Chapter 3 Flashcards
Culture
A system of behaviours, beliefs, knowledges, practices, values, and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items. Culture is dynamic and always moving
Culture contested
Aspects of culture may be contested when they become instruments of oppression
Culture authenticity
Culture becomes contested over authenticity. Culture involves traditions but is not confined to them.
What kinds of cultures are there?
- Dominant culture vs. Subculture and counterculture
- High culture vs. Popular and mass culture
Dominant culture
Through political and economic power, able to impose values, language, and ways of behaviour on a given society
Dominants
People closely linked with cultural mainstream (white, Christian, European)
Minority cultures
Those that fall outside the cultural mainstream.
There are two subcategories under minority cultures:
1. Countercultures
2. Subcultures
Countercultures
Minority cultures that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition to it
(Hippies, biker gangs)
Subcultures
Minority cultures that differ in some way from dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it
(Occupation groups, hobbies)
High culture
Culture of elite, a distinct minority. Associated with the arts (theatre, opera, classical music)
What does high culture require that Pierre Bourdieu called?
Cultural capital: a set of skills and knowledge needed to acquire the sophistical tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture
Social capital
economic resources gathered from human interactions
Popular culture
The culture of the majority, especially those who don’t have power
Mass culture
People who have little or no agency in the culture they assume (big companies dictate what people watch, buy, value)
Agency
Ability of “the people” to be creative or productive with materials given by dominant culture
Jean Baudrillard
Called Simulaca which is a feature of Mass Culture.
Simulacra
Stereotypical images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes scholars like Baudrillard (Inuit represented through igloos, kayaks)
Cultural norms
Norms?
Rules or standards or behaviours that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture
Sanctions
Positive / negative
Sanctions - rewards and punishments in response to a particular behaviour
Positive sanctions - rewards for doing the right thing (smiles)
Negative sanctions - reactions designed to tell offenders they violated the norm (glare)
William Graham sumner
Distinguished three kinds of norms:
1. Folkways
2. Mores
3. Taboos
Folkways
Day to day norms. Should not violate, weakly sanctioned (double dipping)
Mores
More serious than folkways. Formalized norms we must not violate, met with serious sanctions (stealing)
Taboos
Norms so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness, mere thought arouses disgust (incest)
Symbols
Cultural items that hold significance for culture and subculture
Values
Standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, etc
Ex. Values studies by max Weber involving Protestant (work) ethic
Ideal culture
What people believe in (environmentalism)
Actual culture
What really exists (driving SUVs)
Ethnocentrism
Occurs when someone holds up a culture (usually one’s own) as the standards by which all cultures are to be judged
- lack of knowledge / ignorance
- played role in colonizing (ex indigenous peoples)
Eurocentrism
Involves addressing others from a broadly defined European position to address others and assuming audience is or would like to be part of that position
(Christopher Columbus “discovering new land” - already houses millions of people)
Cultural relativism
An approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper social, historical, environmental context
(Female genital mutation -> female genital circumcision)
Cultural relativism vs. Presentism
Cultural relativism - ability to judge figure of the past within their own time and not todays standards
Presentism - inability to judge figure of the past within their own time, instead by todays standards
Sociolinguistics
Study of language as part of culture
Dialect
A variety of a language that differs from others in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
Linguistic determination
Suggests that the way we view and understand the world is shaped by the language we speak
Ebonics
“Black speech”
