Talk:Cultural system

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 August 2018 and 4 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Awiggin8. Peer reviewers: Awiggin8.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Retain article stub

Please do not delete. This is an important macro-sociological concept. Wikipedia does not have an article on social system or sociocultural system -- both are redirects. This stub (or all three of the other broad system concepts) needs to be developed. --Reswik 19:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it would be best to merge and redirect to Culture until the article is ready to come into it's own. Note that when this page was built 08:38, 18 September 2004 Piotrus (Talk | contribs) (redirect entry) it was a redirect to Culture. Then 23:36, 28 July 2005 202.141.97.114 (Talk) it became essentially the stub it is now and has not changed significantly in a year and half. This article as is currently stands is nothing more then a dictionary entry see WP:NOT#DICT, Also I notice that Wiktionary does not have the entry so you may also want to transwiki this. Jeepday 02:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The article needs content added. Did you notice the quotes I included below about the nature of cultural system? I will be doing work on some sociology articles over the next few weeks and months that relate to this topic. I will expand the stub here. --Reswik 03:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion, redirect to Culture, that will protect the article from an WP:AFD, you can work on the body of the article here on the talk page while it is redirected. When it's ready change the redirect to the new text. Does that work for you? That way if someone else comes along to write on the subject it will be here for them also. Jeepday 04:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I found time to start the article. I'll keep your suggestion in mind for other very short but important stubs. Thx, Reswik 03:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this article stub needs some work by an anthropologist. Culture is properly their field of study, right? Cheers Linneasr 16:57, 23 February 2019 (EST)

References

Here are some references that could be a basis for starting to expand this stub. --Reswik 19:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Burrowes, Carl Patrick. 1996. From Functionalism to Cultural Studies: Manifest Ruptures and Latent Continuities Communication Theory 6 (1), 88–103. A quote from the text at the publisher's website:

"Functionalism practically disappeared as an explicit tradition in communications due to the radical theoretical realignments of the 1980s. Three criticisms proved decisive to this undoing; political conservatism; problems of logic, mainly tautology and an inappropriate appeal to teleological explanations; and a tendency to impose psychological and sociological analyses on specifically cultural materials. Formulated in reference to systemic Parsonian functionalism, which dominated the broader social sciences, these criticisms are relatively easy to reconcile within the contextual, actionist Mertonian tradition, which took root in the communications context, but only through a constructive dialogue with the cultural studies and cultural indicators approaches, both of which have spent the last decade investigating a traditionally functionalist concern – the hypothesis of cultural systems integration. If functionalism offers to this cross-fertilization a focus on the normative orders of society, the cultural indicators approach provides a rigorous methodology and cultural studies cautions a greater sensitivity to social hierarchies." (source: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1996.tb00121.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=comt)

Geertz, Clifford. 1966. "Religion as a Cultural System," in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion , ed. M. Banton. New York: Praeger: 1-46.

Ritzer, George and Douglas J. Goodman. 2004. "Structural Functionalism, Neofunctionalism, and Conflict Theory," in Sociological Theory, sixth edition. McGraw-Hill. A quote from the text at the publisher's website:

"Talcott Parsons

The single greatest contributor, and practitioner, of structural functionalism was Talcott Parsons (1902-1979). The heart of Parsons's theory is built on the four functional imperatives, also known as the AGIL system:

1. The adaptive function, whereby a system adapts to its environment.

2. The goal-attainment function, i.e., how a system defines and achieves its goals.

3. The integrative function, or the regulation of the components of the system.

4. Latency, or pattern maintenance function, i.e., how motivation and the dimensions of culture that create and sustain motivation are stimulated.

Complementing this are four action systems, each of which serve a functional imperative: the behavioral organism performs the adaptive function; the personality system performs goal attainment; the social system performs the integrative function; and the cultural system performs pattern maintenance. Parsons saw these action systems acting at different levels of analysis, starting with the behavioral organism and building to the cultural system. He saw these levels hierarchically, with each of the lower levels providing the impetus for the higher levels, with the higher levels controlling the lower levels." (online: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072817186/student_view0/chapter7/chapter_summary.html)

Rough draft of article

The article just posted is a short very rough draft that needs much work. The article is currently a very dry conceptual introduction. The article, at least, needs: academic language and concepts toned down, a few practical examples, historical context, discussion of more major approaches to these basic aspects of social theory, and more discussion of the importance and use of these theories. --Reswik 03:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Probably to add to article, or summarize from other articles, sub-sections on takes on cultural and social structures in:

• structuralism
• gentetic structuralism of Pierre Bourdieu
• structuration theory of Anthony Giddens
• post-structuralism of Michel Foucault

And, add brief overviews of examples/cases from social science literature of systems analyzed and described -- pointing to articles that go (eventually) into more detail about key specific studies. --Reswik 14:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)