Sociology, Chapter 3

Material culture

____ is the physical objects that people make, use and share

Ideal, Real

_____ culture is the beliefs, values, and norms that people say they hold and _____ culture are a society's actual everyday behaviors.

Society

_____ is a group of people who share a culture and defined territory.

Language

_____ is a system of shared symbols.

Culture

_____ is defined as learned and shared behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and material objects that characterize a particular group or society.

Rituals

Formal and repeated behaviors that unite people

Counterculture

A _____ is a group or category of people whose distinctive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting differ somewhat from those of the larger society.

Feminist

Scholars drawing on the _______ perspective emphasize how gender can lead to women experiencing culture differently than their male counterparts.

Diffusion, Invention/Innovation, Discovery, External Pressures

Some of the major reasons for cultural change include _____, _______ ,_______, and _______.

Mass media

The _____ includes forms of communication designed to reach large numbers of people

Symbol

The building blocks of culture include _____, or anything that stands for something else, and has a particular meaning for people who share a culture.

Cultural lag

When some parts of culture change more rapidly than others, it is referred to as _________. This describes the gap when nonmaterial culture changes more slowly than material culture.

Non-material culture

____ is the ideas that people create to interpret and understand the world.

Cultural universals

_____ are customs and practices that are common to all societies.

Cultural capital

_____ are resources such as knowledge, verbal and social sills, education, and other assets that give a group advantages

Taboo

_____ are strong prohibitions of any act that is forbidden because its considered to be extremely offensive.

High culture

_____ is the cultural expression of a society's highest social classes

Culture shock

_____ is the state of confusion and uncertainty that accompanies exposure to an unfamiliar way of life or environment.

Cultural imperialism

_____ is when the cultural values and products of one nation influence or dominate those of another country

Popular culture

_____ refers to the beliefs, practices, activities, and products that are widely shared among a population in everyday life.

Multiculturalism, Cultural pluralism

_____ refers to the coexistence of many cultures in the same geographic area, without any one culture dominating another. Sometimes referred to as _______.

Mores

______ are norms that members of a society consider very important because they maintain moral and ethical behavior.

Laws

______ are rigid norms strictly enforced by society.

Folkways

______ are rules members of society see as important, but are not seen as critical. They are norms that involves everyday customs, practices, and interaction

Values

______ are standards that provide general guidelines for behavior. They define what is good or bad, moral or immoral, proper or improper, desirable or undesirable, beautiful or ugly.

Ethnocentrism

______ is the belief that one's culture and way of life are superior to those of other groups. This attitude leads people to view other cultures as inferior, wrong, backward, immoral, or barbaric.

Cultural relativism

______ refers to recognizing that no culture is better than another and that a culture should be judged by its own standards.

Norms

______ represent a particular society's rules for right and wrong behavior.

Functionalist

______ view culture in terms of its role in social integration. The perspective focuses on showing that similar norms and values create solidarity and stability in a culture

Sanctions

_______ are rewards for good or appropriate behavior, and punishment for bad or inappropriate behavior.

Cultural integration

_______ is the consistency of various aspects of society, and promotes order and stability.

Symbolic Interactionist

_________ focus on how people interpret culture, transmit norms, and values through social interaction. They point out that cultural norms help people merge into a society despite their differences.

Conflict theorists

__________ argue that U.S. culture and others suffer from widespread inequality. They point out that as the powerful monopolize cultural resources, inequality increases.