Henslin's Ideal Culture

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Culture is the shared products of a human group and the product a society creates. Culture is a system of meaning that help to establish set standards to show how one should behave. Henslin discusses culture is defined as, "The language, beliefs, values, norms and behaviors, and even material objects that characterize a group and are passed from one generation to the next." (Henslin, 2014, p. 36). Culture sets core values to a society because real culture is people’s actual behavior, which often falls short of their cultural ideals, ideal culture is a group’s ideal values, norms, and goals, and culture sets norms within a society and sets expectation. Culture is shared and transmitted to others and is always changing. In a society many will …show more content…

Value determines the character of a society and the kind of culture independence and hard work, some societies are communal and raise kids, provide food for community. Sometimes loving others even or donating to charities can be viewed as a value. Some societies focus on war and strength, whatever a society values are determines their character and the type of culture they are. Values is defined by Henslin as, "the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, superior or inferior good or bad, beautiful or ugly." (Henslin, 2014, p. 46) Value within today's society within the United of America may seem normal to one but to another culture it may seem completely unorthodox. For example, in our culture woman show skin and are admired while in Saudi Arabia doing so is a completely utterly and most disrespectful act to society. Whether a society determines what values are important and not important determines norms and can infer a way to act in society and sets expectation of …show more content…

The use of language is vital within a society, a tool to help communicate with one another. Language helps culture to establish by pushing people to go above their existing involvement. Whether we have multiple words alike for similar thought or few to characterize something without its function within society it would impact culture greatly. Functions of language creates a abundance of knowledge, we can suggest how people feel and think. Henslin defines language as, "a system of symbols that can be combined in an infinite number of ways and can represent not only objects but also abstract thought." (Henslin, 2014, p. 43) Without the use of language culture, concept, and all thought would seize to remain, without the use of communication, knowledge from the past to the future would deplete and we would have little to no memory. Language has been ingrained with the ways of viewing the world. Henslin defines subcultures as, "the values and related behaviors of a group that distringush its members from the larger culture; a world within view." We learn from our surroundings, in American English, we have a wide range of words that we use that reflect subcultures and how language ties in with them and enables the communicator to claim connection with these subcultures. A example of language and subcultures is within the adolescent community would be how the use the word dope can suggest awesome within a younger subgroup

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