Social Practices

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 574.

Norms

Values

Cultures differ not only in their beliefs but also in what they value. Values involve what a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, dean or dirty, valuable or worthless, appropriate or inappropriate, and kind or cruel [Milton Rokeach, The Nature of Human values]. Because values are the desired characteristics or goals of a culture, a culture's values do not necessarily describe its actual behaviors and characteristics. However, values are often offered as the explanation for the way in which people communicate. Thus, as Shalom Schwartz suggests, values serve as guiding principles in people's lives [Shalom H. Schwartz, "Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries].

From culture to culture, values differ in their valence and intensity. Valence refers to whether the value is seen as positive or negative. Intensity indicates the strength or importance of the value, or the degree to which the culture identifies the value as significant.

For example, in some U.S. American cultures, the value of respect for elders is negatively valenced and held with a modest degree of intensity. Many U.S. Americans value youth rather than old age. In Korea, Japan, and Mexico, however, respect for elders is a positively valenced value, and it is very intensely held.

It would be possible after studying any particular culture to determine its most important values and each value's valence and intensity.

Norms are the socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviors.When a person's behaviors violate the culture's norms, social sanctions are usually imposed. Like values, norms can vary within a culture in terms of their importance and intensity. Unlike values, however, norms may change over a period of time, whereas beliefs and values tend to be much more enduring.

Norms exist for a wide variety of behaviors. For example, the greeting behaviors of people within a culture are governed by norms. Similarly, good manners in a variety of situations are based on norms. Norms also exist to guide people's interactions and to indicate how to engage in conversation, what to talk about, and how to disengage from conversations. Because people are expected to behave according to their culture's norms, they therefore come to see their own norms as constituting the "right" way of communicating. Norms, then, are linked to the beliefs and values of a culture. Because they are evident through behaviors, norms can be readily inferred.

Social practices are the predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow. Thus, social practices are the outward manifestations of beliefs, values, and norms.

In the United States, lunch is usually over by 1:30 p.m., gifts brought by dinner guests are usually opened in the presence of the guests, television watching dramatically increases during the annual Super Bowl, and children sleep alone or with other children.

In Italy, lunch hasn't even begun by 1:30 p.m., and soccer is more popular than American football.

In Malaysia, gifts are never opened in front of the giver; doing so is considered had manners.

In many Middle Eastern, Latin American, and Asian families, children routinely share beds with adult relatives.

One type of social practice is informal and includes everyday tasks such as eating, sleeping, dressing, working, playing, and talking to others. Such behaviors are so predictable and commonplace within a culture that the subtle details about how they are accomplished may pass nearly unnoticed. For instance, cultures have social practices about eating with "good manners." Slurping one's food in Saudi Arabia and in many Asian cultures is the usual practice, and it is regarded favorably as an expression of satisfaction and appreciation for the quality of the cooking. But good manners in one culture may be bad manners in another; European Americans typically consider such sounds to be inappropriate.

Another type of social practice is more formal and prescriptive. These include the rituals, ceremonies, and structured routines that are typically performed publicly and collectively: saluting the flag, praying in church, honoring the dead at funerals, getting married, and many other social practices. Of course, all members of a culture do not necessarily follow that culture's "typical" social practices; each person differs, in unique and significant ways, from the general cultural tendency to think and behave in particular ways. As William B. Gudykunst and Carmin M. Lee suggest, "Individuals in a culture generally are socialized in ways consistent with the cultural-level tendencies, but some individuals in every culture learn different tendencies”.

What are the components of cultural patterns? Define each component and illustrate by some examples.