Chapter 3 - Culture Flashcards
define culture
a system of behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items.
what are the three types of culture
dominant culture
subculture
and counterculture
which of the following statements is false
- everyone has culture
- you can only have one culture
- all cultures are subject to change
- Sometimes culture is not accepted by everyone in that group, so it is “contested”
- everyone can claim more than one culture
what is dominant culture
is the one that through political and economic power and impose its values, languages and ways of behaving and interpreting behavior on a given society
people associated with dominant culture are called _______
dominants
what is the dominant culture in cananda
Canadian dominants are white, english speaking, heterosexul make university graduates of european background between the ages of 30 and 55, in good health, who own homes in middle-class neighbourhoods in cities in Ontario and Quebec
what is a minority culture
those who fall outside of the cultural mainstream
minority cultures fall between 2 subcategories which are
counter culture - minority cultures that feel the power of dominant culture exist in opposition to it
subculture - minority cultures that differ in some wau but dont directly oppose the dominant culture
what is high culture
the culture of the elite, a distinct minority
Associated with theatre, opera, classical music, ballet, and serious works of literature
Also referred to as elite culture
_____ _______ coined the term cultural capital
pierre bourdieu
what is culture capital
knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone of high culture
Ie. the more “cultural capital” the higher your “cultural capital”
what is popular culture
the culture of the majority, particularly of those who do not have power (the working class, less educated, women, and radicalised minorities)
high and popular culture differ in terms of ______
They differ in terms of agency; the ability of people to be creative or productive with the materials made available to them by dominant culture
who are the 2 sociologists that called mass culture the output of the culture industry
Said that movies and radio shows are mass produced to keep society happy and submissive
Thodor Adrno and Max Horkheimer
who called a feature of mass culture simulacra
Jean Baudirillard
define simulacra
are stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes by scholars
Eg. innuit people are represented by describing practices like building igloos
what is decipherment and who coined it
Decipherment- looking in a text for the definitive interpretation for the purpose the culture industry had in mind for creating the text (mass culture sociologists use this)
Micheal de Certeau
What is reading in sociological terms and who came up with it
Reading - is 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 wats not necessarily intended by the creators of the text (popular culture sociologists use this)
Micheal de Certeau
What are Sanctions
People react to how others follow or don’t follow the norms
escribe positive and negative sanctions
Positive - a reaction that supports the behavior (a high five or smile)
Negative a reaction designed to tell offenders that have violated a norm ( an eye roll or parking tickets)
who was the first person in worth america to teach a course called sociology and also distinguish between folkways, mores, and taboos
William Graham Sumner
What are folkways
norms governing simple day-to-day matters
Norms you should not violate
Eg. double dipping chips at a party
What are Mores
are taken much more seriously than folkways
You must not violate them
Eg. crimes like theft or booing at the national anthem of the visiting team
What are Taboos
a norm so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought or mentions of it is enough to arouse disgust or revulsion
Eg. child porn, incest
what is a cultural symbol
Cultural items that hold significance for a culture or subculture
Can be tangible or intangible
what are cultural values
the standards used by culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, and justice and to assess the behavior of others
Eg. Max Weber’s identification of the protestant ethic is one early example of a sociological study of values
what is a cultural artefact
culture symbols that are physical objects
Eg. county’s flag
what is ethnocentrism?
who coined it?
Occurs when someone holds up a culture (usually their own) as the standard by which all cultures are to be judged
William Graham Sumner
Explain the Potlatch Act of 1884?
Potlatch - traditional ceremony of the Northwest Coast Indigenous people living in the US and Canada
Involved acquisition or affirmation of hereditary names used for rights to fish, hunt, or forage for plants in particular territories, and with responsibility to conserve the living things in those areas
In 1884 the canadian government banned the Potlatch
In 1951 ban was repealed
Explain the outlawing of peyote
peyote is a hallucinogens
The people believed the great spirit gave them peyote to help them cure disease etc
The spaniards did not approve and tried to ban it among native inhabitants which forced them into hiding
what is eurocentrism
Taking a broadly defined “european” position to address others, and assuming that the audience shares that potion
how does Manfred Steger define Cultural Globalization
“the intensifications and expansion of cultural flows across the globe”
Eg. what we call Americanization
what is cultural relativism
an approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper cultural context
Eg. “you can’t understand a single part of a car without understanding the whole system of which it is a part of”
Not just about how we understand but how we judge these cultural practices
what is presentism
all the arguments about who should be honored and who should be condemned
Eg. Laurier arguing about taking down John A. Macdonald’s statue because we was racist
what is Sociolinguistics
The study of language as part of culture
Culture cannot be understood or transmitted without some sense of language
what is Linguistic determinism (or causation)
who came up with it (hint super werid name)
suggests the way we view the world is shaped by the language we speak
Saphir-whorf hypothesis
what do indo-european launguages have to do with gender
All impose gender grammatically
The idea of being true to a particular time, place, or context is called
authenticity
The dominant culture imposes its values, language, and ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour through
political and economic power
A minority culture that differs in some way from the dominant culture, but doesn’t oppose it, is
a subculture
Which term did Pierre Bourdieu coin to describe the knowledge and skills needed to acquire the tastes of high culture?
Cultural capital
Mass culture is a term used by people who believe
hat we have little or no agency in the culture we consume and produce
The rule or standards of behaviour that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture are called
norms
A reaction that tells people that they have violated a norm is a
negative sanction
Norms that should not be violated (as opposed to must not) are also called
folkways
The general term for the head coverings worn by some Muslim women is
niqab
Values are the standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities and to
assess the behavior of others
The one-way flow of culture from the West can be colloquially called
Americanization
Culture is holistic by nature, which means that
it is a complex system in which everything is connected
Judging historical actions by the standards of the present is known as
presentism
Disliking the smells of a different culture is proof that
ur senses are culturally conditioned
A dialect is the result of
pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar that differs from the base language
