Intro to Sociology - Chapter 3

Culture

The values, norms, and material goods characteristic of a given group. Like the concept of society, the notion of culture is widely used in sociology and the other social science (particularly anthropology). This is one of the most distinctive properties of human social association.

Society

A group of people who live in a particular territory, are subject to a common system of political authority, and are aware of having a distinct identity from other groups. Some of these, such as hunting and gathering ones, are small, numbering no more than a few dozen people. Other are large, numbering in millions. Modern Chinese one, for instance, has a population of more than a billion people.

Cultural Universals

Values or modes of behavior shared by all human cultures.

Marriage

A socially approved sexual relationship between two individuals. This historically has involved two person of opposite sexes, but in the past decade this between same-sex partners has been legalized in a growing number of states and nations throughout the world. This normally forms the basis of a family of procreation—that is, it is expected that the married couple will produce and bring up children.

Nonmaterial Culture

Cultural ideas that are not themselves physical objects.

Material Culture

The physical objects that a society creates that influence the ways in which people live.

Values

Ideas held by individuals or groups about what is desirable, proper, good, and bad. What individuals holds desirable is strongly influenced by the specific culture in which they happen to live.

Norms

Rules of conduct that specify appropriate behavior in a given range of social situations. This either prescribes a given type of behavior or forbids it. All human groups follow definite number of this, which are always back by sanctions of one kind or another, varying from informal disapproval to physical punishment.

Symbol

One item used to stand for or represent another, as in the case of a flag symbolizing a nation.

Signifier

Any vehicle of meaning and communication.

Semiotics

The study of the ways in which nonlinguistic phenomena can generate meaning, as in the example of a traffic light.

Language

The primary vehicle for meaning and communication in a society, this is a system symbols that represents objects and abstract thoughts.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

The theory that language influences thought and perception, suggesting that speakers of different languages may perceive the world differently. Based on the theories of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Cultural Turn

Sociology’s recent emphasis on the importance of understanding the role of culture in daily life.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

Societies whose mode of subsistence is hunting animals, fishing, and gathering edible plants.

Pastoral Societies

Societies whose subsistence derives from the rearing of domesticated animals.

Agrarian Societies

Societies whose means of subsistence are based on agriculture production (crop growing).

Industrialization

The process of the machine production of goods.

Industrialized Societies

Strongly developed notion-states in which the majority of the population works in factories or offices rather than in agriculture and most people live in urban areas.

Nation-States

Particular types of states, characteristic of the modern world, in which governments have sovereign power within defined territorial areas, and populations are citizens who believe themselves to be part of single nations.

Colonialism

The process whereby powerful nations established their rule in parts of the world away from their home territories.

Cultural Capital

The accumulated cultural knowledge within a society that confers power and status.

Emerging Companies

Countries located primarily in the Global South, such as India and Singapore, that over the past three to four decades have begun to develop a strong industrial base.

Cultural Appropriation

The adoption of one cultural group’s elements by another cultural group.

Subcultures

Values and norms held by a groups within a wider society that are distinct from those of the majority.

Countercultures

Cultural groups within a wider society that largely reject the values and norms of majority.

Assimilation

The process by which different cultures are absorbed into a mainstream culture.

Multiculturalism

A condition in which ethnic groups exist separately and share equally in economic and political life.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to look at other cultures through the eyes of one’s own culture, and thereby misrepresent them.

Cultural Relativism

The practice of judging a society by its own standards.

Sociobiology

An approach that attempts to explain the behavior of both animals and human beings in terms of biological principles.

Instincts

Fixed patterns of behavior that have genetic origins and that appear in all normal animals within a given species.

Nationalism

A set of beliefs and symbols expressing identification with a national community.

Cultural Lag

The idea, introduced by William Ogburn, that changes in cultural values and norms take time to catch up with technological developments.