Dictionaries define sociology as the systematic study of society and social interaction.

The word
“sociology” is derived from the Latin word socius (companion) and the Greek word logos
(speech or reason), which together mean “reasoned speech or discourse about companionship.”
How can the experience of companionship or togetherness be put into words and explained?
While this is a starting point for the discipline, sociology is actually much more complex. It uses
many different theories and methods to study a wide range of subject matter, and applies these
studies to the real world. The sociologist Dorothy Smith (1926-2022) defines the social as the
“ongoing concerting and coordinating of individuals’ activities” (Smith, 1999). Whenever there
is more than one person in a situation there is coordination and mutual attunement of behaviours.
Sociology is therefore the systematic study of all those aspects of life designated by the adjective
“social.” They concern relationships, and they concern what happens when more than one person
is involved. These aspects of social life never simply occur; they are organized processes. They
can be the briefest and most unconscious of everyday interactions — moving to the right to let
someone pass on a busy sidewalk, for example — or the largest and most enduring interactions
— such as the billions of daily exchanges that constitute the circuits of global capitalism. If there
are at least two people involved, even in the seclusion of one’s own mind, then there is a social
interaction that entails the “ongoing concerting and coordinating of activities.” Why does the
person move to the right on the sidewalk? What collective processes lead to the decision that
moving to the right rather than the left is normal? Is it different in countries where people drive
on the left? Think about the T-shirts in the chest of drawers at home. What are the sequences of
linkages, exchanges, transportation conduits, and social relationships that connect one’s Tshirts
to the dangerous and hyper-exploitative garment factories in rural China or Bangladesh? These
are the type of questions that point to the unique domain and puzzles of the social that sociology
seeks to explore and understand.

August Comte: The Father of Sociology

The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès
(1748–1836) in an unpublished manuscript (Fauré et al., 1999). In 1838, the term was reinvented
by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). The contradictions of Comte’s life and the times he lived
through can be in large part read into the concerns that led to his development of sociology. He
was born in 1798, year 6 of the new French Republic, to staunch monarchist and Catholic
parents. They lived comfortably off his father’s earnings as a minor bureaucrat in the tax office.
Comte originally studied to be an engineer, but after rejecting his parents’ conservative,
monarchist views, he declared himself a republican and free spirit at the age of 13 and was
eventually kicked out of school at 18 for leading a school riot. This ended his chances of getting
a formal education and a position as an academic or government official. He became a secretary
to the utopian socialist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) until they had a falling
out in 1824 (after St. Simon reputedly purloined some of Comte’s essays and signed his own
name to them). Nevertheless, they both thought that society could be studied using the same
scientific methods utilized in the natural sciences. Comte also believed in the potential of social
scientists to work toward the betterment of society and coined the slogan “order and progress” to
reconcile the opposing progressive and conservative factions that had divided the crisis-ridden,
post-revolutionary French society. Comte proposed a renewed, organic spiritual order in which
the authority of science would be the means to create a rational social order. Through science,
each social strata would be reconciled with their place in a hierarchical social order. It is a
testament to his influence in the 19th century that the phrase “order and progress” adorns the
Brazilian coat of arms (Collins and Makowsky, 1989). Comte named the scientific study of
social patterns positivism. He described his philosophy in a well-attended and popular series of
lectures, which he published as The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) and A General
View of Positivism (1848/1977). He believed that using scientific methods to reveal the laws by
which societies and individuals interact would usher in a new “positivist” age of history. In
principle, positivism, or what Comte called “social physics,” proposed that the study of society
could be conducted in the same way that the natural sciences approach the natural world. While
Comte never in fact conducted any social research, his notion of sociology as a positivist science
that might effectively socially engineer a better society was deeply influential. Where his
influence waned was a result of the way in which he became increasingly obsessive and hostile
to all criticism as his ideas progressed beyond positivism as the “science of society” to
positivism as the basis of a new cult-like, technocratic “religion of humanity.” The new social
order he imagined was deeply conservative and hierarchical, a kind of a caste system with every
level of society obliged to reconcile itself with its “scientifically” allotted place. Comte imagined
himself at the pinnacle of society, taking the title of “Great Priest of Humanity.” The moral and
intellectual anarchy he decried would be resolved through the rule of sociologists who would
eliminate the need for unnecessary and divisive democratic dialogue. Social order “must ever be
incompatible with a perpetual discussion of the foundations of society” (Comte, 1830/1975).

