Part 1: Culture

Chapter 1 Culture
1. Culture: Language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors and even material objects that
characterize a group and are passed from one generation to the next.
2. Material Culture: material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as their art,
buildings, weapons, utensils, machines, hairstyles, clothing and jewelry. There is
nothing inherently "natural" about material culture.
3. Nonmaterial Culture: a group's ways of thinking (including its beliefs, values, and
other assumptions about the world) and doing (its common patterns of behavior,
including language and other forms of interaction); also called symbolic culture.
4. Patterns: recurring characteristics or events.
5. Culture within us: language, values, morality, religion, war, money, love, space, etc.
we came into the world without these things and now that we have learned them we
take them for granted.
6. Culture Shock: the disorientation that people experience when they come in contact
with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken-for-
granted assumptions about life (example-buying tickets in Morocco where there are
no lines, just chaos).
7. 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 and norms, and behaviors. It has both positive and negative consequences.
8. Cultural Relativism: not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms
9. Symbolic Culture: another term for nonmaterial culture.
10. Symbol: something to which people attach meaning and then use to communicate
with one another. Include gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways...
11. Gestures: the ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one
another. It can lead to misunderstanding and offense (universal gestures - head nod,
facial expressions).
12. 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.
13. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis that
language creates ways of thinking and perceiving.
• Learning a language not only means learning words, but also acquiring the
perceptions embedded in that language
• Language reflects and shapes our cultural experiences
14. Values: the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or
bad, beautiful or ugly.
15. Norms: expectation, or rules of behavior that reflect and enforce behavior (expectations
of "right" behavior).
16. Sanctions: either expressions of approval given to people for upholding norms or
expressions of disapproval for violating them.
17. Positive Sanction: a reward or positive reaction for following norms, ranging from a smile
to a material reward.
18. Negative Sanction: an expression of disapproval for breaking a norm, ranging from a
mild informal reaction such as a frown to a formal reaction such as a prize or a prison
sentence or an execution.
19. Moral Holidays: days people are allowed to break norms (Mardi Gras).
20. Moral Holiday Places: locations where norms are expected to be broken.
21. Folkways: norms that are not strictly enforced.
22. Mores: norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought essential to core
values or the well-being of the group.
23. Taboo: a norm so strong that it brings extreme sanctions, even revulsion if someone
violates it. (example - eating human flesh)
24. Subculture: the values and related behaviors of a group that distinguish its members
from the larger culture; a world within a world.
25. Counterculture: a group whose values, beliefs, norms, and related behaviors place its
members in opposition to the broader culture.
26. Pluralistic Society: a society made up of many different groups with contrasting values
and orientations to life.
27. Core Values: the values that are central to a group, those around which people build a
common identity.
• Robin Williams 10 Core Values in US society
1. Achievement and success
2. Individualism
3. Hard work
4. Efficiency and practicality
5. Science and technology
6. Material comfort
7. Freedom
8. Democracy
9. Equality
10. Group superiority
Additional Added onto Basic 10
11. Education***
12. Religiosity***
13. Romantic Love***
28. Value Cluster: values that together form a larger whole.
29. Value Contradiction: values that contradict one another, to follow the one means to
come in conflict with the other. It is perversely at the point of value contradictions, then, that
one can see a major force for social change in a society
30. Emerging values:
1. Leisure
2. Self-fulfillment
3. Physical fitness
4. Youthfulness
5. Concern for the environment
31. Culture Wars: when traditionalists and those advocating a change clash.
32. Ideal Culture: a people's ideal values and norms; the goals held out for them.
33. Real Culture: the norms and values that people actually follow; as opposed to ideal
culture.
34. Cultural Universals: a value, norm, or cultural trait that is found in every group.
35. Sociobiology: a framework of thought that views human behavior as the result of natural
selection and considers biological factors to be the fundamental cause of human behavior.
36. Technology: in its narrow sense, tools ; its broader sense includes the skills or
procedures necessary to make and use those tools.
37. New Technology: the emerging technologies of an era that have a significant impact on
social life
38. Cultural Lag: Ogburn's term for human behavior lagging behind technological
innovations. William Ogburn - at groups material culture usually changes first, with the
nonmaterial culture lagging behind him.
39. Cultural Diffusions: the spread of cultural traits from one group to another, includes both
material and nonmaterial cultural traits
40. Cultural Leveling: the process by which cultures become similar to one another; refers
especially to the process by which Western culture is being exported and diffused into other
nations.