Culture functions as a control mechanism governing behavior through approval

Evidence

This tight relationship between conventions, social approval, and status supports the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s description of culture as “best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns—customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters” but instead as “a set of control mechanisms—plans, recipes, rules, instructions—for the governing of behavior.” Conventions create habits and patterns of behavior through carrots of social approval and sticks of social disapproval. Since culture is based on arbitrary behaviors, individuals could always wander aimlessly from practice to practice. Conventions, whether conscious or internalized, explain why people instead cluster around the same patterns. And status is intertwined in the entire process. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 141

Categorization

• DEFINE: Presents Geertz’s definition of culture as a set of control mechanisms, with the causal machinery (approval and disapproval) spelled out.
• XREF: connects to: Self-regulation, not fairness alone, enables prosocial culture. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 250; Culture functions as a precaution against thought’s chaotic journey — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 83; Judging intentions is a culturally specific instrument of social control — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 264 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Judging intentions is a culturally specific instrument of social control #exemplifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 264
• Self-regulation, not fairness alone, enables prosocial culture. #qualifies (0.78) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 250
• Effective community norms constrain behavior and suppress beneficial innovation #exemplifies (0.78) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 110
• Cultures breed aggression where it is modeled, prestiged, and functionally rewarded #expands (0.77) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 162
• Mass culture structures itself as allowed, forbidden, and deflected gratifications #qualifies (0.76)
• Culture operates as a constitutive force in politics and social change #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 159
• Culture functions as a precaution against thought’s chaotic journey #expands (0.74) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 83
• The Western model of intentional agency is culturally specific #expands (0.73)
• A logic of domination justifies ruling nature via culture-nature hierarchy. #expands (0.72) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 511
• Collective cultural phenomena can be explained as the aggregate of individuals’ self-interested status behavior #complicates (0.71) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 34