Karl Marx: The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848, he and Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895) coauthored the Communist Manifesto. This book is one of the most
influential political manuscripts in history. It also presents in a highly condensed form Marx’s
theory of society, which differed from what Comte proposed. Whereas Comte viewed the goal of
sociology as recreating a unified, post-feudal spiritual order that would help to institutionalize a
new era of political and social stability, Marx developed a critical analysis of capitalism that saw
the material or economic basis of inequality and power relations as the cause of social instability
and conflict. The focus of sociology, or what Marx called historical materialism (the “materialist
conception of history”), should be the “ruthless critique of everything existing,” as he said in a
letter to his friend Arnold Ruge (1802-1880). In this way the goal of sociology would not simply
be to scientifically analyze or objectively describe society, but to use a rigorous scientific
analysis as a basis to change it. This framework became the foundation of contemporary critical
sociology. Although Marx did not call his analysis “sociology,” his sociological innovation was
to provide a social analysis of the economic system. Adam Smith (1723–1790) and the political
economists of the 19th century tried to explain the economic laws of supply and demand solely
as a market mechanism, similar to the abstract discussions of stock market indices and
investment returns in the business pages of newspapers today. Marx’s analysis showed the social
relationships that had created the market system, and the social repercussions of their operation.
As such, his analysis of modern society was not static or simply descriptive. He was able to put
his finger on the underlying dynamism and continuous change that characterized capitalist
society. Marx was also able to create an effective basis for critical sociology in that what he
aimed for in his analysis was, as he put it in another letter to Arnold Ruge, “the self-clarification
of the struggles and wishes of the age.” While he took a clear and principled value position in his
critique, he did not do so dogmatically, based on an arbitrary moral position of what he
personally thought was good and bad. He felt, rather, that a critical social theory must engage in
clarifying and supporting the issues of social justice that were inherent within the existing
struggles and wishes of the age. In his own work, he endeavoured to show how the variety of
specific work actions, strikes, and revolts by workers in different occupations — for better pay,
safer working conditions, shorter hours, the right to unionize, etc. — contained the seeds for a
vision of universal equality, collective justice, and ultimately the ideal of a classless society.

Harriet Martineau: The First Woman Sociologist?

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was one of the first women sociologists in the 19th century.
There are a number of other women who might compete with her for the title of the first woman
sociologist, such as Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Flora Tristan, and Beatrice
Webb, but Martineau’s specifically sociological credentials are strong. She was for a long time
known principally for her English translation of Comte’s Course in Positive Philosophy.
Through this popular translation, she introduced the concept of sociology as a methodologically
rigorous discipline to an English-speaking audience. But she also created a body of her own
work in the tradition of the great social reform movements of the 19th century, and introduced a
sorely missing woman’s perspective into the discourse on society. It was a testament to her
abilities that after she became impoverished at the age of 24 with the death of her father, brother,
and fiancé, she was able to earn her own income as the first woman journalist in Britain, and to
write under her own name. From the age of 12, she suffered from severe hearing loss and was
obliged to use a large ear trumpet to converse. She impressed a wide audience with a series of
articles on political economy in 1832. In 1834, she left England to engage in two years of study
of the new republic of the United States and its emerging institutions: prisons, insane asylums,
factories, farms, Southern plantations, universities, hospitals, and churches. On the basis of
extensive research, interviews, and observations, she published Society in America and worked
with abolitionists on the social reform of slavery (Zeitlin, 1997). She also worked for social
reform in the situation of women: the right to vote, have an education, pursue an occupation, and
enjoy the same legal rights as men. Together with Florence Nightingale, she worked on the
development of public health care, which led to early formulations of the welfare system in
Britain (McDonald, 1998).
Émile Durkheim: The Pathologies of the Social Order

