Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture

Question 1

Acculturation

Answer 1

Cultural modification or change that results when one culture group or individual adopts traits of a dominant or host society; cultural development or change through “borrowing.”

Question 2

Artifact

Answer 2

Any physical object that a culture produces

Question 3

Barriers to diffusion

Answer 3

Things that slow or stop the spread of an idea, innovation, people or other things.

Question 4

Cultural convergence

Answer 4

The process by which two cultures become similar.

Question 5

Cultural diffusion

Answer 5

The movement of culture traits from one place to another.

Question 6

Cultural landscape

Answer 6

The cultural impacts on an area, including buildings, agricultural patterns, roads, signs and nearly everything else that humans have created.

Question 7

Culture

Answer 7

Shared patterns of learned behavior, attitudes and knowledge

Question 8

Culture complex

Answer 8

A group of interrelated culture traits.

Question 9

Culture hearth

Answer 9

An area from which important culture traits, including ideas, technology, and social structures, originated. Ancient Mesopotamia is an example

Question 10

Culture realm

Answer 10

Culture regions grouped into larger areas

Question 11

Culture region

Answer 11

An area defined by a large number of common culture traits.

Question 12

Culture trait

Answer 12

A single component of a culture; can be a thing, an idea or a social conversion.

Question 13

Custom

Answer 13

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Question 14

Folk Culture

Answer 14

Culture traditionally practiced by a small homogenous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Question 15

Foodways

Answer 15

How a culture prepares and consumes food.

Question 16

Habit

Answer 16

A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Question 17

Ideological subsystem

Answer 17

The ideas, beliefs, values and knowledge of a culture.

Question 18

Innovative diffusion

Answer 18

The movement of a phenomenon from one location to another

Question 19

Mentifacts

Answer 19

Individual culture traits of the ideological subsystem, such as an idea.

Question 20

Popular culture

Answer 20

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Question 21

Reverse hierarchical diffusion

Answer 21

Diffusion up a hierarchy, such as from small towns to large cities.

Question 22

Social construction of space

Answer 22

The idea that society shapes the spatial nature of our world

Question 23

Sociofact

Answer 23

The culture trait in the sociological subsystem.

Question 24

Sociological subsystem

Answer 24

The part of a culture that guides how people are expected to interact with each other and how their social institutions are structured.

Question 25

Taboo

Answer 25

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Question 26

Technological subsystem

Answer 26

The material objects that a culture produces, as well as the procedures for using those objects.

Question 27

Terroir

Answer 27

The contribution of a location’s distinctive physical features to the way food tastes.