Social Studies

• what is culture ?


  Culture is the system within behaviours, beliefs, knowledge,practices and values,concrete materials including buildings, tools and scared items and determined. It's a way of people's life. Culture is dynamic and its change overtime. Culture and its elements are contested : + There is little agreement as to who and what belongs to a culture,even by those who belong to that group. One of that points of contestation is Authenticity and or what is true to a particular culture .
• what is component of culture ?

  Culture are made up of 2 main components : -> Tangible components : These are inlcludes items/ symbols that represent a culture in a concrete manner. They includes things like clothing, building and food. -> Intangible components : these are includes symbolic abstract elements of a culture that can only be interpreted but not concreted. Language is an example of intangiblele cultural element.
• Cultural Typology ?


  Can be distinguished along two central oppositions : -> Dominant culture and subculture and counterculture and -> High culture and Popular culture and mass culture.
• What is Dominant culture ?

  Dominant culture is the culture that through its political and economic powers is able to imposed values and language and ways of behaving and interpreting beaviour on a given
• What is the word "Dominant"?


  Dominant refers to people who have closely linked with the cultural mainstream
• What is Canadian's dominants ?

  Canadian's dominants are white English speaking, heterosexual, male university graduated of European background between the ages of 30-55, in good health who owns home in middle neighbourhoods of cities in Ontario and Quebec
• Minority cultures ?


  Minority cultures are those that fall outside the cultural mainstream -> There are 2 subcatergories that fall under the minority culture : -> Subcultural and Countercultural
• What is CounterCultures ?

  Countercultures is minority culture that feels the power of Dominant cultures and exist oppsed to it (ex: clothing styles or sexual norms) for example : Hippies , Biker gangs, and alternative like music and fashion.
• What is Subcultures ?


  Subculture is minority cultures that different in some ways from the dominant culture but don't directly opposed it like groups organized around occupation or hobbies
• What is High CULTURE ?

  High culture is the culture of the elite, a distinct minority . It is asscociated with the arts like theatre opera, ballet and classical music. High culture requires what Pirre Bourdieu called Cultural Capital which was a set of skills and knowledge to accquired the sotisphicated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture
• What is popular culture?

  Popular culture is the culture of majority, especially those who do not have power like the Working class, the less educated , women and racialized minorities and Cultural studies cast light on the significance of and meaning expressed in popular culture
• What is Mass Culture?


  Mass Culture refers to people who have little or no agency in the culture they consume like big companies dictate what people watch, buy,value or believe -> Created by those in power for the masses
• What is the crucial distinct exist different between Popular culture and Mass culture ?

  The Agency -> the ability of "the people" to be creative or productive with materials given to them by a dominant culture
• What is a feature of Mass culture?

  Simulacra is a feature of Mass Culture , Simuclara are stereotypical cultural images produced and reproduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes by the scholars ( Jean Baudrillard,1929-2007) like Inuit represented through igloos, kayaks,...), Simuclara are "hyperreal" thus likely to be considered more real than what actually exists
• What involves in important distinction between the two positions ( Popular culture and Mass culture ) ?

  IMPORTANT DISTINCTION between the 2 positions involves : DECIPHERMENT and READING
• What is Decipherment ?


  Decipherment involves looking in a text for the definitve interpratation for the purpose ( conscious or unconscious ) the culture industry had in mind in creating the text .
• What is Reading ?


  Reading is the process in which people treat what is provided by the culture industry as a resource , a text to be interpreted as they see fit or suitable, in ways not necessarily intended by the creators of the text
• What is cultural Norms ?

  Norms are the rules or standards of behaviour that are expected of a group, society, or culture. Norms may be contested along the lines of ethnicity, "race", gender and age. Norms are expressed in a culture customs like a wedding to symbolic articles of dress like the white dress worn by the bride. Norms can change overtime and differs from culture to culture
• What is Sanctions ?

  Sanctions are rewards and punishment in response to a particular behaviour
• What is Positive Sanctions ?

  Positive Sanctions are rewards for "doing the right thing" like smiles, high-five or bonus )
• What is Negative sanctions ?

  Negative Sanctions are reactions designed to tell offenders that they have violated a norm like a glare, an eye roll, parking ticket, a library fine
• Who distinguished three kinds of norms ?

  Wlilliam Graham Sumner ( 1840-1910)
• What is Folkways ?

