Ch3: Culture and Media

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

Sum of the social categories and concepts we embrace in addition to beliefs, behaviors (except instinctual ones), and practices. Basically, culture is everything but nature.

Question 2

Ethnocentrism

Answer 2

Belief that one’s own culture or group is superior to others and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one’s own.

Question 3

Nonmaterial Culture

Answer 3

Values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms.

Question 4

Material Culture

Answer 4

Everything that’s part of out constructed physical environment, including technology.

Question 5

Cultural Lag

Answer 5

Time gap between the appearance of a new technology and the words and practices that give it meaning.

Question 6

Culture Shock

Answer 6

Doubt, confusion, or anxiety arising from immersion in an unfamiliar culture

Question 7

Code Switch

Answer 7

Flipping fluidly between two or more languages and sets of cultural norms to fit different cultural contexts

Question 8

Ideology

Answer 8

System of concepts and relationships; an understanding of cause and effect. Ideology is nonmaterial culture in its most abstract guise

Question 9

Cultural relativism

Answer 9

Taking into account the differences across cultures without passing judgement or assigning value

Question 10

Cultural Script

Answer 10

Mode of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural

Question 11

Subculture

Answer 11

Distinct cultural values and behavioral patterns of a particular group in society; a group united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meanings specific to its members

Question 12

Values

Answer 12

Moral beliefs

Question 13

Norms

Answer 13

How values tell us to behave and are put into play

Question 14

Reflection Theory

Answer 14

Idea that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality of social structures of a society is projected

Question 15

Hegemony

Answer 15

Condition by which a dominant group uses its power to elicit the voluntary “consent” of the masses. Getting people to go along with the status quo because it seems like the best course or the natural order of things.

Question 16

Consumerism

Answer 16

The steady acquisition of material possessions, often with the belief that happiness and fulfilment can thus be achieved