Chapter 5

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

• system of behaviours, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values, and concrete materials (building, tools, sacred items)
• expressed through language and artifacts (things we make)
• one of the main points of contestation is authenticity

Question 2

Dominant culture and dominants

Answer 2

-the culture that is able to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour on a society through its political and economic power
-dominants: people closely linked with cultural mainstream

Question 3

Minority cultures, counter cultures, and subcultures

Answer 3

-cultures that are not in the cultural mainstream
-countercultures: cultures that exist in opposition to the power of the dominant culture
-subcultures: cultures that differ from dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it

Question 4

High culture, cultural capital (and who)

Answer 4

-culture of the elite (a distinct minority)
-associated with the arts
-requires cultural capital:
a set of skills and knowledge needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture (Pierre Bourdieu)

Question 5

Who are Canada’s dominants

Answer 5

• white, English speaking, straight, male, university graduates, European descent, 30-55, in good health, own homes in middle-class neighbourhoods in Ontario or Quebec

Question 6

Popular culture and cultural studies

Answer 6

-The culture of the majority especially those without power (working class, less educated, women, and “racialized” minorities)
- cultural studies cast light on the significance of, and meanings expressed in, popular culture

Question 7

Mass culture

Answer 7

-differs from popular culture in the sense that mass culture assumes “the people” have little agency in the culture they consume, to be creative, or productive with materials given to them by a dominant culture

Question 8

simulacra and who

Answer 8

-a feature of mass culture
-stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduces like material goods/commodities by the media or scholars
-are “hyperreal” likely to be considered more real than what’s actually true and distorts reality ex: Inuit people represented through igloos and kayaks
-Jean Baudrillard

Question 9

Decipherment vs reading

Answer 9

-Decipherment: looking in a text for the purpose (conscious or unconscious) the culture industry had in mind in creating the text (definitive interpretation)
-Reading: treating what is provided by the culture industry as a resource to be interpreted as as seen fit (not necessarily how the creator intended)

Question 10

Norms

Answer 10

-the rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of a group, society, or culture
-may be contested when it comes to race, gender, and age
-expressed through various ways ex: ceremonies that reflect cultural customs and symbolic clothing

Question 11

Sanctions

Answer 11

-rewards and punishments in response to a behaviour
-positive santion= reward for doing right thing ex: smile, high five, or bonus
negative sanction= reactions designed to tell offenders they have violated a norm ex: glare, eye roll, library fine, parking ticket

Question 12

Folkways, Mores, and Taboos (and who)

Answer 12

-William Graham Sumner
Folkways: (etiquette)
-norms that govern day-to-day matters that we should not violate
-they are weakly sanctioned
-ex: double-dipping chips
Mores:
-formalized norms we must not violate
-violations are seriously sanctioned
-complicated and may be contested
-ex: stealing, rape
Taboos: norms that are so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought/mention arouses disgust/revulsion
-ex: incest, child pornography

Question 13

Symbols

Answer 13

-cultural items that hold significance for a culture (or subculture)
-can be tangible (material objects ex: maple leaf)
-can be intangible ex: Canadian anthem
-change over time

Question 14

Values, ideal vs actual culture

Answer 14

-standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities (ex: goodness, beauty, and justice) and to asses the behaviour of others
-values and behaviours don’t always match ex: we value environmentalism yet we drive large SUV’s
- ideal culture: what people believe
Actual culture: what really exists (the real behaviours)

Question 15

Ethnocentrism

Answer 15

-holding up one culture (usually your own) as being the standard all other cultures are to be judged against
-often a product of lack of knowledge or ignorance
-contributes to colonizing effort ex:1884 potlatch act

Question 16

Eurocentrism

Answer 16

-addressing others from a “European” position and assuming the audience is or would like to be part of that position

Question 17

Cultural globalization, Americanization, who

Answer 17

-intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe
-steger suggested that the Americanization of the world and the danger of a one directional flow of culture could be problematic

Question 18

Cultural Relativism

Answer 18

-an approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper social, historical, and environmental context
-we cannot use our own cultural standards to judge the cultural practices of others
-becomes problematic when studying practices that were once normalized but are now considered abhorrent and offensive ex: genocide against indigenous peoples

Question 19

Presentism

Answer 19

-the inability to judge figures of the past within their own time, instead we judged them by today’s standards

Question 20

Sociolinguistics

Answer 20

-the study of languages as part of culture
-language is key to the communication and transmission of culture
-looks at language in relation to such sociological factors such as race, ethnicity, age, gender, and region

Question 21

Dialect

Answer 21

-often evaluated according to whether they represent proper or improper, casual or formal, funny or serious versions of a language
-distinctions are a product of linguistic and social factors

Question 22

1.Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
2.linguistic determinism

Answer 22

1. -describes the relationship between language and cultures
   -language, words and their meanings are culture specific and so language outside of its cultural context does not make sense
   2.
   -suggests that the way we view and understand language is shaped by the language we speak
   ex: gendered pronouns affect how we think about gender