UCSP M2

• Culture


  The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, artifacts that are part of any society
• Kinds of culture


  • Material culture
  • Non-material culture
• Material culture


  Tangible, includes all the society's physical objects
• Non-material culture


  Intangible, includes the values, beliefs, symbols, and language that define a society
• Characteristics of culture


  • Shared
  • Learned
  • Taken for granted
  • Dynamic
  • Adaptive or maladaptive
  • Generally integrated
• Theories of culture


  • Cultural evolutionism
  • Diffusionism
  • Historicism
  • Psychological anthropology
  • Functionalism
  • Neo-evolutionism
  • Materialism
  • Structuralism
  • Ethnoscience
  • Feminist anthropology
  • Post modernism
• Components of culture


  • Non-material culture
  • Material culture
• Non-material culture


  • Knowledge
  • Beliefs
  • Values
  • Norms
  • Language
  • Symbolic culture
• Knowledge


  Any information received and perceived to be true
• Beliefs


  The perception of accepted reality
• Values


  Anything held to be relatively worthy, important, desirable, or valuable
• Norms


  Established expectations of society as to how a person is supposed to act depending on the requirements of the time, place, or situation
• Sanctions


  Positive or negative reactions to the way in which people follow norms
• Types of norms


  • Folkways
  • Mores
  • Taboos
  • Laws
• Language


  A system of symbols that can be put together in an infinite number of ways to communicate abstract thought
• Symbolic culture


  The central components are the symbols
• Gestures


  Shorthand means of communication using one's body
• Material culture


  Tangible things that reflect a society's values and technology
• Technology


  The practical application of knowledge in converting raw materials into finished products
• Cultural lag


  Situations in which not all parts of a culture change at the same pace
• Cultural diffusion


  Transmission of cultural characteristics
• Cultural leveling


  The process in which cultures become similar to one another
• Art


  The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture
• Ethnocentrism


  Using one's own culture to judge other cultures as inferior
• Cultural relativism


  Trying to appreciate other groups' ways of life in the context in which they exist, without judging them as superior or inferior to one's own
• Ideal culture


  The ideal values and norms of a people
• Real culture


  The norms and values that people actually follow
• Culture shock


  Personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life
• Xenocentrism


  A culturally based tendency to value other cultures more highly than one's own
• Acculturation


  The process of cultural contact and exchange through which a person or group comes to adopt certain values and practices of a culture that is not originally their own
• Enculturation


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


  • High culture
  • Low culture
  • Popular culture
  • Subcultures
  • Countercultures
• High culture


  Cultural patterns that distinguish a society's elite
• Low culture


  The culture of the common people and the mass
• Popular culture


  Cultural patterns that are widespread among a society's population
• Subcultures


  Groups whose values and related behaviors are so distinct that they set their members off from the dominant culture
• Countercultures


  Groups whose values set their members in opposition to the dominant culture