Organizational culture is the “set(s) of artifacts, values, and assumptions that emerge from the interactions of organizational members” (Keyton 2005, 1). These interactions create a social order or a communication construction of the organization. Thus, symbols, messages, and meaning create a continuous communication performance at work. This is why it is frequently stated that an
The name Tlingit means in the people. These Native Americans continue to inhabit many of their aboriginal village sites along the southeastern coast of Alaska. Foraging people, they were well adapted to hunting and gathering in rugged temperate rain forest and at sea. Tlingit came to depend on income from fur trapping and an active
The Oldowan is the earliest of the Lower Paleolithic or Early Stone Age typological “cultures.” At present, the earliest Oldowan sites date from about 2.6 my and come from Gona, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The Oldowan industry terminates at about 1.6 my, which coincides with the beginning of the Acheulean. The Developed Oldowan
Culture is defined as the beliefs and values that shape the customs, norms, and practices of groups of people that help them solve the problems of everyday living. Thus, culture influences the Culture and careers refers to the way that culture influences the way people work, the way they make decisions about work, and how
Nazca culture, also known as Nasca, flourished in southern Peru during the period around A.D. 1 to A.D. 700. The Nazca culture emerged in distinct stages: Early, Middle, and Late, with a Classic period between A.D. 250 and A.D. 750, the time during which the Nazca lines were constructed. From studies of ceramic designs in
Since Dorothy A. E. Garrod’s 1928 excavations at a cave in Wadi en-Natuf (located about 10 miles northwest of Jerusalem), archaeologists have continued to define and explain the distinctive cultural phase that is called “Natufian.” As the type-site for this cultural subdivision of the late Epipalaeolithic period, Shuqba Cave’s Layer B yielded a configuration of
Llano culture refers to late Pleistocene North American people on the Llano Estacado, or Southern High Plains, who used distinctive stone projectile points, known as Clovis points, to hunt mammoths. Formal description of the Llano culture during the 1950s established it as the oldest known prehistoric archaeological culture in North America and reinforced the notion
Attempts by linguists and anthropologists to understand humankind have always focused on two areas: culture and society and language and communication. It is somewhat unnatural, however, to separate the study of language from the study of culture, as doing so can limit attempts to characterize the development of peoples and how they create communities and
It is widely recognized that cultural norms, values, beliefs, and practices vary among population sub-groups, and influence how members of a group seek, understand, process, communicate, and act upon information about health. Ignoring these cultural differences during health and medical system interactions can have serious consequences that lead to or exacerbate disparities in health status
Visual culture is an area of study focused on practices of looking and the role of visual representations in the arts, popular and alternative media cultures, institutional and professional contexts, and everyday life. Art history, film and media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology are some of the fields in which visual culture study is
To fully understand the concept of folk culture, we must first separate the two words and define them individually, then rejoin them to completely comprehend the term’s overall concept. Folk, or folkways, are routine conventions of everyday life. They are the customary ways that people act: eating, personal hygiene, dressing, and so on. Folkways are
The discovery in 1927 near Folsom, New Mexico, of distinctive stone projectile points in unambiguous association with bones of extinct Late Pleistocene bison provided the first widely accepted evidence for a human presence in North America greater than a few thousand years and initiated the field of Paleo-Indian studies in American archaeology. The discovery also
The idea that popular culture consists of distinct “taste cultures” was developed by Herbert Gans (1974) as an alternative to the then dominant theory of mass culture. Mass culture theorists (Horkheimer & Adorno 2001) viewed popular culture as a commercial enterprise that represented a debased form of high culture. They claimed that mass culture targeted
The Fayoum is a region located 60 km southwest of Cairo and contains archaeological remains from the past 12,000 years. Its most prominent feature is the Birket el-Qarun (Lake Moeris), the only freshwater lake in Egypt, covering an area of 215 km, whose numerous crocodiles during Pharaonic times gave rise to the local crocodile cults
Human beings are the bearers of culture; therefore, it is important to study how humankind has evolved over time as a basis to understand culture change. Periods of culture change indicate the direction in which the strengths and values of said cultures survive and maintain their existence. How to study culture change may be difficult
