Chapter 3: Cultures Flashcards
What is Culture?
A systems of behaviour and beliefs, knowledge, practises, values and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items.
Define Social Structure
The way society is organized into different parts.
4 Elements of Social structure.
- Roles
- Statues
- Social Groups
- Social Institutions
What is Authenticity of Culture?
Carries the idea of being true to a particular time, place, or context.
Culture often becomes _____ over the question of authenticity.
Contested
What does contested mean?
Describes a practise whose moral goodness or badness, normalcy or deviance is disputed by some members of society.
Elements of Traditional Social Institutions?
- Family
- Economy
- Religion
- Education
- Politics
What is a social institution?
An establishment which endures patterns of social relationship.
Elements of Contemporary social institutions?
- Mass media
- Sport
- Media
- Medicine
- Science and Technology
Elements of Culture?
- Norms
- Beliefs
- Value
- Symbols
What is the relationship between culture and social structure?
Society.
When can authenticity become a problem?
When a colonial society studies a colonized culture and claims to know the secret of its authenticity. (Ex. Disney movie- Aladdin)
Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Structural Functionalism
Integrates people into groups.
Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Conflict Theory
- Serves interests of powerful groups.
- Society based on tension and conflict over scarce resources
Theoretical Perspective on Culture: Symbolic Interactions
-Creates group identity from diverse cultural meanings.
Dominant Culture
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)
Minority Culture
Those that fall outside of the cultural mainstream.
Subcultures
A type of minority culture that is different from the dominant culture but is not directly opposed to it.
Countercultures
A minority culture that feel the power of the dominant culture and exists in opposition to it.
High Culture
- The Culture of the Elite.
- Distinct Minority
- Associated with the Arts
Who coined the term Cultural Capital?
Pierre Bourdieu
What is Cultural Capital?
Knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that marks someone as a person of high culture.
Popular Culture
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)