3.3 The Elements of Culture

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define the concept of material culture and provide examples of material culture.
• Provide a detailed example of cultural practices.
• Explain how cultural frames orient our experiences and actions.
• Describe how norms and values are threaded through culture.
• Explain how ideologies and worldviews shape our perception of the world around us.

The complex whole of culture can be broken down into three categories: what we make, what we do, and what we think. The boundaries separating these categories are somewhat artificial because so much of cultural life involves all of these things at once. However, it’s useful to start with the basic building blocks of culture, then see how those blocks can be put together to produce more complex structures.