1. Examine the difference between material and non-material culture in your world.

Identify ten objects that are part of your regular cultural experience. For each, then
identify what aspects of non-material culture that these objects represent. What has
this experience revealed to you about your culture?

 The difference between material and non-material culture in your world

 Material culture refers to the objects or belongings of a group of people. Metro passes
and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are automobiles, stores, and the physical
structures where people worship. Material culture refers to the physical or technological
aspects of our daily lives, including food, houses, factories, and raw materials.
 Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. .
Nonmaterial culture refers to ways of using material objects, as well as to customs,
beliefs, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication.
 Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often
symbolize cultural ideas Generally, the nonmaterial culture is more resistant to
change than the material culture.

 Ten objects that are part of your regular cultural experience

1)Public transport (Bus) :
Public transport is crucial to the livability of any city. It helps reduces pollution and road
congestion-the more people who travel by bus, the fewer motorbikes on the road, requires
less land use than road infrastructure. Nowaday, bus become familiar with everybody. For
me, traveling by bus save money. If you are a student, you will only lose 100 thousand
VND once month . Or if you aren't a student , you will lose 120 thousand VND once
month . It's very economical.
2) Healthy Food
Eating healthy food everyday can improve health, boost immune system, and provide
enough energy level to study and work. It can also prevent or help you manage a wide
range of health problems, such as diabetes, depression, certain types of cancer certain
types of cancer...
3)Part time work
Working part-time can be a great way to earn some extra money, enhance your
knowledge , develop your skills and meet new people.
4) Internet
Internet has made our life become easier and more convenient. We can use internet to
communicate with people around the world, doing business by using internet, make new
friend and know different cultures, searching information, studying and etc. Interaction
through social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, …provide the vehicle for people of
all ages, races, interests and genders to quickly communicate and share their ideas.
5) Clothes
What we wear on our bodies has meaning. Our clothes indicate who we are as individuals
as well as a society. Clothes are a means of expressing our individuality (whether we are
formal or serious, cheeky ,..). The way we dress is one way we express our personality
6) Mobile phone
The mobile phone is considered the quickest means of communication in our daily life, I
can contact easily with our friends and our relative wherever by calling or sending
messages. I also can use mobile phone to access to the internet find out many source of
reference on internet which is useful for studying, update information wherever we are.
7) Books
I start and end every day by reading some chapters of book. Daily reading brought a lot
of benefits to me. Reading exposes me to new ideas, information and ways of thinking.
This helps spur creativity and develop my creative thinking. In addition, reading is a form
of entertainment, helping me forget the daily hassles of life and enjoy the world outside
of my own
8) Teacup
When I make a cup of tea and hand it to family members every morning, the teacup helps
mediate a gesture of care and affection
9)Pets
I have a dog; we treat him as a part of the family. He enriches our lives, making us
happier, helping us relieve stress and healthier overall.
10) Sports
Participation in sports is a good habit. The main benefits of sport are improved health and
fitness, and the development of social and communication skills.

2. How do culture and social communities shape communication?

Communication is closely linked to culture because communication expresses, sustains,

