Week 5: Culture and Media Flashcards
Describe this week’s paradox.
Do mass media create social norms or reflect them? Culture is like two mirrors facing each other: it simultaneously reflects and creates the world we live in.
Describe culture.
Culture is the sum of the social categories and concepts we recognize in addition to our beliefs, behaviors, and practices. EVERYTHING BUT NATURE.
Describe ethnocentrism.
The sense of taken-for-granted superiority in the context of cultural practices and attitudes. The belief that one’s own culture is superior to that of others.
Nonmaterial cultue. What is it?
Values, beliefs, and behaviors, and social norms.
Material culture. What is it?
Everything that is part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology. E.g. Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, books, furniture, movies, food, and magazines.
Name a few other ways to look at culture.
1) What don’t we notice in a foreign culture but would spot in a foreign context?
2) It is a way of organizing our experiences.
3) Language.
4) Concepts such as race, gender, class, and inequality.
What is ideology?
It is a system of concepts and relationships, and understanding of cause and effect. E.g. People in coach class in airplanes aren’t allowed to use first class toilets. Why not?
What is cultural relativism?
Means taking into account differences across cultures without passing judgment or assigning value. E.g. In the U.S., you are expected to look at someone in the eye when you talk to them. In China, that’s rude. However, neither practice is inherently right or wrong.
What are cultural scripts?
Modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural, shape our notions of gender.
What is subculture?
Groups united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to members of that group.
Values
Our moral beliefs.
Norms
How are our values put into play? Those are norms.
Socialization
Our internalization of society’s values, beliefs, and norms.
Describe the Reflection Theory.
States that cultures is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere. E.g. Some people claim song lyrics are too violent. How do rappers respond? Our art is a reflection of our reality.
What is the Media?
Any format or vehicle that conveys information.
