Chapter 2 - Culture & Cultural Change Flashcards
What is a society?
Group of people who live in a certain place and who share a culture
What is culture?
Shared system of values and practices about how to live in that group
also WEBS OF SIGNIFICANCE
Subject to ongoing change and increasingly global
What is culture shock?
Personal disorientation that accompanies exposure to an unfamiliar way of life
Who viewed culture as a creative force?
Casey
What is the semiotic problem of culture?
The question of how to create and share meaning with others
What is sociobiology?
Biological imperatives drive the formation of culture. Behaviour is biologically determined and supports biological discrimination based on gender, race, medical conditions
What is the sociological approach to culture?
Avoids purely biological explanations of human behaviour and is concerned with the way behaviour is shaped by culture and how these change
What are the common components of culture?
1) values
2) beliefs
3) behaviours
4) material objects
What are the elements of culture? Describe them
1) material elements
- things (tangible things created by members of society)
2) immaterial elements
- signs (intangible world of ideas created by members of a society)
What did Durkheim believe about culture?
Plays an important role in solidarity
What is mechanical solidarity?
Form of social organization based in small communities held together by strong collective consciousness
What is organic solidarity?
Occurs in large-scale groups like cities, where sharing meaning and values is more difficult (happens naturally)
What are artifacts?
Things we can actually touch
What do cultural evolutionists believe?
Greater the complexity of artifacts, the high the cultural superiority
What are symbols?
Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture
- may have physical forms or be immaterial
What are components of culture?
1) language
2) values
3) beliefs
4) norms and values
What is language as a component of culture?
System of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another
- may take many forms
What are values as components of culture?
Culturally defined standards by which people asses desirability, goodness, and beauty and that serve as broad guidelines for social living (American Constitution)
What are beliefs?
Statements that people hold to be true (Articles of Faith)
What are norms?
Rules and expectations by which society guides the behaviour of its members
What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
Holds that people perceive the world through the cultural lens of their language
What did Martineau believe?
Gap between ideal and real culture (life as it should be and as it is)
- values closely related to norms
What is Mores?
Norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance
What are Folkways?
Informal and formal norms are linked and both are subject to change
How does mass media influence norms?
Through stories and discourses about the world around us
What is Narrative inevitability?
Stories we see repeatedly in media provide us with assumptions about how the world should play out
What are discourses?
Powerful points of view that inform media images and stories
What have been the stages of technology?
1) Hunting and gathering
2) Horticulture
3) Agriculture
4) Industry
5) Post-Industrial Revolution
What is subculture?
A subset group of the main culture that stands apart but still part of the main culture (hutterites)
What is counterculture?
Opposed to main culture, stands apart and often seeks to change the culture (Aryan Race, skinheads, hippies)
What is a ritual?
Shared beliefs and symbols that unite a group
What did Van Gennep believe about Rites of Passage?
Ritual events that improve our status through transitioning to a better role in society
What did Turner believe about rituals?
Rituals guide people through the luminal phase in transition
Compared to other cultures, Canada is one of the most _____________ societies.
Multicultural
What is high culture?
Cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite
What is popular culture?
Culture patterns widespread among society’s population
How does cultural change occur?
1) Invention
2) Discovery
3) Diffusion
What is cultural lag?
When some elements of a culture don’t change as quickly as others
What is Ethnocentrism?
Judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture
What is Cultural Relativism?
Evaluating a culture by its own standards
What is Neo-liberalism?
Individuals look after themselves instead of looking to governments (self-help)
- those who don’t self-govern well are shunned
What are theoretical perspectives on culture?
1) Marxism
2) Functionalism
3) symbolic interactionism
4) production of culture
5) consumer culture theory
6) British culture studies
7) post modernism and cultural constructionism
8) queer theory and culture
What is Marxism?
Culture exists to serve the needs of the base
What is cultural hegemony?
System by which masses are dominated by prevailing ideas and beliefs of dominant groups in society
What is Durkheim’s theory of functionalism?
Function of culture is to promote social integration
Culture establishes shared values that are manifest in collective conscience
What is Parson’s Action Theory?
Society composed of interdependent systems. Cultural system is essential to reproduction of society
What is symbolic interaction?
Culture is a system of symbols, ideas and language that facilitates interaction
Social order is continually negotiated in processes of interaction
What is the Dramaturgical Approach?
Meanings are constructed through performances
What is the theory on production of culture?
Focuses on systems by which symbolic elements of culture are produced
What is the Consumer Culture Theory?
Individual choices shaped by cultural consumption - the meanings attributed to goods and those who consume them
What is the British Cultural Studies theory?
Individuals as producers and consumers of culture
What is the post-modernism and cultural constructionism theory?
Post modernism questions notion of transcendent morals and truths
What is the Queer Theory?
Any approach that questions the stable and exclusive categories of identity, time, space, sex, gender and so on that enable power and discrimination in Western culture.
What is queering?
Looking at dominant cultural practices in search of excluded possibilities
What is globalization?
Process by which societies are interconnected around the world, influenced by politics, world economy, etc.
What is cultural imperialism?
Views that American-run media infiltrates and shapes cultures around the world (Americanization)
What is Culture of Dissent?
View that globalize technologies (Internet) allow people to form defiant publics and work toward social change
In addition to symbols, which of the following is a common component of culture?
a) murder taboo
b) psychic culture
c) witchcraft
d) material culture
Material culture
What is a key value of Canadian culture?
Equality and fairness in a democratic society
Early in the 20th century, which continent did most immigrants come from?
Europe
According to Lenski in the textbook, cities, greater specialization of labor and money as the stand of exchange appear in the __________ stage of sociocultural evolution
Agrarian
