Chapter 5- Lecture Flashcards
What is culture?
Culture is a complex collection of values, beliefs, behaviours, and material objects shared by a group passed on from one generation to the next.
What are the 5 defining features of culture?
- Culture is learned (from birth, participating in social life)
- Culture is shared (experiences and meaning)
- Culture is transmitted (from generation to generation)
- Culture is cumulative (refined by generations, changed)
- Culture is human (animals are not cultural)
What is material culture?
The tangible artifacts and physical objects found in a given culture. What we have around us.
-Ex. poutine, maple syrup
What is non-material culture?
The intangible and abstract components of a society, including values and norms.
- Ex. ideas, values, and religion, music, norms
- Embedded and embraced by material culture
What are values?
Beliefs about ideal goals and behaviours
-Polite, tolerant/accepting, multicultural
What are norms?
Rules that outline appropriate behaviour
What are some examples of changing norms?
- Funerals have evolved, more celebratory now
- Cremation used to be denounced and families would look after their dead bodies themselves
What are folkways?
Informal norms that suggest customary ways of behaving
-Good and responsible behaviours
What are mores?
Norms that carry a strong sense of social importance.
-More significant in moral judgement
What are laws?
Norms that are formally defined and enacted in legislation
-Control us
What is a sanction?
A penalty for norm violation
-Informal and formal
What is ethnocentrism?
The tendency to view one’s own culture as superior to others
How is ethnocentrism restriction?
In the sense that it does not allow one to appreciate diversity
What is the issue with bicultural youth and multiculturalism?
Balancing being two cultures –> first generation immigrants.
What is cultural relativism?
Appreciating that all cultures have intrinsic worth and need to be evaluated and understood on their own terms.
-Avoid judging other cultures’ customs and traditions before trying to understand them.
Why do some argue against cultural relativism?
Some argue that it means giving up the ability to determine if an action is right or wrong, moral or immoral.
What do you need to be aware of to become a more informed and critical thinker?
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism
What is a symbol?
Something that stands for or represents something else.
What is language?
A shared symbol system of rules and meaning.
What do shared cultural symbols allow us to?
Interact as language is key identifier of cultural boundaries.