chapter 3 - culture

Question 1

high culture

Answer 1

enjoyed mainly by the upper class

Question 2

popular/mass culure

Answer 2

enjoyed by all classes

Question 3

dominant culture

Answer 3

helps rich and powerful categories of people exercise control over others

Question 4

subordinate culture

Answer 4

contests dominant culture to varying degrees

Question 5

culture

Answer 5

the shared symbols and their definitions that people create to solve real-life problems

Question 6

symbols

Answer 6

concrete objects or abstract terms that represent something else

Question 7

abstraction

Answer 7

the ability to create general concepts that meaningfully organize sensory experience

Question 8

beliefs

Answer 8

cultural statements that define what community members consider real

Question 9

cooperation

Answer 9

the capacity to create a complex social life by establising generally accepted ways of doing things and ideas about what is right and what is wrong

Question 10

norms

Answer 10

generally accepted ways of doing things

Question 11

values

Answer 11

ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable, beautiful and ugly

Question 12

production

Answer 12

the human capacity to make and use the tools and technology that improve our ability to take what we want from nature

Question 13

material culture

Answer 13

the tools and techniques that enable people to accomplish tasks

Question 14

non-material culture

Answer 14

symbols, norms, and other intangible elements

Question 15

social organization

Answer 15

the orderly arrangement of social interaction

Question 16

folkways

Answer 16

norms that specify social preferences without evoking severe punishment

Question 17

mores

Answer 17

core norms that most people believe are essential for the survival of their group or society

Question 18

taboos

Answer 18

the strongest norms which, when violated, evoke revulsion and severe punishment

Question 19

laws

Answer 19

norms that are codified and enforced by the state

Question 20

Sapir-Whorf thesis

Answer 20

the idea that we experience certain things in our environment and form concepts about those things, that we develop language to express these concepts, and that language itself influeces how we see the world.

Question 21

rape culture

Answer 21

a culture in which sexual harassment, slut-shaming, the trivialization of rape, victim-blaming, and sexual assault are widespread and, for large sections of the population, normalized.

Question 22

ethnocentrism

Answer 22

the tendency to judge other cultures exclusively by the standards of one’s own culture.

Question 23

caste

Answer 23

a hereditary class authorized by religion

Question 24

multiculturalism

Answer 24

federal government policies that promote and fund the maintenancy of culturally diverse communities, thus strengthening the trend toward cultural diversification

Question 25

cultural relativism

Answer 25

the belief that all cultures have equal value

Question 26

rights revolution

Answer 26

in the beginning of the 20th century, the process by which socially excluded groups struggled to win equal rights under the law and in practice

Question 27

rites of passage

Answer 27

cultural ceremonies that mark the transition from one stage of life to another

Question 28

postmodernism

Answer 28

the current era; it is characterized by the mix of cultural elements, the erosion of authority, and the decline of consensus around core values

Question 29

rationalization

Answer 29

the application of the most efficient means to achieve given goals and their unintended, negative consequences

Question 30

consumerism

Answer 30

the tendency to define outselves in terms of the goods we purchase

Question 31

countercultures

Answer 31

subversive subcultures that oppose domninant values and seek to replace them

Question 32

subculture

Answer 32

a set of distinctive values, norms, and practices within a larger culture

Question 33

cultural capital

Answer 33

the beliefs, tastes, norms, and values that people draw on in their everyday life

Question 34

cultural jamming

Answer 34

the creative methods used by individuals and groups to challenge dominant cultural beliefs, tastes, norms, and values

Question 35

what role does culture play in generating meaning and solving problems?

Answer 35

concrete experience is meaningless, it needs to be interpreted to hold meaning. interpretations require applying cultural concepts; in that sense, the meaning of all infividual and collective experiences is rooted in culture. The solutions to social problems are found within culture.

Question 36

how do biological explanations differ from cultural explanations?

Answer 36

the few biologists and psychologists that deny the influence of the cultural environment argue that surviving in harsh conditions requires adaptations that, over time, are selected into the gene pool, in our DNA. however, it is easily demonstrated that variation in human behaviour is strongly modified by the cultural context.

Question 37

what do functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory teach us about the operation of culture?

Answer 37

functionalism emphasizes how elements of culture contribute to social order by guiding people to support collective goals.
conflict theory emphasizes how culture is a site of ongoing struggle between more and less advantaged groups, with advantaged groups holding the upper hand.
symbolic interactionism emphasizes how people are the agents of culture, creatively shaping and interpreting it and, to some degree, choosing how culture influences them.

Question 38

how does culture operate as a liberating/constraining force?

Answer 38

In some respects, culture provides us with increasing opportunities to exercise our freedom. The rights revolution, multiculturalism, globalization, and postmodernism reflect this tendency.
In other respects, the growth of rationalization, the spread of consumerism, the rise of virtual culture, and the impact of cultural capital are prime examples on the limites on our actions that culture creates.