Chapter 3

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

A system of behaviours, beliefs, knowledges, practices, values, and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items. Culture is dynamic and always moving

Question 2

Culture contested

Answer 2

Aspects of culture may be contested when they become instruments of oppression

Question 3

Culture authenticity

Answer 3

Culture becomes contested over authenticity. Culture involves traditions but is not confined to them.

Question 4

What kinds of cultures are there?

Answer 4

1. Dominant culture vs. Subculture and counterculture
2. High culture vs. Popular and mass culture

Question 5

Dominant culture

Answer 5

Through political and economic power, able to impose values, language, and ways of behaviour on a given society

Question 6

Dominants

Answer 6

People closely linked with cultural mainstream (white, Christian, European)

Question 7

Minority cultures

Answer 7

Those that fall outside the cultural mainstream.
There are two subcategories under minority cultures:
1. Countercultures
2. Subcultures

Question 8

Countercultures

Answer 8

Minority cultures that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition to it
(Hippies, biker gangs)

Question 9

Subcultures

Answer 9

Minority cultures that differ in some way from dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it
(Occupation groups, hobbies)

Question 10

High culture

Answer 10

Culture of elite, a distinct minority. Associated with the arts (theatre, opera, classical music)

Question 11

What does high culture require that Pierre Bourdieu called?

Answer 11

Cultural capital: a set of skills and knowledge needed to acquire the sophistical tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture

Question 12

Social capital

Answer 12

economic resources gathered from human interactions

Question 13

Popular culture

Answer 13

The culture of the majority, especially those who don’t have power

Question 14

Mass culture

Answer 14

People who have little or no agency in the culture they assume (big companies dictate what people watch, buy, value)

Question 15

Agency

Answer 15

Ability of “the people” to be creative or productive with materials given by dominant culture

Question 16

Jean Baudrillard

Answer 16

Called Simulaca which is a feature of Mass Culture.

Question 17

Simulacra

Answer 17

Stereotypical images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes scholars like Baudrillard (Inuit represented through igloos, kayaks)

Question 18

Cultural norms
Norms?

Answer 18

Rules or standards or behaviours that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture

Question 19

Sanctions
Positive / negative

Answer 19

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)

Question 20

William Graham sumner

Answer 20

Distinguished three kinds of norms:
1. Folkways
2. Mores
3. Taboos

Question 21

Folkways

Answer 21

Day to day norms. Should not violate, weakly sanctioned (double dipping)

Question 22

Mores

Answer 22

More serious than folkways. Formalized norms we must not violate, met with serious sanctions (stealing)

Question 23

Taboos

Answer 23

Norms so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness, mere thought arouses disgust (incest)

Question 24

Symbols

Answer 24

Cultural items that hold significance for culture and subculture

Question 25

Values

Answer 25

Standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, etc
Ex. Values studies by max Weber involving Protestant (work) ethic

Question 26

Ideal culture

Answer 26

What people believe in (environmentalism)

Question 27

Actual culture

Answer 27

What really exists (driving SUVs)

Question 28

Ethnocentrism

Answer 28

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)

Question 29

Eurocentrism

Answer 29

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)

Question 30

Cultural relativism

Answer 30

An approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper social, historical, environmental context
(Female genital mutation -> female genital circumcision)

Question 31

Cultural relativism vs. Presentism

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Sociolinguistics

Answer 32

Study of language as part of culture

Question 33

Dialect

Answer 33

A variety of a language that differs from others in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar

Question 34

Linguistic determination

Answer 34

Suggests that the way we view and understand the world is shaped by the language we speak

Question 35

Ebonics

Answer 35

“Black speech”