Chapter 3 Culture

Sociologist Gerhard Lenski has defined technology as what?

"cultural information about the ways in which the material resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires"

Mores:

(pronounced " MOR -ays") are norms deemed highly necessary to the welfare of a society, often because they embody the most cherished principles of a people. Each society demands obedience to its mores; violation can lead to severe penalties.

cultural universals :

All societies have developed certain common practices and beliefs.

Culture Shock:

Anyone who feels disoriented, uncertain, out of place, or even fearful when immersed in an unfamiliar culture may be experiencing culture shock

Culture consists of all what within a society?

It consists of all objects and ideas within a society, including slang words, ice-cream cones, and rock music.

Culture includes what?

It includes the ideas, values, and artifacts (for example, DVDs, comic books, and birth control devices) of groups of people.

Innovation:

The process of introducing a new idea or object to a culture is known as innovation

Counterculture:

When a subculture conspicuously and deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture, it is known as a counterculture Countercultures typically thrive among the young, who have the least investment in the existing culture.

Conformity to a norm can lead to positive sanctions such as :

a pay raise, a medal, a word of gratitude, or a pat on the back.

Diffusion can occur through what?

a variety of means, among them exploration, military conquest, missionary work, and the influence of the mass media, tourism, the Internet (Box 3-3), and the fast-food restaurant.

Sociologist Robin Williams (1970) has offered a list of basic values. It includes :

achievement, efficiency, material comfort, nationalism, equality, and the supremacy of science and reason over faith.

Norms:

are the established standards of behavior maintained by a society.

values:

are these collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper—or bad, undesirable, and improper—in a culture.

Members of a subculture participate in the dominant culture while engaging in unique and distinctive forms of behavior. Frequently, a subculture will develop an what?

argot , or specialized language that distinguishes it from the wider society.

Anthropologist George Murdock (1945:124) compiled a list of cultural universals, including:

athletic sports, cooking, dancing, visiting, personal names, marriage, medicine, religious ritual, funeral ceremonies, sexual restrictions, and trade.

Generally, the nonmaterial culture is more resistant to what?

change than the material culture.

Each people has a distinctive culture with its own what?

characteristic ways of gathering and preparing food, constructing homes, structuring the family, and promoting standards of right and wrong.

Functionalists maintain that social stability requires a what?

consensus and the support of society's members; strong central values and common norms provide that support.

Because language is the foundation of every culture, the ability to speak other languages is what?

crucial to intercultural relations.

All of us, to some extent, take for granted the what?

cultural practices of our society. As a result, it can be surprising and even disturbing to realize that other cultures do not follow our way of life.

Thus, the word symbols and grammar of a language organize the world for us. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis also holds that language is not a given. Rather, it is what?

culturally determined, and it encourages a distinctive interpretation of reality by focusing our attention on certain phenomena

The ethnocentric person sees his or her group as the center or defining point of what?

culture and views all other cultures as deviations from what is "normal."

Language is one of the major elements of what?

culture.

Functionalist and conflict theorists agree that variation exists within cultures. Functionalists view subcultures as variations of particular social environments and as evidence that what?

differences can exist within a common culture.

Values influence people's behavior and serve as criteria for evaluating the actions of others. The values, norms, and sanctions of a culture are often what?

directly related.

Conflict theorists fear that the sociobiological approach could be used as an argument against efforts to assist who?

disadvantaged people, such as schoolchildren who are not competing successfully

There are two forms of innovation:

discovery and invention.

In contrast, an invention results when what?

existing cultural items are combined into a form that did not exist before. The bow and arrow, the automobile, and the television are all examples of inventions, as are Protestantism and democracy.

Negative sanctions include:

fines, threats, imprisonment, and stares of contempt.

From a functionalist perspective, a cultural trait or practice will persist if it performs what?

functions that society seems to need or contributes to overall social stability and consensus.

Formal norms:

generally have been written down and specify strict punishments for violators.

Family cohesiveness, peer group behavior, and other social factors can override what?

genetic influences on behavior

Sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization of society to describe what?

how the principles of fast-food restaurants, developed in the United States, have come to dominate more and more sectors of societies throughout the world.

Sociologists have long recognized the many ways in which culture influences what?

human behavior.

A society is the largest form of what?

human group. It consists of people who share a common heritage and culture.

Sociobiologists do not seek to describe what?

individual behavior on the level of "Why is Fred more aggressive than Jim?" Rather, they focus on how human nature is affected by the genetic composition of a group of people who share certain characteristics

In Karl Marx's view, a capitalist society has a dominant ideology that serves the what?

interests of the ruling class.

In its extreme form, sociobiology suggests that all behavior is what?

is the result of genetic or biological factors, and that social interactions play no role in shaping people's conduct.

Sociobiology:

is the systematic study of how biology affects human social behavior.

They assume that particular forms of behavior become genetically linked to a species if they contribute to what?

its fitness to survive (van den Berghe 1978).

Sociologist Donald Black (1995) has termed what?

law "governmental social control," meaning that laws are formal norms enforced by the state. Laws are just one example of formal norms.

In the United States, we often formalize norms into what?

laws, which are very precise in defining proper and improper behavior.

