Research at least two cultural customs and/or taboos of one or more cultures. Learn about their selling and buying behaviors. Then, explain the challenges in selling travel products and services because of their unique cultural customs and known taboos.

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Explanation:

Differentiate between culture and society.

Distinguish between biological and cultural explanations of human behaviour.

Compare and contrast cultural universalism, cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, and androcentrism.

Examine the policy of multiculturalism as a solution to the problem of diversity.

3.2. Elements of Culture

Understand the basic elements of culture: values, beliefs, and norms.

Explain the significance of symbols and language to a culture.

Describe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Distinguish material and nonmaterial culture.

3.3. Culture as Innovation: Pop Culture, Subculture, and Global Culture

Distinguish two modes of culture: innovation and restriction.

Discuss the distinction between high culture, pop culture, and postmodern culture.

Differentiate between subculture and counterculture.

Understand the role of globalization in cultural change and local lived experience.

3.4. Culture as Restriction: Rationalization and Commodification

Describe culture as a form of restriction on social life.

Explain the implications of rationalization and consumerism.

3.5. Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

Discuss the major theoretical approaches to cultural interpretation.

Introduction to Culture

People ordering at a fast food restaurant.

Figure 3.2. Fast food nation. (Photo courtesy of Jon Bunting/Flickr)

Are there rules for eating at McDonald’s? Generally, we do not think about rules in a fast food restaurant because they are designed to be casual, quick, and convenient. But if you look around one on a typical weekday, you will see people acting as if they were trained for the role of fast food customer. They stand in line, pick their items from overhead menus before they order, swipe debit cards to pay, and stand to one side to collect trays of food. After a quick meal, customers wad up their paper wrappers and toss them into garbage cans. This is a food system that has become highly rationalized in Max Weber’s terms. Customers’ movement through this fast food routine is orderly and predictable, even if no rules are posted and no officials direct the process.

If you want more insight into these unwritten rules, think about what would happen if you behaved according to some other standards. (You would be doing what sociologists call a “breaching experiment” in ethnomethodology: deliberately disrupting social norms in order to learn about them.) For example: call ahead for reservations; ask the cashier detailed questions about the food’s ingredients or how it is prepared; barter over the price of the burgers; ask to have your meal served to you at your table; or throw your trash on the ground as you leave. Chances are you will elicit hostile responses from the restaurant employees and your fellow customers. Although the rules are not written down, you will have violated deep seated tacit norms that govern behaviour in fast food restaurants.

This example reflects a broader theme in the culture of food and diet. What are the rules that govern what, when, and how we eat? Michael Pollan (b. 1955), for example, contrasts the North American culture of fast food with the intact traditions of eating sit-down, family meals that still dominate in France and other European nations (2006). Despite eating foods that many North Americans think of as unhealthy — butter, wheat, triple-cream cheese, foie gras, wine, etc. — the French, as a whole, remain healthier and thinner than North Americans.

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