Sociology Lesson 2

What does a culture represent?

values, beliefs, norms, language, symbols, and practices of a group

What does society represent?

the people who share a culture

True or false society and culture cannot exist without one another

True

Can be material or nonmaterial

Culture

Metro passes, bus tokens, buses, subway cars, and the physical structure of bus stops are examples of?

Material culture

tangible or touchable items that represent culture.

Material culture

consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. These are things you cannot touch. They are intangible

nonmaterial culture

physical objects often symbolize

cultural ideas

patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies

Cultural universals

believing your group is the correct standard of measurement, and that if other cultures do not measure up to it, they are wrong

Ethnocentrism

What sociologist described ethnocentrism saying the term refers to a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric.

William Graham Sumner

True or false almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric

True

Can lead to disdain or dislike of other cultures and could cause misunderstanding, stereotyping, and conflict

Ethnocentrism

The deliberate imposition of one's cultural values on another culture.

Cultural imperialism

When people find themselves in a new culture, they may experience disorientation and frustration. Sociologists refer to this as what?

Culture shock

Unanticipated differences from one’s own culture, culture shock, may lead them to become what?

ethnocentric

During his time with the Inuit tribe, Ken Barger learned to engage in

cultural relativism

the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture

cultural relativism

What requires you to have an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values, norms, and practices

cultural relativism

opposite of ethnocentrism and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own

Xenocentrism

The Greek root word xeno-, pronounced “ZEE-no,” means

“stranger” or “foreign guest”

an irrational fear or hatred of different cultures

xenophobia

Value refers to

the ideals, principles, and standards that members of a culture hold in high regard

shape a society by suggesting what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and what is sought or avoided

Values

often suggest how people should behave, but they don’t accurately reflect how people do behave

values

One of the ways societies strive to maintain their values is through

Rewards and punishments

A form of social control, a way to enforce conformity to social norms.

Sanctions

behaviors that reflect compliance with what cultures and societies have defined as good, right, and important. Most members adhere to them.

Norms

established, and written rules exist in all societies. They support many social institutions, such as the military, criminal justice, and healthcare systems, and public schools.

Formal norms

Who may question what purpose formal norms serve?

Functionalists

Who might be interested in who creates, benefits from, and suffers under formal norms?

conflict theorists

Who might wonder how a group that benefits interacts

symbolic interactionists

Laws, employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements, and “no running” signs at swimming pools are examples of

Formal norms

most specific and clearly stated of the various types of norms, and they are the most strictly enforced. But they are enforced to varying degrees

Formal norms

People learn informal norms by

observation, imitation, and general socialization

dictate appropriate behaviors without the need for written rules, and so may be difficult to learn when you are new to or not familiar with the culture.

Informal norms

Informal norms

Casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to.

Norms may be further classified as either

Mores or folkways

norms that embody a group's moral views and principles. They often have a religious foundation. Violating them can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are protected with laws and other formal sanctions

Mores

norms without any moral underpinnings. Rather, they direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. We can think of them as ‘traditions’

Folkways

True or false a folkway in one culture could be extremely rude in another culture?

True

a system of symbols that people use to communicate and through which culture is transmitted

Language

In the 1920s, linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf advanced an idea, which became known as

the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity

based on the idea that people experience their world through their language and therefore understand it through the cultural meanings embedded in that language

the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity

This hypothesis suggests language shapes thought and, in turn, behavior

the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity

What sociologist wrote about cultural capital?

Pierre Bourdieu

consists of material goods, non-material attitudes, and knowledge specific to a particular economic class

Cultural capital

Bourdieu grouped cultural capital into three categories:

embodied (a regional dialect), objectified (possessions), and institutionalized (academic credentials)

the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the highest or elite class segments of a society

High culture

associated with the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes found in the lowest-class segments of a society

Low culture

refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society

Popular culture

A parade, a baseball game, or the season finale of a television show. Music, anime, and cosplay examples of

Popular culture

a smaller cultural group within a larger culture

Subculture

Groups that reject some of the larger culture's norms and values.

