BharatNotes Why this chapter matters for UPSC: GS1 asks how globalisation affects India's cultural diversity, whether it homogenises culture, how traditional values persist while society changes, and how screens are changing the way children are socialised. NCERT's chapter supplies the frame for all of these: culture as a learned and changing common understanding, its three dimensions (cognitive, normative and material), the lag between material and non-material change, ethnocentrism set against cosmopolitanism, and socialisation as a lifelong process that shapes people without robbing them of freedom. The chapter is unchanged in the 2026-27 reprint (word-for-word the 2021-22 text). This page teaches the whole chapter and adds the original sources for two of its terms, ethnocentrism and culture lag.
🧠 First Principles — Read This First
Culture is a map for behaving in society. Just as you need a map to cross unknown territory, NCERT says, "you need culture to conduct or behave yourself in society". Culture is "the common understanding, which is learnt and developed through social interaction with others in society". It marks a group off from others and gives it an identity. And cultures "are never finished products": elements are constantly added, deleted, expanded, shrunk and rearranged, which makes them dynamic. The capacity to develop a common understanding and draw the same meanings from signs and symbols is what distinguishes humans from other animals.
Cultures differ, but they cannot be ranked. People in different natural and social settings (mountains and plains, forests and deserts, villages and cities) adapt different strategies, which produces diverse ways of life. NCERT's example is the tsunami of 26 December 2004. On the mainland and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, fisherfolk and service personnel integrated into modern life were caught unaware and suffered large-scale devastation. The island communities NCERT calls "primitive", the Onges, Jarawas, Great Andamanese and Shompens, foresaw the calamity from experiential knowledge and moved to higher ground. Access to modern science and technology does not make a culture superior: "cultures cannot be ranked but can be judged adequate or inadequate in terms of their ability to cope with the strains imposed by nature."
Socialisation makes us, and makes us free. Without socialisation an infant would not behave like a human being, yet socialisation is not "cultural programming". Agencies of socialisation pull in different directions, and the self that socialisation builds is also the source of individuality and independent thought.
PART 1 — Quick Reference
Definitions of Culture (as NCERT gives them)
| Who | Definition or idea | What it stresses |
|---|---|---|
| Edward Tylor (British, 1871) | "Culture or civilisation taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" | Mostly non-material, intangible dimensions (Tylor was a museum curator who studied artefacts) |
| Bronislaw Malinowski (Poland, 1884-1942; founder of the "functional school") | "Culture comprises inherited artifacts, goods, technical process, ideas, habits and values" (1931) | Adds material artefacts and technical processes |
| Clifford Geertz (1973) | "Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs" | Interpretation, the search for meaning, not causal explanation |
| Leslie White | Culture adds meaning to objective reality, as when water from a particular source is regarded as holy | Meaning |
| Kroeber and Kluckhohn (US, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, 1952) | Surveyed many definitions: a way of thinking, feeling, believing; the total way of life; an abstraction from behaviour; learned behaviour; a storehouse of pooled learning; a social legacy; standardised orientations to recurrent problems; a mechanism for the normative regulation of behaviour | Shifts of emphasis: mental ways vs total way of life; what is shared and passed on; culture as directing behaviour |
Three Dimensions of Culture
| Dimension | NCERT's meaning | NCERT's examples |
|---|---|---|
| Cognitive | How we learn to process what we hear or see so as to give it meaning | Recognising the ring of one's own cell phone; recognising a politician's cartoon |
| Normative | Rules of conduct: folkways, mores, customs, conventions and laws | Not opening other people's letters; performing rituals at death |
| Material | Any activity made possible by materials, tools or machines | Internet chatting; rice-flour paste for kolam designs |
Cognitive and normative aspects are non-material; NCERT calls material and non-material the "two principal dimensions". When material or technological change runs ahead, the non-material lags behind in values and norms: culture lag.
