Module 2 Flashcards
Culture
Shared beliefs, values, and practices.
Society
People who live in a definable community and who share a culture.
Cultural Relativism
The practice of assessing a culture by its own standards, and not in comparison to another culture.
Cultural Universals
Patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies.
Material Culture
The objects or belongings of a group of people.
Nonmaterial Culture
The ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society.
Cultural Imperialism
The deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture.
Cultural Relativism
The practice of assessing a culture by its own standards, and not in comparison to another culture.
Cultural Universals
Patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies.
Culture Shock
An experience of personal disorientation when confronted with an unfamiliar way of life.
Ethnocentrism
The practice of evaluating another culture according to the standards of one’s own culture.
Material Culture
The objects or belongings of a group of people.
Nonmaterial Culture
The ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society.
Xenocentrism
A belief that another culture is superior to one’s own.
Beliefs
Tenets or convictions that people hold to be true.
Ideal Culture
The standards a society would like to embrace and live up to.
Real Culture
The way society really is based on what actually occurs and exists.
Sanctions
A way to authorize or formally disapprove of certain behaviors.
Social Control
A way to encourage conformity to cultural norms.
Values
A culture’s standards for discerning what is good and just in society.
Values
A culture’s standards for discerning what is good and just in society.
Folkways
Direct, appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of culture.
Formal Norms
Established, written rules
Informal Norms
Casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to.
Mores
The moral views and principles of a group.
Norm
The visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies through which societies are structured.
Language
A symbolic system of communication.
Mores
The views and principles of a group.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The way that people understand the world is based on their form of language.
Symbols
Gestures or objects that have meanings associated with them that are recognized by people who share a culture.
Counterculture
Groups that reject and oppose society’s widely accepted cultural patterns.
High Culture
The Cultural patterns of society’s elite.
Popular Culture
Mainstream, widespread patterns among a society’s population.
Subcultures
Groups that share a specific identification, apart from a society’s majority, even as the members exist within a larger society.
Culture Lag
The gap of time between the introduction of material culture and nonmaterial culture’s acceptance of it.
Diffusion
The spread of material and nonmaterial culture from one culture to another.
Discoveries
Things and ideas are found from what already exists.
Globalization
The integration of international trade and finance markets.
Innovations
New objects or ideas are introduced to culture for the first time.
Inventions
A combination of pieces of existing reality into new forms.
Agricultural Societies
Societies that rely on farming as a way of life.
Feudal Societies
Societies that operate on a strict hierarchical system of power based around land ownership and protection.
Horticultural societies
Societies based around the cultivation of plants.
Hunter-Gather Societies
Societies depend on hunting wild animals and gathering uncultivated plants for survival.
Industrial Societies
Societies characterized by a reliance on mechanized labor to create material goods.
Information Societies
Societies are based on the production of nonmaterial goods and services.
Pastoral Societies
Societies based around the domestication of animals.
Societies
A group of people who live in a definable community and share the same culture.
Anomie
A situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness.
Collective Conscience
The communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society.
Mechanical Solidarity
A type of social order maintained by the collective consciences of a culture.
Organic Solidarity
A type of social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences.
Social Integration
How strongly a person is connected to his or her social group.
Alienation
An individual’s isolation from his society, his work, and his sense of self.
Bourgeoisie
The owners of the means of production in society.
Capitalism
A way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to make the transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by individual people and companies rather than by the government.
Class Consciousness
The awareness of the one’s rank in society.
False consciousness
A person’s beliefs and ideology that are in conflict with her best interests.
Proletariat
The laborers in a society.
Iron Cage
A situation in which an individual is trapped by a social institution.
Rationalization
A belief that modern society should be built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition.
Habitualization
The idea is that society is constructed by us and those before us, and it is followed like a habit.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
An idea that becomes true when acted upon.
Thomas Theorem
How a subjective reality can drive events to develop in accordance with that reality, despite being originally unsupported by objective reality.
