Soc 100 - Culture III

Question 1

In review, what is culture?

Answer 1

Culture is a combination of beliefs or values and practice, habits, or rituals that follow from them.We understand a society if we understand the cultural rules that shape its people’s actions.

Question 2

Cultural Universal

Answer 2

Practices or rituals with symbolic value found in every known human culture.Cooking, funeral ceremonies, self-adornment, gift-giving, language etc are found to have symbolic importance everywhere.

Question 3

What actions tend to be cultural universals in a society?

Answer 3

Actions essential to survival of all societies often found to have such importance.

Question 4

How do Cr Th look at culture?

Answer 4

Critical theorists look at how culture can be used to dominate or impose social control. How do sets of values serve particular social interest groups? How are they transmitted?

Question 5

Authority

Answer 5

The ability to have others obey you (without resorting to force)

Question 6

What are the three types of Authority described by Weber?

Answer 6

Traditional: followers obey because of long-established cultural prestige of role.Charismatic: followers obey due to personal magnetism of inspirational leader.Rational-legal: leader chosen in legally-defined process, e.g. elections or examinations

Question 7

What kind of authority to people have who hold prestigious positions in society? Give some examples.

Answer 7

They have traditional authority, based on cultural prestige�they are figures we turn to for guidance individually and socially:�National/international political or religious leaders; local figures, e.g. priests, professors, doctors.

Question 8

Dominant Ideology

Answer 8

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

Question 9

How does Antonio Gramsci define the two types of intellectuals relative to classes and class rule?

Answer 9

Organic Intellectuals: Those with particular technical knowledge about their class’s activity. They form naturally as specialisations of labour process, e.g. an engineer, a doctor.�Traditional Intellectuals: Semi-autonomous group of scholars, priests, administrators not attached to any particular class – but who could be adopted by whichever class rules.

Question 10

Hegemony

Answer 10

Ideological control of a society exercised by a dominant group, whose way of looking at the world is propagated by major cultural institutions.

Question 11

Who does Gramsci suggest controls the traditional intellectuals? And why?

Answer 11

Gramsci suggests ruling class controls traditional intellectuals:They maintain control over institutions of education and religion, allowing propagation of their worldview.

Question 12

How is the lower class intellectually defenseless?

Answer 12

They don’t have any intellectuals to express their own worldview.

Question 13

How do the lower classes then in turn help the ruling class?

Answer 13

Because the subaltern classes are fed beliefs and values of dominant class, their actions will inadvertently help those of rulers even when they don’t want to.Thus, dominant group has intellectual hegemony.

Question 14

Encoding and Decoding

Answer 14

Encoding: Hiding messages about normal model of society within cultural items.Decoding: How we understand messages – depends on own situation; might not be effective.

Question 15

Which Sociological movement looks at the way culture conveys hidden messages?

Answer 15

the Cultural Studies movement

Question 16

Are cultural values always explicity expressed in the media?

Answer 16

Cultural values aren’t always expressed explicitly: they can be implied without saying it.

Question 17

How do tv shows usually depict the nuclear family?

Answer 17

Television shows usually depict a typical nuclear family, often with a schlub of a husband but a slender, beautiful wife: implies that this is the standard type.

Question 18

How does Stuart Hill explain gender roles are presented in society to establish normality?

Answer 18

Cultures often set up ideal models of role behaviour:Gender roles are presented as models for us to follow

Question 19

How do cultures, according to Stuart Hill, use appearances to establish normality? How does this lead to ethnocentrism?

Answer 19

We’re presented with impossible models of appearance.These models often racially-specific: comparatively few models of colour, so ethnocentric ideals of beauty.�

Question 20

What is the ‘norm’ in north america?

Answer 20

This sets up white masculine model as the ‘norm’ – and those who are not white males are interpreted through difference�

Question 21

What theory of Freud’s helps to establish gender inequality?

Answer 21

Freud’s ‘penis envy’: women allegedly wish to be men.�

Question 22

How are subaltern groups presented in the media in contrast with the dominant group?

Answer 22

Consequently, subaltern groups are often presented as merely secondary, or as “defective” versions of the dominant group.

Question 23

What is the Bechdel Test? Who was it invented by?

Answer 23

Think of a Hollywood movie:Does it have two named female characters?Do those characters have a conversation just with each other?Do they talk about something other than men?�Alison Bechdel, highlights the way women are often represented as secondary: even in films about women, their lives revolve around the men.

Question 24

How does Simone de Beauvoir describe women are treated as ‘the Other’?

Answer 24

Men are represented as self-controlling agents, with their own lives. They develop themselves by overcoming problems.Women appear in literature at best as ‘the Muse’ – there to inspire the man, not have a story of her own.

Question 25

What is Colonialism, and who described this phenomenon?

Answer 25

Frantz Fanon (1925-61) examined colonialism:Colonial cities often divided into the “European quarter” of order & peace, and the “native quarter” of crime & darkness.Colonised peoples absorb European standards – and come to hate their own appearance.