Agencies of Socialisation
| Agency | What NCERT says |
|---|---|
| Family | Experiences differ by family system (nuclear: parents key; extended: grandparents, an uncle or a cousin may matter more) and by the family's region and class; few children take over their parents' outlook unquestioningly |
| Peer group | Friendship groups of children of similar age, formalised as age-grades in some small traditional societies; reasonably egalitarian, rules can be tested; peer relationships often remain important throughout life |
| School | A formal organisation with a definite curriculum, but also a "hidden curriculum": girls, rarely boys, expected to sweep the classroom |
| Mass media | Print (19th century "conduct-books" for women), television, and now internet-based digital media; can make information more democratic; its effects (e.g. on-screen violence and aggression) are debated, its reach is certain |
| Other agencies | Work (people "go out to work" only in industrial societies), neighbourhood, occupational group, social class or caste, region, religion |
PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative
Culture in Everyday Speech and in Sociology
In everyday conversation "culture" is confined to the arts or to the way of life of certain classes or countries, and it is often used for a refined taste in classical music, dance or painting that supposedly marks people off from the "uncultured" masses. Sociologists and anthropologists instead study the social contexts in which culture exists and take it apart to understand the relations between its aspects. For the sociologist culture is "not as something that distinguishes individuals, but as a way of life in which all members of society participate", and every social organisation develops a culture of its own. Culture is learnt in the company of others, in families, groups and communities: the use of tools and techniques as well as non-material signs and symbols. NCERT's Bangalore example shows how much of it is unspoken: a commuter asks an auto-driver "Indiranagar?", the question "Will you come?" carried by the arch of an eyebrow, and the driver answers with a jerk of the head towards the back seat, or a grimace, or a smiling shake of the head.
Learning culture also prepares us for our roles and responsibilities. What we learn in the family is primary socialisation; what happens in school and other institutions is secondary socialisation.
Defining Culture
NCERT compares definitions to show how the concept was built (see the table in Part 1). Tylor's list is, apart from art, entirely non-material; Malinowski's adds artefacts, goods and technical processes. Tylor's definition reflects an attempt to capture the intangible dimensions of societies whose artefacts he examined but never visited. Malinowski, stranded on an island in the Western Pacific during the First World War, discovered the value of staying for an extended period with the society one studies, which established the tradition of fieldwork (chapter 5). Geertz asks us to read human actions like words in a book, as conveying a message, and seeks an interpretative rather than a causal explanation. Kroeber and Kluckhohn's 1952 survey shows the recurring words ("way", "learn", "behaviour") and the shifts of emphasis between them.
The Cognitive Dimension
The cognitive aspects of one's own culture are harder to recognise than its material aspects (tangible, visible or audible) or its normative ones (explicitly stated). Cognition is how we make sense of the information coming to us. Literate societies transcribe ideas in books and preserve them in libraries and archives; in non-literate societies lore is committed to memory and transmitted orally by specialist practitioners who narrate it on ritual or festive occasions. Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy cites a 1971 study that only 78 of about 3,000 existing languages possess a literature, and suggests that unwritten material repeats words so they are easier to remember, that the audience of an oral performance is more involved than readers of an unfamiliar written text, and that texts become more elaborate when written.
In societies like India, literacy was historically available only to the privileged. Sociologists ask how literacy can be made relevant to people whose families have never been to school, which can produce unexpected responses, like the vegetable-seller who asked why he needed the alphabet when he could mentally calculate what his customers owed. Students of Indian classical music are still discouraged from writing down what they learn, and NCERT asks whether electronic media, multiple channels and constant surfing are changing our attention span and cognitive culture.
The Normative Dimension
The normative dimension consists of folkways, mores, customs, conventions and laws: the values or rules that guide behaviour in different contexts. We follow social norms mostly because we are used to them, through socialisation, and all norms are accompanied by sanctions that promote conformity (chapter 2).
Norms and laws. Norms are implicit rules; laws are explicit. A law is "a formal sanction defined by government as a rule or principle that its citizens must follow", applicable to the whole society, with penalties for violation. A family rule that children must be indoors after sundown is a norm, specific to that family; stealing a gold necklace violates "the universally accepted law of private property" and can lead to jail after trial. Laws derive from the authority of the State and are the most formal definitions of acceptable behaviour; unlike laws, "norms can vary according to status", and dominant sections apply dominant norms that are often discriminating, such as norms that barred Dalits from drinking water from the same vessel or even the same source, or that kept women from moving freely in public. Pierre Bourdieu reminds us that understanding another culture's norms means grasping implicit understandings: a person who wants to show gratitude for a gift should not give a return gift too quickly, or it looks like an attempt to get rid of a debt rather than a friendly gesture.
