Chapter 2: Vocabulary Flashcards
beliefs:
mental acceptance or conviction that certain things are true or real
counterculture:
group that strongly rejects dominant societal values/norms; seek alternative lifestyles
cultural imperialism:
the extensive infusion of one nation’s culture into other nations.
cultural lag:
William Ogburn’s term for a gap between the technical development of a society and its moral and legal institutions.
cultural relativism:
belief that the behaviors and customs of any culture must be viewed and analyzed by the culture’s own standards.
cultural universals:
customs and practices that occur across all societies.
culture:
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.
culture shock:
disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own and believe they cannot depend on their own taken-for-granted assumptions about life.
ethnocentrism:
the practice of judging all other cultures by one’s own culture.
folkways:
informal norms or everyday customs that may be violated without serious consequences within a particular culture.
high culture:
classical music, opera, ballet, live theater, and other activities usually patronized by elite audiences.
language:
a set of symbols that expresses ideas and enables people to think and communicate with one another.
laws:
formal, standardized norms that have been enacted by legislatures and are enforced by formal sanctions.
material culture:
the physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share.
mores:
strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may not be violated without serious consequences in a particular culture.
nonmaterial culture:
the abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behavior.
norms:
established rules of behavior or standards of conduct.
popular culture:
activities, products, and services that are assumed to appeal primarily to members of the middle and working classes.
sanctions:
rewards for appropriate behavior or penalties for inappropriate behavior.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:
the proposition that language shapes the view of reality of its speakers.
subculture:
a category of people who share distinguishing attributes, beliefs, values, and/or norms that set them apart in some significant manner from the dominant culture.
symbol:
anything that meaningfully represents something else.
taboos:
mores so strong that their violation is considered to be extremely offensive and even unmentionable.
technology:
the knowledge, techniques, and tools that allow people to transform resources into usable forms, and the knowledge and skills required to use them after they are developed.
value contradictions:
values that conflict with one another or are mutually exclusive.
values:
collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture.