and alters culture. Your culture directly shapes how you communicate, teaching you
whether and when interrupting is appropriate, how much eye contact is polite, and how
much distance should be kept between people.
Five central relationships between culture and communication:
 We Learn Culture in the Process of Communicating
We don’t study our native culture to learn how to behave appropriately. Instead, we learn
a culture’s perspectives and rules during the process of communicating. By observing and
interacting with others and being exposed to mass communication, we learn language
(the word dog) and what it means (a pet to love, a working animal, or food to eat). In
other words, in learning language we learn the values of our culture. We learn cultural
values and norms in the process of communicating with others.
From the moment of birth, we begin to learn the beliefs, values, and norms of our society.
cal proportions. We also learn nonverbal communication from the culture into which we
are socialized.
Both conscious and unconscious learning are continuous processes through which we
learn language and internalize culture so that it is seamlessly part of who we are and how
we see the world. As we learn language, we learn cultural values that are encoded in
language.
 Communication Is a Primary Indicator of Culture
One of the best indicators that a culture or social community exists is communication.
Because we learn to communicate in the process of interacting with others, people from
different cultures use communication in different ways and attach different meanings to
communicative acts.
Individualistic cultures regard each person as distinct from other people, groups, and
organizations. Individualistic cultures value personal freedom, individual rights, and
independence. Communication in individualistic cultures tends to be assertive and often
competitive.
Collectivist cultures regard people as deeply connected to one another and to their
families, groups, and communities. Collectivist cultures value intergroup order and
harmony, group welfare, and interdependence. Within collectivist cultures,
communication tends to be other-oriented and cooperative, and collective
accomplishments are more valued than personal ones. Cultural rituals and roles tend to
celebrate communal achievements more than individual ones.
Individualistic and collectivist cultures tend to cultivate distinct communication styles.
Individualistic cultures generally rely on a low-context communication style, which is
very direct, explicit, and detailed. Because people are regarded as distinct individuals,
communicators do not assume that others will share their meanings or values. Instead,
everything must be spelled out carefully and clearly. Because self-expression and
personal initiative are valued in individualistic cultures, argument and persuasion are
perceived as appropriate.
Collectivist cultures typically rely on a high-context communication style, which is
indirect and un-detailed and which conveys meanings more implicitly than explicitly.
Because people are regarded as interconnected, it is assumed they are alike in terms of
their values and understandings. Thus, there is no need to spell everything out. Instead,
communicators assume that others will understand what isn’t stated and will be able to
use shared knowledge of situations and relationships to interpret vague statements.
 Multiple Social Communities May Coexist in a Single Culture
In fact, each of us belongs to multiple social groups as well as at least one culture. Most
societies have a dominant, or mainstream, way of life. Although many groups may exist
within a single society, not all identify equally with the dominant culture.
Different racial and ethnic groups also teach their members distinctive ways of
interacting. As social communities, African Americans and Hispanics have stronger
commitments to collective interests such as family or race, whereas European Americans
tend to be more individualistic .
Every culture has proverbs that express its values and pass them from one generation to
the next. Following are some proverbs that reflect in particular cultures “A zebra does not
despise its stripes.”
 “A zebra does not despise its stripes.” Among the Masai of Africa, this saying encourages
acceptance of things and oneself as they are.
 “Know the family and you will know the child.” This Chinese proverb reflects the belief
that individuals are less important than families.
 “The child has no owner.” “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” These African
adages express the idea that children belong to whole communities, not just to biological
parents.
 “Better to be a fool with the crowd than wise by oneself.” “A solitary soul neither sings
nor cries.” These Mexican proverbs reflect a strong commitment to collectivism.
 Communication Expresses and Sustains Cultures
Communication simultaneously reflects and sustains cultural values. When some
Westerners argue, speak up for their ideas, and compete in conversations, they uphold the
values of individuality and assertiveness. Communication, then, is a mirror of a culture’s
values and a primary means of keeping them woven into the fabric of everyday life.
 Communication Is a Source of Cultural Change
In addition to reflecting culture, communication is a source of cultural change. Social
communities in the United States have used communication to resist the mainstream’s
efforts to define their identity. Whenever a group says, “No, the way you describe
Americans doesn’t fit me,” that group initiates change in the cultural understandings.
Communication helps propel change by naming things in ways that shape how we
understand them. For instance, the term sexual harassment names a practice that certainly
is not new, but for many years it was not labeled and not given social reality. Mary’s
commentary explains how important the label is.
 Both an overall culture and particular social communities shape our perceptions and
ways of communicating. Yet we can learn to appreciate different cultural systems and
the diverse forms of communication they foster, as well as the ways in which multiple
social identities shape our communication. Doing so enables us to adapt our
communication effectively in response to the diverse people with whom we interact.

3. What are the characteristics of a bureaucracy?

A bureaucracy is a component of formal organization that uses rules and hierarchical

ranking to achieve efficiency. Few people want to identify their occupation as
“bureaucrat,” despite the fact that all of us perform various bureaucratic tasks. In an
industrial society, elements of bureaucracy enter into almost every occupation.
Weber proposed that whether the purpose is to run a church, a corporation, or an army,
the ideal bureaucracy displays five basic characteristics.

1.Division of labor.
Specialized experts perform specific tasks. In your college bureaucracy, the admissions
officer does not do the job of registrar; the guidance counselor does not see to the
maintenance of buildings. By working at a specific task, people are more likely to
become highly skilled and carry out a job with maximum efficiency.
The downside of division of labor is that the fragmentation of work into smaller and
smaller tasks can divide workers and remove any connection they might feel to the
overall objective of the bureaucracy.

2. Hierarchy of authority.
Bureaucracies follow the principle of hierarchy; that is, each position is under the
supervision of a higher authority. A president heads a college bureaucracy; he or she
selects members of the administration, who in turn hire their own staff.

3 .Written rules and regulations.

What if your sociology professor gave your classmate an A for having such a friendly
smile? You might think that wasn’t fair, that it was against the rules. Through written
rules and regulations, bureaucracies generally offer employees clear standards for an
adequate (or exceptional) performance.
In addition, procedures provide a valuable sense of continuity in a bureaucracy.
Individual workers will come and go, but the structure and past records of the
organization give it a life of its own that outlives the services of any one bureaucrat. Of
course, rules and regulations can overshadow the larger goals of an organization to the
point that they become dysfunctional.