The Material Dimension and Culture Lag
The material aspect refers to tools, technologies, machines, buildings, modes of transport and instruments of production and communication: mobile phones, cars, ATMs, refrigerators and computers in cities, transistor radios and electric motor pumps for irrigation in villages. NCERT sums up: there are two principal dimensions of culture, material and non-material, the cognitive and normative being non-material. For a culture to function as a whole they must work together, but when the material or technological dimension changes rapidly, the non-material can lag behind in values and norms, giving rise to culture lag, when "the non-material dimensions are unable to match the advances of technology".
Where "culture lag" comes from. NCERT uses the term without naming its author. It is W.F. Ogburn's: in Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature (1922), a chapter titled "The Hypothesis of Cultural Lag" argues that changes in material culture force changes in other parts of culture, which "do not change as quickly" and "lag behind the material-culture changes", producing a period of maladjustment. His test case was the slow adaptation of law to industrial accidents (workmen's compensation). The term ethnocentrism, used later in this chapter, also predates NCERT by a century: W.G. Sumner, Folkways (1906), called it "the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it".
Culture and Identity
Identities "are not inherited but fashioned both by the individual and the group through their relationship with others". For an individual, the roles he or she plays give identity, and every person in modern society plays many. Roles must also be recognised and acknowledged, often through a language shared among role players: students have their own ways of referring to teachers, classmates and performances, a code that creates their own world of meanings; women in rural areas bathing at the pond, or in cities across washing lines on rooftops, create their own language and through it a private space beyond men's control.
A culture contains many sub-cultures, such as those of elite and working-class youth, "marked by style, taste and association" and identifiable by speech, dress codes, music and the way members interact. Sub-cultural groups can function as cohesive units that give members an identity: young people of a neighbourhood forming a club for sports and constructive activities gain a positive image in the locality, a positive self-image, and an identity recognised by the neighbourhood. NCERT's glossary adds that a sub-culture marks a group within a larger culture who "borrow from and often distort, exaggerate or invert the symbols, values and beliefs of the larger culture to distinguish themselves".
Ethnocentrism and Cosmopolitanism
"It is only when cultures come into contact with one another that the question of ethnocentrism arises." Ethnocentrism is "the application of one's own cultural values in evaluating the behaviour and beliefs of people from other cultures": one's own values are projected as the standard and considered superior. NCERT reminds us that sociology is an empirical, not a normative, discipline. Ethnocentric comparison rests on a sense of cultural superiority, clearly seen in colonial situations. Its classic example is Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute on Education (1835) to the East India Company: "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, morals and intellect."
Cosmopolitanism is ethnocentrism's opposite: an outlook that "values other cultures for their difference", does not judge others' values by one's own, celebrates and accommodates different cultural propensities, and promotes exchange and borrowing to enrich one's own culture. NCERT's examples are the English language, a leading vehicle of international communication through its constant inclusion of foreign words, and Hindi film music, popular for its borrowings from Western pop as well as Indian folk and semi-classical forms such as bhangra and ghazal. Such influences are absorbed in a distinctive way: English does not become a different language, nor does Hindi film music lose its character. NCERT's box on Hinglish lists words such as airdash, prepone, stepney, time-pass and the new verb "Bangalored" (said of those whose jobs are outsourced to India). A modern society appreciates cultural difference and does not close its doors to influences from abroad, and "in a global world where modern means of communication are shrinking distances between cultures, a cosmopolitan outlook allows diverse influences to enrich one's own culture."
Cultural Change
Cultural change is "the way in which societies change their patterns of culture". The impetus can be internal, such as new farming methods that raise production and transform food consumption and the quality of life of an agrarian community, or external, such as conquest or colonisation, which can bring deep changes in cultural practices and behaviour. Change can come through changes in the natural environment, contact with other cultures, or processes of adaptation. Ecological change can drastically alter a way of life: when forest-dwelling communities lose access to the forest and its produce through legal restrictions or the forest's decimation, the effects are disastrous, and NCERT names tribal communities in North East India and middle India as the worst affected by the loss of forest resources.
