Sociology Chapter 3

CULTURE AND MASS MEDIA

Culture

The beliefs, norms, behaviors, languages, and products common to the members of a particular group that bring meaning to their social worlds.

Material culture

The physical objects that are created, embraced, or consumed by society that help shape people’s lives.

Nonmaterial culture

The abstract creations of human cultures, including language, ideas about behavior, and social practices.

Beliefs

Particular ideas that people accept as true.

Values

The abstract and general standards in society that define ideal principles, such as those governing notions of right and wrong.

Folkways

Fairly weak norms that are passed down from the past, the violation of which is generally not considered serious within a particular culture.

Mores

Strongly held norms, the violation of which seriously offends the standards of acceptable conduct of most people within a particular culture.

Taboos

Powerful mores, the violation of which is considered serious and even unthinkable within a particular culture.

Laws

Codified norms or rules of behavior.

Ideal culture

The values, norms, and behaviors that people in a society profess to embrace.

Real culture

The values, norms, and behaviors that people in a society actually embrace and exhibit.

Cultural inconsistency

A contradiction between the goals of ideal culture and the practices of real culture.

Etic perspective

The perspective of the outside observer.

Emic perspective

The perspective of the insider, the one belonging to the cultural group in question.

Cultural relativism

A worldview whereby the practices of a society are understood sociologically in terms of that society’s norms and values, and not the norms and values of another society

Subcultures

Cultures that exist together with a dominant culture but differ from it in some important respects

Language

A symbolic system composed of verbal, nonverbal, and written representations that are vehicles for conveying meaning.

Multiculturalism

A commitment to respecting cultural differences rather than trying to submerge them into a larger, dominant culture.

High culture

Music, theater, literature, and other cultural products that are held in particularly high regard in society

Popular culture

The entertainment, culinary, and athletic tastes shared by the masses.

Mass media

Media of public communication intended to reach and influence a mass audience

Simulacra

: Copies of objects and things that have no reality in the first place.

Hyperreality

Mass reproduction of images and realities leading to a culture where language and images are separated completely, and reproductions of reality are more real than the reality they intend to produce.

Rape culture

A social culture that provides an environment conducive to rape that blames victims for their victimization

Social class reproduction

The way in which class status is reproduced from generation to generation, with parents passing on a class position to their offspring.

Cultural capital

Wealth in the form of knowledge, ideas, verbal skills, and ways of thinking and behaving.

Habitus

The internalization of objective probabilities and subsequent expression of those probabilities as choice.

Globalization

The process by which people worldwide become increasingly connected economically, politically, socially, culturally, and environmentally

Global culture

A type of culture—some would say U.S. culture—that has spread across the world in the form of Hollywood films, fast-food restaurants, and popular music heard in virtually every country.

Shallow Integration

One country makes a product and exports it

Deep Integration

Many part made in many nations