Week 3 · Chapter

Chapter 3 — Culture

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~35–45 minutes · Objective 3 (analyze culture and socialization — values, beliefs, norms, symbols, and language; ethnocentrism and cultural relativism; the agents of socialization; and the social development of the self in Cooley's and Mead's accounts), building on Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slide deck, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Sociology in Action Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

Every group you belong to runs on rules that nobody wrote down for you, from how fast to answer a text to when it is polite to start eating. This week is about culture, the shared way of life a group passes on: what it values, what it believes, the rules it expects people to follow, and the objects and words it uses. You will learn to sort those rules by how much they matter to people and by how they are enforced. You will also learn two opposite ways of meeting an unfamiliar custom: judging it by your own group's standards, or trying to understand it on its own terms.

Why you already care about this

Think about the last time you started something new: a job, a class, a team, or a visit to a friend's family. Within an hour you were reading signals. Do people here take their shoes off at the door? Does the group chat expect a reply tonight, or is tomorrow fine? Is it a uniform shirt or a dress-as-you-like shift? Nobody handed you a rulebook, yet you could feel when you got one wrong.

Some of that is small. A wrong guess about a dinner custom earns a look. Some of it is large. Copying a classmate's exam can end with a zero and a formal report. Pew Research Center found that 35% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone in 2011 and 91% in 2025, and you may have heard the rules about when phones belong at the table argued over at a family dinner. Culture is all of this: the objects, the rules, and the arguments about the rules.

Sociologists study culture because it shapes almost everything else in this course. By the end of this week you will be able to look at any custom, from a group-chat habit to a dress code. You will say what kind of rule it is and how the group keeps it in place.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

tell culture from society, and material culture from nonmaterial culture;
tell a value from a belief;
sort a norm as a folkway, a mos, or a taboo, and sort its sanction as positive or negative and formal or informal;
explain the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and why it is a hypothesis, not a law;
define cultural universals, culture shock, and cultural lag, and read a real figure for what it does and does not say about lag;
tell ethnocentrism from cultural relativism, and a subculture from a counterculture;
run one cultural norm through the three perspectives and name each one's level of analysis.

Carry this sentence with you: moral weight and formality are two questions, not one.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1, The Sociological Imagination & Doing Sociology, gave you the three perspectives and the macro and micro levels of analysis. Week 2, Sociological Research Methods, taught you to ask how evidence was gathered and to read a figure four ways.
This week: culture, the shared values, beliefs, norms, symbols, language, and objects of a group, and the two ways of meeting another group's customs.
How they connect: Week 1's three perspectives get their first full workout on a cultural norm, and Week 2's four questions help you read a real figure about cultural lag.
Where we're going next: Week 4, Socialization & the Self, asks how each of us learns a culture in the first place and becomes a self along the way.

Week 1 is where the three lenses came from. Structural functionalism (macro) asks what job a pattern does for society. Conflict theory (macro) asks who benefits and who loses. Symbolic interactionism (micro) asks what a thing means to the people in a face-to-face moment. Week 2 gave you the four questions for any statistic: what is measured, over what population and period, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation or a cause. You will use both in Sections 5 and 8.

1. Tell culture from society, and the material from the nonmaterial

Picture a family that moves across the country for a new job. They leave behind their neighbors, their old school, and the people at their corner store. But they pack more than boxes. They bring the way they celebrate birthdays, the words they use for things, and their sense of what counts as rude. They left one society behind; they carried their culture with them.

That picture separates two words that people often use as if they were one.

Culture is the shared values, beliefs, norms, symbols, language, and material objects of a group, which its members learn and pass on.
Society is the people who share a culture and interact with one another, usually within a shared territory; society is the people, while culture is what they share.

Culture itself has two sides. Look around any kitchen. The rice cooker, the mugs, and the phone charger are things you can touch. The rule that guests are offered a drink first, and the belief that a home-cooked meal shows care, are ideas.

Material culture is the physical objects a group makes and uses, such as tools, clothing, buildings, and phones.
Nonmaterial culture is the ideas a group shares about how to live, including its values, beliefs, norms, symbols, and language.

