten years ago. Our values in what we find important change all the time with what we find acceptable or not. Throughout this age, many people have trumped the “norm” and excelled far from what society would allow over a decade ago. It’s through strong perseverance, tolerance & a level of ambition that most successful people are born with. When someone thinks about perseverance, most people would think about a person dying from a terminal illness and defeating the disease and living the rest of their life healthy and without defeat. There are people today in our society that share the same feat, but in many different conquering ways. Barack Obama, our 44th President of the United States is our first African American President. Decades ago, everyone would doubt that this day would come. African American’s have persevered through time and have fought for their rights in a society that has never accepted them. As different as some may perceive President Obama and his family, the only difference that remains constant, is the color of their skin. They’re not so different at all from anyone else. After years of fight and struggle, our society is conforming into a more acceptable race. If each and every person could share just a fraction of the desire President Obama lives with, imagine what the world may be like someday? Another...
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...of. An ethical issue of human rights has to be keenly looked upon when addressing this; if one has to report such incidences yet the involved party is his or her colleague or friend. This situation could prove challenging but by adhering to and evaluating various bioethical principles in conjunction with one’s own beliefs, professionalism and the organization’s set standards, a solution to such scenarios can occur. This assay argument will base on ethical principles of primary loyalty to the patient. Often individual are identified as the source of the ethical failure. However, one the most important aspects of creating ethical behavior are the culture of environment of the organization in which individuals functions. Managerial ethics assume a position of profound consequences here in the form of organization policies and process, culture espoused vs. values, leadership behavior, rewards punishment, social networks and treatment of employees. As much as organizational policies and process and procedures dictate actions that may have ethical content. The responsibility cannot be “farmed out” to others in order to place the blame outside the organization when the failure occurs. The code of ethics incorporates standards of ethical behavior, particularly when that conduct directly relates to the role and identity of health care workers. Being a model means decisions and actions will reflect personal integrity and ethical leadership that others will seek to emulate. A typical...
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...Robotic Surgery Technology, Society, and Culture HUMN432 Introduction: Robotic Surgery Robotic surgery is the latest development that uses robots and computer aided apparatus to aid in normal surgical procedures. It is a new technology and mostly used in well-developed countries. With robotic surgery a single surgeon is able not only to perform multiple surgeries but also do his/her work from any part of the world (McConnell, Schneeberger & Michler, 2003). Robotic surgery is a type of procedure that is similar to laparoscopic surgery. It also can be performed through smaller surgical cuts than traditional open surgery. There are small precise movements that are possible with this type of surgery. It gives some advantages over standard endoscopic techniques. Sometimes robotic-assisted laparoscopy can allow a surgeon to perform a less-invasive procedure that was once only possible with more invasive open surgery. Once it is placed in the abdomen, a robotic arm is easier for the surgeon to use than the instruments in endoscopic surgery. The robot reduces the surgeon’s movements. The robot assistance reduces some of the hand tremors and movements that might otherwise make the surgery less precise. Robotic instruments can access hard-to-reach areas of your body more easily through smaller incisions compared to traditional open and laparoscopic surgery. This procedure is done under general anesthesia where you are asleep and pain free. The surgeon sits at a computer...
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...Why do people act the way they do? A simple question, but a vital one if you are interested in understanding the reasons for why a certain group of people have a particular culture – the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people. In order to have a more tangible, stronger grasp of the underlying causes that influence the actions of people, a firm grasp and study of the liberal arts of a country is extremely helpful, if not necessary. Consequently, the benefits are tremendous – not only will it help understand the actions and beliefs of a group of people that may be completely different from yours, it will also help you predict and understand what sort of behavior is accepted or shunned. Furthermore, having a firm understanding of the liberal arts of another country is extremely useful in the business setting, as businesses are naturally influenced by the culture of the people who run them. Any business person working in international settings should develop some sort of understanding of the culture of the country they are working with – it will help in...
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...The Culture Industry and The Society of the Spectacle In Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, the author discusses how culture has become commodified. In Theodor Adorno’s The Culture Industry, the author discusses how art became autonomous. In this essay, I will compare the two books and show how Debord’s theory of commodified culture and Adorno’s theory of autonomous art directly correlate with one another. The mass production of commodities destroyed quality guidelines and broke down legal and regional barriers. Debord says, “The capitalist production system has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next” (Debord, §165). One point Debord is making is that capitalism broke down spatial barriers. When objects became commoditized, human circulation – or tourism – became the by-product. Debord says, “Tourism is the chance to go and see what has been made trite.” (§168) People travel to Rome to see the Coliseum, and travel to Egypt to see the Great Pyramids. These objects, reduced from historical masterpieces to the latest thing you must see before you die, fuel travel and break down geographic barriers. The distance between New York and Rome become significantly smaller. Cars did this in the United States on a smaller scale. It was easier and faster to travel farther in a car than it had been before the car was invented, making travel more accessible, and commodities more able to be made even more trite. Another point Debord...
