Culture 21

Question 1

GURU

Answer 1

• A Sanskrit and pan-Indian word denoting a spiritual master or teacher. It implies an initiatory relation between master and disciple.
• Passes on oral tradition and ascetic regimen to the student.

Question 2

GWEILO

Answer 2

A derogatory term meaning “Foreign devil” or “white ghost” used by the Chinese in South of Mainland China and Hong Kong to refer to Westerners.

Question 3

ALLMARKS OF HUMANITY

Answer 3

Good and evil, imagination, laughter, love.

Question 4

HARMONY

Answer 4

One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz measuring the fitting in harmoniously with the environment.

Question 5

HEAD, VILLAGE

Answer 5

A local leader in a tribal society who has limited authority, leads by example and persuasion, and must be generous.

Question 6

HEALTH-CARE SYSTEMS

Answer 6

Beliefs, customs, knowledge and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal.

Question 7

HEGEMONY

Answer 7

Term derived from the work of the Italian writer and political theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), which refers to the ability of a dominant group to exert or maintain control through a combination of overt and subtle mechanisms.

Question 8

HELPING BEHAVIOUR

Answer 8

• Prosocial behaviour that benefits others more than the person.
• Different from prosocial cooperation, in which mutual benefit is gained.

Question 9

HEURISTICS

Answer 9

Rules of thumb or shortcuts for making judgements for which we have insufficient or unverified information.

Question 10

HIDDEN TRANSCRIPT

Answer 10

A term used by James Scott to describe the coded critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage and in private, where the power holders can’t see it.

Question 11

HIERARCHY

Answer 11

One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz measuring the unequal distribution of power in a culture.

Question 12

HIGH CONTEXT AND LOW CONTEXT CULTURES

Answer 12

• All communication (verbal as well as nonverbal) is contextually bound.
• What we do or do not pay attention to is largely dictated by cultural contexting. In low-context cultures, the majority of the information is explicitly communicated in the verbal message.
• In high-context cultures the information is embedded in the context. High- and low-context cultures also differ in their definition of social and power hierarchies, relationships, work ethics, business practices, time management.
• Low-context cultures tend to emphasize the individual while high-context cultures places more importance on the collective.

Question 13

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Answer 13

Also called diachronic linguistics, is the study of how and why languages change.

Question 14

HOLISTIC

Answer 14

• Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.
• Interested in the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.

Question 15

HOLOCULTURAL ANALYSIS

Answer 15

A paradigm of research for testing hypotheses “by means of correlations found in a worldwide, comparative study whose units of study are entire societies or cultures, and whose sampling universe is either (a) all known cultures… Or (b) all known primitive tribes.”