Worked example — one team, two sides of culture. Take an illustrative recreational soccer team.

Material culture. The team jersey, the cleats, the cooler of orange slices, and the group chat on everyone's phone.
Nonmaterial culture. The value of showing up for teammates, the belief that practice makes the team better, the norm of shaking hands with the other team after a match, and the nickname everyone uses for the coach.
Society versus culture. The players are the people; the jersey, the handshake, and the nickname are what they share.

In words: if every player quit and a new group bought the same jerseys but kept none of the habits, the objects would survive and the team's culture would not.

Misconception check — culture and society as one word. Students often write "culture" and "society" as if they meant the same thing, because everyday speech uses them that way. In sociology they are different. Society is the people; culture is what the people share. The cure: ask "am I talking about the people, or about what they share?" If it is the people, the word is society.

2. Separate values from beliefs

Two coworkers argue during a break. One says, "Honesty matters more than anything." The other says, "Anyone who works hard enough can get ahead." Both sound like big statements about how to live. They are two different kinds of statement.

Values are a culture's shared standards of what is good, right, and desirable, such as honesty or family loyalty, which people use to judge behavior.
Beliefs are statements the people in a culture hold to be true, such as the conviction that hard work leads to success; unlike a value, a belief can be checked against evidence.

The first coworker named a value. Honesty is a standard you judge by; nobody can prove it true or false. The second coworker stated a belief. Whether hard work is enough to get ahead is a claim about the world, and Week 7 will read real income and poverty evidence on it.

Worked example — sorting three statements. Sort each illustrative statement from a neighborhood meeting.

"We should take care of our elders." A standard of what is good, so it is a value.
"Most people in this neighborhood know their neighbors' names." A claim about the world that a survey could check, so it is a belief.
"Fairness means everyone gets a turn to speak." A standard of what is right, so it is a value.

In words: if you could test it with evidence, it is a belief; if it is a yardstick for judging, it is a value.

Misconception check — "a belief is a weaker value." Students often think a belief is a value someone holds less firmly. It is tempting because both words describe what people care about. The difference is not strength. A value says what is good; a belief says what is true. People can hold a belief fiercely and still be wrong about the facts.

3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced

You stand in line at a food truck. Someone walks past the line and orders first. Nobody calls the police, but people stare, and someone mutters. Now picture a different moment: someone in a cemetery digging up a grave. The reaction is not a stare. It is shock, and a criminal charge. Both are broken rules. They do not weigh the same.

Sociologists call the rules norms: the shared rules of a group for how people are expected to behave in a given situation. Norms come in three weights. Sumner (1906), Folkways, brought the first two words into sociology.

Folkways are everyday customs that carry no moral weight, such as how quickly to answer a message; breaking one draws only mild reactions.
Mores are norms that carry moral weight, such as honesty on an exam; breaking one draws a strong reaction. The singular is mos.
A taboo is the strongest kind of prohibition in a culture, a norm so serious that even the thought of breaking it shocks people.

That is the first question: how much moral weight does the norm carry? The second question is how the group enforces it.

A sanction is a reward or a penalty that a group uses to enforce a norm.
A positive sanction is a reward for keeping a norm, such as praise, a smile, or an award.
A negative sanction is a penalty for breaking a norm, such as a frown, a warning, or a fine.
A formal sanction is a reward or penalty applied by an official body under written rules, such as a school, an employer, or a court.
An informal sanction is a reward or penalty applied by ordinary people in everyday life, such as a smile, a joke at someone's expense, or a cold shoulder.

Worked example — the six-norm sort. These six norms are illustrative, constructed for this course, not real data. Ask both questions of each one.

