Sociology Ch 3 - Culture
Multiculturalism
A perspective recognizing the cultural diversity of the US and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions
Language
A system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another
Symbol
Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture
Social Control
Attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behavior
Popular Culture
Cultural patterns that are widespread among a society's population
High Culture
Cultural patterns that distinguish a society's elite
Subculture
Cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society's population
Counterculture
Cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society
Values
Culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living
Afrocentrism
Emphasizing and promoting African cultural patterns
Technology
Knowledge that people use to make a way of life in their surroundings
Folkways
Norms ofr routine or casual interaction
Mores
Norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance
Culture Shock
Personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life
Norms
Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members
Beliefs
Specific thoughts or ideas that people hold to be true
Cultural Integration
The close relationships among various elements of a cultural system
Eurocentrism
The dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns
Cultural lag
The fact that some cultural elements change more quickly than others, disrupting a cultural system
Sapir-Whorf Thesis
The idea that people see and understand the world through the cultural lens of language
Nonmaterial Culture
The ideas created by members of a society
Material Culture
The physical things created by members of a society
Cultural Relativism
The practice of judging a culture by its own standards
Ethnocentrism
The practice of judging another culture by standards of one's own culture
Cultural Transmission
The process by which one generation passes culture to the next
Culture
The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people's way of life