4. Impersonality.
Max Weber wrote that in a bureaucracy, work is carried out sine ira et studio, “without
hatred or passion.”
Bureaucratic norms dictate that officials perform their duties without giving personal
consideration to people as individuals. Although this norm is intended to guarantee equal
treatment for each person, it also contributes to the often cold and uncaring feeling
associated with modern organizations. More frequently, bureaucratic impersonality
produces frustration and disaffection.

5. Employment based on technical qualifications.

Within the ideal bureaucracy, hiring is based on technical qualifications rather than on
favoritism, and performance is measured against specific standards. Written personnel
policies dictate who gets promoted, and people often have a right to appeal if they believe
that particular rules have been violated. Such procedures protect bureaucrats against
arbitrary dismissal, provide a measure of security, and encourage loyalty to the
organization.
Although ideally, any bureaucracy will value technical and professional competence,
personnel decisions do not always follow that ideal pattern. Dysfunctions within
bureaucracy have become well publicized. According to the Peter principle, every
employee within a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence (Peter and
Hull 1969). This hypothesis, which has not been directly or systematically tested, reflects
a possible dysfunctional outcome of advancement on the basis of merit. Talented people
receive promotion after promotion, until sadly, some of them finally achieve positions
that they cannot handle with their usual competence.

4. Describe the development of human societies according to the sociocultural

evolution approach.
Sociologist Gerhard Lenski takes a very different view of society and social structure.
Rather than distinguishing between two opposite types of society, Lenski sees human
societies as undergoing a process of change characterized by a dominant pattern known
as sociocultural evolution. This term refers to long-term social trends resulting from the
interplay of continuity, innovation, and selection (Nolan and Lenski 2009:361).

In Lenski’s view, a society’s level of technology is critical to the way it is organized.

Lenski defines technology as “cultural information about the ways in which the material
resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires”. As
technology advances, Lenski writes, a community evolves from a preindustrial to an
industrial and finally a postindustrial society.

 Preindustrial Societies

How does a preindustrial society organize its economy? If we know that, we can
categorize the society. The first type of preindustrial society to emerge in human history
was the hunting-and-gathering society, in which people simply rely on whatever foods
and fibers are readily available. Technology in such societies is minimal. Organized into
groups, people move constantly in search of food. There is little division of labor into
specialized tasks.

Hunting-and-gathering societies are composed of small, widely dispersed groups. Each

group consists almost entirely of people who are related to one another. As a result,
kinship ties are the source of authority and influence, and the social institution of the
family takes on a particularly important role.

 Horticultural societies

Horticultural societies , in which people plant seeds and crops rather than merely subsist
on available foods, emerged about 12,000 years ago. Members of horticultural societies
are much less nomadic than hunters and gatherers. They place greater emphasis on the
production of tools and household objects. Yet technology remains rather limited in these
societies, whose members cultivate crops with the aid of digging sticks or hoes (Wilford
1997).

 Agrarian societies

The last stage of preindustrial development is the agrarian society, which emerged about
5,000 years ago. As in horticultural societies, members of agrarian societies engage
primarily in the production of food. However, technological innovations such as the plow
allow farmers to dramatically increase their crop yields. They can cultivate the same
fields over generations, allowing the emergence of larger settlements.

The agrarian society continues to rely on the physical power of humans and animals (as
opposed to mechanical power). Nevertheless, its social structure has more carefully
defined roles than that of horticultural societies. Individuals focus on specialized tasks,
such as the repair of fishing nets or blacksmithing. As human settlements become more
established and stable, social institutions become more elaborate and property rights more
important. The comparative permanence and greater surpluses of an agrarian society
allow members to create artifacts such as statues, public monuments, and art objects and
to pass them on from one generation to the next.

 Industrial Societies

Although the Industrial Revolution did not topple monarchs, it produced changes every
bit as significant as those resulting from political revolutions. The Industrial Revolution,
which took place largely in England during the period 1760 to 1830, was a scientific
revolution focused on the application of non animal (mechanical) sources of power to
labor tasks. An industrial society is a society that depends on mechanization to produce
its goods and services. Industrial societies rely on new inventions that facilitate
agricultural and industrial production, and on new sources of energy, such as steam.

As the Industrial Revolution proceeded, a new form of social structure emerged. Many
societies underwent an irrevocable shift from an agrarian-oriented economy to an
industrial base. No longer did an individual or a family typically make an entire product.
Instead, specialization of tasks and manufacturing of goods became increasingly
common. Workers, generally men but also women and even children, left their family
homesteads to work in central locations such as factories.