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) helped establish sociology as a formal academic discipline by

establishing the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895,
and by publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method in 1895. He was born to a Jewish family
in the Lorraine province of France (one of the two provinces, along with Alsace, that were lost to
the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871). With the German occupation of
Lorraine, the Jewish community suddenly became subject to sporadic anti-Semitic violence, with
the Jews often being blamed for the French defeat and the economic/political instability that
followed. Durkheim attributed this strange experience of anti-Semitism and scapegoating to the
lack of moral purpose in modern society. As in Comte’s time, France in the late 19th century was
the site of major upheavals and sharp political divisions: the loss of the Franco-Prussian War, the
Paris Commune (1871) in which 20,000 workers died, the fall and capture of Emperor Napoleon
III (Napoleon I’s nephew), the creation of the Third Republic, and the Dreyfus Affair. This
undoubtedly led to the focus in Durkheim’s sociology on themes of moral anarchy, decadence,
disunity, and disorganization. For Durkheim, sociology was a scientific but also a “moral
calling” and one of the central tasks of the sociologist was to determine “the causes of the
general temporary maladjustment being undergone by European societies and remedies which
may relieve it” (1897/1951). In this respect, Durkheim represented the sociologist as a kind of
medical doctor, studying social pathologies of the moral order and proposing social remedies and
cures. He saw healthy societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced a breakdown
in social norms between individuals and society. He described this breakdown as a state of
normlessness or anomie — a lack of norms that give clear direction and purpose to individual
actions. As he put it, anomie was the result of “society’s insufficient presence in individuals”
(1897/1951). Key to Durkheim’s approach was the development of a framework for sociology
based on the analysis of social facts and social functions. Social facts are those things like law,
custom, morality, religious rites, language, money, business practices, etc. that can be defined
externally to the individual. Social facts:

• Precede the individual and will continue to exist after she or he is gone;

• Consist of details and obligations of which individuals are frequently unaware; and

• Are endowed with an external coercive power by reason of which individuals are controlled.

For Durkheim, social facts were like the facts of the natural sciences. They could be studied
without reference to the subjective experience of individuals. He argued that “social facts must
be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual” (Durkheim, 1895/1964).
Individuals experience them as obligations, duties, and restraints on their behaviour, operating
independently of their will. They are hardly noticeable when individuals consent to them but
provoke reaction when individuals resist. Durkheim argued that each of these social facts serve
one or more social functions within a society; they exist to fulfill a societal need. For example,
one function of a society’s laws may be to protect society from violence and punish criminal
behaviour, while another is to create collective standards of behaviour that people believe in and
identify with. Laws create a basis for social solidarity and order. In this manner, each identifiable
social fact could be analyzed with regard to its specific function in a society. Like a body in
which each organ (heart, liver, brain, etc.) serves a particular function in maintaining the body’s
life processes, a healthy society depends on particular functions or needs being met. Durkheim’s
insights into society often revealed that social practices, like the worshipping of totem animals in
his study of Australian Aboriginal religions, had social functions quite at variance with what
practitioners consciously believed they were doing. The honouring of totemic animals through
rites and privations functioned to create social solidarity and cohesion for tribes whose lives were
otherwise dispersed through the activities of hunting and gathering in a sparse environment.

