Chapter 3: Cultures Flashcards

1
Q

What is Culture?

A

A systems of behaviour and beliefs, knowledge, practises, values and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items.

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2
Q

Define Social Structure

A

The way society is organized into different parts.

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3
Q

4 Elements of Social structure.

A
  1. Roles
  2. Statues
  3. Social Groups
  4. Social Institutions
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4
Q

What is Authenticity of Culture?

A

Carries the idea of being true to a particular time, place, or context.

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5
Q

Culture often becomes _____ over the question of authenticity.

A

Contested

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6
Q

What does contested mean?

A

Describes a practise whose moral goodness or badness, normalcy or deviance is disputed by some members of society.

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7
Q

Elements of Traditional Social Institutions?

A
  • Family
  • Economy
  • Religion
  • Education
  • Politics
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8
Q

What is a social institution?

A

An establishment which endures patterns of social relationship.

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9
Q

Elements of Contemporary social institutions?

A
  • Mass media
  • Sport
  • Media
  • Medicine
  • Science and Technology
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10
Q

Elements of Culture?

A
  • Norms
  • Beliefs
  • Value
  • Symbols
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11
Q

What is the relationship between culture and social structure?

A

Society.

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12
Q

When can authenticity become a problem?

A

When a colonial society studies a colonized culture and claims to know the secret of its authenticity. (Ex. Disney movie- Aladdin)

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13
Q

Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Structural Functionalism

A

Integrates people into groups.

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14
Q

Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Conflict Theory

A
  • Serves interests of powerful groups.

- Society based on tension and conflict over scarce resources

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15
Q

Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Symbolic Interactions

A

-Creates group identity from diverse cultural meanings.

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16
Q

Dominant Culture

A

Through its political and economic power, is able to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour on a given society.
(Ex. Straight, white, males between the ages of 30-55 with a European background)

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17
Q

Minority Culture

A

Those that fall outside of the cultural mainstream.

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18
Q

Subcultures

A

A type of minority culture that is different from the dominant culture but is not directly opposed to it.

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19
Q

Countercultures

A

A minority culture that feel the power of the dominant culture and exists in opposition to it.

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20
Q

High Culture

A
  • The Culture of the Elite.
  • Distinct Minority
  • Associated with the Arts
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21
Q

Who coined the term Cultural Capital?

A

Pierre Bourdieu

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22
Q

What is Cultural Capital?

A

Knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that marks someone as a person of high culture.

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23
Q

Popular Culture

A

culture for the majority, particularly for those who do not have power. It’s based on popular taste and is created by people who will consume it. (Ex. Youtube)

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24
Q

Mass Culture

A

A culture for the majority that is produced by big companies and powerful governments. (Ex. Disney)

25
Q

Agency

A

Capacity of individuals to act freely. (ex. free-will, and individual choice)

26
Q

Structure

A

Social forces determine or limit a person in their decisions. (i.e. socially-shaped tendency to act a certain way)

27
Q

Agency vs Structure debate: What would Popular culture argue?

A

Popular Culture would argue that you’re able to use or resist that information or entertainment to your own means and ends.

28
Q

Agency vs Structure debate: What would Mass Culture argue?

A

Mass Culture would argue that a “power bloc” exists and exerts powerful influence over us.

29
Q

Simulacra

A

stereotypical cultural images produces and reproduced like material goods by the media. (Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte)

30
Q

Simulacra is associated with what type of Culture?

A

Mass Culture

31
Q

Which french sociologists coined the term simulacra?

A

Jean Baudrillard

32
Q

Jean Baudrillard described Simulacra as a “hyper-Reality”. What does this mean?

A

become more real than what actually exists.

33
Q

What is the sociological reason for its [simulacra] importance?

A

It’s a critical concept for examining capitalism and consumerism.

34
Q

Decipherment

A

involves looking in a text for the definitive interpretation. (The purpose the culture industry had in mind in creating the text)

35
Q

Decipherment is associated with what type of culture?

A

Mass Culture

36
Q

Reading

A

The process in which people treat what culture industries provide and resources. A text to be interpreted as they see fit, not always in ways the creators intended.

37
Q

“Reading” is associated with what type of culture.

A

Popular Culture

38
Q

What are social norms?

A

Rules and standards of behaviour that are expected of a group/

39
Q

How are social norms enforced?

A

Through sanctions

40
Q

What are sanctions?

A

Rewards or punishments given in response to a particular behaviour.

41
Q

What do sanctions protect society from?

A

Chaos and disorder.

42
Q

Who distinguished 3 types of social norms?

A

William Graham Sumner

43
Q

What are the 3 types of social norms?

A
  1. Folkways
  2. Mores
  3. Taboos
44
Q

What are folkways?

A

A type of social norms that described things we SHOULD NOT do. (Etiquette) (Distinguishes between what’s right and rude)

45
Q

What are Mores?

A

A type of social norm that MUST NOT be violated. They are enshrined in the criminal codes and laws.

46
Q

What are Taboos?

A

Norms that are deeply ingrained that the thought or mention of it revolts or disgusts people. FORBIDDEN (ex. cannibalism, necrophilia, pornography…)

47
Q

What are Symbols?

A

Cultural items that hold significance for cultures of subcultures.

48
Q

Ethnocentrism

A

Holding one culture as being the standard by which all are to be judged.

49
Q

Eurocentrism

A

Taking a broadly defined European position to address others, and assume that the audience shares the same position.

50
Q

What term did William Graham Sumner coin?

A

Ethnocentrism

51
Q

Cultural Globalization

A

The intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe.

52
Q

What is the concern with cultural globalization?

A

There will be a one-way flow of culture coming from the west (Americanization)

53
Q

Who defined cultural globalization?

A

Manfred Steger

54
Q

Cultural Relativism

A

An approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper social, historical, and environmental context.

55
Q

When does cultural relativism become a problem?

A

When studying historical practises and views that were once widespread but are now considered abhorrent and offensive.

56
Q

What’s the difference between cultural relativism and presentism?

A

Presentism is when you CANNOT judge figures of the past in their own time; but with cultural relativism you CAN.

57
Q

What is sociolinguistics?

A

The study of language as part of a culture.

58
Q

What does linguistic determinism suggest?

A

the way we view and understand the world is based on the language we speak.