Six illustrative norms, sorted by moral weight and by the sanction that enforces each
Norm	Context	Moral weight	Type	Sanction	Sanction type
1. Answering a friend's message in the group chat within a day	group chat	none	folkway	a friend posts a teasing "hello??"	negative, informal
2. Waiting until everyone is served before you eat	family dinner	none	folkway	a grandparent's approving smile	positive, informal
3. Wearing the store's uniform shirt on shift	workplace dress code	none	folkway	the manager issues a written warning	negative, formal
4. Doing your own work on an exam	campus exam	yes, honesty	mos	a zero on the exam and an academic-integrity report	negative, formal
5. Returning a lost wallet with the cash still inside	neighborhood	yes	mos	the neighborhood association's good-neighbor award	positive, formal
6. Never disturbing a grave	cemetery	the strongest	taboo	a criminal charge, along with public outrage	negative, formal

Now add up each column.

Moral weight. 3 folkways + 2 mores + 1 taboo = 6 norms.
Sanctions. 1 positive informal + 1 positive formal + 1 negative informal + 3 negative formal = 6 sanctions.
The lesson of Norm 3. The uniform shirt is written into a workplace rule, and breaking it brings a formal sanction. Yet wearing the wrong shirt is not a moral wrong, so the norm is still a folkway.

In words: moral weight sorts folkways, mores, and taboos, while formality sorts sanctions, and a written rule does not make a norm a mos.

Here is a caveat. Where a norm sits can differ from one group to another. Waiting for everyone to be served may be a light folkway in one family and a matter of respect in another, so the sort describes one setting, not every setting.

Pause and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Name one folkway from a group you belong to, and describe an informal sanction you have seen someone receive for breaking it.
(b) Name one rule from a job, a team, or a school that is written down but carries little moral weight, and say whether you would call it a folkway or a mos.

Misconception check — the swapped pair. Students often swap folkways and mores, or call any written rule a mos. It is tempting because a rule with paperwork feels serious. But a mos is defined by moral weight, not by paperwork. The cure: ask "would people see breaking this as morally wrong?" If not, it is a folkway, however formal its sanction.

4. Read symbols and language

Send a thumbs-up emoji to two friends. One reads it as a cheerful "got it." The other reads it as curt, almost rude. The little picture did not change. What changed is the meaning each person attached to it.

A symbol is anything that carries a meaning the members of a group share, such as a gesture, an emoji, a flag, or a ring.
Language is a system of spoken, written, or signed symbols that the members of a culture use to communicate and to pass their culture on.

Symbols only work because a group shares their meaning. A red light means "stop" to every driver who learned the same traffic code. A wedding ring signals a marriage to people who share that custom. Language is the biggest symbol system of all, and it carries the rest of a culture from one generation to the next.

Language may do more than carry culture. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the proposal that the language people speak shapes how they perceive and think about the world; it is a hypothesis to be tested, not a proven law.

Worked example — slang on a night shift. Picture an illustrative restaurant kitchen whose crew has its own words: "in the weeds" for falling behind, "86" for an item that has run out, "behind" called out when walking past someone.

Symbols. Each word stands for a shared meaning the crew learned on the job.
A Sapir–Whorf reading. A new cook who learns "in the weeds" may start to notice the moment a shift tips into chaos sooner, because now there is a word for it.
The honest limit. This is a hypothesis about how language and perception connect. One kitchen does not prove it; a study designed to test it would be needed.

In words: words give a group shared handles on its world, and whether they also shape what people notice is a question to test, not a fact to assume.

Misconception check — the hypothesis read as a law. Students often state the Sapir–Whorf idea as a proven rule: "your language decides what you can think." It is tempting because the idea is striking. But it is a hypothesis, a claim to be tested. The cure: write "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis proposes," never "the Sapir–Whorf law proves."

5. Look across cultures and across time

Imagine a student spending a few months with a host family abroad. On day one, dinner runs two hours and nobody eats alone in their room. The student's usual habits suddenly feel wrong, and nobody explains the new ones. A few weeks later, the long dinners feel normal. That stretch in between has a name.

Culture shock is the disorientation and stress people feel when they enter an unfamiliar culture and the norms they know no longer guide them.

Underneath the differences, some patterns show up everywhere.

A cultural universal is a pattern or practice found in every known culture, such as having a language, even though its form differs from one culture to the next.

The idea is associated with Murdock. Every known culture has a language and some recognized form of family, but the languages differ, and so do the families.

Cultures also change, and their parts do not always change at the same speed.

