Chapter 3 Flashcards
The values, norms, and material goods characteristic of a given group. One of the most distinctive properties of human social association
Culture
A group of people who live in a particular territory, are subject to a common system of political authority, and are aware of having a distinct identity from other groups
Society
Values or modes of behavior shared by all human cultures
Cultural universals
A socially approved sexual relationship between two individuals
Marriage
Cultural ideas that are not themselves physical objects
Nonmaterial culture
The physical objects that a society creates that influence the ways in which people live
Material culture
Ideas held by individuals or groups about what is desirable, proper, good, and bad
Values
Rules of conduct that specify appropriate behavior in a given range of social situations. Either prescribed a given type of behavior or forbids it. These are always backed by sanctions of one kind or another, varying from informal disapproval to physical punishment
Norms
Any vehicle of meaning and communication
Signifier
The study of the ways in which non linguistic phenomena can generate meaning
Semiotics
The primary vehicle of meaning and communication in a society, it is a system of symbols that represent objects and abstract thoughts
Language
A hypothesis, based on the theories of Sapir and Whorf, that perceptions are relative to language
Linguistic relativity hypothesis
Sociolgy’s recent emphasis on the importance of understanding the role of culture in daily life
Cultural turn
Societies whose mode of subsistence is gained from hunting animals, fishing, and gathering edible plants
Hunting and gathering societies
Societies whose subsistence derived from the rearing of domesticated animals
Pastoral societies
Societies whose means of subsistence are based on agricultural production
Agrarian societies
The process of the machine production of goods
Industrialization
Strongly developed nation-states in which the majority of the population works in factories or offices rather than in agriculture, and most people live in urban areas
Industrialized societies
Particular types of states, characteristic of the modern world, in which governments have sovereign power within defined territorial areas, and populations are citizens who know themselves to be part of single nations
Nation-states
The process whereby Western nations established their rule in parts of the world away from their home territories
Colonialism
The accumulated cultural knowledge within a society that confers power and status
Cultural capital
Developing countries that over the past two or three decades have begun to develop a strong industrial base
Emerging economies
When members of one cultural group borrow elements of another group’s culture
Cultural appropriation
Values and norms distinct from those of the majority, held by a group within a larger society
Subcultures
Cultural groups within a wider society that largely reject the values and norms of the majority
Counterculture
The acceptance of a minority group by a majority population in which the new group takes on the values and norms of the dominant culture
Assimilation
A condition in which ethnic groups exist separately and share equally in economic and political life
Multiculturalism
The tendency to look at other cultures through the eyes of one’s own culture, and thereby misrepresent them
Ethnocentrism
The practice of judging a society by its own standards
Cultural relativism
An approach that attempts to explain the behavior of both animals and human beings in terms of biological principles
Sociobiology
Fixed patterns of behavior that have genetic origins and that appear in all normal animals within a given species
Instincts
A set of beliefs and symbols expressing identification with a national community
Nationalism
The idea, introduced by Ogburn, that changes in cultural values and norms take time to catch up with technological developments
Cultural lag