Counterculture

A form of cultural change resulting in new material or nonmaterial elements.

Innovation

What is cultural diffusion?

The process by which cultural change "spreads out" across the culture

refers to the promotion and increase in interactions between different regions and populations around the globe, resulting in the integration of markets and the interdependence of nations fostered through trade.

Globalization

view the different categories of culture as serving many functions

Functionalists

view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power differentials related to issues like class, gender, race, and age

Conflict theorists

the sociological perspective most concerned with face-to-face interactions and cultural meanings among members of society

Symbolic interactionalism

Sociological process that occurs through socializing.

Socialization

psychologist who focused on the role of social interactions in child development. He recognized that the development of self evolved through a negotiation between the world as it exists in one’s mind and the world that exists as it is experienced socially

Jean Piaget

one of the most influential modern scientists to advance a theory of how people develop a sense of self. He divided the maturation process into stages and posited that people’s self-development is closely linked to their early stages of development.

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

created a theory of personality development based, in part, on the work of Freud. However, Erikson believed the personality continued to change over time and was never truly finished. His theory includes eight stages of development, beginning with birth and ending with death.

Psychologist Erik Erikson

believed that there is a specific developmental path that all people go through.

Herbert Mead

Stage where children are only capable of imitation: they have no ability to imagine how others see things. They copy the actions of people with whom they regularly interact, such as their caregivers

preparatory stage

Stage during which children begin to take on the role of another person. Thus, children might try on a parent’s point of view by acting out “grown-up” behavior, like playing dress-up and acting out the “mom” role, or talking on a toy telephone the way they see adults do.

Play stage

Stage when children learn to consider several roles simultaneously and how those roles interact. They learn to understand interactions involving different people with a variety of purposes.

Game stage

the common behavioral expectations of society. By this stage of development, an individual is able to imagine how he or she is viewed by one or many others—and thus, from a sociological perspective, to have a “self”

Generalized other

an important part of the socialization process. The term refers to how people learn what society considers “good” and “bad,” which is important for a smoothly functioning society.

Moral development

prevents people from acting on unchecked urges and instead prompts them to consider what is right for society and good for others

Moral development

Who was interested in how people learn to decide what is right and what is wrong

Lawrence Kohlberg

To understand how people learn to decide what is right and wrong, he developed a theory of moral development that includes three levels

Lawrence Kohlberg. preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.

Stage young children, who lack a higher level of cognitive ability, experience the world around them only through their senses.

Preconventional stage

Stage when youngsters become increasingly aware of others’ feelings and take those into consideration when determining what’s “good” and “bad.”

Conventional stage

Stage when people begin to think of morality in abstract terms, such as Americans believing that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At this stage, people also recognize that legality and morality do not always align

Postconventional stage

recognized that Kohlberg’s theory might exhibit gender bias because his research was conducted only on male subjects

Carol Gilligan

Whose research suggested that boys and girls do have different understandings of morality. Boys appeared to have a justice perspective, emphasizing rules and laws. Girls, on the other hand, seem to have a care-and-responsibility perspective; they consider people’s reasons for behavior that seems morally wrong.

Carol Gilligan

Who would say that socialization is essential to society, both because it trains members to operate successfully within it and because it perpetuates culture by transmitting it to new generations

Structural functionalists

Who might argue that socialization reproduces inequality from generation to generation by conveying different expectations and norms to those with different social characteristics

Conflict theorist

What is the idea of nature vs. nurture?

It is a debate of whether our genetics (nature) or our environment (nurture) has more bearing on who we are

the first agent of socialization

Family

made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests

Peer group

This type of socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns, the rules of a game, or how to shoot a basket.

Peer group

by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks what kind of function is school serving

Latent function

the informal teaching that occurs in schools.

Hidden curriculum

How do schools function as agents of socialization?

Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the day

the preparation for future life roles

anticipatory socialization

old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are eliminated because they are no longer useful

Resocialization

An individual must give up markers of their old life in order to be socialized into the new one

degradation ceremony