Culture Flashcards
Culture
Shared beliefs, values, and practices, that participants in a society must learn
Material culture
The physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture
Non material culture
Thoughts or ideas that make up a culture
Culture shock
Feelings of discomfort occurring when immersed in a new culture
Ethnocentricism
Measuring or judging one’s own culture against another culture
Cultural relativism
Not judging a culture to our own standards of what is right or wrong, strange or normal
Symbolic culture
An experience that signifies a culture
Symbol
Anything that carries meaning to a specific group of people or culture
Gestures
A form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in space of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words
Language
A symbolic system through which people communicate and through which culture is transmitted
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality
Values
the belief that we have about what is important, both to us and to society as a whole
Norms
Rules or expectations that are socially enforced
Sanctions
The methods that we use to enforce social control
Positive sanction
Rewards given for conforming to norms
Negative sanction
If someone in a society does not abide by the expected custom or laws, the others in the society find a way to punish him
Folkways
A social norm that is developed by social conventions or traditions without the sanctions possessed by other morally significant social norms
Mores
The traditional customs and codes of behavior that are typically followed in a place or in a group, but are not codified by law
Taboo
A social groups ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group’s sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred, or allowed only for certain people
Subculture
Groups that are perceived to deviate from the normative standards of the dominate culture
Counterculture
A culture within a larger culture that deliberately challenges or rejects the dominant culture’s behaviors, beliefs, lifestyle, norms, and values
Pluralistic society
Where many groups and political parties coexists and have an active role in the governing process
Core values
Essential beliefs and principles that lead in individual to act or a company to operate in a certain way
Value cluster
Has a range of values and concepts within it
Value-contradiction
A value system by its is internally inconsistent or contradictory if its values contradict each other, and its exceptions are highly situational and inconsistently applied
Ideal culture
The values, beliefs and norms people desire to achieve
Real culture
the actual values, norms, and beliefs of a given society, observed and measured in reality
Cultural universe
Concepts, social constructs, or patterns of behavior that are common to all human cultures
Sociobiology
The systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior in all organisms, including humans
Technology
The application of science to address the problems of daily life
New technology
Information and communication technologies based on microelectronics
Cultural lag
The phenomenon that occurs when changes in material cultural occur before or at a faster rate than the changes in non-material culture
Cultural diffusion
The spread of any element of a culture from one group to a group that does not already have that element in its culture
Cultural leveling
Cultures that are growing and becoming more similar to each other
