Culture: Values, Beliefs, Practices and Domination (lecture 5&6)

Question 1

Nacirema (Miner)

*note: American spelt backwards

Answer 1

• name= a ‘joke’ to highlight the objectifying alienating way we often treat other cultures and to relate to other cultures
• the idea that other culture may seem mystical and ‘different’ to us, but the same can be said about our culture
NOTE: always take an outsider’s perspective on our own culture, and an insider’s perspective on other cultures

Question 2

4 ways to analyze culture (folkway, mores, taboos, rituals and practices)

Answer 2

1) Folkways: informal norms; guide everyday behaviour (eg: politeness, cleanliness)
2) Mores: more strictly-enforced moral norms (eg: prohibitions against murder)
3) Taboos: things that it’s forbidden to do or touch (esp. in public) (eg: urinating in public)
4) Rituals and Practices: behaviour that follows on from folkways and morals (eg: washing)

Question 3

Material Culture

Answer 3

particular ways a society interacts with the material world (everyday objects it uses to do so)
ex: laptop

Question 4

Non-Material Culture

Answer 4

ideals, beliefs, arts etc of a socity; its representations of descriptions of the world

Question 5

Cultural Universe (George Murdock)

*main interest of symbolic interactionists

Answer 5

practices or rituals with symbolic value found in every known human culture (eg: cooking, language, weddings)
• have symbolic value

Question 6

Social Integration

Answer 6

process of fully incorporating individuals (or groups) into society by the adoption of cultural norms or the major cultural group
• structural functionlists encourages us to behave in similar ways in order to protect the social order

Question 7

Semiotics (and subcategories: sign and symbol)

Answer 7

Semiotics: study of meanings within cultures (examining signs and symbols)
Sign: object that represents something other than itself (ie: tiger=animal)
Symbol: An additional meaning or value associated with object (ie: gorilla= great strength)

Question 8

Values

Answer 8

things culture or people hold to be the most important (useful to help explain how people act- sociologically)
•may motivate people to take certain types of actions which have broader social consequences

Question 9

Protestant Ethic (Weber)

symbolic interactonalism

Answer 9

• Weber’s term for a set of values and ways of acting (+ consequences) that he thought typical of protestant christians in the 16th century
• value hard work, frugality for own sake
• effective affinity w capitalism: suited rise of market society–> gives protestants advantage

Question 10

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf)

Answer 10

our thoughts are limited by the words our language provides for them
• essentially, we are only able to use ideas that our society (and language) has words for; therefore, people sharing language think similarly (eg: shared concepts even when we express individuality, shaped by society)

Question 11

Linguistic Determinism

Answer 11

• unable to come up with a concept, idea or belief if you don’t have the word(s) for it
- everyone is ‘defined’ by language (to a degree)

Question 12

Ideal Culture (conflicts?)

Answer 12

values and ideals a group fo people claims to adhere to (their mental image of their society)
• idealized, no longer real representation of how society is
• societies often cling on to image of former society; this can lead to conflicts between generations bc younger generations no longer adhere to standards of older folks

Question 13

Multiculturalism

Answer 13

recognition of (and govern. support for) multiple different cultures in one society
• cultural pluralism= good for society
- Pierre Trudeau- official policy of multiculturalism in Canada (institutional recognition to cultural diversity)

Question 14

Canada vs. Amerian Multiculturalism description?

Answer 14

Canada: cultural mosaic (immigrants retain original cultural identity)
American: melting pot (immigrants all become ‘American’)

Question 15

Ethnocentrism

Answer 15

judging other cultures by the standards of your own culture; assuming your own culture is the ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ one while others have ‘strange’ customs

Question 16

What happens when cultural homogeneity is enforced?

Answer 16

• feelings of alienation
• members of minority groups feel excluded from society and undervalued
• social problems

Question 17

Androcentric Language

Answer 17

use of MALE words to refer to ANY person/ describe humanity as a whole (eg: rights of man)
• implicitly excludes women from the way we think about certain social roles (ie: fireman, businessman)
• ind. may exclude or diminish the value of people in their own culture (eg: gender)

Question 18

Deviance

Answer 18

any behaviour that goes AGAINST the commonly-held values of a society, esp if held to be a threat (to society’s values)
• these are punished, or forced to conform to mainstream

Question 19

Conformity

Answer 19

adherence to the main rules and norms of a society; conventional behaviour (accepted by society)

Question 20

What are the 2 deviations from society?

Answer 20

1) Counterculture: against mainstream but seek to REPLACE it with something different; usually formed by people excluded from society with little to lose (reject mainstream and adopt new values) (eg: neo-nazi)
2) Subculture: distinct part within mainstream but want to stand out; usually formed by people in high status dominant groups that share many norms with main group but with points of differentiation (don’t seek to overthrow society, usually from middle-class) (eg: hipsters)

Question 21

Talcott Parsons on culture

Answer 21

• argues that cultural systems lie at the root of other social forms; patterns that shape conditions of individual action
• analysis of culture, language, values etc. reveal the basic ‘rules of the social game’ doesn’t determine the outcome but limit how it might turn out

Question 22

Authority (and it’s three subcategories- traditional, charismatic, rational-legal)

Answer 22

Authority: ability to have others obey you (without resorting to force)