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...HIS-321 (Ancient World of Greece & Rome) Analysis Paper Greek Culture / Society and Homosexuality Greek Culture / Society and Homosexuality By Daniel Smithson Southern New Hampshire University HIS-321 Professor Charles Disantis Daniel Smithson HIS-321 (Ancient World of Greece & Rome) Analysis Paper Greek Culture / Society and Homosexuality Ancient Greece: The golden age of the Grecian empire said to span the years 500 to 300 BCE. This time gave breath to the great philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. This was also the time of great playwrights such as Aristophanes, Sophocles and Aeschylus. How did the Greeks maintain familial ties in a culture with more sexual freedom and seemingly non-existent sexual stigma than today? Grecian Patriarchal Society: Although the Grecian people valued family life, Greek society was stalwartly patriarchal in its social-political structure. The men of Greece coveted the aesthetic of the male form and enjoyed nude wrestling in the arena. Grecian men often shared what we today would call “Homoerotic” or “Homosexual” experiences, Indecorous witticisms illustrated in the compositions of Aristophanes and many other playwrights. Sexual fluidity among men was an intrinsic characteristic of Grecian society. In the Iliad Homer tells the story of Achilles, his...
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...Response: Culture & Society Concordia University-Portland Abstract The present paper provides a personal and well-reasoned reflection concerning the role of family, circles of trust and culture in my vocational life. It will also focus on how my ethical orientation is linked: 1) to my communal and cultural background, and, 2) how I think it is expanded by cross-cultural awareness. Societies vary in the amount they empower distinction and uniqueness versus congruity and reliance. Individualistic societies encourage confidence, choice making taking into account of individual needs, and the privilege to a private life. In collectivist societies, total dedication is relied upon in one's prompt and more distant family/tribe. The term woman's rights are regularly used to depict the prevailing social example where choice making techniques, stress the needs of the family/gather initially, and the idea of having a "private life" may not even exist. Since societies adjust and change, making suppositions about family progress is risky; families in the United States today from all societies show a mixed bag of arrangements. Apparently, there is no such thing as a "normal" family. One can nonetheless expect that families from more customary societies not acculturated in United States ways, will have a tendency to esteem, women's liberation and show family structures that are truly unique in relation to the white collar class European American family demonstrate Keywords: culture, ethics...
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...Popular Culture and its Effect on Society Chris Lupkes SOC/105 Michelle Gardner March 04, 2013 The name Theodore Geisel, though one of the most famous contemporary writers, is rarely recognized even though his work is well known throughout the world. He has won three Academy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for his work but people only recognize him by his pseudonym, Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat is a book is about a Cat that moves in on two unsuspecting Children on a rainy day. He creates a whirlwind of misbehavior that the kids are at first powerless to stop. After the cat invites his friends into the house, they trash the place and try to get the kids to join in with all the mischief. After the boy asserts himself and orders the fun-loving cat to hit the road; that is where the story ends. This book was Theodor’s third book, the first of the six that the Cat appears in. The Cat in the Hat was perhaps the defining book of his career. The book only has 236 “new-reader” words in its vocabulary. When Ted’s first wife died in 1967, he married his old friend which only influenced the production of his later books. Theodore wrote the book because he felt that there should be more entertaining and fun material...
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...Tattoo culture and influence in society Nowadays, tattoo has been regarded as a sign of fashion. “A trend that started growing in America and Europe in the early '90s, tattooing soon became so popular that 36% of Americans aged 25-29 had at least one body tattoo by 2003(Julie Genser 2007).” However, tattoo could probably bring health risks to tattoo carrier. Historically, tattoo originally is the nation’s cultural and symbolic, different tattoo pictures have own meaning and even it is a symbol of authority. This paper will argue that the ink of tattoo injecting into our skin has lead to increase health risk. And then this paper will discuss why tattoo is so popular even it is harmful people’s health. Finally, the essay will discuss tattoo is not only a historical heritage, but also stimulates the development of the economy. Early Tattoo’s culture The word tattoo comes from the Tahitian word tattau. It means "to mark" and was first mentioned in explorer James Cook’s records from his 1769 expedition to the South Pacific. Some scientists say that certain marks on the skin of the Iceman, a mummified human body starting from about 3300 B.C., are tattoos. In fact, tattoos were found on Egyptian and Nubian mummies starting from about B.C. One of the earliest tattoos was tribal tattoos. Tattoos have different meaning in different cultural tribes. For example, Polynesian people would add more and more tattoos to themselves even until their body was completely covered. They believed...
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...between the social production and capitalist appropriation. In the chapter titled Theoretical, Engels lays out the basic conflict between what we know as socialism and capitalism, doing so by first examining what he calls the “Materialist conception of history” (Engels 1939, p. 292). In his materialistic history he claims that the exchange and bartering of products, and their production is the “basis of every social order” (Engels 1939, p. 292). He states that in every society that has ever appeared in history, the distribution and production of goods and the division of society into estates and classes is “determined by what [and how it] is produced… and the exchange of [said] product.” (Engels 1939, p.292) Thus, according to Engels, the basis of our society revolves around production, and consumption, which can clearly be seen even today. Historical Materialism can then be defined as the forces of production, the exchanges of products, and the division of labor according to one’s ability to produce. However in society, often people live from the work of others often called the Bourgeoisie by Engels (p. 292), and it is because of the capitalist mode of production that such a ruling class could be created, and benefit from the work of others. It is here then that we find the fundamental contradiction in capitalism. To find this contradiction, we must look back onto a time when feudalism was the center of the economy, where small-scale production was common, and where the “instruments...
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