Besides evolutionary change there can be revolutionary change, when a culture is transformed rapidly and its values and meaning systems change radically, initiated by political intervention, technological innovation or ecological transformation. The French Revolution (1789) transformed French society by destroying the estate system of ranking, abolishing the monarchy and inculcating liberty, equality and fraternity. NCERT closes the section by asking whether the recent expansion of electronic and print media has brought about evolutionary or revolutionary change.
Socialisation
At birth the human infant knows nothing of society or social behaviour, yet as she or he grows up the child learns not only about the physical world but what it means to be a good or bad girl or boy, and which behaviour is applauded or disapproved.
Socialisation. NCERT defines it as "the process whereby the helpless infant gradually becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which s/he is born". Without socialisation an individual would not behave like a human being: NCERT recalls the "Wolf-children of Midnapore", two small girls reportedly found in a wolf den in Bengal in 1920, who walked on all fours, preferred raw meat, howled like wolves and had no speech. Socialisation is lifelong: the most critical process happens in the early years (primary socialisation), while secondary socialisation extends over the whole of life. The birth of a child also re-socialises those who bring it up: parents, grandparents and older siblings all enter new relationships. And it is not "cultural programming" in which the child passively absorbs influences; even a newborn asserts her or his will, crying when hungry until carers respond, and whole family schedules are reorganised around the infant.
A child is first a member of a family, but also of a larger kin group (biradari, khaandaan, clan) and of a larger society: a tribe or sub-caste, a religious and linguistic group. Each membership imposes behavioural norms and values and has corresponding roles (son, daughter, grandchild, student) performed simultaneously. Norms and values differ between families of different castes, regions, classes and religions, between village and city, and between tribes; even the language one speaks, and whether it is closer to a spoken dialect or a standardised written form, depends on the region and on the family's socio-economic and cultural profile.
Agencies of Socialisation
Family. Family systems vary widely, so infants' experiences are not standard across cultures (see the table in Part 1). In most traditional societies the family one is born into largely determines one's social position for life, and even where position is not inherited, the region and class of the family sharply affect patterns of socialisation. Yet few children simply take over their parents' outlook, especially in a world of pervasive change, and the very diversity of socialising agencies produces differences between the outlooks of children, adolescents and their parents. NCERT's activity asks how the child of a domestic worker would feel different from the child of the family her mother works for, and what they might share.
Peer groups. Peer groups are friendship groups of children of a similar age; in some small traditional societies they are formalised as age-grades. From four or five, children spend much time with friends of the same age. "Peer" means equal, and relations among young children tend to be reasonably egalitarian, with more give and take than the dependence of the family, so in peer groups "rules of behaviour can be tested out and explored". Peer relationships often stay important throughout life, at work and elsewhere.
Schools. Schooling is a formal organisation with a definite set of subjects, but alongside the formal curriculum there is what some sociologists call a hidden curriculum. NCERT's example: in schools in India and elsewhere girls, but rarely boys, are expected to sweep the classroom, while some schools counter this by giving boys and girls tasks not normally expected of them.
Mass media. Mass media has become an essential part of everyday life. Even in 19th century India, print "conduct-books" instructing women to be better housekeepers and more attentive wives were popular in many languages. Media can make access to information more democratic, reaching villages without roads or literacy centres. A British study found children spend the equivalent of almost a hundred school days a year watching television, with adults not far behind; the link between on-screen violence and children's aggression is still debated, and NCERT's box recalls children imitating the Shaktimaan serial with fatal results. What is certain is the extent of media influence: Indian serials and films have large audiences in Nigeria, Afghanistan and among Tibetan émigrés, and the televised Mahabharat was dubbed in Tashkent and watched, undubbed, by English-speaking children in London. Non-print digital media on the internet now receives considerable attention, particularly in cities.
Other agencies. Work is an important setting of socialisation in all cultures, though only in industrial societies do large numbers "go out to work" to places separate from home; in traditional communities many tilled land close to home or had workshops in their dwellings.
