chapter 2 Flashcards
what is culture
- rules standards and norms shared by members of society.
- Everything that people have, think, and do as members of a society.
what is society
a group of people who occupy a specific locality, share common cultural traditions, and cooperate for their mutual survival
What are the characteristics of culture?
- based on symbols
- Adaptive
- Shard
- Integrated
- Learned
- Change
Culture is shared:
- Shared set of ideas, values, and standards of behavior
- allows predictablity Predictablity
- Predictablity is possible because members of a society exposed to similar cultural conditioning
- does not mean determed, rather influenced
Subculture
A group which exists within a larger society that has its own, distinctive set of standards
Pluralistic society
A society where subcultural variation is especially marked
Enculturation
The process by which human infants learn their culture. It is how culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.
Sources of cultural change
- Innovations
- Diffusion
- Forced change
What kind of assumption is this?
Anthropologist at one timed assumed that Mayas out in the jungle, were different than the other indians of the area because of how they produced a surplus to support large populations.
Culture based assumption
Tabula Rasa
A blank slate, a term introduced by the English Philospher John Locke as a metaphor for the human mind at birth, the belief of Locke and the other British empiricists being that nothing is innate in the mind and that all knowledge comes through the senses.
Sources of Cultrual Variation
- Biological differences
- personal hisotories
- class
- gender
- occupation
- subcultural variation (Highly pluralistic society)
Adaptation
Process by which organisims achieve a beneficial adjustment to their environments
What is Integration and give example?
The mutual effect of the interaction of two or more parts of a larger system
What is symbol
Something, either vebal or nonverbal, that stands for something else
Culture is based on symbols
- Allows us to sharte complex ideas with others
- Allows us to transmit large quantities of information to the next generation
- Most powerful form of symbols is language
What are the Cultural universals ?
- Subsistence strategies
- economic systems
- Marriage and family
- Education systems
- Social control and political systems
- Systems of supernatural beliefs
- Communication systems
Cultural Relativism
The idea that cultural traits are best undrestood when viewd within the cultural context of which they are part.
Emic
A perspective in ethnography that uses the concepts and categories that are relevant and meaningful to the culture under analysis
Etic
A perspective in ethnography that uses the concepts and categories of the anthropologist culture to describe another culture
Innovation
Change within society that causes of cultural change
Diffusion
Series of mechanisims that come from outside sources
Forced change
Smaller culture in contact with larger culture then forced to do new culture
Examples of cultural intergration
Marriage, economics, religion, mythology
Whats the most powerful symbol in culture?
Language
Three verbs that Ferraro defines Culture:
- Have
- Think
- Do
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Ferraro Cultural universals
- Economic system
- marriage and family
- social control system
- supernatural beliefs
- communications
Future shock
psychological disorientation resulting from living in a cultural envronment that is changing so rapidly that people feel they are constantly living in the future