Cultural lag is the gap that opens when material culture changes faster than the nonmaterial culture, such as the norms, around it.

Ogburn (1922), Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, named the idea. A new object arrives quickly; the rules for using it take longer to settle.

Worked example — cultural lag and the smartphone. Read one real figure with Week 2's four questions.

The material side. 35% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone in 2011 and 91% in 2025 (Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet).
The change. 91 − 35 = 56 percentage points, in 14 years (2025 − 2011 = 14).
What is measured? Self-reported smartphone ownership.
Over whom, and when? U.S. adults, in 2011 and in 2025.
What does it show, and not show? It shows how fast one material object spread. It says nothing about the norms for using phones, so any lag in nonmaterial culture is a separate claim the figure cannot test.
Correlation or cause? Neither. It is a description.

In words: the object spread by 56 percentage points in 14 years. Whether the rules about phones at work, in class, or at dinner have caught up is a question this figure does not answer.

Here is an honesty note. Cultural lag is a useful idea, but "the norms are lagging" is an interpretation, not a measurement. To test it, you would need evidence about the norms themselves, such as a survey asking people what phone behavior they find acceptable.

Misconception check — "universal" means identical. Students often read "cultural universal" as "every culture does it the same way." It is tempting because "universal" sounds like "uniform." But a universal names a category found everywhere, not a single form. Every culture has a language; the languages are different.

6. Judge, or understand? Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism

Two roommates compare their families. In one family, dinner is at 6 p.m. sharp. In the other, dinner starts around 9 p.m. The first roommate says, "Eating that late is weird." The second says, "Eating at six is like eating lunch twice." Each one is measuring the other's family against their own.

That move has a name, and so does its opposite.

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture by the standards of your own culture, usually in a way that treats your own as the right or normal way.
Cultural relativism is the practice of understanding a custom by the meaning it has within its own cultural context; it is a method of study, not a moral verdict that every practice is acceptable.

Sumner popularized the word ethnocentrism in the same 1906 book that gave sociology folkways and mores.

Worked example — the dinner-hour argument, both ways. Run the roommates' argument through each approach.

The ethnocentric reading. "Our dinner hour is normal; theirs is strange." The judgment uses one family's clock as the yardstick.
The relativist reading. Ask how each household's day is arranged. When do the adults get home from work? When does homework end? What is dinner for: refueling quickly, or the main time the family talks?
What relativism adds. Each dinner hour makes sense inside its own household's schedule and meaning.
What relativism does not do. It does not declare that every practice anywhere is beyond question. It is a way of understanding first, before any judgment.

In words: ethnocentrism judges first and asks later; cultural relativism asks first.

Misconception check — "relativism means anything goes." Students often think cultural relativism means you can never say any practice is harmful. It is tempting because relativism asks you to hold back your judgment. But relativism is a method of study, not a moral rule. A sociologist uses it to understand a practice in its context. Whether that practice is right is a separate question.

7. Find the groups inside a culture: subcultures and countercultures

An illustrative esports team practices until 2 a.m. three nights a week. Its members use slang outsiders cannot follow, wear matching headsets, and hold their own rituals before a match. Yet they still go to class, hold jobs, pay rent, and follow the same laws as everyone else.

A subculture is a group within a larger culture that shares the dominant culture's main norms and values but also has distinctive norms, language, or styles of its own.

Now picture a different illustrative group: an off-grid community that refuses to use money, rejects private property, and will not take wage work. It does not add a few special habits to the dominant culture. It sets itself against that culture's central rules.

A counterculture is a group within a larger culture that actively rejects the dominant culture's norms and values and puts its own in their place.

Worked example — sorting four illustrative groups. Ask one question of each: does the group add distinctive norms, or reject the dominant ones?

A hospital night-shift crew with its own jokes and break rituals. Adds distinctive norms, keeps the main ones: subculture.
A competitive birdwatching club with its own vocabulary and early-morning outings. Adds distinctive norms: subculture.
The off-grid community that refuses money and private property. Rejects central norms: counterculture.
A fan community that dresses as its favorite characters at conventions. Adds distinctive norms: subculture.