Socialisation and Individual Freedom
Socialisation in normal circumstances can never completely reduce people to conformity. There are conflicts between socialising agencies: school and home, home and peer group. Since our cultural settings influence our behaviour so much, it might seem we are robbed of individuality and free will. NCERT calls this view "fundamentally mistaken". Lifelong interaction with others conditions our personalities, values and behaviour, "yet socialisation is also at the origin of our very individuality and freedom", because in its course each of us develops a sense of self-identity and the capacity for independent thought and action.
How Gendered Is Socialisation?
Krishna Kumar's "Growing up Male" (1986), quoted by NCERT, shows the street as a gendered space: boys used it to stand around, run, play and try out their bikes, while for girls it was "simply a means to get straight home from school", walked in clusters "perhaps because behind their purposeful demeanour they carried the worst fears of being assaulted". NCERT's closing extract, from Gita Krishnakutty's story The Bell, gathers the chapter's concepts: a girl from "that horrid English school" insists on ringing the temple bell that only the priest's daughter Thangam may touch ("we are equal in the eyes of god"), endures the oiling and tight knotting of her hair, resents being escorted when in town she walks to school alone, rings the bell anyway, and is punished by "tight-lipped silence" and the absence of her favourite tiny pappadams at dinner. The activity asks students to find in it the individual and society, normative differences between town and village, ascribed status, conflict between socialising agencies, gendered socialisation and informal sanctions.
PART 3 — UPSC Integration
Cross-paper relevance
- GS1 (Indian Society): globalisation and cultural diversity; homogenisation vs specificity; continuity of traditional values amid change; socialisation of children in the age of screens; gendered socialisation.
- GS1 (Modern History): Macaulay's Minute (1835) and colonial education as ethnocentrism.
- GS4 (Ethics): the family, school and peer group as agencies of value formation; norms vs laws; prejudice and ethnocentrism.
- Essay: themes on culture and identity, tradition and modernity, technology and values (culture lag).
Using the Concepts in an Answer
| Question theme | Concepts to use | NCERT anchor |
|---|---|---|
| Does globalisation homogenise culture? | Cosmopolitanism, distinctive absorption, sub-cultures | English and Hindi film music borrow without losing their character; Hinglish |
| Technology and social values | Material vs non-material culture, culture lag | Non-material dimensions unable to match technology |
| Screens and children | Agencies of socialisation, mass media, peer groups | TV equal to almost 100 school days a year; Shaktimaan imitation; debated effects, certain reach |
| Are tribal cultures "backward"? | Cultures cannot be ranked; adequacy in coping | Andaman communities and the 2004 tsunami |
| Colonial cultural policy | Ethnocentrism | Macaulay's Minute (1835) |
| Gender norms | Gendered socialisation, hidden curriculum, informal sanctions | Kumar 1986; girls sweeping classrooms; The Bell |
| Tradition and change | Internal and external change; evolutionary and revolutionary change | New farming methods; colonisation; French Revolution; loss of forest access |
Exam Strategy
For Prelims: match definitions to authors (Tylor 1871 "complex whole"; Malinowski "inherited artifacts... values", founder of the functional school; Geertz "webs of significance" 1973; Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952), and terms to their classic sources (Sumner's definition of ethnocentrism, 1906; Ogburn's cultural lag, 1922). Know NCERT's three dimensions and their examples, the list of normative elements (folkways, mores, customs, conventions, laws), and the agencies of socialisation.
For Mains: NCERT's exercises ask how the social-science idea of culture differs from everyday use, how the dimensions form a whole, whether it is hard not to be ethnocentric, two approaches to cultural change, whether cosmopolitanism belongs with modernity, and which agency of socialisation matters most for your generation. Use NCERT's examples rather than generic ones: the tsunami, Macaulay, Hinglish, the hidden curriculum, The Bell.
Avoid: equating culture with "high culture"; ranking cultures; treating socialisation as one-way programming; presenting ethnocentrism's opposite as anything other than NCERT's cosmopolitanism.
Practice Questions
Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Mains items 1 to 6 are NCERT's own exercises.
Prelims:
Which one of the following is an example of the cognitive dimension of culture as given by NCERT?