Social scientists credit Oscar Lewis (1914-1970), an American anthropologist, with introducing the concept of a culture of poverty. He first suggested it in 1959, in his book, Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. The concept refers to the ideas and behavior developed by poor people in some capitalist societies as they
Culture shock refers to feelings of uncertainty and discomfort experienced by an ethnographer during fieldwork in a different culture. Confronted by a new environment, strangers, and many new behaviors and ideas, almost all ethnographers react emotionally, some with unusual anxiety, anger, sadness, fear, or disorientation. Culture shock tends to resolve over time but may be
The first complete definition of culture in anthropology was provided by Edward Tylor, who defined the concept as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” This definition is taken from Primitive Culture, Tylor’s 1871 cultural evolutionary account
Postmodern culture is a far reaching term describing a range of activities, events, and perspectives relating to art, architecture, the humanities, and the social sciences beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. In contrast to modern culture, with its emphasis on social progress, coherence, and universality, postmodern culture represents instances of dramatic historical
The production of culture perspective focuses on the ways in which the content of symbolic elements of culture are significantly shaped by the systems within which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught, and preserved. The initial focus was on the production of expressive symbols such as art works, scientific research reports, popular culture, religious practices
What is culture in sociology? To produce a definition of culture, one can examine the concept in the abstract, that is, explore the concept theoretically from a variety of standpoints and then justify the definition that emerges through deductive logic. Or one can explore how the concept is used in practice, that is, describe how
Culture is a system created by human activity comprising spiritual, organizational, and material items and expanding within the Earth’s nature at the expense of this very nature. People mostly understand human culture in several ways: (1) as an acquired characteristic of human behavior, (2) as a spiritual culture, (3) as a better view of civilization
“Culture and personality” has been perhaps the most mythologized and misunderstood of American anthropology’s interdisciplinary endeavors. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, the two anthropologists most closely associated with “cultural and personality,” have often been understood to equate culture with personality. While views of this sort are common, there is little, if any, evidence in Mead’s
The culture area concept was developed in the early 1900s, at a time when American anthropology was in its infancy. Franz Boas and his students were collecting enormous amounts of data about the “disappearing” native cultures of North America. There was no framework for organizing this data, however. The concept of the culture area was
Elite culture can be defined as those ‘‘high’’ cultural forms and institutions that were exclusive to, and a distinguishing characteristic of, modern social elites. It is a term that particularly references the cultural tastes of the established aristocracy, the commercial bourgeoisie, educated bureaucrats and political power brokers, and the professions in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
Fans have become important to work in media sociology and cultural studies for a variety of reasons: they can be taken to represent a dedicated, active audience; they are consumers who are often also (unofficial, but sometimes official) media producers (Jenkins 1992; McKee 2002); and they can be analyzed as a significant part of contemporary
The reproduction of our society’s sex gender system has been a continuing puzzle for sociologists of gender. The history of western writings on gender has long included ruminations on the role of culture in constituting gender difference and privilege (Wollstonecraft 1978; Mill 2003; and especially de Beauvoir 1993). Yet during the last 40 years of
Mass culture typically refers to that culture which emerges from the centralized production processes of the mass media. It should be noted, however, that the status of the term is the subject of ongoing challenges – as in Swingewood’s (1977) identification of it as a myth. When it is linked to the notion of mass
Material culture refers to the physical stuff that human beings surround themselves with and which has meaning for the members of a cultural group. Mostly this ‘‘stuff’’ is things that are made within a society, but sometimes it is gathered directly from the natural world or recovered from past or distant cultures. It can be
There is a movement among sociologists and social critics to include the built environment and physical bodies in social analysis, and to think seriously about the ways that locations and creatures (including people) matter to group life. Part of this comes from anthropological leanings in sociology, and the tradition of thick description that includes discussions
The word ‘‘popular’’ denotes ‘‘of the people,’’ ‘‘by the people,’’ and ‘‘for the people.’’ In other words, it is made up of them as subjects, whom it textualizes via drama, sport, and information; workers, who undertake that textualization through performances and recording; and audiences, who receive the ensuing texts. Three discourses determine the direction sociologists
