The Elements of Culture
1. Symbols: Anything that carries particular meaning recognized by people who share the same culture.
2. Language: A system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.
3. Values: Culturally defined standards of desirability, goodness, beauty and many other things that serves as broad guidelines for social living.
4. Beliefs: Specific statements that people hold to be true.
5. Norms: Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members. The two types of norms are mores and folkways. Mores are norms that are widely observed and have a great moral significance. Folkways are norms for routine, casual interaction.
Read more about this topic: Sociology Of Culture
Famous quotes containing the words the elements, elements and/or culture:
“No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)