3 - Culture in Context

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

• A system within which behaviours, beliefs, knowledges, practices, values, concrete materials including buildings, tools and sacred items
• People’s way of life
• Tangible and abstract (e,g, language, values) things
• Dynamic and change over time
• CUlture and its elements are contested

Question 2

Two main components of a culture

Answer 2

• Tangible components: Items/symbols that represent a culture in a concrete manner (e.g. clothing, food)
• INtangible components: Symbolic abstract elements of a culture that can only be interpreted but not concreted (e.g. language)

Question 3

Two central oppositions of culture

Answer 3

• Dominant culture vs subculture and counterculture
  OR
• High culture (culture of rich people) vs popular and mass culture

Question 4

Dominant culture

Answer 4

The culture that, through its political and economic power, is able to impose its values, language, ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour on a given society

Question 5

Minority culture

Answer 5

• Those that fall outside the cultural mainstream
• Two subcategories (counter and subcultures)

Question 6

Countercultures

Answer 6

Minority cultures that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition (e.g. hippies, bikies)

Question 7

Subcultures

Answer 7

Minority cultures that differ in some way from the dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it (e.g. groups organised around occupations or hobbies)

Question 8

Mass culture

Answer 8

• Refers to people who have little or no agency in the culture they consume (e.g. big companies dictate what people consume)
• Difference between mass and popular is that the two differ in terms of agency

Question 9

Agency

Answer 9

The ability of “the people” to be creative or productive with materials given to them by a dominant culture

Question 10

Simulacra

Answer 10

• Stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes scholars
• Feature of mass culture
• “Hyperreal”, thus likely to be considered more real than what actually exists

Question 11

Important distinction between popular and mass culture

Answer 11

Decipherment and reading

Question 12

Decipherment

Answer 12

Looking in a text for the definitive interpretation, for the purpose (conscious or unconscious) the culture industry had in mind when creating the text

Question 13

Reading

Answer 13

Process in which people treat what is provided by the culture industry as a resource, a text to be interpreted as they see fit, in ways not necessarily intended by the creators of the text

Question 14

Norms

Answer 14

• Rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of a group, society, or culture
• Norms may be contested along the lines of ethnicity, “race”, gender and age
• Expressed in culture through various means, from ceremonies that reflect cultural customs (e.g. wedding)
• Norms change over time and differ from culture to culture

Question 15

Sanctions

Answer 15

• Rewards and punishment in response to a particular behaviour
• Can be negative or positive

Question 16

Positive sanctions

Answer 16

Rewards for “doing the right thing” (smiles, high fives)

Question 17

Negative sanctions

Answer 17

Reactions designed to tell offenders they have violated a norm (glare, eye roll, ticket, fine)

Question 18

Three kinds of norms

Answer 18

• Folkways
• Mores
• Taboos

Question 19

Folkways

Answer 19

• Or etiquette
• Norms that govern day to day matters
• Shoyld not violate but are weakly sanctioned (e.g. double dipping)

Question 20

Mores

Answer 20

• More serious
• Formalised norms we must not violate and are met with serious sanctions (eg. stealing, rape)

Question 21

Taboos

Answer 21

Norms so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought or mention is enough to arouse digust (e..g incest, child porn)

Question 22

Values

Answer 22

• The standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness. beauty, and justice and to assess the behaviour of others
• Values and bheaviour are not always congruent

Question 23

Ideal culture

Answer 23

What people believe in (e.g. environmentalism)

Question 24

Actual culture

Answer 24

What really exists (driving large SUVs)

Question 25

Ethnocentrism

Answer 25

- Occurs when someone holds up one culture (usually their own), as being the standard which all cultures are to be judges - Often product of lack of knowledge or ignorance - Played a role in colonising efforts of powerful nations

Question 26

Eurocentrism

Answer 26

- Involves addressing others from a broadly defined European position to address others and assuming the audience is or would like to be part of that position

Question 27

Reverse ethnocentrism

Answer 27

Occurs when one someone accepts the superiority of other’s culture to own culture

Question 28

Cultural globalisation

Answer 28

Intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe

Question 29

Cultural relativism

Answer 29

- The ability to judge figures of the past within their own time and not by today’s standards. - Becomes problematic when studying historical practices and views that were once widespread but are now considered abhorrent and offensive such as acts of genocide against Indigenous Peoples.

Question 30

Presentism

Answer 30

Inability to judge figures of the past within their own time, instead we judge them by today’s standards.

Question 31

Sociolinguistics

Answer 31

- The study of language as part of culture - Language is key to the communication and transmission of culture - Sociolinguistics looks at language in relation to such sociological factors as “race,” ethnicity, age, gender, and region

Question 32

Dialect

Answer 32

A variety of a language that differs from others in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and gramma

Question 33

Examples of dialects in canada

Answer 33

- Canadian French - Canadian English - Indigenised Canadian English

Question 34

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

Answer 34

- Describes the relationship between language and culture - Language, words, and the meanings they generate are culture-specific, therefore language outside of its cultural context does not make sense

Question 35

Linguistic determinism

Answer 35

- Suggests that the way we view and understand the world is shaped by the language we speak - E.g. Gendered pronouns reflect and shape how we think about gender