Counseling Psychology and Pedagogy Master Program PSD 437

1. SOCIETY, CULTURE and
GENDER

2. DEFINITIONS
 Culture:
Those qualities and attributes that seem
to be characteristic of all humankind.
 Humans evolve and adapt primarily
through culture rather than changes
in anatomy or genetics.
 Culture survives if it can
accommodate to changing conditions.
 Culture is viewed as a macrosystem.
 Binds a particular society together,
and includes its manners, morals,
tools, and techniques.

3. NATURE OF CULTURE
 Culture is a group phenomenon.
 Cultures evolve from the interaction of
person with others, and a person’s belief or
behavior becomes part of the culture when it
is externalized and objectified.

4.  A culture evolves as each person
encounters four “poles”.
 One’s own body or somatic process.
Biological constitution
Genetic endowment
 Other persons or society.
Feedback cycle
 The material world of nonhuman
objects.
 The universe of social constructed
meanings.

5.  According to Erikson, cultures change
through the action of persons whose ideas
and behavior “fit” the culture.
 Change can also occur as a result of
cataclysm, either physical as in famine, war,
epidemic, or disaster.
 It can also change as a result of a “paradigm
shift” in fundamental understandings by
those in the culture.

6.  Society:
 A group of people who have learned to live and
work together.
 Society is a holon and within the society,
culture refers to the way of life is followed
by the group (society).

7. QUALITIES OF A SOCIETY
 Culture is that complex whole that includes
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by a human being as a member of
society.
 Culture is viewed as the ways of doing,
being, and explaining, as they exist in each
particular system.

8. SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS:
SOCIETY AND ROLES
 All cultures, being social systems,
have organization.
 Three aspects operating to define
social class:
Economic status
Social status
Political power
 Social class suggests a group
consciousness on the part of
members.
 Emergence of a permanent
“underclass” in American society.

9.  Role relates to and derives from status.
 Total of the cultural expectations
associated with a particular status,
including:
Attitudes
Values
Behavior
 Role expectation are defined by the
culture and its components and
incorporated by the persons filling the
role.

10.  All persons occupy a complex set of roles:
 Parent
 Child
 Worker
 Voter
 Worshipper
 The total number of roles is influenced by the
quantity of networks they are involved in.

11. SOCIETY-CULTURE
 Culture – meaningful (action)
 Society – bundle of institutions
 Institution -- institutions in society work together to
produce social order
 behavior patterns important to a society
 structures and mechanisms of social order and
cooperation governing the behavior of a set of
individuals
 transcending individual human lives and intentions
 Culture presupposes society -- something shared &
supra-individual
 Society presupposes persons -- assemblage of individuals

12. SOCIAL STRUCTURE
 Social relationships – ongoing network of social
relations
 Relationships among and between definite
entities or groups to each other
 enduring patterns of behaviour by participants
in a social system in relation to each other
 institutionalised norms or cognitive frameworks
that structure the actions in the social system
 systems of relationships, organization, forms of
associations - standardized modes of behavior

13. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
 inequality in society
 the unequal distribution of goods and services,
rights and obligations, power and prestige
 all attributes of positions in society, not
attributes of individuals
 Stratified society is:
when a society exhibits stratification it
means that there are significant breaks in
the distribution of goods services, rights
obligations power prestige
 as a result of which are formed collectivities or
groups we call strata

14. STATUS & SOCIAL DIFFERENCE
 status - ascribed & achieved
 ascribed status - social positions that people hold
by virtue of birth
 sex, age, family relationships, birth into class or
caste
 achieved status - social positions attained as a
result of individual action
 shift from homogeneous kin based societies
(mechanic) to heterogeneous societies of
associations (organic) involves growth in
importance of achieved

15. GENDER ROLES, STEREOTYPES,
STRATIFICATION
 gender roles - tasks & activities that a culture
assigns to sexes
 gender stereotypes - oversimplified strongly held
ideas about the characteristics of men & women
& third sex-third gender
 gender stratification - unequal distribution of
rewards (socially valued resources, power,
prestige, personal freedom) between men &
women reflecting their position in the social
hierarchy

16.  unequal distribution of wealth,
power and privilege between
men and women
unequal distribution of wealth,
power and privilege between any
embodied orientation
cultures everywhere give man,
as a category opposed to
women, higher social value and
moral worth.
 Is the secondary status of
women one of the true cultural
universals?
Gender Stratification

17. How does one measure gender
stratification?
economic power
prestige
Autonomy
ideology
Legal rights
Freedom to choose marriage partner,
profession, and conception. Etc.
look at the roles played by women and the
value society places on those roles

19. STRUCTURE & AGENCY
 Agency = action
 Agency as praxis/practice
 Praxis – activity/action oriented towards a
historically relevant change
 Practice -- Practical sense (practice) --
adjustment (anticipatory) to demands of
structure

20. SEX, SEXUALITY, GENDER
 not the same thing
 all societies distinguish between males
and females
 a very few societies recognize a third,
sexually intermediate category
 Gender-sexuality – fixed and fluid
identities
 Embodiments of history – human bodily experience
 Corporeal experience and social
structure/organization

21. GENDER
 GENDER - the cultural construction of
male & female characteristics
 vs. the biological nature of men & women
 SEX differences are biological - GENDER
differences are cultural/historical
 behavioral & attitudinal differences from
social & cultural rather than biological
point of view

22. Sex Versus Gender
 Sex refers to biological
differences
 Gender refers to the
ways members of the two
sexes are perceived,
evaluated and expected to
behave.
The cultural construction
of male and female
characteristics.