Adorno contends that globally, the primary effect of popular culture is to do what?

limit people's choices. Yet others have shown that the culture industry's influence does not always permeate international borders. Sometimes the culture industry is embraced; at other times, soundly rejected

They even preserve their distinctive culture through what?

literature, art, video recordings, and other means of expression.

Discovery involves what?

making known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality. The finding of the structure of the DNA molecule and the identification of a new moon of Saturn are both acts of discovery. A significant factor in the process of discovery is the sharing of newfound knowledge with others.

cultural relativism:

means viewing people's behavior from the perspective of their own culture.

Many cultural universals are, in fact, adaptations to what?

meet essential human needs, such as the need for food, shelter, and clothing.

Language communicates a culture's what?

most important norms, values, and sanctions.

Cultural relativism stresses that different social contexts give rise to different what?

norms and values.

Folkways are what?

norms governing everyday behavior. Folkways play an important role in shaping the daily behavior of members of a culture. Society is less likely to formalize folkways than mores, and their violation raises comparatively little concern.

Sociobiologists assert that many of the cultural traits humans display, such as the almost universal expectation that women will be nurturers and men will be providers, are what?

not learned but are rooted in our genetic makeup.

culture war:

or the polarization of society over controversial cultural elements.

Sanctions are what?

penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm.

The term dominant ideology describes the set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain what?

powerful social, economic, and political interests. This concept was first used by Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs (1923) and Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1929), but it did not gain an audience in the United States until the early 1970s.

informal norms are generally understood but not what?

precisely recorded.

diffusion to refer to the:

process by which a cultural item spreads from group to group or society to society.

Material culture:

refers to the physical or technological aspects of our daily lives, including food, houses, factories, and raw materials.

Nonmaterial culture:

refers to ways of using material objects, as well as to customs, beliefs, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication.

In this excerpt from his journal article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," Horace Miner casts an anthropologist's observant eye on the intriguing rituals of an exotic culture. If some aspects of this culture seem familiar to you, you are what?

right, for what Miner is describing is actually the culture of the United States ("Nacirema" is "American" spelled backward).

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , named for two linguists, describes the what?

role of language in shaping our interpretation of reality.

Language can shape how we what?

see, taste, smell, feel, and hear. It also influences the way we think about the people, ideas, and objects around us.

Although cultural relativism does not suggest that we must unquestionably accept every cultural variation, it does require a what?

serious and unbiased effort to evaluate norms, values, and customs in light of their distinctive culture.

A subculture is a segment of society that?

shares a distinctive pattern of customs, rules, and traditions that differs from the pattern of the larger society.

Certainly most social scientists would agree that there is a biological basis for social behavior. Like interactionists, however, conflict theorists and functionalists believe that people's behavior rather than their genetic structure defines what?

social reality.

If it were not for the social transmission of culture, each generation would have to reinvent what?

television, not to mention the wheel

Thus, we must examine practices such as polygamy, bullfighting, and monarchy within the particular contexts of what?

the cultures in which they are found.

Symbols are what?

the gestures, objects, and words that form the basis of human communication.

The German philosopher Theodor Adorno and others have spoken of the worldwide culture industry that standardizes what?

the goods and services demanded by consumers.

The fact that you share a similar culture with others helps to define what?

the group or society to which you belong.

Sociobiology is founded on what?

the naturalist Charles Darwin's (1859) theory of evolution.

Consequently, Ogburn introduced the term culture lag to refer to what?

the period of maladjustment when the nonmaterial culture is still struggling to adapt to new material conditions.

Acceptance of norms is subject to change as what?

the political, economic, and social conditions of a culture are transformed.

Technology in its many forms has increased what?

the speed of cultural diffusion and broadened the distribution of cultural elements.

Culture is what?

the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior.

nonverbal communication:

the use of gestures, facial expressions, and other visual images to communicate. We are not born with these expressions. We learn them, just as we learn other forms of language, from people who share our same culture.

Bilingualism refers to what?

the use of two languages in a particular setting, such as the workplace or schoolroom, treating each language as equally legitimate.

A fairly large number of people are said to constitute a society when what?

they live in the same territory, are relatively independent of people outside their area, and participate in a common culture.

According to Sapir and Whorf, because people can conceptualize the world only through language, language precedes what?

thought.

cultural capital:

to describe noneconomic assets, such as family background and past educational investments, which are reflected in a person's knowledge of language and the arts.

Sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) coined the term ethnocentrism:

to refer to the tendency to assume that one's own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others.

Similarly, feminist theorists have noted that gender-related language can reflect—although in itself it does not determine— the what?

traditional acceptance of men and women in certain occupations.

Members of the society learn this culture and do what?

transmit it from one generation to the next.

Many everyday statements reflect our attitude that our culture is best. We use terms such as what to refer to other societies?

underdeveloped, backward, and primitive to refer to other societies.

It places a priority on what?

understanding other cultures, rather than dismissing them as "strange" or "exotic." .

The entire fabric of norms and sanctions in a culture reflects that culture's what?

values and priorities. The most cherished values will be most heavily sanctioned; matters regarded as less critical will carry light and informal sanctions.

For a norm to become significant, it must be what?

widely shared and understood.

Language is an abstract system of what?

word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture. It includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and nonverbal gestures and expressions.