Midterm 1 Flashcards
1
Q
Etymology of the word “culture”
A
Latin word “culture” - to cultivate
2
Q
Important people in the Sociology of Culture
A
Ibn Khaldun
Auguste Comte coined the term Sociology
Marx, Weber, Freud, Spencer, Durkheim
3
Q
Definition of Society
A
Group of people sharing a community (place) and a culture
4
Q
Definition of Culture
A
totality of ideas beliefs, values symbols, rituals creating patterns of behaviour of a group of people
5
Q
Sociology of Culture
A
study of the interaction between society and culture
Uses empirical evidence
Focus on social and cultural factors
6
Q
Cultural sociology
A
study of the interaction between sociology and culture
7
Q
Generation Gap creates..
A
inter-generational conflict
8
Q
Ethnocentrism (other word + definition+ antonym)
A
Cultural relativism
Use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging others
Xenocentrism: Belief that another culture is superior
9
Q
Norms
A
Standards of behaving in a given context
10
Q
Cultural shock
A
When the norms are different
11
Q
Values
A
Culturally defined standards about what is desirable, proper, valuable
12
Q
Subculture
A
Smaller but not inferior, different norms and values
13
Q
Counterculture
A
Subculture whose values or activities and goals are opposed to the mainstream culture
14
Q
Spencer’s theory
A
Social evolutionism
15
Q
Social evolutionism
A
Culture development is a product of social evolution, product of transformation of natural factors
16
Q
Different Stages
A
Barbaric - organic environment
Civilised - super organic environment
17
Q
Criticism of social evolutionism
A
Eurocentric vision (B shaped by N, Civilisation shaped by C)
18
Q
Engels on the gender war
A
“world historical defeat of the female sex”
19
Q
Series of events that led to monogamy
A
Agricultural settlement –> The rise of PP –> ensure inheritance by “own” children
20
Q
Paul Seabright
A
natural selection –> breeding viable children
21
Q
What are the conditions at a given time the expression of for Marx?
A
An ongoing power struggle between two groups
22
Q
What does culture reflect?
A
the social conditions at a given time
23
Q
3 oldest branches of philosophy that shapes Marx’s idea
A
Ontology - deals with the nature of being
Epistemology - study of knowledge
The philosophy of consciousness - what it is to be human
24
Q
2 ways of understanding reality (-isms) + Marx’s stance
A
Idealism - reality only exists in our idea of it
Materialism (≠) - ideas are the manifestation of physical properties
Marx: both: ideas generate ideas (Human centric naturalism)
25
Species-being
through creativity, we created a reality we understand through experience.
The created product defines the nature of the producer
26
What does the product do?
Reflect back our nature
27
Commodity fetishism
the products created have a life of their own
28
Origin of the word ideology
Latin: idea (image) and logos (knowledge)
29
Definition of ideology
distorted image of reality that gives us false knowledge
30
Georg Lukács on ideology
Reification - distorted cultural lens
31
Ideology springs from a spontaneous philosophy which contains
Language
Common sense (conventional wisdom) and good sense
Popular Religion
32
Definition of counter-hegemony
World view selective accommodation of the desires of a wide range of groups within a society
33
Criticism of culture as an ideology
People may have reason to believe in the social order
Culture is not just ideology + interest of Bourgeois
Culture might shape economy (weber)
34
Weber's methodology
Comparative historical analysis
35
Comparative historical analysis
Have to understand social action and the meaning that people give to their actions
36
What does Weber create to understand reality?
Ideal types (and compare cases and look at similarities and deviances)
37
2 kinds of ideal types
Classificatory - social action, authority
| Historical - spirit of capitalism
38
Main theoretical assumption for Weber
every person acts within a cultural context that is historically specific
39
4 ideal types for social actions
Value rational
Affective action
Traditional action
Instrumental-rational action
40
Value rational
Based on values and morals
41
Affective action
Emotion in a given situation
42
Traditional action
Determined/motivated by habits or customs
43
Instrumental-rational action
means and ends are rationally linked (logical only in a particular culture)
44
Weber's 3 meanings of rationalization
Means/end calculation
Bureaucracy (organisational culture)
Disenchantment/ secularisation/ demystification
45
Steps that lead to domination
Rationalisation --> Legitimation --> Domination
46
Characteristics of hyper-reality (4)
Efficiency, calculability, predictability, technology
47
Ideal type of authority (3)
Charismatic Authority
Traditional Authority
Rational Legal Authority
48
Charismatic Authority
Belief in supernatural or intrinsic gifts of the individual
49
Traditional Authority
Belief in time and customs
50
Rational legal authority
Belief in procedure rules and laws
51
Definition of a class (Weber)
ability to buy and sell goods and services that bring us satisfaction
52
Definition of a status (Weber)
Have an effective claim to social esteem in terms of positive or negative privileges (based on: lifestyle, education and occupation)
53
Definition of a party (Weber)
The social organization and practice of power (ex. political parties, unions, interest groups)
54
When does social change occur?
