Chapter 2: Culture Flashcards
Cultural Knowledge
Information that enables people to function in their society and contribute to the survival of the society as a whole.
cultural models
Shared assumptions that people have about the ideal culture.
norms
Set of commonly held expectations and attitudes that people have about appropriate behavior
subculture
A group whose members and others think of their way of life as different ins some significant way from that of other people in the larger society.
enculturation
process of learning one’s culture through informal observation and formal instruction.
taboo
norms specifying behaviors that are prohibited in culture.
cultural core
Practices by which people organize their work and produce food and other goods necessary for their survival.
cultural integration
tendency for people’s practices and beliefs to form a relatively coherent and consistent system
naturalized concepts
ideas and behaviors so deeply embedded in a culture that they are regarded as universally normal or natural
culture wars
internal disagreements in a society about cultural models or about how society or the world should be organized
counterculture
an alternative cultural model within a society that expresses different views about the way that society should be organized
worldview
A culture-based often ethnocentric way that people see the world and other peoples.
culture contact
Direct interaction between peoples of different culture through migration, trade, invasion, or conquest.
syncretism
Process by which a cultural product is created when people adapt a cultural item selectively borrowed from another culture to fit their existing culture
Assimilation
Process by which less numerous and less powerful cultural group changes its ways and cultural identity to blend in with the dominant culture
acculturation
process by which a group adjusts to living within a dominant culture while at the same time maintaining its original cultural identity
Cultural pluralism
condition in a stratified society in which many divers cultural groups ideally live together equally and harmoniously without losing their cultural identities and diversity.
modernization
complex cultural change, both internal and external, based on industrialism and and a transnational market economy
cultural evolution
Beliefe of early anthropologists that cultures evolve through various stages from a simpler and more primitive state to a complex and more culturally advanced state.
social darwinism
early belief that cultures compete for a survival of the fittest, as in the process of natural selection in biological evolution
culture history
ongoing culture change in which people respond and adapt to their environment
ethnogenesis
ongoing process in which people develop, define, and direct their own cultural and ethnic identities.