Others are

Max Weber: Verstehende Soziologie

Georg Simmel: A Sociology of Forms

CHAPTER 3. CULTURE

This raises the distinction between the terms “culture” and “society” and how sociologists
conceptualize the relationship between them. In everyday conversation, people rarely distinguish
between these terms, but they have different meanings, and the distinction is important to how
sociologists examine culture. Culture refers to the beliefs, artifacts, and ways of life that a social
group shares, whereas society is a group that interacts within a common bounded territory or
region. To clarify, a culture represents the beliefs, practices, and material artifacts of a group —
in other words, meaningful or meaning-laden components of group interaction — while a society
represents the social structures, processes, and organization of the people who share those
beliefs, practices, and material artifacts. Neither society nor culture could exist without the other,
but sociologists can separate them analytically to gain insight into social life. In this chapter, the
relationship between culture and society is examined in greater detail, paying special attention to
the elements and forces that shape culture, including cultural diversity and cultural changes. A
final discussion touches on the different theoretical perspectives from which sociologists
research culture.

Over the history of humanity, this has lead to an incredible diversity in how humans have
imagined and lived life on Earth, the sum total of which Wade Davis (b. 1953) has called the
ethnosphere. The ethnosphere is the entirety of all cultures’ “ways of thinking, ways of being,
and ways of orienting oneself on the Earth” (Davis, 2007). It is the collective cultural heritage of
the human species. A single culture, as the sphere of meanings shared by a single social group, is
the means by which that group makes sense of the world and of each other. But there are many
cultures and many ways of making sense of the world. Through a multiplicity of cultural
inventions, human societies have adapted to the environmental and biological conditions of
human existence in many different ways. What do we learn from this? First, almost every human
behaviour, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. In Canada, people
tend to view marriage as a choice between two people based on mutual feelings of love. In other
nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of
interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other cases, through a direct system
such as a mail-order bride. To someone raised in Winnipeg, the marriage customs of a family
from Nigeria may seem strange or even wrong. Conversely, someone from a traditional Kolkata
family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love as the foundation for the lifelong
commitment of marriage. In other words, the way in which people view marriage depends
largely on what they have been taught. Being familiar with these written and unwritten rules of
culture helps people feel secure and “normal.” Most people want to live their daily lives
confident that their behaviours will not be challenged or disrupted. Behaviour based on learned
customs is, therefore, a good thing, but it does raise the problem of how to respond to cultural
differences.

Second, culture is innovative. The existence of different cultural practices reveals the way in
which societies find different solutions to real life problems. The different forms of marriage are
various solutions to a common problem, the problem of organizing families in order to raise
children and reproduce the species. As structural functionalists argue, the basic problem is shared
by the different societies, but the solutions are different. This illustrates the point that culture in
general is a means of solving problems. It is a tool composed of the capacity to abstract and
conceptualize, to cooperate and coordinate complex collective endeavours, and to modify and
construct the world to suit human purposes. It is the repository of creative solutions, techniques,
and technologies humans draw on when confronting the basic shared problems of human
existence. Culture is, therefore, key to the way humans, as a species, have successfully adapted
to the environment. The existence of different cultures refers to the different means by which
humans use innovation to free themselves from biological and environmental constraints.

Third, culture is also restraining. Cultures retain their distinctive patterns through time and
impose them on their members. In contemporary life, global capitalism increasingly imposes a
common cultural playing field on the cultures of the world. As a result, Canadian culture, French
culture, Malaysian culture, and Kazakhstani culture will share certain features like rationalization
and commodification, even if they also differ in terms of languages, beliefs, dietary practices,
and other ways of life. There are two sides to the response of local cultures to global culture.
Different cultures adapt and respond to capitalism in unique manners according to their specific
shared heritages. Local cultural forms have the capacity to restrain the changes produced by
globalization. Moreover, unique local cultures are transported around the world due to global
migration, diasporas and media, leading to the diversification of cultural practices in countries
like Canada, as well as to innovative forms of cultural blending and hybridization. On the other
hand, the diversity of local cultures is increasingly limited by the homogenizing pressures of
globalization. Economic practices that prove inefficient or uncompetitive in the global market
disappear. The meanings of cultural practices and knowledges change as they are turned into
commodities for tourist consumption or are patented by pharmaceutical companies.
Globalization also increasingly restrains cultural forms, practices, and possibilities. There is
therefore a dynamic within culture of innovation and restriction. The cultural fabric of shared
meanings and orientations that allows individuals to make sense of the world and their place
within it can change with contact with other cultures and changes in the socioeconomic
formation, allowing people to reinvision and reinvent themselves. Or, it can remain stable, even
rigid, and restrict change. Many contemporary issues to do with identity and belonging, from
multiculturalism and hybrid identities to religious fundamentalism and white nationalist
movements, can be understood within this dynamic of innovation and restriction. Similarly, the
effects of social change on ways of life, from new modes of electronic communication to societal
responses to climate change and global pandemics, involve a tension between innovation and
restriction.

