Chapter 2 - Culture and Sociology Flashcards
(27 cards)
The things people make and the things they use to make them-the tools they use, the physical environment they inhabit.
Material culture
Both the material basis for social life and the sets of values and ideals that we understand to define morality, good/evil, appropriate/inappropriate.
Culture
Often just called “culture”. The ideas and the beliefs that people develop about their lives and heir world.
Nonmaterial culture
Describes the vast differences between the cultures of the world as well as the differences in belief and behavior that exist within cultures.
Cultural diversity
A feeling of disorientation when the cultural markers that we rely on to help us suddenly change.
Culture shock
The use of one’s own culture as the reference point by which to evaluate other cultures; it often depends on or leads to the belief that one’s own culture is superior to others
Ethnocentrism
A position that all cultures are equally valid in the experience of their own members
Cultural relativism
A group with in a society that creates its own norms and values distinct from the mainstream and usually its own separate social institutions as well
Subculture
Subculture that identifies itself through its difference and opposition to the dominant culture
Counterculture
Anything-an idea, a marking, a thing-that carries additional meaning beyond itself to others to share in the culture. Symbols come to mean what they do only in a culture; they would have no meaning to someone outside.
Symbol
An organized set of symbols by which we are able to think and communicate with others
Language
The chief vehicle by which human beings create a sense of self
Language
A theory that language shapes our reality because it gives us a way to talk about the categories of life the we experience
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Enactment by which members of a culture engage in a routine behavior to express their sense of belonging to the culture
Ritual
One of the rules a culture develops that defines how people should act and the consequences of failure to act in the specified way
Norm
One of the relatively weak and informal norms that is the result of patterns of action. Many of the behaviors we called manners are this.
Folkways
Informally enforced norms based on strong moral values which are viewed as essential to the proper functioning of a group
Mores
One of the norms that has been organized and written down
Law
This constitutes what a society things about itself and are among the most basic lessons that a culture can transmit to its you
Values
One of the rituals customs and symbols are evident in all societies
Cultural universal
The culture of the masses the middle and the working class includes a wide variety of popular music, non-highbrow forms of literature, any forms of spectator sport, and other popular forms of entertainment, television, movies, and video games
Popular culture
French sociologist Pierre bourdieu’s term for the cultural articles-ideas, artistic expressions, forms of music or literature-that function as resources that people in the dominant class can use to justify their dominance
Cultural capital
Short-lived highly popular and widespread behavior style or mode of thought
Fad
A behavior style or idea that is more permanent and often begins as a fad
Fashion