When legitimation of the stratification is questioned
55
"Calling"
Luther - type of social action, social responsibility to behave correctly in society
56
"Predestination"
Calvin - faith is predestined
57
Ascetism
Blessings of god to be reinvested (in K: wealth)
58
Ideal type of the spirit of capitalism
Ethically oriented maxim for the organization of life
59
3 maxims of the spirit of capitalism
Life with a specific goal to always make more money
Work as an moral duty, vocational calling
Life and actions are legitimised on basis on quantitative calculations
60
Basic premise of the Frankfurt School critical theory (3)
Cant understand reality from scientific perspective
Science studies things with market value
Social dynamics understood in context of a whole : Social totality
61
What does enlightenment switch out
Tradition with reason
62
Science, most dominant form of...
ideology
63
The culture industry (2 main people)
Adorno and Horkheimer
64
Cultural items no longer have artistic value but...
exchange value
65
Benjamin
In advanced technological societies, art loses its aura (originality and authenticity) when mechanically produced
66
Fromm
Pathology of normalcy
67
Marcus
technocrats set the rules of the game through technological rationality and use technology to dominate us
68
Repressive desublimation
exchanging certain freedoms for others
69
Sublimation (Freud)
transform libido into "socially useful" achievements
70
Surplus repression
imposes discipline from the inside
71
Habermas (replacement of ... by ... )
Life world by System world because of rationalisation (loss of agency)
72
Eliot and Lewis (culturalism)
Loss of tradition and reaction to modernism
73
Williams and Hogart (culturalism)
```
W: Elite/high culture: form of social privilege
H: main objective of cultural studies is to diagnose the cultural health of a society (he compared pre war working class and post war mass culture)
```
74
Ordinary people, working class and youth are controlled (or at least tried to) by
```
Demolishing working class habitats and building tower blocks
Creating a market for their cultural creativity (creative economy)
```
75
4 industries of creative economy
Heritage
Arts
Media
Creative business services
76
Definition of creative industries
Activities born in individual creativity, skill and talent which have potential for wealth and job creation through intellectual property
77
Problems with creative economy
Distributors capture more of the value
| Big industries dominate
78
Collective representations (for Durkheim)
Social components of ourselves: beliefs,norms and values
| Socially created classifications or cultural lenses
79
What does the division of labour determine (for Durkheim)
Solidarity
80
Simple society (for Durkheim)
Mechanical solidarity
81
Complex society (for Durkheim)
Organic solidarity
82
Anomie (for Durkheim)
Normless situation (condition of alienation), leads to crime and suicide
83
Religion (for Durkheim)
unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them
84
What does religion provide?
framework, clear moral guidelines
85
Totem and taboo
Sacred animal or object that spiritually represents a group
| Ritual prohibitions around a totem
86
Purpose of a ritual
reinforce societies key values, bind individuals to the community and make the world symbolically meaningful to them
87
How does religion classify things (in what process)
Differentiation
88
What theories/ists does functionalism and structuralism come from?
Durkheim's totetism
Saussure's linguistic theory
Freud's psychoanalytic theory
89
Saussure's linguistic structuralism
Language is a system (langue)
Made up of signs: signifiers (phonetic expression of an idea) and signified (idea or concept)
RS is arbitrary and culturally defined
90
Social psychological structuralism (theorist)
Freud
91
All signs are arbitrary (freud) because of two important psychological mechanisms
Condensation
| Displacement
92
Condensation
the unconscious seeks to express itself by attaching meaning to something (ex. metaphor in dream)
93
Displacement
using one thing to stand for another (metonymy)
94
What does civilization do to our principles
restriction of our pleasure principle and makes us abide to reality principle (norms, laws, rules..)
95
Too much discipline leads to
discontent, nervosis
96
Definition of a myth
unproved collective beliefs or stories used to understand or justify a cultural practice or tradition
A vital feature of culture
97
How are stories important
Meaningful way to understand realities of human experience, to see how they understand their reality
98
What is totetism due to for Levi-Strauss?
Due to the universal processes of the human mind in terms of binary oppositions
99
Why are we prisoners of language according to Barthes?
We can only access reality through our culture schemes and codes
100
What is modernity based on? (3)
the industrial revolution
greek philosophy
Inductive logic
101
Post structuralism
There aren't any real things, they're representations of the image produced by the signifier
102
Jacques Derrida
Each system is always changing
103
Deconstructionism
Method of textual reading and writing
104
Baudrillard (on postmodernism)
Contemporary post-modernist isn't real: produced by an endless series of signifiers
105
Simulated world that capitalism has created (Marx)
Simulacrum
106
Simulacra
signs or images that fabricate a reality that doesn't exist
107
The Culture of Spectacle (organized around 3 things + author)
Guy Debord: a media and consumer culture organised around the production and consumption of images, spectacular commodities and stages events
108
McLuhan 3 definitions of a medium
1. Any extension of human mind and body
2. Anything from which a change emerges, anything we conceive or create
3. It's the message
109
What is a message according to McLuhan
The change of scale or pace or pattern, it differentiates between the previous and current state (change in interpersonal dynamics)
110
For debord, what is the goal of all production systems?
manufacturing signe and images
111
Consequence of the SotS
creates passivity, decrease in public engagement
112
Entropy (in this context)
When output is smaller than input
| More and more information, less and less meaning
113
Negentropy
output bigger than input
| ex. photosynthesis, capitalist investment
114
How is negentropy made possible in the capitalist society?
through exploitation of nature and human labour
115
Democracy and capitalism producing entropy of ...
meaning
116
Simulation doesn't copy reality but it...
destroys it
117
Mechanisms happening in simulacra (5)
- Media
- Language and ideology
- Urbanization
- Multinational capitalism
- Consumer capitalism (exchange value/money)
118
Definition of simulacrum
is a copy of a copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can no longer properly be said to be a copy. It stands on its own as a copy without a model.