Elements of Culture

 Values and Beliefs

Two crucial elements that define the variability between cultures are values and
beliefs. Values are a culture’s standard for discerning desirable states in society
(what is true, good, just, or beautiful). They are “culturally defined goals,
purposes, and interests,” which comprise “a frame of aspirational reference” as
Robert Merton put it (Merton, 1938). Values are deeply embedded and critical for
transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs. Beliefs are tenets or convictions that
people hold to be true. Individuals in a society have specific beliefs, but they also
share collective values. To illustrate the difference, North Americans commonly
believe that anyone who works hard enough will be successful and wealthy.
Underlying this belief is the value that both work and wealth are good and
desirable. In contrast, the Chinese Taoist concept of wu wei (not-doing or not-
making) is based on the belief that “the way of things in the world” (the Tao)
unfolds spontaneously. Therefore learning how to “not-work” and to allow life to
unfold in the integrated and spontaneous way natural to it, without deliberate
effort, is seen as a virtue (te) and is a shared, collective value. Values help shape a
society by suggesting what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and what should
be sought or avoided. Consider the value that North American culture places upon
youth. Children represent innocence and purity, while a youthful adult appearance
signifies liveliness and sexuality. Shaped by this value, North Americans spend
millions of dollars each year on cosmetic products and surgeries to look young
and beautiful. Sometimes the values of Canada and the United States are
contrasted. Americans are said to have an individualistic culture, meaning people
place a high value on individuality and independence. In contrast, Canadian
culture is said to be more collectivist, meaning the welfare of the group and group
relationships are primary values. As described below, Seymour Martin Lipset
used these contrasts of values to explain why the two societies, which have
common roots as British colonies, developed such different political institutions
and cultures (Lipset, 1990). Values are not static; they vary across time and
between groups as people evaluate, debate, and change collective societal beliefs.
For example, the change in the laws (the Cannabis Act) governing cannabis use in
Canada shifted from prohibition to legalization and regulation in October, 2018,
largely because of a change in the underlying values of Canadians. Where
cannabis consumption had been presented as a sign of immoral character in the
early 20th century campaigns to prohibit it, law makers in the 21st century
recognized that a majority of the population disagreed. Many in fact regarded it as
medicinal, as a means to attain the positive value of health and well-being. Others
regarded it as matter of personal choice or right within a sphere of personal
autonomy that should not be interfered with by moral authorities or states. It
appears that Canadian values changed priority: from the virtue of abstinence to
the virtues of health or personal autonomy.
Norms
Just as values vary from culture to culture, so do norms. For example, cultures
differ in their norms about what kinds of physical closeness are appropriate in
public. It is rare to see two male friends or coworkers holding hands in Canada
where that behaviour often symbolizes romantic feelings. But in many nations,
masculine physical intimacy is considered natural in public. A simple gesture,
such as hand-holding, carries great symbolic differences across cultures. Most
members of the society adhere to norms because their violation invokes some
degree of sanction. Sanctions are a form of social control, a way to encourage
conformity to cultural norms. They define the punishments and rewards that
govern behaviour. These can be understood to operate at various levels of
formality. Formal norms are established, written rules. They are behaviours
worked out and agreed upon in order to suit and serve most people. Laws are
formal norms, but so are employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements,
and the “no running” rule at swimming pools. Formal norms are the most specific
and clearly stated of the various types of norms, and the most strictly enforced.
But even formal norms are enforced to varying degrees, reflected in cultural
values. For example, money is highly valued in North America, so monetary
crimes are punished. It is against the law to rob a bank, and banks go to great
lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable possessions and install
anti-theft devices to protect homes and cars. Until recently, a less strictly enforced
 social norm was driving while intoxicated. While it is against the law to drive
drunk, drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behaviour. Though there
have been laws in Canada to punish drunk driving since 1921, there were few
systems in place to prevent the crime until quite recently. These examples show a
range of enforcement in formal norms. There are plenty of formal norms, but the
list of informal norms — casual behaviours that are generally and widely
conformed to — is longer. People learn informal norms by observation, imitation,
and general socialization. Some informal norms are taught directly — “kiss your
Aunt Edna” or “use your napkin” — while others are learned by observation,
including observations of the consequences when someone else violates a norm.
Children learn quickly that picking their nose is subject to ridicule when they see
someone shamed by others for doing it. Although informal norms define personal
