Class 2- Culture, Demographics, and Inequality Flashcards
What is status?
What are the three main types of statuses?
A status is a socially defined position or role within a society.
A master status is the role or position that dominates; tends to determine your “place” in society.
An ascribed status is one assigned to you by society, regardless of your effort.
An achieved status is one that is earned.
What is a role?
What changes can happen to your role?
A role is a socially defined expectation about how you will behave based on your status.
Role conflict occurs when two or more statuses are held by an individual and there is conflict between the expectations for each status.
Role strain occurs when you face conflicting expectations for a single role.
Role exit occurs when you transistion from one role to another.
How is status and role different?
Status is a socially defined position in society and role is an expectation of how you will behave based on your status.
Compare and contrast an aggregate, a category, and a group.
A group is a number of people who identify and interact.
An aggregate includes people who exist in the same space, but do not identify or interact.
A category shares certain characteristics, but does not regularly interact.
What is a social network?
How is an organization different?
A social network is a web of social relationships.
An organization is a large group of people with a common purpose; tend to be more complex, impersonal, and hierarchically structured than networks.
What are three common types of organizations?
Types of organizations:
- Utilitarian- motivated by some incentive or reward
- Normative- motivated by a common cause or belief
- Coercive - members have been forced to join
A ________ is a system for managing public services that includes decision-making by nonelected offials, the implementation of rules and laws, and a system of set procedures meant to simply the complex functioning of organizations.
A bureacracy.
The “iron law of oligarchy” states that all forms of organization develop oligarchic tendencies.
Oligarchy refers to a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
What is culture?
Culture is everything that is made, learned, and/ or shared by the members of a society, including: beliefs, behaviors, values, and material objects.
Material culture is the concrete, visible parts of a culture.
Nonmaterial culture (or symbolic culture) consists of the intangible aspects of a culture, such as values and beliefs.
What is the difference between a value and a belief?
A value is a culturally approved concept about what is right or wrong. Values are a culture’s principles about how things should be.
Beliefs are specific ideas that people feel to be true. Values support beliefs.
What is a ritual?
Rituals are characterized by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symboism, and performance, all societies have rituals.
Define the differences between cultural lag and culture shock.
Cultural lag explains that culture takes time to catch up with technology and that social problems/ conflicts are caused by this lag.
Culture shock is the personal disorientation a person feels when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life.
Define assimilation.
Assimilation is the process by which a person or a group’s language and/or culture come to resemble those of another group.
Define multiculturalism.
Define ethnocentrism.
Define cultural relativism.
Multiculturalism is the preservation of various cultures or cultural identies within a single unified society.
Ethnocentrism is the belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own ethnic group/ culture.
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual’s beliefs and activities should be understood in terms of their culture.
What is the difference between a subculture and a counterculture?
A subculture is a group that lives differently, but not opposed to, the dominant culture. A subculture is within a culture.
A counterculture is a subculture that opposes the dominant culture.
What is the difference between cultural transmission and cultural diffusion?
Cultural transmission refers to the methods that people within society use to learn and pass on new information. Generally referred to between generations. Culture is learned through experience and participation.
Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group to another.
