C. The Complexity of Culture

• Culture


  A people's way of life, encompassing beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws, norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge, and everything that a person learns and shares as a member of society
• Enculturation


  The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group by a person, another culture, etc.
• Culture Shock


  The feeling of uncertainty, confusion, or anxiety that people experience when visiting, doing business in, or living in a society that is different from their own
• Ethnocentrism


  The tendency of each society to place its cultural patterns at the center of all things, and the practice of comparing other cultural practices with those of one's own and automatically finding those other cultural practices to be inferior
• Cultural Relativism


  The idea that all norms, beliefs, and values are dependent on their cultural context and should be treated as such
• Xenocentrism


  A preference for the foreign, characterized by a strong belief that one's own products, styles, or ideas are inferior to those which originate elsewhere
• Xenophobia


  The fear of what is perceived as foreign or strange, which may include fear of losing identity, suspicion of other group's activities, aggression, and the desire to eliminate the presence of the other group to secure a presumed purity