Chapter 3 Textbook

Question 1

culture

Answer 1

system of behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, value, and concrete materials including buildings, tools, and sacred items
- everyone has culture, sometimes more than one

Question 2

how does culture become contested?

Answer 2

culture often becomes contested over the question of authenticity
authenticity becomes a problem when a colonized culture claims to know the secret of its authenticity

Question 3

two oppositions in culture

Answer 3

1. dominant culture vs subculture & counterculture
2. high culture vs popular culture & mass culture

Question 4

dominants

Answer 4

people most closely linked with the cultural mainstream

Question 5

Canada’s dominants

Answer 5

white, English-speaking men of Christian and European stock

Question 6

minority cultures

Answer 6

those that fall outside the cultural mainstream

Question 7

John Porter (1965)

Answer 7

Believed that there was a hierarchy according to which certain minority cultures, particularly those based on ethnic background, are favored more than others

Question 8

countercultures

Answer 8

minority cultures that feel the power of the dominant culture and exist in opposition to it; groups that reject elements of the dominant culture such as clothing styles or sexual norms

Question 9

subcultures

Answer 9

minority cultures that differ in some way from the dominant culture but don’t directly oppose it; may be organized around occupations or hobbies and typically exhibit a fairly neutral contrast to the mainstream

Question 10

high culture

Answer 10

the culture of the elite, a distinct minority
- it is associated with theatre, opera, classical music and ballet, “serious” works of literary fiction and non-fiction, and artsy films.

Question 11

Pierre Bourdieu (cultural capital)

Answer 11

coined the term cultural capital to refer to the knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture.
the more cultural capital one has, the higher their cultural class is

Question 12

popular culture

Answer 12

the culture of the majority, particularly of those who do not have power (the working class, the less educated, women, and racialized minorities)

Question 13

cultural studies courses and programs

Answer 13

cultural studies draws on both the social sciences (primarily sociology) and the humanities (primarily literature and media studies) to cast light on the significance of popular culture

Question 14

popular culture vs mass culture

Answer 14

• differ in agency, the ability of the people to be creative or productive with the material given to them by a dominant culture
• popular culture - people take an active role in shaping the culture they consume
• mass culture - people have little or no agency in the culture they consume and produce

Question 15

simuclara (Jean Baudrillard)

Answer 15

Simuclara are stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media & sometimes by scholars
Simuclara tend to distort contemporary reality

Question 16

norms

Answer 16

rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of members of a group, society, or culture

Question 17

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)

Answer 17

• the first person in North America to teach a course called “sociology”
• distinguished three types of norms based on how seriously they are respected and sanctioned

Question 18

folkways

Answer 18

norms governing simple day to day matters
norms that you should not violate

Question 19

mores

Answer 19

taken much more seriously than folkways
norms you must not violate
violation of some mores, even if they are not laws, will meet with shock or severe disapproval

Question 20

taboos

Answer 20

a taboo is a norm so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought or mention of it is enough to arouse disgust or revulsion

Question 21

symbols

Answer 21

cultural items that hold significance for a culture or subculture; can be tangible material objects or intangible, non-material objects, such as songs, or even remembered events

Question 22

values

Answer 22

standards used by a culture to describe abstract qualities such as goodness, beauty, and justice, and to assess the behaviour of others

Question 23

values vs symbols

Answer 23

cultural values are way harder to pinpoint than symbols
this is why many Canadians find themselves identifying themselves as “unarmed Americans with better health coverage”

Question 24

ethnocentrism (coined by Sumner)

Answer 24

• occurs when someone holds up a culture (usually one’s own) at the standards by which all cultures are to be judged
  -“all cultures are great except for the ones that aren’t”
• often a product of ignorance
• played a key role in the colonizing efforts of powerful nations imposing their beliefs on the indigenous populations of the lands they “discovered”

Question 25

eurocentrism

Answer 25

involves taking a broadly defined European position to address others, and assuming that the audience shares that position

Question 26

cultural relativism

Answer 26

an approach to studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper cultural context

Question 27

presentism

Answer 27

failure to judge things by their proper time standarts