Ch 2 Flashcards
Culture
Language, beliefs, values, norms passed from one generation to the next
Material culture
Physical things
Ex. Jewelry, buildings, art
Nonmaterial culture
A group’s way of thinking
Ex. Beliefs, values, language, interaction
Culture shock
Disorientation when experiencing new culture
Ethocentrism
- 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
Cultural relativism
- 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
Symbolic culture
- nonmaterial culture
- symbol: something to which people attach meaning and use to communicate
- gestures, language, norms, sanctions, folkways, mores
Gestures
movements of the body to communicate
Language
Symbols (words) that can be combined in an infinite number of ways for the purpose of communicating abstract thought
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Challenges common sense: language determines consciousness not objects or events
Values
Ideas of what is desirable in life
Norms
Expectations/ rules of behavior that develop out of a group’s values
Sanctions
Reactions people receive for following or breaking norms
Positive vs Negative sanction
- Approval for following a norm
Ex. Prize, smiles, raise in work - disapproval for breaking a norm
Ex. Fined, stares, fired
Folkways
- 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
Mores
essential to our core values and wed insist on conformity
Ex. steals, rapes violates mores
Taboo
- A norm so strongly ingrained that even the though of its violation is greeted with revulsion
- Sanctions are severe: jail, banishment
Ex. Cannibalism
Subcultures
- 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
Countercultures
When a group’s values and norms place it at odds with the dominant culture
Ex. Motorcycle enthusiasts vs motorcycle gangs
Pluralistic society
- made up of different many groups
Ex. U.S.
Core values
Shared by most of the groups that make up a society
Ex. In U.S.: achievement, hard work, freedom
Value clusters
Values that cluster together to form a larger whole
Ex. Success: hard work, education, comfort
Value contradictions
Ex. Group superiority vs freedom in U.S.
Culture wars
Clash in values between traditionalists and those advocating for change
Ideal culture
Values, norms, goals that a group considered ideal, worth aiming for
Ex. Success
Real culture
- falls short of the ideal
- norms and values that people actually follow
Technology
- tools
- skills or procedures necessary to name and use tools
- new technology: emerging, significant impact of social life
Cultural lag
- Not all parts of a culture change at the same pace
- material culture changes first and nonmaterial lags behind
Cultural diffusion
- Culture adopt things they find desirable from one another
- changes in technology of material
Cultural leveling
- Process in which cultures become more and more similar to one another
Ex. Globalization of capitalism