In traditional academic discourse, culture and economy have long been regarded as separate analytical spheres: on the one hand, the realm of shared cognitions, norms, and symbols, studied by anthropologists; on the other hand, the realm of self interest, where economists reign supreme. Though the two disciplines overlap occasionally (in economic anthropology mainly), radical differences
Culture in organizations refers to the values, norms, and patterns of action that characterize the social relationships within formal organizations. Jaques (1951) first described the changing culture of a factory, defining it as the customary or traditional ways of doing things, which are shared to a greater or lesser extent by all members of the
Studies of culture and the state focus on a range of relationships between modern political regimes and patterns of symbolic and material life. They reveal the diverse ways that power works through culture, and provide means for a better understanding of how power is accumulated, organized, and deployed in or around state systems. Much work
Culture industry is a term which performs both a descriptive and conceptual function. It also has a history. Since the term was coined by Horkheimer and Adorno in their 1947 essay ‘‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,’’ both what the term designates and its theoretical implications have undergone a number of shifts. In its
Culture jamming refers to an organized, social activist effort that aims to counter the bombardment of consumption oriented messages in the mass media. For Habermas (1985), an ideal speech situation is one in which all participants within a public space are empowered to reach consensus on issues of mutual importance through engagement in symmetrical discourse.
The sociology of culture and, the related, cultural sociology concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a members of a society, as it is manifested in the society. Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, the ways of acting
Celebrity culture is characterized by a pervasive preoccupation with famous persons and an extravagant value attached to the lives of public figures whose actual accomplishments may be limited, but whose visibility is extensive. It became a feature of social life, especially in the developed world, during the late 1980s/ early 1990s and extended into the
Research and theoretical approaches to sport culture and subcultures in the sociology of sport fall into three overlapping periods: (1) early interest in sport subcultures from an interactionist perspective; (2) a transition period during which more critical theoretical approaches to culture and subcultures and more rigorous methodological approaches emerged; and (3) a wholehearted embrace of
The antiquity of humans in the New World had been a controversy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Insight into just how long ago the incursion of people into the Americas occurred came in 1927, when lanceolate projectile points were found with the remains of extinct bison near Folsom, New Mexico. Then, in 1932
For sociologists subscribing to a hierarchical model of culture, sports may be regarded as its antithesis: a bodily practice, of little cultural consequence, gazed on by passive spectators for the enrichment of the leisure and media industries. The neglect of sports as a sociological subject until relatively recently may be attributed to a common resistance
Since at least the nineteenth century, culture has been one of the most difficult, richly connotative concepts to define. While it is widely accepted that its roots are to be found in the Latin verb colere, among whose associated meanings is “to cultivate,” this has been all but forgotten in ordinary language. Being a web
The Aurignacian is an early Upper Paleolithic, or Late Stone Age, culture dating to between 34,000 and 27,000 years before the present (BP). Aurignacian artifacts have long been considered representative of the culture of the first anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) to migrate into continental Europe. This is currently an issue of intense debate
As the social historian Philippe Aries reminds us (1962), “childhood” and “youth” are socially constructed conceptions of age and not biological givens. Indeed, the idea that a transitional period of youth occurs between childhood and adulthood is a relatively recent invention, beginning with Rousseau’s Emile in mid-eighteenth-century Europe, which celebrated childhood and delineated stages of
Philosophers of the European Enlightenment defined science in opposition to culture or humanistic knowledge. Science was truth based on verifiable observation and certain logical procedures, and thus stood opposed to all traditional beliefs. Francis Bacon, who initiated the philosophical tradition of elaborating ”demarcation principles” to distinguish science from non science, differentiated science from all knowledge
“Culture” is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” according to Williams (1976, 87). Originally used to describe the process of tending, culture evolved as metaphor, as noun, and as a reference to a physical object. Today, culture is regarded as a unifying system, a worldview, a civilization, and
