Relationship between Culture and Society
Cultures are the product of human society, and it saves its culture by changing and transmitting to the next generation. Culture and society are counterparts like the two faces of a sheet of paper. It is secondary to society and is the man made part of environment. It is universal for human experience. It is dynamic because completely static cultures are dead ones but they don’t exist in contemporary societies of the world. Culture is both stable and ever changing. It is the way of life of the people while the society is the organized aggregate of individuals who follow a given way of life. Simply society is composed of people, the way they behave is their culture. Man is the sole culture building animal.
According to some sociologists, human society have gone through pre modern, modern and postmodern phases. Examples of pre modern societies are pastoralist and hunting societies. Modern societies are supposed to be industrial and capitalist societies. Those who believe in post modernity have no faith in science and technology as it can harm human beings with pollution, noises, nuclear weapons etc.
Culture and society Raymond William described it any idea of culture is a reaction of any change in the condition of human social life. These condition neither static nor uniform and any idea of culture drawn a conclusion and inquiry.
Culture and Technology
Technology is the material objects of a society plus the society’s ideas about how to use the object. The latter is part of non-material culture and determines the meaning of the material culture. The same objects may have different uses in different cultures.
Technology determines how much a culture is influenced by its physical environment. For example, people of different climatic regions use different clothes, live indifferent types of houses arid use different material and food according to their seasons.
When technology increases in efficiency, and cultures are raised above subsistence level, then
- a greater division of labor and more job specialization occurs
- the people become more and more separated from means of production. For example, the people making baskets, forget how to raise food
- greater inequalities in economic possessions are possible; and
- the people separated from the means of production are in a position to be exploited .by those who command production
Change in type and magnitude of technology is observed easily
Aspects of culture like belief system influence what elements of technology will be accepted
According to Ogbun hypothesis, technology of a culture changes more rapidly than other aspects of the culture producing cultural lag. The idea is more Western, Certain East African tribes most readily accept changes in their religious beliefs.
Technology in cultures is mostly used for economic purposes
