Ch.3 Culture Flashcards
What is Culture?
The knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society.
What are materials of culture?
The physical aspects and creations that society make, use, and share.
What are the Non materials culture?
The abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behavior: language, beliefs, spirituality, values, and political systems.
Components of Culture?
-symbols
-language
-values
-norms
-laws
Symbols
Meaningful representations (flags, statues, etc..)
Language
A set symbols that express ideas and enable people to think and communicate with one another,
-kinds: verbal and nonverbal (written or gestures)
Language, Race, and Ethnicity.
Certain terms and expressions have racial and ethnic overtones that may reinforce negative associations.
Language Diversity in Canada.
Language as a keystone to culture because it is the chief vehicle for understanding and experiencing one’s culture.
Values
Collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture.
Core Canadian Values
- Equality and fairness in a democratic society
- Consultation and dialogue
- Accommodation and tolerance
- Support for diversity
- Compassion and generosity
- Canada’s natural beauty
- Canada’s world image: Commitment to freedom, peace, and nonviolent change
What are Value Contradictions?
Values that conflict with one another or are mutually exclusive.
Ideal versus Real Culture
Ideal: values and standards of behaviour that people in a society profess to hold
Real: the values and standards of behaviour that people actually follow
Norms
Established rules of behaviors or standards of conduct.
Prescriptive
What behaviour is appropriate ( IS accepted)
Proscriptive
what behavior is not appropriate (NOT accepted)
Formal
Written down as laws.
Sanctions
Rewards for appropriate behavior and punishment for inappropriate behavior.
Folkways
Those informal norms or every-day customs that may be violated with-out serious consequences within a particular culture.
Mores
Are strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may or may not be violated without serious consequences in a particular culture.
Taboo
So strong that their violation is considered to be extremely offensive.
Laws
Formal, standardized norms that have been enacted by legislatures and are enforced by formal sanctions.
Civil Laws
deals with disputes between people
Criminal Laws
deals with public safety and well-being
Cultural Lag
A gap between the technological development of a society and its moral and legal institutions
Factors of Cultural Change
Discovery, Invention and Diffusion.
Discovery
Something previously unknown or unrecognized: e.g., vaccines for diseases
Invention
Reshaping existing cultural items into a new form (the steam engine, the car, and the computer)
Diffusion
Transmission of cultural items or social practices from one culture to another.
Cultural Diversity
The wide range of cultural differences found between and within nations.
Homogeneous
One language, ethnicity, religion, and the like.
Heterogeneous
Many languages, ethnic groups, religions. (Multicultural countries)
Subcultures
A group of people who share a distinctive set of cultural beliefs and behaviors that differ in some significant ways from that of the larger society.
Countercultures
A group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles.
Cultural Shock
The disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to regard one’s own culture and group as the standard, and thus (superior).
Cultural Relativity
Behaviours and customs of any culture must be viewed and analyzed by the culture’s own standards.
High Culture
classical music, opera, ballet, live theatre
Populare Culture
Activities, products, and services that are assumed to appeal primarily to members of the middle and working class.
Cultural Imperialism
The extensive infusion of one nation’s culture into other nations.
Functionalist Perspective
Cultures function to meet people’s needs.
Conflict Perspective
Cultures function to promote the increased consumption of commodities; people come to believe they need them.
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
Simmel’s insights:
Culture can take on a life of its own and, thus, we become controlled by it, e.g., money.