While there may be some debate over whether Russia’s or Canada’s version of “Naked News” came first, for many social observers the beginning of serious news delivered by naked women or women in the act of stripping indicates a crisis in the practice of journalism. To say that the boundary between journalism and entertainment has
Consumer culture, the creation and cultivation of self-and social meaning from the marketing, purchase, and display of commodified goods, is a central characteristic of modern and postmodern society. Although related to other forms of culture, such as commercial culture, material culture, and popular culture, it is a theoretically distinct realm that includes the symbolic qualities
The study of the culture industries has become increasingly more complex in the field of communications in light of the ways in which expanding research into their organization, activities, and logics connects with questions and arguments concerning culture, commercialism, and social control. Largely originating in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
Within the discipline of communication there has been a long history of studying the relationship between girls, media, and other cultural artifacts. Until recently, however, the focus of such studies has been almost solely on girls as consumers of media and other products and/or as passive victims of mediated portrayals of femininity. For example, the
Perhaps the most rapidly expanding facet of today’s media landscape is celebrity culture; entertainers’ work in the film, television, music, and fashion industries accompanies gossip about their personal lives in magazines and newspapers, on television, and online. The major players in celebrity culture are known worldwide – today, there are few who do not know
Human development takes place in the interaction of a child and the culture in which he or she matures. Culture can be conceived of as knowledge, skills, practices, and values that are created and shared by groups of people. Processes of development and processes of culture are inextricably intertwined. An important aspect of psychological development
The study of culture and mental health is concerned with understanding the relationships of cultural factors to the etiology, assessment, diagnosis, classification, and treatment of psychopathology. Interest in the study of cultural variables is relatively new although the importance of examining and comparing psychopathology across cultures was first acknowledged in 1904 by the father of
Culture of Honor Definition A culture of honor is a culture in which a person (usually a man) feels obliged to protect his or her reputation by answering insults, affronts, and threats, oftentimes through the use of violence. Cultures of honor have been independently invented many times across the world. Three well-known examples of cultures
Some of the earliest records of human culture describe people traveling to foreign lands for trade or conquest. Today people travel in order to find work, to study or teach. They make brief trips (e.g., for vacations) or settle permanently in a country other than their own. Such travel inevitably involves personal contact between culturally
This article delves into the intricate relationship between culture and illness cognition within the realm of health psychology. Recognizing the pivotal role of culture in shaping individuals’ perceptions of illness, the introduction outlines the significance of this interplay and articulates the article’s primary focus. The first section explores cultural factors influencing the perception of illness
Second culture acquisition, an integral aspect of the acculturation process, is the adjustment of the immigrant to the dominant culture. In the new culture, immigrants must navigate through situations in which they have no experience, often without a grasp of the language. Immigrants must deal with changes such as alterations in diet, climate change, different
Culture consists of implicit and explicit patterns of behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols and their embodiments in artifacts. The essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and their attached values. Culture systems may be considered as products of action and conditioning elements of further action. A. L. Kroeber
Culture Definition Culture can be generally defined as an interrelated set of values, tools, and practices that is shared among a group of people who possess a common social identity. More simply, culture is the sum total of our worldviews or of our ways of living. Cultural world-views affect a range of psychological processes, including
Culture shock is a complex set of symptoms associated with the experience of migration to or contact with a new environment and the process of adjusting to this new environment. Historically, culture shock was conceptualized as a consequence of stress caused by contact with a new culture, resulting in feelings of anxiety, sadness, and confusion
Although there is no universally accepted definition of organizational culture, researchers generally agree that organizational culture refers to the shared meaning, interpretations, and understanding of various organizational events among organizational members. Organizational culture serves as a guide to members to behave in ways shown to be effective over time; adds a sense of predictability and