In words: a subculture adds to the dominant culture, while a counterculture pushes against it.

Misconception check — different equals rejecting. Students often call any group that looks unusual a counterculture. It is tempting because a distinctive style catches the eye. But looking different is not the test. The test is whether the group actively rejects the dominant culture's norms. Most unusual-looking groups are subcultures.

8. Run one cultural norm through three lenses

Go back to Norm 3 from the six-norm sort: wearing the store's uniform shirt on shift. It is a small folkway with a formal sanction. Now look at it through each of Week 1's three perspectives, one sentence each, in order.

Worked example — the uniform shirt, three ways. Read the same rule at each level, in the course's fixed order.

Structural functionalism (macro). The rule does a job for the store: customers can find staff, and the shared look signals a team.
Conflict theory (macro). The rule raises the question of who writes it and whose styles it treats as the default, since the people who set the dress code are rarely the people who wear it.
Symbolic interactionism (micro). The shirt carries meaning in face-to-face moments: to a customer it says "ask me," and to the worker it may feel like pride, or like a costume.

No lens wins. Each answers a different question at its own level: the first two look at the whole organization (macro), and the third looks at the moment between two people (micro).

Pause and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Pick a custom from a group you belong to, such as a team ritual or a family holiday habit, and write one sentence about it from each perspective.
(b) Pick a dress code you have followed, at work, at school, or at an event, and say which perspective best explains why you followed it.

Misconception check — one lens is the right one. Students often decide that one perspective is correct and the other two are wrong. It is tempting because one lens may match your own experience. But the three perspectives answer different questions at different levels. The cure: name the level each lens works at, and keep all three.

For more on this week's ideas, the module's Readings & Resources page links to short articles and videos.

Key terms

Culture — The shared values, beliefs, norms, symbols, language, and material objects of a group, which its members learn and pass on. (first used: 1. Tell culture from society, and the material from the nonmaterial)
Society — The people who share a culture and interact with one another, usually within a shared territory; society is the people, while culture is what they share. (first used: 1. Tell culture from society, and the material from the nonmaterial)
Material culture — The physical objects a group makes and uses, such as tools, clothing, buildings, and phones. (first used: 1. Tell culture from society, and the material from the nonmaterial)
Nonmaterial culture — The ideas a group shares about how to live, including its values, beliefs, norms, symbols, and language. (first used: 1. Tell culture from society, and the material from the nonmaterial)
Values — A culture's shared standards of what is good, right, and desirable, such as honesty or family loyalty, which people use to judge behavior. (first used: 2. Separate values from beliefs)
Beliefs — Statements the people in a culture hold to be true, such as the conviction that hard work leads to success; unlike a value, a belief can be checked against evidence. (first used: 2. Separate values from beliefs)
Norms — The shared rules of a group for how people are expected to behave in a given situation. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Folkways — Everyday customs that carry no moral weight, such as how quickly to answer a message; breaking one draws only mild reactions. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Mores — Norms that carry moral weight, such as honesty on an exam; breaking one draws a strong reaction. The singular is mos. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Taboo — The strongest kind of prohibition in a culture, a norm so serious that even the thought of breaking it shocks people. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Sanction — A reward or a penalty that a group uses to enforce a norm. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Positive sanction — A reward for keeping a norm, such as praise, a smile, or an award. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Negative sanction — A penalty for breaking a norm, such as a frown, a warning, or a fine. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Formal sanction — A reward or penalty applied by an official body under written rules, such as a school, an employer, or a court. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Informal sanction — A reward or penalty applied by ordinary people in everyday life, such as a smile, a joke at someone's expense, or a cold shoulder. (first used: 3. Rank the norms, then ask how each is enforced)
Symbol — Anything that carries a meaning the members of a group share, such as a gesture, an emoji, a flag, or a ring. (first used: 4. Read symbols and language)
Language — A system of spoken, written, or signed symbols that the members of a culture use to communicate and to pass their culture on. (first used: 4. Read symbols and language)
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis — The proposal that the language people speak shapes how they perceive and think about the world; it is a hypothesis to be tested, not a proven law. (first used: 4. Read symbols and language)
Culture shock — The disorientation and stress people feel when they enter an unfamiliar culture and the norms they know no longer guide them. (first used: 5. Look across cultures and across time)
Cultural universal — A pattern or practice found in every known culture, such as having a language, even though its form differs from one culture to the next. (first used: 5. Look across cultures and across time)
Cultural lag — The gap that opens when material culture changes faster than the nonmaterial culture, such as the norms, around it. (first used: 5. Look across cultures and across time)
Ethnocentrism — Judging another culture by the standards of your own culture, usually in a way that treats your own as the right or normal way. (first used: 6. Judge, or understand? Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism)
Cultural relativism — The practice of understanding a custom by the meaning it has within its own cultural context; it is a method of study, not a moral verdict that every practice is acceptable. (first used: 6. Judge, or understand? Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism)
Subculture — A group within a larger culture that shares the dominant culture's main norms and values but also has distinctive norms, language, or styles of its own. (first used: 7. Find the groups inside a culture: subcultures and countercultures)
Counterculture — A group within a larger culture that actively rejects the dominant culture's norms and values and puts its own in their place. (first used: 7. Find the groups inside a culture: subcultures and countercultures)

