Lecture 2: Culture, Comparison and Context

Question 1

What are ‘symbols’

Answer 1

signs that have no necessary or natural connection with the things for which they stand

Question 2

What is ‘enculturation’

Answer 2

the process by which a child learns his or her culture

Question 3

Why is culture learned

Answer 3

Culture is learned through direct instruction and observations. Human cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols

Question 4

Why is culture symbolic?

Answer 4

Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to cultural learning. An example hereby are verbal and nonverbal symbols. The association between symbols and symbolized is arbitrary and conventional

Question 5

Why is culture shared?

Answer 5

Because it is located in and transmitted through groups. Culture spreads through shared beliefs, values, memories, and expectations link people who grow up in the same culture. Enculturation unifies people by providing common experiences

Question 6

Why is culture all-encompassing

Answer 6

culture includes features sometimes regarded as trivial or unworthy of serious study. To understand Western cultures, one must also consider television, fast-food restaurants, sports, and games. Culture is also inherently linked to politics

Question 7

Why are cultures integrated and patterned systems?

Answer 7

if one part of culture changes, other parts of culture will change too. Important here are the core values of a culture

Question 8

what are ‘core values’

Answer 8

key/basic/central values that integrate a culture

Question 9

why is culture instrumental, adaptive and maladaptive?

Answer 9

Humans have biological and cultural ways of coping with environmental stress. What’s good for an individual isn’t necessarily good for the group. Many modern cultural patterns may be maladaptive in the long run

Question 10

What does ‘hominid’ mean?

Answer 10

member of the hominid family; any fossil or living human, chimp or gorilla

Question 11

What does ‘hominin’ mean?

Answer 11

Hominins: hominids excluding the African apes; all human species that ever existed

Question 12

Universal

Answer 12

exists in all societies

Question 13

Generality

Answer 13

exists in some, but not all, societies

things like a nuclear family, the process of diffusion, colonization and invention.

Question 14

Particularity

Answer 14

distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration

patterns of culture like diffusion and independent invention. When cultural traits are borrowed, traits modified to fit the adopting culture

Question 15

National culture

Answer 15

cultural features shared by citizens of the same nation

Question 16

international culture

Answer 16

cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries

Question 17

subcultures

Answer 17

identifiable cultural patterns existing within a larger culture

Question 18

ethnocentrism

Answer 18

tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to use one’s own standards and values in judging outsiders

Question 19

practice theory

Answer 19

individuals within society have diverse motives

Question 20

cultural relativism

Answer 20

to know another culture requires full understanding of its members’ beliefs and motivations

Question 21

Human rights

Answer 21

rights based on justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions

Question 22

cultural rights

Answer 22

rights vested in religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies

Question 23

intellectual property rights

Answer 23

an indigenous group’s collective knowledge and its applications

Question 24

globalization

Answer 24

series of processes that work to make modern nations and people increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent

Question 25

globalization as a fact

Answer 25

Spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies across the world. New aspects: speed, scale, volume