interactions, they extend into other systems as well. Think back to the discussion
of fast food restaurants at the beginning of this chapter. In Canada, there are
informal norms regarding behaviour at these restaurants. Customers line up to
order their food, and leave when they are done. They do not sit down at a table
with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or nap in a booth.
Most people do not commit even benign breaches of informal norms. Informal
norms dictate appropriate behaviours without the need of written rules.
 Folkways, Mores, and Taboos
Norms may be further classified as mores, folkways, or taboos. Mores
(pronounced mor–ays) are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a
group. They are based on social requirements. Violating them can have serious
consequences. The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal
norms. In Canada, for instance, murder is considered immoral, and it is
punishable by law (a formal norm). More often, mores are judged and guarded by
public sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as
shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The mores of
the Canadian school system require that a student’s writing be in the student’s
own words or else the student should use special stylistic forms such as quotation
marks and a system of citation, like APA (American Psychological Association)
or MLA (Modern Language Association) style, for crediting the words to other
writers. Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name:
plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe, and can even
result in expulsion. Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral
underpinnings. They are based on social preferences. Folkways direct appropriate
behaviour in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. Folkways
indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another
person. They specify whether to wear a tie and a blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to
an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In
Egypt, it is not acceptable. In northern Europe, it is fine for people to go into a
 sauna or hot tub naked. Often in North America, it is not. An opinion poll that
asked Canadian women what they felt would end a relationship after a first date
showed that women in British Columbia were pickier than women in the rest of
the country (Times Colonist, 2014). First date deal breakers included poor
hygiene (82%), being distracted by a mobile device (74%), talking about sexual
history and being rude to waiters (72%), and eating with one’s mouth open (60%).
All of these examples illustrate breaking informal rules, which are not serious
enough to be called mores, but are serious enough to terminate a relationship
before it has begun. Folkways might be small manners, but they are by no means
trivial. Taboos refer to actions which are strongly forbidden by deeply held sacred
or moral beliefs. They are the strongest and most deeply held norms. Their
transgression evokes revulsion and severe punishment. In its original use taboo
referred to being “consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean, or cursed” (Cook &
King, 1784). There was a clear supernatural context for the prohibition; the act
offended the gods or ancestors, and evoked their retribution. In secular contexts,
taboos refer to powerful, moral prohibitions that protect what are regarded as
inviolable bonds between people. Incest, pedophilia, and patricide or matricide
are taboos. Many mores, folkways, and taboos are taken for granted in everyday
life. People need to act without thinking to get seamlessly through daily routines;
they can not stop and analyze every action (Sumner, 1906). They become part of
routines, or cultural practices. As Dorothy Smith (1999) put it, the different levels
of norm enable the “ongoing concerting and coordinating of individuals’
activities.” These different levels of norm help people negotiate their daily life
within a given culture, and as such their study is crucial for understanding the
distinctions between different cultures.
 Practices
Even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal
of cultural propriety. Take the case of going to work on public transportation.
Whether commuting in Dublin, Cairo, Mumbai, or Vancouver, many behaviours
will be the same in all locations, but significant differences also arise between
cultures. Typically in Canada, a passenger finds a marked bus stop or station,
waits for the bus or train, pays an agent before or after boarding, and quietly takes
a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might
have to run, because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on
patrons. Dublin bus riders are expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want
the bus to stop for them. When boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers
must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the
crowded platforms. That kind of behaviour would be considered the height of
rudeness in Canada, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting
around on a train system that is taxed to capacity. In this example of commuting,
the different cultural practices are seen as various solutions to a common problem,
 the problem of public transportation by bus. The problem is shared, but the
solutions are different. Practices in general are simply ways of doing things. The
idea of a cultural practice indicates that a way of doing things is embedded in a
particular culture. They express a particular way of seeing and interpreting the
world, a particular type of know-how or practical knowledge, a particular set of
social expectations and constraints, and a particular set of customs or traditions.