1) Traditional: followers obey bc of the long established cultural prestige of role (eg: monarchy, parent)
2) Charismatic: followers obey due to personal magnetism of inspirational leader and their ability to motivate their followers to carry out their wishes (eg: nelson mandela)
3) Rational-legal: people in authority chosen in legally-defined process (eg: elections, teachers) based on merit and good performance

Question 23

Dominant Ideology

Answer 23

system of values, beliefs and practices that justify and support existing social system, and defend the authority of those with power within it

Question 24

Ideological Hegemony (Antonio Gramsci)

Answer 24

intellectual and ideological control of society by the dominant class, such that everyone adopts their worldview
• ruling class maintains control over institutions of education, law and religion and intellectuals express the dominant class's ideals
• subaltern (lower) classes WON'T have any intellectuals to express own worldview bc fed beliefs etc from dominant class and their actions inadvertently help those of rulers when they don't want to

Question 25

Collective Consciousness

Answer 25

whole collection of values, beliefs, ideas etc that the vast majority of people in a society assumer to extremely ‘wrong’
• ie: we see murder as something horrifying, or if someone dresses differently than us, or eats something diff.
• therefore, suggesting that we feel something bigger than us is under attack; the thing attacked is SOCIETY (which we all seek to defend)

Question 26

Solidarity (Durkheim)

Answer 26

the ‘force’ that holds us all together in society, bringing people together as something more than just a crowd of individuals
• eg: in the past societies were much more homogenous, and this was reinforced by laws punishing those who deviated from the accepted ways of acting/ living

Question 27

Encoding (Stuart Hall)

Answer 27

hiding messages about normal model of society within cultural items (subtle)
•eg: gender roles in tv shows

Question 28

Decoding (Stuart Hall)

Answer 28

how we UNDERSTAND messages- depends on own situation; might not be effective

Question 29

Dominant Culture

Answer 29

values, norms etc of behaving of the ruling group in society
• others are expected to conform to this; the ‘default’ of what is assumed to be ‘natural’ (essentially what everyones strives for/ wants to do- eg: slim, abs, white masculine male)

Question 30

Bechdel Test (Alison Bechdel)

Answer 30

measure of female presence in major Hollywood movies
• revealed how sidelined women are in pop culture
- suggesting that men= independent of females but females= dependent on men in movies

Question 31

The Eternal Feminine (Simone de Beauvoir)

Answer 31

• the supposed mysterious ‘essence’ of women; characteristics that entices men
• females (real or fictional) often treated as if they’re entirely explained by this ‘essence’
- ‘women there to inspire the men with sheer feminine essence’

Question 32

Orietalism (Edward Said)

Answer 32

the way white Europeans saw the rest of the world as ‘mysterious’ ‘primitive’
• Europe= privileged as ‘normal’- the way humans should be
* non-westerners deviate from a norm of human progress and reason (used to justify colonialism)

Question 33

Alterity (Emmanuel Levinas)

Answer 33

how one (dominant) group depicts another as somehow 'different from the norm' or less human
• dominant group sees itself in contrast to this 'other'
   - feminists and race thoeists look at this

Question 34

‘High’ (‘elite’) Culture

Answer 34

arts etc enjoyed by high-status groups in society (opera, wine)
•implies you have to be ‘sophisticated; to appreciate such refined things

Question 35

‘Pop’ (‘mass’) Culture

Answer 35

less-exclusive entertainment, often seen as simplistic and enjoyed by lower-status people
• treated as mere entertainment without artistic merit

Question 36

Conspicuous Consumption (Thorstein Veblen)

Answer 36

practice of buying EXPENSIVE, showy products in order to demonstrate your status and power to others

Question 37

Veblen Goods

Answer 37

things bought for the sole purpose of showing how rich one is and for the sake of status

Question 38

Capital (and it’s 3 diff forms- Economic, Cultural, Social)
(Pierre Bourdieu)

• status is displayed by demonstrating you GOOD taste but the ruling class determines what counts as ‘good taste’

Answer 38

Capital: a resource you invest in order to get more of it back

Economic Capital: money and other material resources that may be invested to grow them (any money you reinvest to get more of it)

Cultural Capital: knowledge of (arts, wine, history etc), includes forms like university degrees to demonstrate status and high class (payback in the form of higher social status)

Social Capital: contacts and networks of people we use to connect and take opportunities

Question 39

Habitus

Answer 39

deeply-ingrained habits, customs, ways of behaving or carrying self; learnt as child
• upper class acquire correct habitus (instinctively know how to behave)
   - bc higher-status pass this knowledge to their children (through lessons or more resources etc)

Question 40

Production of Culture Perspective

Answer 40

examination of cultural or artistic objects through socioeconomic circumstances they were produced in (particular social circumstances that lead to specific ways of creating art)

Question 41

Culture Industry

Answer 41

modern entertainment industry, which produces ‘arts’ on production line (eg: Hollywood)
• goal is to maximise profit (cheaply)
• much of what is produced has the same ‘structure’–> very easy, simplistic and repetitive but still catches the consumer’s eye

Question 42

What does Bourdieu (capital) and Veblen (Conspicuous Consumption) look at?

Answer 42

They look at the way we use knowledge of culture to assert our superiority ad to see social inequality

Question 43

Culture (in sociology vs. general sense)

Answer 43

Sociology: the universe of symbols, values, beliefs and practices shared by a society

Culture: the arts, entertainment, literature etc..