Chp 2 Culture: Giving Meaning to Human Lives

John Harvey Kellogg

________ invented cornflakes in the 19th century because he believed that bland, healthy foods helped prevent "unhealthy "sexual urges, such as masturbation.

Cultural relativism

________, interpreting another culture using their goals, values, and beliefs rather than our own to make sense of what people say and do, is a central means of overcoming ethnocentrism, and it is a major feature of the anthropological perspective on culture.

Norms

________ are typical patterns of behavior, viewed by participants as the unwritten rules of everyday life.

Tradition

________- the most enduring and ritualized aspects of a culture, usually assumed to be timeless or, at least, very old.

Social sanctions

________ are the reactions or measures intended to enforce norms and punish their violations.

hearty breakfasts

In the 19th century, rich, ________ (meat, eggs, biscuits, gravy, and butter) were a sign of prosperity, as was the resulting full- bodied body type.

Values

_____ are symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities.

Radcliffe Brown

________, functionalism proposes that cultural practices and beliefs perform functions for societies, such as explaining how the world works and organizing people into efficient roles.

Evans Pritchard

________, a critic of functionalism, argued that functionalism was too associated with the natural sciences and viewed culture as too stable and smoothly functioning.

cross-cultural perspective

A ________ (analyzing a human social phenomenon by comparing that phenomenon in different cultures) demonstrates the incredible flexibility and plasticity of the human species.

Cultures

________ are dynamic, always adapting and changing.

Cultural construction

________- the fact people collectively "build "meanings through common experience and negotiation.

Functionalists

________ emphasize that social institutions function together in an integrated and balanced fashion to keep the whole society functioning smoothly and to minimize social change.

English scholar Sir Edward B Tylor

________ was a founding figure of cultural anthropology.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz

________ proposed that culture is a system of symbols- something that represents something else- through which people make sense out of the world.

Human beliefs

________ and practices come in all shapes and forms.

social groups

They are humanly constructed and variable across ________, and they can change somewhat quickly.

Culture

________- the taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group.

Culture

________ is integrated with daily experience.