MODULE 2

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS

Learning Outcomes

1. Differentiate social, cultural and political

change.
2. Identify the causes of social change
3. Explain and discuss the definition of
anthropology, political science, and
sociology

I. Social, Political, And Cultural Change

● Change is generally pervasive and takes place in culture, society, and politics.
Changes in culture bring change in society and human beings; likewise,
changes in society and human beings bring change in culture and politics
(Panopio: 263). These changes are even overlapping and interdependent in
contemporary times due to factors affecting social mobility, such as migration,
urbanization, transnationalism, and globalization. Let us define each type of
change either in social, political or cultural aspects.

1. Social Change – refers to variations or modifications in the patterns of social

organization, of sub-groups within a society, or of the entire society itself. This may
be manifested in the rise or fall of groups, community or institutional structures and
functions or changes in the statutes and roles of members in the family, work setting,
church, government, school, and other sub-systems of the social organization
(Panopio, 364).

● There are three causes of social change: invention, discovery, and diffusion.
1. Invention – is often defined as a new combination or a new use of
existing knowledge. It produces mechanical objects, ideas, and social
patterns that reshape society to varying degrees. It can be classified
into:
⮚ Material inventions (e.g. bow and arrow, mobile phone, airplane)
and
⮚ Social inventions (e.g. alphabet, texting, jejemon)
2. Discovery – on the other hand, takes place when people reorganized
existing elements of the world they had not noticed before or learned to
see in a new way. Oftentimes, a discovery contributes to the emergence of
a new paradigm or perspective, and even reshapes and reinvents
worldviews.
3. Diffusion – refers to the spread of culture traits from one group to another.
It creates changes as cultural elements spread from one society to another
through trade, migration, and mass communication. Culture spreads

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 through the processes of enculturation, socialization, association, and
integration.
⮚ Enculturation – takes place when one culture spreads to
another through learning. Education is the most popular form of
enculturation. Pedagogical interventions provide proper venues
for the diffusion of culture.
⮚ Socialization –refers to learning through constant exposure and
experience to culture, which ultimately imbibes the latter to the
system of values, beliefs, and practices of an individual or
groups.
⮚ Association – on the other hand, is establishing a connection
with the culture thereby bridging areas of convergence and
cultural symbiosis.
⮚ Integration – is the total assimilation of culture as manifested by
change of worldviews, attitudes, behavior, and perspectives of
looking things.

2. Political change - includes all categories of change in the direction of open,

participatory, and accountable politics. It is the change that occurs in the realm of
civil and political societies and in the structure of relations among civil society,
political society, and the state (Alagappa: 10). Youth awareness and active
participation during elections belong to this type of change. The emergence of civil
society groups as “pressure groups” during crises in the Philippine politics, such as
the recent Chief Justice Corona impeachment trial is also a concrete manifestation
on how political change works.

3. Cultural change – on the other hand, as the third type of change refers to all
alterations affecting new traits or trait complexes and changes in a culture’s content
and structure. These changes are caused by several factors, such as the physical
environment, population, war and conquest, random events, and technology.

II. Definition of Anthropology, Political Science, and Sociology

A. Anthropology

● The American Anthropological Association describes Anthropology as a

science seeking to “uncover principles of behavior that apply to all human
communities.” To an anthropologist, diversity itself—seen in body shapes
and sizes, customs clothing, speech, religion, and worldwide—provides a
frame of reference for understanding any single aspect of life in any given
community. Instead of looking for a “universal culture”—cultural artifacts that
appear the same or similar everywhere they are found—anthropologists are
looking for “culture universal,” patterns of similarity within an array of
differences. This approach is faithful to the principle of “equal but different”
enshrined in the motto of the discipline.
● As a social science, anthropology focuses on human diversity around the
world. Anthropologists look at cross-cultural differences in social institutions,

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 cultural beliefs, and communication styles. They often seek to promote
understanding between groups by “translating” each culture to the other, for
instance by spelling out common, taken-for-granted assumptions.
● Four great anthropologist helped to formalize and advance anthropology as a
discipline, namely Franz Boas (1858-1942), Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski
1884-1942), Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955), and Marcel Mauss
(1872-1950).
1. Franz Boas is often considered as the father of modern American
anthropology. He was the first anthropologist to have rejected the biological
basis of racism or racial discrimination. He also rejected the popular Western
idea of social evolution or the development of societies from lower to higher
forms. This kind of theory influenced by Darwin was rejected by Boas in favor
of historical particularism. In this doctrine, each society is considered as
having a unique form of culture that cannot be subsumed under an overall
definition of general culture. Kwakiutl dancing, for example, in Boas’ analysis
can be only understood according to the meanings ascribed to it by the
participants rather than seeing it as part of a general social function.
Consistent with his anti-evolutionary theory, Boas advocated cultural
relativism or the complexity of all culture whether primitive or not.

2. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. He was a Polish immigrant who did a

comprehensive study of Trobriand Island. Based on his field study, he
developed what social scientists now call as participant observation. It is a
method of social science research that requires the anthropologists to have
the ability to participate and blend with the way of life of a given group of
people. He is also considered as one of the most influential ethnographers in
the 20th century. Ethnography is literally the practice of writing about people.
Often, it is taken to mean the anthropologist’s way of making sense of other
people’s modes of thought, since anthropologists usually study cultures other
than their own.

3. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown. He did fieldwork in 1906-1908 on the

Andaman Islands east of India, and published his reports in the diffusionist
style, but later shifted his theoretical orientation. In 1937, he became the Chair
in Social Anthropolgy in Oxford. Unlike Malinowski, but similar to Durkheim,
Radcliffe-Brown advocated the study of abstract principles that govern social
change. He saw individuals as mere products of social structures. This view
led to the establishment of structural-functionalist paradigm in
anthropology. According to this view, the basic unit of analysis for
anthropology and social sciences are the social structures and the functions
they perform to maintain the equilibrium of society.

B. Political Science

● Political Science is the systematic study of government and politics. It makes

generalizations and analyses about political systems and political behavior
and uses these results to predict future behavior (as in elections and similar
processes where predicting behaviors are important). Political science
includes the study of political philosophy, ethics, international relations,
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 foreign policy, public administration, and the dynamic relations between
different parts of governments. As such, it deals extensively with the theory
and practice of politics which is commonly thought of as the determining factor
in the distribution of power and resources. Political scientists “see themselves
engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and
conditions, and from these revelations they attempt to construct general
principles about the way the world of politics works.
● In its most generic sense, political science assumes the asymmetrical power
relations of members of society but problematizes the unjust and unfair effects
of such relations manifested in matters related to governance. Power relations
are forms of interaction mediated by the use and deployment of authority and
political influence. They have different layers ranging from the personal to the
group/organizational, to the institutional and governmental. Political science is
fascinated by the variety of their manifestations; hence, its goal is to
document these manifestations and map the constellations of power relations
within the different layers. Their political analysis is sharpened by the diverse
issues and concerns debated within and across the layers.

C. Sociology

● Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that deals with the scientific study
of human interactions, social groups and institutions, whole societies, and the
human world as such. Of course, sociology also addresses the problem of the
constitution of the self and the individual, but it only does so in relation to
larger social structures and processes. Sociology, therefore, is a science that
studies the relationship between the individual and the society as they
develop and change in history. Sociology does not only study the existing
social forms of interactions but also pursues the investigation of the
emergence of stable structures that sustain such interactions.
● The following sociologist are the founder of Sociology:

1. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), a French philosopher and mathematician, is

the founding father of sociology. He coined the term “sociology” but he
originally used “social physics” as a term for sociology. Its aim was to discover
the social laws that govern the development of societies. Comte suggested
that there were three stages in the development of societies, namely, the
theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage. Comte’s
sociology has always been associated with posivitism or the school of
thought that says that science and its method is the only valid way of knowing
things.

Unknown to many students of sociology, however, there were also women

scholars who were responsible for the development of sociology.
2. The “founding mother” of sociology is Harriet Martineau (1802-1876),
an English writer and reformist. With physical disabilities, Martineau traveled a

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 lot, especially in the United States, and wrote her travelogues. In her accounts
expressed in How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), the deep
sociological insights that we now call as ethnographic narratives are fully
expressed. She also wrote on political economy and was influenced by J. S.
Mill, David Ricardo, and Adam Smith.

3. After Auguste Comte, the German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx
(1818-1883) further contributed to the development of sociology. Marx
introduced the materialist analysis of history which discounts religious and
metaphysical (spiritual) explanation for historical development. Before Marx,
scholars explained social change through divine intervention and the theory of
“great men.” However, Marx advocated the use of scientific methods to
uncover the deep structural tendencies that underlie great social transitions,
for instance, from agricultural to modern industrial capitalist society. Marx
belonged to the realist tradition of social sciences that believed in the power of
scientific reason to know the nature of society and human beings. Unlike any
other sociologists, Marx stands out as the sociologist who combined
revolutionary activity with scholarly passion.

4. Another French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), made possible

the professionalization of sociology by teaching it in the University of
Bordeaux. Durkheim was responsible for defending sociology as an
independent discipline from psychology. As a social-realist, Durkheim argued
that society possesses a reality sui generis (that is, its own kind, or a class by
itself, unique) independent of individuals and institutions that compose it.
Durkheim famously argued that society pre-existed the individuals and will
continue to exist long after the individual is dead. His main contributions are in
the field of sociology of religion, education, and deviance.

5. Another founding father of sociology is Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber

stressed the role of rationalization in the development of society. For Weber,
rationalization refers essentially to the disenchantment of the world. As
science began to replace religion, people also adopted a scientific or rational
attitude to the world. People refused to believe in myths and superstitious
beliefs. In this way, modern individuals became dependent on science to
order their lives. And the greatest application of scientific way of life is in
bureaucracy, which Weber saw as a mammoth machine that will eventually
curtail human freedom. Because in bureaucracy efficiency is considered as
the supreme value, other values such as personal relationships and human
intimacies are gradually discarded.

Summary

Change is generally pervasive and takes place in culture, society, and politics.
Cultural change is caused by several factors including the presence of technology.
Invention, discovery, and diffusion trigger social change. The disciplines of
anthropology, political science, and sociology are important in comprehending the
dynamics of culture, society, and politics.