  Folkways or etiquette, are norms that govern day-to-day matters. Those are norms we should not violate and they are weakly snactioned like double dipping chips
• What is Mores ?

  Mores are more serious than folkways . These often formalized norms we must not violate and violations are met with serious sanctions like stealing,rape. Mores are complicated and may be contested
• What is taboos ?

  Taboos are norms that are so deeply ingrained in our social consciousness that the mere thought or mention of it is enough to arouse disgust or revulsion like incest, child pornography.
• What is cultural Symbols ?


  Symbols are cultural items that hold significance for a culture or subculture. Symbols can be Tangible like material objects such as the maple leaf,niquab. Symbols can also be Intangible like non-material objects such as songs or events like seal hunt, Canadian Anthem. Cultural symbols changes overtime.
• What is Values ?


  Values are the standards used by a culture to describe abstarct qualities such as goodness,beauty and justice and to assess the behaviours of others
• Does VALUES and BEHAVIOUR are ALWAYS CONGRUENT ?


  No, it doesn't Value and Bahaviour are NOT ALWAYS CONGGRUENT like IDEAL CULTURE : is what people believe in like environmentalism and ACTUAL CULTURE : what really exists like driving large SUVs
• What is Ethnocentrism ?


  Ethnocentrism occurs when someone holds up one culture but usually their own as being the Standard by which all cultures are to be judged. Ethnocentrism is often the product of a lack of knowledge or ignorance . Ethnocentrism has played a role in the colonizing efforts of powerful nations imposing their political,economic and religious beliefs on the Indigenous populations of lands they "discovered"
• What is Eurocentrism ?


  Eurocentrism involves addressing others from a broadly difined European position to address others and assuming the audience is or would like to be part of that position for example like Eurocentric perspective of many textbooks used in the West tends to champion advances made by people of European stock while downplaying or altogether ignoring non-European developments like the standard numbering system is the Hindu-Arabic system
• What is Reverse ethnocentrism ?


  Reverse ethnocentrism occurs when one someone accepts the superiority of other's culture to own culture for example like vernularization of one's language of ordinary or country people , Second generation migrants in Canada and other western countries have the tendency to embrace reverse ethnocentrism due to growing detachment from their original cultural values
• What is the Cultural Globalization ?


  Cultural globalization is the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe ( Steger,2003). For example the "Americanization" of the world or the danger of a one-directional flow of culture could be problematic
• What is Cultural Relativism ?


  Cultural Relativism is an approach of studying and understanding an aspect of another culture within its proper social,historical and environmental context. We cannot use our own cultural standards to assess and judge the cultural practices of others. CUltural relativism becomes problematic when studying historical practices and views that were once widespread but are now considered abhorrent and offensive such as acts of genocide against Indigenous peoples such as Mi' Kmaq population.
• What is cultural relativisim ?


  Cultural relativisim is the ability to judge figures of the past within their own time and not by today's standards.
• What is Presentism ?


  Presentism is the inability to judge figures of the past within their own time instead we judge them by today's standards such as figures like Cornwallis,McClung and Sir John A cannot be judge by today's standard
• What is Sociolinguistics ?


  Sociolinguistics is the study of language as part of culture. Language is KEY to the communication and transmission of culture. Sociolinguistics looks at language in relation to such sociological factors as "race", ethinicity,age,gender and region
• What is Dialect ?


  Dialect is a variety of a language that differs from others in terms of pronounciation , vocabulary and grammar. Dialects are often evaluated according to whether they represent proper or improper, casual or formal ven funny or serious versions of language. The DISTINCTION are the product of linguistics and social factors for example of a dialect difference can be seen in the SUV commercial that featured a voiceover in a Newfoundland accent but however you might not hear that same accent extolling the marketable features of a Lexus.
• What is example of DIALECTS in Canda?

  -> Canadian English, Canadian French, Aboriginal Canadian English, Cape Breton English
• What is Linguistic Determinism and Relativity ?


  Sapir-Whorf hypothesis : described the relationship between language and cuture. Language, words and the meanings they generate are culture-specific therefore language outside of its cultural context does not make sense.
• What is Linguistics determinism ?


  Linguistics determinism suggests that the way we view and understand the world is shaped by the language we speak for example like gendered prounouns reflect and shape how we think about gender