 Postindustrial and Postmodern Societies

In the 1970s, sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about the technologically advanced
postindustrial society, whose economic system is engaged primarily in the processing
and control of information. The main output of a postindustrial society is services rather
than manufactured goods. Large numbers of people become involved in occupations
devoted to the teaching, generation, or dissemination of ideas. Jobs in fields such as
advertising, public relations, human resources, and computer information systems would
be typical of a postindustrial society(D. Bell [1973] 1999).

Sociologists have gone beyond discussion of the postindustrial society to the ideal of the
postmodern society. A postmodern society is a technologically sophisticated society that
is preoccupied with consumer goods and media images (Brannigan 1992). Such societies
consume goods and information on a mass scale. Postmodern theorists take a global
perspective, noting the ways that culture crosses national boundaries.

The emphasis of postmodern theorists is on observing and describing newly emerging

cultural forms and patterns of social interaction. Within sociology, the postmodern view
offers support for integrating the insights of various theoretical perspectives—
functionalism, conflict theory, feminist theory, and interactionism while incorporating
other contemporary approaches.

A major focus of sociology has been to identify changes in social structure and the
consequences for human behavior. At the macro level, we see society shifting to more
advanced forms of technology. The social structure becomes increasingly complex, and
new social institutions emerge to assume some functions that once were performed by the
family. On the micro level, these changes affect the nature of social interactions. Each
individual takes on multiple social roles, and people come to rely more on social
networks and less on kinship ties. As the social structure becomes more complex,
people’s relationships become more impersonal, transient, and fragmented.

5. What are the potential strengths of group discussion ?

The primary potential strengths of groups in comparison to individuals are greater

resources, more thorough thought, heightened creativity, and enhanced commitment to
decisions. A group obviously exceeds any individual in the ideas, perspectives,
experiences, and expertise it can bring to bear on solving a problem.

Groups also tend to be more thorough than individuals. Aspects of an issue that one
member doesn’t understand, another person can explain; the details of a plan that bore
one person interest another; the holes in a proposal that some members overlook are
caught by others. Greater thoroughness by groups isn’t simply the result of more people.
It reflects interaction among members. When conformity pressures are controlled,
discussion can promote critical and careful analysis because members propel each other’s
thinking. Synergy is a special kind of collaborative vitality that enhances the efforts,
talents, and strengths of individual members .

A third value of groups is that they are generally more creative than individuals. Again,
the reason seems to lie in the synergy of groups. Any individual eventually runs out of
new ideas, but groups seem to have almost infinite generative ability. As members talk,
they build on each other’s ideas, refine proposals, and see new possibilities in each
other’s comments.

Finally, an important strength of groups is their ability to generate commitment to

outcomes. The greater commitment fostered by group discussion arises from two sources:

 First, participation enhances commitment to decisions. Groups in which all members

participate tend to generate greater commitment among members, which is especially
important if members will be involved in implementing the decision.

 Second, because groups have greater resources than individual decision makers, their
decisions are more likely to take into account the points of view of the various people
needed to make a decision work.

 Greater resources, thoroughness, creativity, and commitment to group goals are

powerful values of group process. To incorporate these values, members must be
willing to invest the time that discussion takes and must resist pressures to conform or
to induce others to conform.

6. What are the potential limitations of group discussion?

The two most significant disadvantages of group discussion are the time needed for the
group process and the potential of conformity pressures to interfere with high quality
decision making. Operating solo, an individual can think through ideas efficiently. In
group discussion, however, all members have an opportunity to voice ideas and respond
to the ideas others put forward. It takes substantial time for each person to express
thoughts, clarify misunderstandings, and respond to questions or criticisms.
In addition, groups take time to deliberate about alternative courses of action. Therefore,
group discussion generally isn’t a wise choice for routine policy making and emergency
tasks. When creativity and thoroughness are important, however, the value of groups may
be more important than the time they take.
Groups also have the potential to suppress individuals and encourage conformity. This
can happen in two ways.
 First, conformity pressures may exist when a majority has an opinion different from that
of a minority or a single member. Holding out for your point of view is difficult when
most or all of your peers have a different one. In effective groups, however, all members
understand and resist conformity pressures. They realize that the majority is sometimes
wrong and the minority, even just one person, is sometimes right. Members have an
ethical responsibility to encourage expression of diverse ideas and open debate about
different views.
 Conformity pressures may also arise when one member is extremely charismatic or has
more power or prestige than other members. Even if that person is all alone in a point of
view, other members may conform to it. Sometimes a high-status member doesn’t intend
to influence others and may not overtly exert pressure. However, the other members still
perceive the status, and it may affect their judgments.