 Symbols and Language

Humans, consciously and subconsciously, are always striving to make sense of
their surrounding world. Symbols — such as gestures, signs, objects, signals, and
words — are tangible marks that stand in for, or represent, something else in an
act of communication. Through symbols an understanding of underlying
experiences, statuses, states, and ideas is expressed and can be passed from one
person to another. They symbolize these underlying contents and convey them as
recognizable markers of meaning shared by societies. They are therefore
necessarily social, otherwise they could not be used to communicate. In the words
of George Herbert Mead (1934): Our symbols are universal. You cannot say
anything that is absolutely particular, anything you say that has any meaning at all
is universal. The social world is filled with symbols. Sports uniforms, company
logos, and traffic signs are symbols. In North America, a gold ring on the fourth
finger of the left hand is a symbol of marriage. In many European countries the
wedding ring is worn on the right hand. Some symbols are highly functional; stop
signs, for instance, provide useful instruction. A police officer’s badge and
uniform are symbols of authority and law enforcement. The sight of a police
officer in uniform or in a police car triggers reassurance in some citizens, but
annoyance, fear, or anger in others. Some symbols are only valuable in what they
represent. Trophies, blue ribbons, or gold medals, for example, serve no purpose
other than to represent accomplishments.
 Language
While different cultures have varying systems of symbols, there is one that is
common to all: the use of language. Language is a symbolic system through
which people communicate and through which culture is transmitted. Some
languages contain a system of symbols used for written communication, while
others rely only on spoken communication and nonverbal actions. For Emile
Durkheim (1938), language is a prime example of a social fact. It exists only in
people’s heads or in their usage of it, yet it exists externally to them “in its own
right.” Language acts as an external constraint, it operates throughout a whole
society and exists as an entity independent of its individual manifestations.
Languages in a strange way are not created by individuals. They precede the
individual and continue to exist after the individual is gone. They frequently
impose detailed obligations on the individual that they are unaware of (vocabulary
or the rules of correct word usage and grammar, for example). They operate
independently of people’s wills as if endowed with an external coercive power
that controls them (determining what can and cannot be said, or even what can
and cannot be thought, for example), rather than the other way around. By
entering into language, a child enters into a whole conceptual order in which a
place — that of the “child” and the meanings of “child” — is already laid out for
them. Some elements of language are fixed by codes. A code is a set of cultural
conventions, instructions, or rules used to combine symbols to communicate
meaning. Like the codes used in ciphers to encode secret messages, the sender of
a message and the receiver of a message have to share the same instructions for
how to encode and decode a message correctly or else communication cannot
occur. Codes therefore govern combinations of symbols that are permitted (and
thereby make sense) and combinations which are forbidden (and thereby produce
nonsense).