Chapter 3

Question 1

Agency

Answer 1

the ability of ‘the people’ to be creative or productive with what colonial power, a dominant culture, or an instrument of mass media has given them.

Question 2

Algonquian

Answer 2

Languages by what together make up the largest Aboriginal language family in Canada and the United States, have no grammatically mandated gender, in either the French or the English sense.

Question 3

Authenticity

Answer 3

Carries the idea of being true to a particular culture, yet think of how broadly the word ‘authentic’ can be applied and understood

Question 4

Contested

Answer 4

Describing a practice whose moral goodness or badness, normalcy or deviance, or general predominance is disputed by some members of society

Question 5

Counterculture

Answer 5

Groups that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition to it. e.g. hipsters

Question 6

Cultural Capital

Answer 6

Refers to the knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture. The more cultural capital one has, the ‘higher’ their cultural capital.

Question 7

Cultural Relativism

Answer 7

An approach to studying the context of an aspect of another culture. It can be spoken of as existing at two levels. One is the level of understanding.

Question 8

Cultural Studies

Answer 8

Draw on both the social sciences and the humanities to cast light on the significance of, and meanings expressed in, popular culture, a topic that previously had been mostly neglected by academics

Question 9

Culture

Answer 9

A system of behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values, ad concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items

Question 10

Decipherment

Answer 10

The process of looking in a text for the definitive interpretation for the intent (conscious or unconscious) of the culture industry in creating the text.

Question 11

Dialect

Answer 11

A variety of language, a version that is perhaps different from others in terms of pronunciation.

Question 12

Dominant Culture

Answer 12

One that, through its political and economic power, is able to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour on a given society

Question 13

Dominants

Answer 13

People closely linked with the cultural mainstream are sometimes referred to as dominants

Question 14

Ethnocentrism

Answer 14

Occurs when someone holds up one culture (usually their own) as the standard by which all cultures are judged.

Question 15

Eurocentrism

Answer 15

Involves taking a broadly defined “European” (Western and Northern Europe as well as North America) position to address others, and assuming that the audience shares (or would like to share) that position.

Question 16

Folkways

Answer 16

Norms that govern day-to-day matters. These are norms one ‘should not’ violate. Otherwise known as ‘etiquette’. Folkways can change. e.g double-dipping chips or eating out of the garbage

Question 17

High Culture

Answer 17

Is the culture of the elite, a distinct minority. Sometimes referred to as ‘elite culture’

Question 18

Hijab

Answer 18

A veil symbolic in the muslim culture.

Question 19

Indigeneity

Answer 19

The ends-result of the process of refashioning indigenous identities according to alternative knowledges rather than those traditionally produced by outsider experts.

Question 20

Indo-European

Answer 20

The family of languages that includes almost all the languages of Europe plus Farsi (Irnian) and the languages of Pakistan and northern India–all impose gender grammatically in some ways.

Question 21

Linguistic Determinism (Causation)

Answer 21

The principle suggests that the way each of us views and understands the world is shaped by the language we speak. Like theories of biological or social determinism,

Question 22

Mass Culture

Answer 22

The term for popular culture used by those who feel that people have little to no agency.

Question 23

Mores

Answer 23

Taken much more seriously than folkways. You ‘must not’ violate them. Mores can change. The perception of women with tattoos has changed from how it was. e.g. rape, killing, and vandalism

Question 24

Negative Sanction

Answer 24

A reaction designed to tell offenders that have violated a norm. e.g. glad, eye roll, library fine

Question 25

Noble Savage

Answer 25

A product of reverse ethnocentrism. The term refers to the idealized representation of primitive culture that symbolizes the innate goodness of humanity when free of the corrupting influence of civilization.

Question 26

Norms

Answer 26

Rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture. There isn’t always consensus concerning these standards: norms may be contested along the sociological lines of ethnicity, “race,” gender, and age.

Question 27

Patriarchy

Answer 27

A social system where men hold political, cultural, and social power. Prevalent in societies with only male leaders and media dominated by male views. “The father of the family must be the master of the house” to “men are naturally superior to women”.

Question 28

Popular Culture

Answer 28

Is the culture of the majority, particularly of those people who do not have power. Called ‘mass culture’ by those who do not believe people have very much agency.

Question 29

Positive Sanction

Answer 29

Is a reward for ‘doing the right thing’. e.g a high five or a raise

Question 30

potlatch

Answer 30

A traditional ceremony of North west Coast Aboriginal people. It often involves the acquisition of affirmation of hereditary names.

Question 31

Reading

Answer 31

The process in which people treat what is provided by the culture industry as a resource, a text to be interpreted as they see fit, in ways not necessarily intended by the creators of the text.

Question 32

Reverse Ethnocentrism

Answer 32

Involves assuming that a particular culture that is not one’s own is better than one’s own in some ways.

Question 33

Sapir-Wholf Hypothesis

Answer 33

Which posits the existence of linguistic determinism. It can be cast either as strongly or weakly deterministic–that is, language can be seen to exert either a strong or a weak influence on a person’s worldview.

Question 34

Simulacra

Answer 34

Stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes by scholars.

Question 35

Sociolinguistics

Answer 35

The study as language as a part of culture.

Question 36

Subculture

Answer 36

Differ in some ways from the dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it. Are more ‘neutral’. e.g. nerds

Question 37

Symbols

Answer 37

Cultural items that come to take on tremendous meaning within a culture or subculture of a society. Can be tangible or intangible.

Question 38

Taboos

Answer 38

A norm so deeply ingrained in our social consciences that the mere thought or mention of it is enough to arose disgust or revulsion. e.g. cannibalism, incest, child pornography

Question 39

Values

Answer 39

The standard used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, and justice, and to assess the behaviour of others

Question 40

Victimology

Answer 40

Referring to an outlook that inaccurately diminishes groups by portraying them as unable to help themselves, to exercise agency.

Question 41

Hyperreal

Answer 41

Likely to be considered more real then than what actually exists or existed (GPS vs Actually seeing where to go)

Question 42

Cultural Globalization

Answer 42

The intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe (as defined by Manfred Steger)