Ch.3 Culture

Question 1

What is Culture?

Answer 1

The 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 materials of culture?

Answer 2

The physical aspects and creations that society make, use, and share.

Question 3

What are the Non materials culture?

Answer 3

The abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behavior: language, beliefs, spirituality, values, and political systems.

Question 4

Components of Culture?

Answer 4

-symbols
-language
-values
-norms
-laws

Question 5

Symbols

Answer 5

Meaningful representations (flags, statues, etc..)

Question 6

Language

Answer 6

A set symbols that express ideas and enable people to think and communicate with one another,
-kinds: verbal and nonverbal (written or gestures)

Question 7

Language, Race, and Ethnicity.

Answer 7

Certain terms and expressions have racial and ethnic overtones that may reinforce negative associations.

Question 8

Language Diversity in Canada.

Answer 8

Language as a keystone to culture because it is the chief vehicle for understanding and experiencing one’s culture.

Question 9

Values

Answer 9

Collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture.

Question 10

Core Canadian Values

Answer 10

1. Equality and fairness in a democratic society
2. Consultation and dialogue
3. Accommodation and tolerance
4. Support for diversity
5. Compassion and generosity
6. Canada’s natural beauty
7. Canada’s world image: Commitment to freedom, peace, and nonviolent change

Question 11

What are Value Contradictions?

Answer 11

Values that conflict with one another or are mutually exclusive.

Question 12

Ideal versus Real Culture

Answer 12

Ideal: values and standards of behaviour that people in a society profess to hold
Real: the values and standards of behaviour that people actually follow

Question 13

Norms

Answer 13

Established rules of behaviors or standards of conduct.

Question 14

Prescriptive

Answer 14

What behaviour is appropriate ( IS accepted)

Question 15

Proscriptive

Answer 15

what behavior is not appropriate (NOT accepted)

Question 16

Formal

Answer 16

Written down as laws.

Question 17

Sanctions

Answer 17

Rewards for appropriate behavior and punishment for inappropriate behavior.

Question 18

Folkways

Answer 18

Those informal norms or every-day customs that may be violated with-out serious consequences within a particular culture.

Question 19

Mores

Answer 19

Are strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may or may not be violated without serious consequences in a particular culture.

Question 20

Taboo

Answer 20

So strong that their violation is considered to be extremely offensive.

Question 21

Laws

Answer 21

Formal, standardized norms that have been enacted by legislatures and are enforced by formal sanctions.

Question 22

Civil Laws

Answer 22

deals with disputes between people

Question 23

Criminal Laws

Answer 23

deals with public safety and well-being

Question 24

Cultural Lag

Answer 24

A gap between the technological development of a society and its moral and legal institutions

Question 25

Factors of Cultural Change

Answer 25

Discovery, Invention and Diffusion.

Question 26

Discovery

Answer 26

Something previously unknown or unrecognized: e.g., vaccines for diseases

Question 27

Invention

Answer 27

Reshaping existing cultural items into a new form (the steam engine, the car, and the computer)

Question 28

Diffusion

Answer 28

Transmission of cultural items or social practices from one culture to another.

Question 29

Cultural Diversity

Answer 29

The wide range of cultural differences found between and within nations.

Question 30

Homogeneous

Answer 30

One language, ethnicity, religion, and the like.

Question 31

Heterogeneous

Answer 31

Many languages, ethnic groups, religions. (Multicultural countries)

Question 32

Subcultures

Answer 32

A group of people who share a distinctive set of cultural beliefs and behaviors that differ in some significant ways from that of the larger society.

Question 33

Countercultures

Answer 33

A group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles.

Question 34

Cultural Shock

Answer 34

The disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own.

Question 35

Ethnocentrism

Answer 35

The tendency to regard one’s own culture and group as the standard, and thus (superior).

Question 36

Cultural Relativity

Answer 36

Behaviours and customs of any culture must be viewed and analyzed by the culture’s own standards.

Question 37

High Culture

Answer 37

classical music, opera, ballet, live theatre

Question 38

Populare Culture

Answer 38

Activities, products, and services that are assumed to appeal primarily to members of the middle and working class.

Question 39

Cultural Imperialism

Answer 39

The extensive infusion of one nation’s culture into other nations.

Question 40

Functionalist Perspective

Answer 40

Cultures function to meet people’s needs.

Question 41

Conflict Perspective

Answer 41

Cultures function to promote the increased consumption of commodities; people come to believe they need them.

Question 42

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Answer 42

Simmel’s insights:
Culture can take on a life of its own and, thus, we become controlled by it, e.g., money.