P&E Chapter 8 ON EXAM Culture Flashcards
culture
a people’s ethose (how people feel about the world around them) and worldview (how people perceive the world around them), all of which is encoded in how people construct and employ meanings that guide their perceptions and behavior in multiple contexts.
material culture
meaning-making activities: music, dance, art, language, clothing, literature, stories and narratives, architecture and shelter
features of life which are not static nor changing very rapidly
ethnic customs, traditions, values, beliefs and notions of common sense
misunderstandings
arise when we use our own understandings we have constructed both about ourselves and about how the world does and should operate to categorize and rank others
practice orientation
a contemporary approach to understanding culture by thinking of human action as a product, producer, and transformer of history and social structures.
nondominant group response to dominate culture
assimilation, accommodation, acculturation and/or bicultural socialization
identities and resources are based on
political, social, and economic structures and processes
a multidimensional understanding of cutlure
is necessary to grasp the increasing complexity of the construction and employment of meaning regarding identities and the distribution of resources
norms
the culturally defined standards or rules of conduct
examples of cultures
U.S. culture, family culture, school culture, digital culture, consumer culture, peer culture, gender culture, entertainment culture, work culture, religious or spiritual culture, identity culture
multifaceted contexts of lives
economics, race/ethnicity, traditions and customs, gender, political processes, immigration, popular culture, psychology, academic processes, technology and other factors
enumeration of social content
that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by humansas members of society; the sum total of human achievement
social heritage/tradition
learned repertory of thoughts and actions exhibited by members of a social group, independently of genetic heredity from one generation to the next. the sum total and organization of social heritages that have acquired social meaning because of racial temperament and the historical life of the group.
rule or way of life
the sum total ways of doing and thinking, past and present, of a social group. the distinctive way of life of a group of people; their complete design for living
psychological and social adjustment and learning
*the total equipment of technique mechanical, mental and moral-by sue of which the people of a given period try to attend their ends. sum total of material and intellectual equipment whereby people satisfy biological. and social needs and adapt to the environment. learned modes of behavior that are socially transmitted from one generations to another within a particular society that may be diffused from onne society to another.
ideas and values
an organized group of thoughts, havits adn conditioned emotional responses shared by members of a society. acquired or cultivated behavior and thought of individuals.
Patterning and symbols
a system of interelated and interdependent habits of response. organization of conventional understandings manifest in art and artifact that characterize a human group. semiotics - webs of public meaning people have spun by which they are suspended. distinct order or classs of phenomena that we have termed symboling; or material objects, acts, beliefs and attitudes that function in contexts characterized by symboling
culture
a set of common understandings manifest in act and artifact both inside somebody’s head as understandings and in the external environment as act and artifact, including both behavior (act) and material outcomes of that behavior (artifacts, or things we construct from the material and technological world around us). both constrains and is constrained by nature, biology, social conditions and other realities of human existence.
traditional understandings of culture 18th and 19th centruy enlightenment and romanticism
rankings of logic, reason, art and technology to judge cultures as better than other cultures
culture seizing nature
psychic unity of humankind
cultural relativism (traditional understanding of culture)
cultures are relatively equal in value, differences in culture reflect different frameworks of meaning and understandings and thus result in different lifestyles.
biological determinism (traditional understanding of culture)
the attempt to differentiate social behavior largely on the basis of biological and genetic endowment
othering (traditional understanding of culture)
labeling people who fall outside of your own group as abnormal, inferior or marginal
basics about culture
Culture is learned through social interaction.
A society may have customary practices, but not all members have same knowledge or attach same significance.
culture seizes nature, humans seek to control nature and shape it according to their own needs and interest
culture is patterned, culture is symbolic and culture is both adaptive and maleadaptive
additional concepts that help discussion of past and present conceptions of culture
ideology (set of shared beliefs about the way things are and should work).
ethnocentrism (tendency to elevate own ethnic group and social cultural processes over others)
cultural symbols (something verbal or nonverbal, that comes to stand for something else: race, ethnicity, gender)
worldview and ethos (idea of reality, concept of nature, of self, of society; tone character and quality of people’s life, its moral and aesthetic style in mood; underlying attitude towards themselves and their world)
cultural innovation
cultural conflict (conflict over meanings
