Ch 2

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

Language, beliefs, values, norms passed from one generation to the next

Question 2

Material culture

Answer 2

Physical things
Ex. Jewelry, buildings, art

Question 3

Nonmaterial culture

Answer 3

A group’s way of thinking
Ex. Beliefs, values, language, interaction

Question 4

Culture shock

Answer 4

Disorientation when experiencing new culture

Question 5

Ethocentrism

Answer 5

• Tendency to use your own group’s ways of doing things as a yardstick for judging others
• William Sumner
• positive: in group loyalties
• negative: lead to discrimination against people whose ways differ from ours

Question 6

Cultural relativism

Answer 6

• Understand a culture on its own terms
• looking at how the elements of a culture fit together without judging those elements as superior or inferior

Question 7

Symbolic culture

Answer 7

• nonmaterial culture
• symbol: something to which people attach meaning and use to communicate
• gestures, language, norms, sanctions, folkways, mores

Question 8

Gestures

Answer 8

movements of the body to communicate

Question 9

Language

Answer 9

Symbols (words) that can be combined in an infinite number of ways for the purpose of communicating abstract thought

Question 10

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 10

Challenges common sense: language determines consciousness not objects or events

Question 11

Values

Answer 11

Ideas of what is desirable in life

Question 12

Norms

Answer 12

Expectations/ rules of behavior that develop out of a group’s values

Question 13

Sanctions

Answer 13

Reactions people receive for following or breaking norms

Question 14

Positive vs Negative sanction

Answer 14

• Approval for following a norm
  Ex. Prize, smiles, raise in work
• disapproval for breaking a norm
  Ex. Fined, stares, fired

Question 15

Folkways

Answer 15

• Norms that are not strictly enforced
• we expect people to comply but we don’t make a big deal if they don’t
  Ex. Shirtless man

Question 16

Mores

Answer 16

essential to our core values and wed insist on conformity
Ex. steals, rapes violates mores

Question 17

Taboo

Answer 17

• A norm so strongly ingrained that even the though of its violation is greeted with revulsion
• Sanctions are severe: jail, banishment
  Ex. Cannibalism

Question 18

Subcultures

Answer 18

• Groups of people who occupy some small corner of life tend to develop specialized ways to communicate with one another
• to outsiders, it can seem like a foreign language
• world within a larger world of dominant culture
  Ex. Same Job, teenagers

Question 19

Countercultures

Answer 19

When a group’s values and norms place it at odds with the dominant culture
Ex. Motorcycle enthusiasts vs motorcycle gangs

Question 20

Pluralistic society

Answer 20

• made up of different many groups
  Ex. U.S.

Question 21

Core values

Answer 21

Shared by most of the groups that make up a society
Ex. In U.S.: achievement, hard work, freedom

Question 22

Value clusters

Answer 22

Values that cluster together to form a larger whole
Ex. Success: hard work, education, comfort

Question 23

Value contradictions

Answer 23

Ex. Group superiority vs freedom in U.S.

Question 24

Culture wars

Answer 24

Clash in values between traditionalists and those advocating for change

Question 25

Ideal culture

Answer 25

Values, norms, goals that a group considered ideal, worth aiming for
Ex. Success

Question 26

Real culture

Answer 26

• falls short of the ideal
• norms and values that people actually follow

Question 27

Technology

Answer 27

• tools
• skills or procedures necessary to name and use tools
• new technology: emerging, significant impact of social life

Question 28

Cultural lag

Answer 28

• Not all parts of a culture change at the same pace
• material culture changes first and nonmaterial lags behind

Question 29

Cultural diffusion

Answer 29

• Culture adopt things they find desirable from one another
• changes in technology of material

Question 30

Cultural leveling

Answer 30

• Process in which cultures become more and more similar to one another
  Ex. Globalization of capitalism