Chapter 3 - culture
Terms
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- counterculture
- a group whose values, beliefs, and related behaviours place its members in opposition to the broader culture
- Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis that language creates ways of thinking and perceiving
- cultural diffusion
- the spread of cultural characteristics from one group to another
- nonmaterial culture
- c a group's ways of thinking (including its beliefs, values, and other assumptions about the world) and doing (its common patterns of behaviour, including language and other forms of interaction)
- material culture
- the material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as their art, buildings, weapons, utensils, machines, hairstyles, clothing, and jewellery
- pluralistic society
- a society made up of many different groups
- sanctions
- expressions of approval or disapproval given to people for upholding or violating norms
- value cluster:
- a series of interrelated values that together form a larger whole
- technology
- often defined as the applications of science, but can be conceptualized as tools (items used to accomplish tasks) and the skills or procedures necessary to make and use those tools
- norms
- the expectations or rules of behaviour that develop out of values
- real culture
- the norms and values that people actually follow
- animal culture
- learned, shared behaviour among animals
- folkways
- norms that are not strictly enforced
- symbol
- something to which people attach meanings and then use to communicate with others
- mores
- norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought essential to core values
- ethnocentrism
- the use of one's own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviours
- gestures
- the ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another
- values
- the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly; attitudes about the way the world ought to be (pg.48)
- cultural levelling
- the process by which cultures become similar to one another, and especially by which Western industrial culture is imported and diffused into developing nations
- positive sanction
- a reward or positive reaction for approved behaviour, for conformity
- cultural lag
- William Ogburn's term for human behaviour lagging behind technological innovations
- cultural relativism
- understanding a people from the framework of its own culture
- language
- a system of symbols that can be combined in an infinite number of ways and can represent not only objects but also abstract thought
- subculture
- the values and related behaviours of a group that distinguish its members from the larger culture; a world within a world
- culture
- the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviours, and even material objects passed from one generation to the next
- taboo
- a norm so strong that it brings revulsion if violated
- technological determinism
- the view that technology determines culture, that technology takes on a life of its own and forces human behaviour to follow
- negative sanction
- an expression of disapproval for breaking a norm, ranging from a mild, informal reaction such as a frown to a formal prison sentence or an execution
- symbolic culture
- another term for nonmaterial culture
- ideal culture
- the ideal values and norms of a people, and the goals held out for them