Culture is something that varies from different society. Culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behaviors, artifacts and institution that are created, learnt and shared by a group of people. It also talks about norms, values, symbol, and the mental maps of reality, structure of power etc.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s culture is better than any other culture.
Culture Relativism: this is what an anthropologist uses for cross cultural research. This is used to look at two or more cultures, it is used to counter or combat ethnocentrism idea or used to compare two or more cultures. It is the suspension of your judgement to understand people’s belief from their cultural context.
Culture is a major discussion in anthropology. This is seen from the definition of scholars like Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), he defined culture or civilization in its ethnographic sense. He defined culture of civilization in his work called Primitive Culture, published in 1871. He defined culture as a complex goal which include belief, knowledge, acts, law, custom and any other capabilities or habit acquired by man as a member of the society. Edward is a British anthropologist.
Culture is seen as a set of ideas while power is the ability to bring about a change through action, threat or force. Simple influential act is in every social relationship, there must be a power relationship. Power and culture influences satisfaction.
How does Power and Culture Interact in the Society
Culture is learnt irrespective of our background. Behavior is our attitudes.
Human beings are born with the ability to learn culture, to master beliefs. What you regard as norm is not applicable to all other cultures.
Max Webber, as capitalism grows, same as how cultures grow and change over time.
Globalization is the flow of ideas through migration, trade, invasion etc. people through this global cooperation produced global culture. Globalization tend to make everyone look the same, migration and the two ways transference of culture. It increases cross politicization like Lagos. No culture is embraced above the other.
Effects of globalization on local culture homogenization: when there is no change at all
Race is a social construct even though it has its own biological aspect. However, as a social science construct, it refers to the category of people who have been single out as inferior or superior often on the basis of physical characteristics such as skin, color, hair texture, eye shapes etc. Early scholars categorized or classified race into the following:
This is according to Samuel Morton’s (1839): This classification was based on physical appearance, level of aggression, intelligence response to pain.
Race theories were used to justify slavery, Imperialism, Fascism, Nazism, the Holocaust
The real, probably or in some cases mythical, common origins of people who have a shared identity which maybe manifested in terms of marriage, language, religion, work, family, patterns etc. peculiar to them.
An ethnic group therefore is the collection of people with shared cultural traits and interacting with one another and regards themselves as one cultural unit.
Note: The self-identification of group members is important.
Hirshon 1996 identified 6 characteristics of Ethnic Groups.
This is the assumption that one’s ethnic group or way of life is better and superior to another.
Dominant Group or Majority group is one that is advantaged or has superior resources and right in the society.
A minority group is also known as subordinate group. This group is one whose members because of physical and cultural characteristics are disadvantaged or subject to unequal treatment by the dominant group.
They are category of people who have been single out by others or by themselves as inferior or superior on the basis of subjectively selected physical traits.
