SOC Chapter 3 Flashcards
Culture
Culture is composed of the beliefs, norms, behaviors, and products common to the members of a particular group
Symbols
Anything that stands for something else and has a particular meaning for people who share a culture =
could be words, gestures, and objects
Characteristics of culture
culture is shared, learned, taken for granted, symbolic , and varies across time and place
Material Culture
culture consists of the tangible objects that members of a society make, use, and share. physical objects created and embraced by society
Material culture examples
tv shows, twitter, famous people
Nonmaterial Culture
The ideas of a culture, including values and beliefs, accumulated knowledge about how to understand and navigate the world, and standards or “norms” about appropriate behavior. Political opinions, religious beliefs, and marriage patterns.
Norms
: common rules of a culture that govern the behavior of people belonging to it. The “oughts” and “ought nots” that guide behavioral choices
Folkways
: fairly weak norms that are passed down from the past; violation is not considered serious (wedding ceremony)
Mores
strongly held norms; violation seriously offends standards of acceptable conduct ( cussing or PDA)
Taboos
: powerful mores; violation is considered serious and even unthinkable
(Incest or Cannibalism)
Laws
codified norms or rules of behavior that formalize and institutionalize society’s norms
The norms in our culture are?
mostly unwritten, instrumental, explicit and implicit, change over time
Language
: a particular kind of symbolic system, composed of verbal, nonverbal, and sometimes written representations that are vehicles for conveying meaning
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
our understandings and actions emerge from language. The words and concepts we learn and use structure our perceptions of the social world.
Thomas Theorem on beliefs-
Beliefs may be understood as real when they are real in their consequences
Values
the standards by which members of a particular culture define what is good or bad, moral or immoral, proper or improper, desirable or undesirable, beautiful or ugly.
Ideal culture
values, norms, and behaviors that people in a given society profess to embrace
Real culture
: values, norms, and behaviors that people in a given society actually embrace and exhibit
Ethnocentrism
: worldview whereby we judge other cultures by the standards of our own
Cultural relativism
worldview whereby we understand the practices of another society sociologically, in terms of that society’s own norms and values and not our own
Subculture
culture that exists within a dominant culture but differs from it in some way
Conterculture
subcultural group whose norms, values, and practices deviate from those of the dominant culture
High culture
music, theater, literature
Popular culture
entertainment, culinary, athletic taste
Culture Universals
customs and practices that are common to all societies
Social class reproduction
the way class status is reproduced from generation to generation (Pierre Bourdieu)
Cultural capital
wealth in the form of knowledge, ideas, verbal skills, and ways of thinking and behaving
Global culture
culture spread across world in the form of popular films, food, and music
Rape culture
A social culture that provides an environment conducive to rape
