BASIC CONCEPTS from Sociology and Anthropology - Tools to think with.
SOCIETY: humanly created organization or system of interrelationships that connects individuals in a common culture. All the products of human interaction, the experience of living with others around us. Humans create their interactions, and once created the products of those interactions have the ability or power to act back upon humans to determine or constrain action. Often, we experience society (humanly created organization) as something apart from the individuals and interactions that create it.
PRODUCTS OF HUMAN INTERACTION - COMPONENTS OF SOCIETY
CULTURE: sets of traditions, rules, symbols that shape and are enacted as feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of groups of people. Referring primarily to learned behavior as distinct from that which is given by nature, or biology, culture has been used to designate everything that is humanly produced (habits, beliefs, arts, and artifacts) and passed from one generation to another. In this formulation, culture is distinguished from nature, and distinguishes one society from another.
LANGUAGE: a system of verbal symbols through which humans communicate ideas, feelings, experiences. Through language these can be accumulated and transmitted across generations. Language is not only a tool, or a means of expression, but it also structures and shapes our experiences of the world and what we see around us.
VALUES: preferences - ideas people share about what is good, bad, desirable, undesirable. These are usually very general, abstract, cut across variations in situations.
NORMS: concepts and behaviors that constitute the normal. Behavioral rules or standards for social interaction. These often derive from values but also contradict values; sometimes derives from statistical norms but often not. Serve as both guides and criticisms for individual