(a) Not opening other people's letters (b) Recognising the cartoon of a politician (c) Using rice-flour paste to draw a kolam (d) Performing rituals at death"Culture or civilisation taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom..." This definition was given by:
(a) Bronislaw Malinowski (b) Clifford Geertz (c) Edward Tylor (d) Alfred KroeberA situation in which the non-material dimensions of culture are unable to match the advances of technology is called:
(a) ethnocentrism (b) culture lag (c) cosmopolitanism (d) acculturationIn NCERT's account, the opposite of ethnocentrism is:
(a) cosmopolitanism (b) cultural lag (c) secularism (d) assimilationConsider the following statements about socialisation according to NCERT:
- Secondary socialisation extends over the entire life of a person.
- Socialisation is a form of cultural programming in which the child absorbs influences passively.
- Socialisation is at the origin of individuality and freedom.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only (b) 1 and 3 only (c) 2 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3
- Secondary socialisation extends over the entire life of a person.
"Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything." This definition comes from:
(a) Macaulay's Minute on Education (b) W.G. Sumner's Folkways (c) Tylor's Primitive Culture (d) Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures
Answers: 1 (b); 2 (c); 3 (b); 4 (a); 5 (b), since NCERT says socialisation is not cultural programming; 6 (b).
Mains:
- How does the understanding of culture in social science differ from the everyday use of the word "culture"? (150 words)
- How can we demonstrate that the different dimensions of culture comprise a whole? (150 words)
- Compare two cultures with which you are familiar. Is it difficult not to be ethnocentric? (150 words)
- Discuss two different approaches to studying cultural change. (150 words)
- Is cosmopolitanism something you associate with modernity? Observe and give examples of ethnocentrism. (250 words)
- What in your mind is the most effective agent of socialisation for your generation? How was it different before? (250 words)
📦 Revision Capsule
Hard Facts
- Tylor 1871 ("complex whole"); Malinowski (Poland, 1884-1942) 1931; Geertz 1973 ("webs of significance"); Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952
- Three dimensions: cognitive, normative, material; two principal dimensions: material and non-material
- Normative elements: folkways, mores, customs, conventions, laws
- Ong: only 78 of about 3,000 languages have a literature (a 1971 study)
- Macaulay's Minute on Education, 1835: "Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes"
- Tsunami of 26 December 2004: Onges, Jarawas, Great Andamanese, Shompens moved to higher ground
- Wolf-children of Midnapore, 1920; French Revolution 1789 as revolutionary cultural change
- Ethnocentrism: Sumner, Folkways (1906); cultural lag: Ogburn (1922)
Core Concepts
- Culture is learnt, shared, changing; never a finished product
- Cultures cannot be ranked, only judged adequate or inadequate in coping
- Norms implicit, laws explicit; norms vary by status and can discriminate
- Culture lag when the material outruns the non-material
- Sub-cultures marked by style, taste and association
- Ethnocentrism vs cosmopolitanism
- Socialisation lifelong, not programming; source of freedom; gendered
Confused Pairs
- Primary socialisation (family, early years) vs secondary socialisation (school and beyond, lifelong)
- Norm (implicit, varies by status) vs law (explicit, applies to all accepting the State)
- Ethnocentrism vs cosmopolitanism
- Evolutionary vs revolutionary cultural change; internal vs external impetus
- Tylor (non-material complex whole) vs Malinowski (adds artefacts and technical process)
PYQ Pattern
- Mains GS1 has asked how globalisation affects cultural diversity and whether it homogenises culture, whether pluralism is under threat, how Indian society keeps traditional values while changing, and how mobile phones replacing child cuddling affect socialisation: the chapter's cosmopolitanism, cultural change and agencies-of-socialisation sections frame each.
Sources
- NCERT, Introducing Sociology (Class XI), ch. 4 "Culture and Socialisation", Reprint 2026-27: ncert.nic.in PDF; 2021-22 print in the book archive, Wayback copy (the texts are identical).
- William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston: Ginn, 1906), section 15 "Ethnocentrism": Project Gutenberg #24253.
- William F. Ogburn, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1922), Part IV ch. 1 "The Hypothesis of Cultural Lag": Internet Archive.