Summary

Culture is what a group shares; society is the people who share it.
Material culture is objects; nonmaterial culture is ideas, rules, and symbols.
A value is a standard of what is good; a belief is a claim about what is true.
Folkways carry no moral weight, mores carry moral weight, and taboos are the strongest prohibitions.
Sanctions are positive or negative, and formal or informal; a written rule does not make a norm a mos.
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis proposes that language shapes perception; it is a hypothesis, not a law.
Cultural universals appear everywhere in different forms; culture shock is the disorientation of the unfamiliar; cultural lag is material change outrunning the norms.
Ethnocentrism judges by your own standards; cultural relativism understands a practice in its context first.
A subculture adds distinctive norms; a counterculture rejects the dominant ones.
The three perspectives read one custom at two macro levels and one micro level, and no lens wins.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

At an illustrative library, staff who return borrowed tablets on time get a thank-you note from the head librarian, and patrons who talk loudly in the quiet room get a sharp "shh" from other patrons. Sort each sanction as positive or negative and as formal or informal.
In an illustrative town, the share of households with an electric-car charger at home rises from 20% to 45% over six years, while the town council is still debating rules for chargers on public sidewalks. Report the change in percentage points, and say which part of the story is material culture and which is nonmaterial.
A new hire at a tech company finds that coworkers bring their dogs to the office and that nobody wears a tie. She calls the company "weird and unprofessional" on her first day. Name the concept her reaction shows, and describe what a cultural relativist would do instead.
A group of neighbors keeps chickens, swaps tools, and holds a monthly potluck, but its members still work regular jobs, pay taxes, and use money. Is this group a subculture or a counterculture? Explain with the test from Section 7.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The thank-you note is a reward, so it is positive, and it comes from the person in charge acting for the library, so it is formal: a positive, formal sanction. The "shh" is a penalty, so it is negative, and it comes from ordinary patrons, so it is informal: a negative, informal sanction. The two questions, direction and formality, are asked separately.
The change is 45 − 20 = 25 percentage points over six years. The chargers themselves are material culture; the rules for sidewalk chargers that the council is still debating are nonmaterial culture. The story fits cultural lag: the objects spread first and the norms are still catching up. The 25-point figure measures only the objects, though, so the lag in the rules is a separate observation.
Her reaction shows ethnocentrism: she is judging the company's customs by the standards of the workplaces she already knows. A cultural relativist would first ask what the customs mean inside this company, such as whether the dogs and the dress code signal a relaxed, team-centered workplace, before reaching any judgment.
It is a subculture. The test is whether the group adds distinctive norms or actively rejects the dominant ones. These neighbors add habits of their own, but they keep the central norms of money, jobs, and taxes. A counterculture would reject those norms outright.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment; next week, Cooley's looking-glass self (1902) and Mead's stages (1934) explain how we learn a culture.

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