Anthropology: Concepts of Culture and Society

Flashcards covering core vocabulary, definitions, and concepts of culture and society from introductory anthropology lecture notes.

Culture (Ken Guest Definition)

A system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people.

Culture (Gary Ferraro Heuristic Definition)

Everything that people HAVE (material objects, spaces, tangible/intangible products), THINK (ideas, beliefs, norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality), and DO (behavior, actions, impacts as members of a social group).

Society

An interdependent group of people who directly or indirectly interact with each other and, to various degrees, are connected by a common history, patterns of behavior, and ways of thinking, and often recognize themselves as distinct from other groups.

Enculturation

The lifelong process by which culture is learned through socialization, which may or may not involve formal teaching and learning.

Mental Maps of Reality

Frameworks that people use to categorize and make sense of the world around them.

Agency

The contextual power of an individual or group to make decisions, contest, and potentially change their circumstances, social structures, norms, expectations, and policies.

Subculture

A social science term referring to groups with distinctive cultural experiences that originally denoted groups subverting or breaking societal norms while sharing a distinct identity.

Counterculture

A specific type of subculture characterized by a systematic and open opposition to what is perceived as the dominant culture.

Microculture

A broad heuristic term for smaller subsets of cultural experiences existing within a larger macro-culture.

Macroculture

The broader and very often dominant culture of a particular society.

Minority Group

A culturally, ethnically, or racially distinct group that coexists with but is subordinate to more dominant groups, defined primarily by its subordinate status rather than numerical size.

Mainstream Culture

An expression referring to widespread cultural patterns, the broader macro-culture, or dominant/hegemonic culture depending on context.