23. SEX
 differences in biology
 Socially & culturally marked
 the body is "simultaneously a physical and
symbolic artifact, both naturally and
culturally produced, anchored in a
particular historical moment" (Scheper-
Hughes & Lock)

24. SEXUALITY (REPRODUCTION)
 all societies regulate sexuality
 lots of variation cross-culturally
 degree of restrictiveness not always
consistent through life span
 adolescence vs. adulthood
 Varieties of “normative” sexual orientation
 Heterosexual, homosexual, transexual
 Sexuality in societies change over time

25. THE “FOUR BODIES”
 Individual body
 The social body
 The body politic
 The mindful body

26. THE INDIVIDUAL BODY
 lived experience of the body-self, body,
mind, matter, psyche, soul

27. THE SOCIAL BODY
 representational uses of the body as a
natural symbol with which to think about
nature, society, culture

28. THE BODY POLITIC
 regulation, surveillance, & control of bodies
(individual & collective) in reproduction &
sexuality, in work & leisure, in sickness &
other forms of deviance

29. THE MINDFUL BODY
 the most immediate, the proximate terrain
where social truths and social
contradictions are played out
 a locus of personal and social resistance,
creativity, and struggle
 emotions form the mediatrix between the
individual, social and political body, unified
through the concept of the 'mindful body.'

30. UNIVERSALS VERSUS
PARTICULARS
 universal subordination of women is often
cited as one of the true cross-cultural
universals, a pan-cultural fact
 Engels called it the “world historical defeat of
women”
 even so the particulars of women’s roles,
statuses, power, and value differ
tremendously by culture

31. FRIEDL AND LEACOCK
ARGUMENT
 variation among foragers
 male dominance is based on exchange, public
exchange
 versus that exchanged privately by women
 Exchange of scarce resources in egalitarian
societies, gender stratification, and universal
subordination of women

32. DOMESTIC - PUBLIC DICHOTOMY
(M. ROSALDO)
 opposition between domestic (reproduction) &
public (production) provides the basis of a
framework necessary to identify and explore
the place of male & female in psycho, cultural,
social and economic aspects of life
 degree to which the contrast between public
domestic (private) sphere is drawn promotes
gender stratification-rewards, prestige, power

33. PERSISTENCE OF
DUALISMS IN
IDEOLOGIES OF GENDER
 a particular view of men and women as
opposite kinds of creatures both biologically
and culturally
 nature/culture
 domestic/public
 reproduction/production

34. PRODUCTION, REPRODUCTION
AND SOCIAL ROLES
 roles - those minimal institutions and modes
of activity that are organized immediately
around one or more mothers and their
children
 women everywhere lactate & give birth to
children
 likely to be associated with child rearing &
responsibilities of the home

35. A LONG RUNNING CONTROVERSY
IN ANTHROPOLOGY
 Sherry Ortner’s famous article “Is
Female to Male as Nature is to
Culture”
 argument is that across cultures, women
are more often associated with nature and
the natural and are therefore denigrated
 Ortner - in reality women are no further
nor closer to nature than men - cultural
valuations make women appear closer to
nature than men

36. We (North Americans in general)
demand that the categories of
male and female be discrete
since gender is culturally
constructed the boundaries are
conceptual rather than physical
Boundaries require markers to
indicate gender
the boundaries are dynamic, eg.
now it is acceptable for men to
wear earrings.
 Voice
 Physique
 Dress
 Behaviour
Hair style
 Kinetics
 Language
use
Is this a man or a woman?
How do you know?
Gender Boundaries

37. THEORIES OF GENDER
INEQUALITY

38. F. ENGELS
 theory of the origin of female subordination
 tied to the male control of wealth
 built on 19th cent. assumption of
communal societies as matrilineal
 men overthrew matrilineality & formed
patriarchal family leading to monogamous
family
 differential ownership of wealth led to
inequality within the family & thus
between the sexes
 gender differences arose from technological
developments that led to changes in
relations of production

39. E. LEACOCK - (EXPANDS
ON ENGELS)
 subjugation of women due to breakdown of
communal ownership of property & isolation of
individual family as economic unit
 transformation of relations of production
Association of female labor with domestic unit
or private sphere
 male production directed towards distribution
outside the domestic group (public sphere)
 occurs with development of private property &
class society

40. K. SACKS
 political power that results from the
ability to give & receive goods in exchange
(redistribution)
 allows for sexual stratification in non-
class societies

41. SANDAY REEVES
 female status dependent on degree to
which men & women participate in
activities of reproduction, warfare,
subsistence

42. FRIEDL AND LEACOCK
 not rights & control over production but
rights of distribution & control over
channels of distribution critical for gender
stratification

43. RETHINKING SUBORDINATION
 Ardener - muted models that underlie male
discourse
 diversity of one life or many lives
 gender roles, stereotypes, stratification
 changes over time
 changes with position in lifecycle
 status of men & women i.e. in male dominant
societies
 decision making roles belong to men but as women reach
menopause; change with marriage status, virgins, wives,
widows (and men)

44. RETHINKING
SUBORDINATION
 women, like men, are social actors who work in
structured ways to achieve desired ends
 formal authority structure of a society may
declare that women are impotent & irrelevant
 but attention to women's strategies & motives,
sorts of choices, relationships established, ends
achieved indicates women have good deal of
power
 strategies appear deviant & disruptive
actual components of how social life proceeds