Chapter Four: Cultural beliefs - Key Terms Flashcards
Cultural beliefs
The predominant beliefs in a culture about right and wrong, what is most important in life, and how life should be lived.They may also include beliefs about where and how life originated and what happens after death.
Symbolic inheritance
The set of ideas and understandings, both implicit and explicit, about persons, society, nature, and divinity that serve as a guide to life in a particular culture. It is expressed symbolically through stories, songs, rituals, sacred objects, and sacred places.
Roles
Defined social positions in a culture, containing specifications of behavior status, and relations with others. Examples include gender, age, and social class.
Gender roles
Cultural beliefs about the kinds of work, appearance, and other aspects of behavior that distinguish women from men.
Socialization
The process by which people acquire the behaviors and beliefs of the culture in which they live.
Self-regulation
The capacity for exercising self- control in order to restrain one’s impulses and comply with social norms.
Role preparation
An outcome of socialization that includes preparation for occupational roles, gender roles, and roles in institutions such as marriage and parenthood.
Sources of meaning
The ideas and beliefs that people learn as part of socialization, indicating what is important, what is to be valued, what is to be lived for, and how to explain and offer consolation for the individual’s mortality.
Bar Mitzvah
Jewish religious ritual for boys at age 13 that signifies the adolescents’ new responsibilities with respect to Jewish beliefs.
Bat Mitzvah
Jewish religious ritual for girls at age 13 that signifies the adolescents’ new responsibilities with respect to Jewish beliefs.
Interdependent self
A conception of the self typically found in collectivistic cultures, in which the self is seen as defined by roles and relationships within the group.
Independent self
A conception of the self typically found in individualistic cultures, in which the self is seen as existing independently of relations with others, with an emphasis on independence, individual freedoms, and individual achievements.
Broad socialization
The process by which persons in an individualistic culture come to learn individualism, including values of individual uniqueness, independence, and self- expression.
Narrow socialization
The process by which persons in a collectivistic culture come to learn collectivism, including values of obedience and conformity.
Custom complex
A customary practice and the beliefs, values, sanctions, rules, motives, and satisfactions associated with it; that is, a normative practice in a culture and the cultural beliefs that provide the basis for that practice.
ontogenetic
Something that occurs naturally in the course of development as part of normal maturation; that is, it is driven by innate processes rather than by environmental stimulation or a specific cultural practice.
First-generation families
The status of persons who were born in one country and then immigrated to another.
Second-generation families
The status of persons who were born in the country they currently reside in but whose parents were born in a different country.
Secular
Based on non-religious beliefs and values.
Ramadan
A month in the Muslim year that commemorates the revelation of the Koran from God to the prophet Muhammad, requiring fasting from sunrise to sunset each day and refraining from all sensual indulgences.
Kor’an
The holy book of the religion of Islam, believed by Muslims to have been communicated to Muhammad from God through the angel Gabriel.
Social desirability
The tendency for people participating in social science studies to report their behaviour as they believe it would be approved by others rather than as it actually occurred.
preconventional reasoning
In Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the level in which moral reasoning is based on perceptions of the likelihood of external rewards and punishments.
Conventional reasoning
In Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the level of moral reasoning in which the person advocates the value of conforming to the moral expectations of others. What is right is whatever agrees with the rules established by tradition and by authorities.
Postconventional reasoning
In Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the level in which moral reasoning is based on the individual’s own independent judgments rather than on egocentric considerations or considerations of what others view as wrong or right.
Worldview
A set of cultural beliefs that explain what it means to be human, how human relations should be conducted, and how human problems should be addressed.
Templates
The basic human pattern of moral development for the three ethics, subject to variation depending on the beliefs and values of a specific culture.
