Chapter 3 Textbook Flashcards
culture
system of behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, value, and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items
- everyone has culture, sometimes more than one
how does culture become contested?
culture often becomes contested over the question of authenticity
authenticity becomes a problem when a colonized culture claims to know the secret of its authenticity
two oppositions in culture
- dominant culture vs subculture & counterculture
- high culture vs popular culture & mass culture
dominants
people most closely linked with the cultural mainstream
Canada’s dominants
white, English-speaking men of Christian and European stock
minority cultures
those that fall outside the cultural mainstream
John Porter (1965)
Believed that there was a hierarchy according to which certain minority cultures, particularly those based on ethnic background, are favored more than others
countercultures
minority cultures that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition to it; groups that reject elements of the dominant culture such as clothing styles or sexual norms
subcultures
minority cultures that differ in some way from the dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it; may be organized around occupations or hobbies and typically exhibit a fairly neutral contrast to the mainstream
high culture
the culture of the elite, a distinct minority
- it is associated with theatre, opera, classical music and ballet, “serious” works of literary fiction and non-fiction, and artsy films.
Pierre Bourdieu (cultural capital)
coined the term cultural capital to refer to the knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture.
the more cultural capital one has, the higher their cultural class is
popular culture
the culture of the majority, particularly of those who do not have power (the working class, the less educated, women, and racialized minorities)
cultural studies courses and programs
cultural studies draws on both the social sciences (primarily sociology) and the humanities (primarily literature and media studies) to cast light on the significance of popular culture
popular culture vs mass culture
- differ in agency, the ability of the people to be creative or productive with the material given to them by a dominant culture
- popular culture - people take an active role in shaping the culture they consume
- mass culture - people have little or no agency in the culture they consume and produce
simuclara (Jean Baudrillard)
Simuclara are stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media & sometimes by scholars
Simuclara tend to distort contemporary reality
norms
rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)
- the first person in North America to teach a course called “sociology”
- distinguished three types of norms based on how seriously they are respected and sanctioned
folkways
norms governing simple day to day matters
norms that you should not violate
mores
taken much more seriously than folkways
norms you must not violate
violation of some mores, even if they are not laws, will meet with shock or severe disapproval
taboos
a taboo is a norm so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought or mention of it is enough to arouse disgust or revulsion
symbols
cultural items that hold significance for a culture or subculture; can be tangible material objects or intangible, non-material objects, such as songs, or even remembered events
values
standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, and justice, and to assess the behaviour of others
values vs symbols
cultural values are way harder to pinpoint than symbols
this is why many Canadians find themselves identifying themselves as “unarmed Americans with better health coverage”
ethnocentrism (coined by Sumner)
- occurs when someone holds up a culture (usually one’s own) at the standards by which all cultures are to be judged
-“all cultures are great except for the ones that aren’t” - often a product of ignorance
- played a key role in the colonizing efforts of powerful nations imposing their beliefs on the indigenous populations of the lands they “discovered”
eurocentrism
involves taking a broadly defined European position to address others, and assuming that the audience shares that position
cultural relativism
an approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper cultural context
presentism
failure to judge things by their proper time standarts