Achieved Status
The status a person chooses, such as a level of education or income.
Ascribed Status
The status outside of an individual’s control, such as sex or race.
Looking-glass Self
Our reflection of how we think we appear to others.
Roles
Patterns of behavior that are representative of a person’s social status.
Sole-set
An array of roles attached to a particular status.
Role Performance
The expression of a role.
Role Strain
Stress that occurs when too much is required of a single role.
Status
The responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to his or her rank and role in society.
Moral Development
The way people learn what is “good” and “bad” in society.
Nature
The influence of our genetic makeup on self-development.
Nurture
The role that our social environment plays in self-development.
Peer Group
A group made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests.
Hidden Curriculum
The informal teaching is done in schools that socializes children to societal norms.
Anticipatory Socialization
The way we prepare for future life roles.
Degradation Ceremony
The process by which new members of a total institution lose aspects of their old identities and are given new ones.
Resocialization
The process by which old behaviors are removed and new behaviors are learned in their place.
Aggregate
A collection of people who exist in the same place at the same time, but who don’t interact or share a sense of identity.
Category
People who share similar characteristics but who are not connected in any way.
Expressive Function
A group function that serves an emotional need.
Group
Any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share some sense of aligned identity.
In-Group
A group a person belongs to and feels is an integral part of his identity.
Instrumental Function
Being oriented toward a task or goal.
Out-Group
A group that an individual is not a member of, and may even compete with.
Primary Groups
Small, informal groups of people who are closest to us.
Reference Groups
Groups to which an individual compares herself.
Secondary Groups
Larger and more impersonal groups that are task-forced and time limited.
Dyad
A two-member group.
Triad
A three-member group.
Authoritarian Leader
A leader who issues orders and assigns tasks.
Democratic Leader
A leader who encourages group participation and consensus-building before moving into action.
Expressive Leader
A leader who is concerned with the process and with ensuring everyone’s emotional wellbeing.
Laissiez-Faire Leader
A hands-off leader who allows members of the group to make their own decisions.
Leadership Function
The main focus or goal of a leader.
Leadership Style
The style a leader uses to achieve goals or elicit action from group members.
Conformity
The extent to which an indicudual complies with group or societal norms.
Bureaucracies
Formal organizations are characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labor, explicit rules, and impersonality.
Clear Division of Labor
The fact that each individual in a bureaucracy has a specialized task to perform.
Coercive Organizations
Organizations that people do not voluntarily join, such as prisons or a mental hospitals.
Explicit Rules
The types of rules in a bureaucracy; rules that are outlined, recorded, and standardized.
Formal Organizations
Large, impersonal organizations.
Hierarchy of Authority
A clear chain of command is found in a bureaucracy.
Impersonality
The removal of personal feelings from a professional situation.
Iron Rule of Oligarchy
The theory that an organization is ruled by a few elites rather than through collaboration.
Normative or Voluntary Organization
Organizations that people join to pursue on merit-proven and documented skills.
Total Institution
An organization in which participants live a controlled lifestyle and in which total resocialization occurs.
Utilitarian Organization
Organization that are joined to fill a specific material need.
McDonaldization of Society
The increasing presence of the fast food business model in common social institution.
Deviance
A violation of contextual, cultural, or social norms.
Formal Sanctions
Sanctions that are officially recognized and enforced.
Informal Sanctions
Sanctions that occur in face-to-face interactions.
Negative Sanctions
Punishments for violating norms.
Sanctions
The means of enforcing rules.
Social Control
The regulation and enforcement of norms.
Social Order
An arrangement of practices and behaviors on which society’s members base their daily lives.
Cultural Deviance Theory
A theory that suggests conformity to the prevailing cultural norms of lower-class society causes crime.
Social Disorganization Theory
A theory that asserts crime occurs in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.
Strain Theory
A theory that addresses the relationship between having socially acceptable goals and having socially acceptable means to reach those goals.
