Culture ( I )- Values, Beliefs and Practices

Question 1

Nacirema culture

Answer 1

North American group loving in the territory between Canadian cree, the Yaqui, and taraumare of Mexico.

Question 2

Nacirema beliefs

Answer 2

fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and hat its natural tendency is to debility and disease.

Question 3

Nacirema rituals

Answer 3

perform their household shrines

- the ‘care box’ where they store ‘magical potions without which no native believes he could live’

Question 4

what did miners conclude the people of Nacirema to be?

Answer 4

magic-ridden people

Question 5

folkways

Answer 5

informal norms; guide everyday behaviour

Question 6

mores

Answer 6

more strictly-enforced moral norms

Question 7

taboos

Answer 7

things that is forbidden to do or touch

Question 8

rituals or practices

Answer 8

behaviours that follow on from folkways and morals

Question 9

material culture

Answer 9

the particular way a society interacts with the material world; the everyday objects it uses to do so

Question 10

non-material culture

Answer 10

the ideals, beliefs, arts of a society; its representations of secretions of the world

Question 11

cultural universal

Answer 11

practices or rituals with symbolic value found in every known human culture

Question 12

social integration

Answer 12

process by which individuals are fully incorporated into society by the adoption of cultural norms

Question 13

Semiotics

Answer 13

Study of meanings within cultures, examining signs and symbols

Question 14

Semiotic Signs

Answer 14

an object that represents something other than itself

Question 15

semiotic symbol

Answer 15

an additional meaning or value associated with objects

Question 16

values

Answer 16

the things a culture holds to be most important; sociologically useful it they can help explain how people act

Question 17

Protestant ethic

Answer 17

Weber’s term for a set of values and ways of acting that he thought typical of protestant

Question 18

sapir-whorf hypothesis

Answer 18

theory that our thoughts are limited by the words our language provides for them

Question 19

Ideal Culture

Answer 19

the values and ideals a group of people claims to adhere to their mental image of their society

Question 20

multiculturalism

Answer 20

recognition of multiple different cultures in one society

Question 21

ethnocentrism

Answer 21

judging other cultures by the standard of your own culture; assuming your own culture is the normal more natural one whilst others have strange customs

Question 22

Androcentric language

Answer 22

use of Male words to refer to any person

eg. ‘rights of man’

Question 23

Deviance

Answer 23

any behaviour that goes against the commonly-held values of a society, especially if held to be a threat

Question 24

Conformity

Answer 24

adherence to the main rules and norms of a society conventional behaviour