Week 4 - Pop Culture Flashcards
Identify and define: culture, popular culture, counter culture, high culture, low culture, subculture, counterculture, ethnocentrism, and multiculturalism.
- Culture: the way that non material objects i.e. thoughts, actions, language, and values - come together with material objects to form a way of life (things and ideas)
- Popular culture: the cultural behaviours and ideas that are popular with most people in society
popular culture is really a mechanism to tells stories, be it through music, art, television, film, theatre, or popular social media sites. Critics of popular culture in 20th and 21st centuries argue popular culture is a product/tool of capitalism. typically considered a manifestation of low culture - Mainstream culture: cultural patterns that are broadly in line with a society’s cultural ideals and values
- Counter-culture: push back on mainstream culture in an attempt to change how a society functions
- High culture: cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite, and is generally associated with fine arts
- Low culture: culture of the masses (sometimes synonymous with popular culture)
- Subculture: cultural patterns that set apart a segment of a society’s population (i.e. hipsters)
- Ethnocentrism: practice of judging one culture by the standards of another
- Multiculturalism: perspective that rather than seeing society as a homogeneous culture, recognizes cultural diversity while advocating for equal standing for all cultural traditions
Sociological and anthropological approaches to popular culture explore:
the ways in which popular culture reflects power and social reproduction;
the themes that are salient (or obvious) in cultural objects, for example music and film;
the role of the individual and the audience in interpreting, accepting, rejecting and mediating the archetypes and stories embedded in popular culture and forms;
the ways in which language and practices around popular change over time to reflect shifting social, cultural, and economic realities.
Identify and recognize the definitions of folkways, mores and taboos.
- Folkways: informal little rules that kind of go without saying. It’s not illegal to violate a folkway, but if you do, there might be ramifications – or what we call negative sanctions. Like, if you walk onto an elevator and stand facing the back wall instead of the door.
- Mores: more official than folkways and tend to be codified, or formalized, as the stated rules and laws of a society. When mores are broken, you almost always get a negative sanction – and they’re usually more severe than just strange looks
- Taboos: the norms that are crucial to a society’s moral center, involving behaviors that are always negatively sanctioned. Taboo behaviors are never okay, no matter the circumstance, and they violate your very sense of decency.
Identify the difference between material and non-material culture.
- Material culture: culture of things, i.e. books, buildings, food, clothing, transportation, cross walks, iconic monuments and more
- Non- material culture: values, beliefs, symbols, ideas, norms, i.e. meaning behind an iconic symbol such as statue of liberty
Identify and recognize the definitions of symbols, values, beliefs and norms.
- Symbols: anything that carries a specific meaning that’s recognized by people who share a culture
- Values: cultural standards that people use to decide what’s right or wrong, serve as the guidelines and ideas we live by. I.e. democracy is an American value
- Beliefs: specific ideas about what people think is true about the world i.e. a common American belief is that a good political system is one where everyone has an opportunity to vote
- western countries - individualism/importance of each person’s own needs
- eastern countries - collectivism/importance of groups over individuals
- Norms: rules and expectations that guide behaviour within a society i.e. giving up your seat for an elderly person on public transit
Identify and define the Sapir -Whorf Hypothesis.
Argues that a person’s thoughts and actions are influenced by the cultural lens created by the language they speak
Example: What gender is the moon? - May be an odd question for English speakers, but in many languages, non-human nouns have genders. In Spanish, “la luna” is feminine, and in German “der mond” is masculine. Affects how each group perceives the moon
- Benjamin Le Whorf - American lunguist, did his research on indigenous languages like Hopi/inuit. Some anthropologists argue that his theory does not always hold up
Identify and define the discipline of anthropology and relevant sub disciplines.
- study of humans and their culture. Four sub-disciplines:linguistic; socio-cultural anthropology; physical anthropology; archaeology
- Structural Functionalism: macro theory that looks at how all structures or institutions in society work together. Examples of structures or institutions of society include: education, health care, family, legal system, economy, and religion.
Identify the subfield of cultural anthropology and recognize what the methodology of ethnography entails.
- study of human behavior and values within a specific group, or subculture of society
-involves hands-on, on-the-scene learning — and it is relevant wherever people are relevant
Summarize and describe the comedic style of Donald Trump, as outlined by Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016).
“Trump’s use of the pistol hand gesture can be traced back to his involvement with professional wrestling, an entertainment genre in which competitors craft a persona through a particular move that is packaged for fan consumption through staged comedic routines of violence” (Hall et al, 80).
Outline and explain why Hall et al. argue that Trump is appealing to segments of the American public.
Hall et al. (2016) argue that former US President Donald Trump’s power lay in his capacity to generate staged routines of violence and comedy that seek to belittle or humiliate his opponent. They come to this conclusion by comparing Trump’s entertainment value, and doing so by historicizing the kind of vernacular (low-brow) spectacles of entertainment that have typically been successful in working class and popular culture
Identify and recognize the methodology and source of data collection used by Hall et al.
-Method: ethnography exaggeration, gesture, bodily performance, embrace of ‘low-forms’ of culture in popular realm “brash” New York City
-cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and rhetorical theory
Identify the power of Trump’s story (lie) about election fraud in the 2020 US Presidential Election.
Hall et al (2016) argue that Trump’s power lay in his comedic and entertainment value
Identify the story of USCP Eugene Goodman and his heroism in the Capitol insurrection.
As the Capitol was breached, and before the Senate chamber was sealed, Goodman, an African-American, led a mob of insurrectionists away from lawmakers in a personal act of bravery. His heroism has been acknowledged with bi-partisan praise and was subsequently promoted to Acting Deputy House Sergeant-at-Arms of the US Capitol, and accompanied now US Vice-President Kamala Harris to the Presidential inauguration on January 20, 2021
