week 2

Question 1

what is culture?

Answer 1

culture refers to knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society

Question 2

What are norms?

Answer 2

relatively precise rules that guide or regulate social life

Question 3

What are folkways?

Answer 3

informal norms or everyday customs that may be violated without serious consequences within a given culture

Question 4

what are mores/mos? then what are taboos?

Answer 4

are strongly held with moral and ethical connotations that when violated provoke a relatively strong reaction on the part of other group members
Taboos: are examples of mores. They are strong social prohibitions that are considered undesirable or offensive by a group, culture, or society

Question 5

What are values?

Answer 5

they are the standards by which members of a culture define right or wrong, what is desirable or undesirable. through values culture gives shape to our lives

Question 6

What is Harris’ cultural materialist perspective on taboos and what are the causes of taboos according to him

Answer 6

human social life is a response to the practical problems of human existence. cannibalism happened in regions with high population and low domestic animals
reason for the pig taboo emerged in arid climates; pigs ate similar foods as humans; required more water and could not be herded.

Question 7

how do we learn our culture?

Answer 7

humans learn their culture through interaction with other humans, through a process of socialization

Question 8

what is socialization?

Answer 8

it is a life long process through which individual members of the society develop their human potential and learn the patterns of their culture

Question 9

what is habitus?

Answer 9

habitus refers to habits, dispositions, lifestyles of a social group acquired through everyday practice
we learn what to eat, how to eat from past experiences and shapes future behavior
- people’s actions of free will reflects and reproduces social structures

Question 10

what is food as tradition?

Answer 10

as we get socialized into our dominant cultural values and practices, they become part of our habitus and traditions
it creates social bonds and divisions
comfort foods that we associate with our past memories build bridges between past and present and often become a source of nostalgia

Question 11

What is food as cultural capital (Bourdieu)?

Answer 11

refers to the educational knowledge resources a person uses to acquire prestige and social standings though acquired cultural knowledge

Question 12

what broader forces determined our culture?

Answer 12

• social determinants: class, gender family
• economic determinants: industrialization and globalization
• cultural determinants: religion, consumer culture, media
  capitalist consumer

Question 13

what is cultural diffusion

Answer 13

refers to the spread of cultural practices and norms from one group of people to another

Question 14

What is globalization?

Answer 14

a process whereby hitherto bounded societies are experiencing increasing cross border flows of people, goods, services, ideas, information, money, images, knowledge, and culture

Question 15

What is ethnocentrism? and what is ethnocentrism chauvinism?

Answer 15

believing that our own cultural practices are the most natural and normal forms of behavior.
ethnocentrism chauvinism considers other cultural practices as inferior

Question 16

what is koc and welsh study on immigrant experience and their idea of food security

Answer 16

they look at how immigrants deal with different cultural practices and how these experiences impact their notion of food security. food security refers to a condition in which “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”

Question 17

what is adaptation

Answer 17

how the immigrant behavior changes as result of immigration

Question 18

what is distancing?

Answer 18

refers to the extent to which individuals are willing to interact and establish relationships with members of social group other than their own

Question 19

food security implies 2 things:

Answer 19

• access to food and freedom from hunger

- access to food people are culturally familiar