Ch8: culture

Race

• categorization by superficial physical traits

  • Racialization → assigning meaning to racial categories

Ethnicity

• grouped by culture (usually other)

• a shared cultural identity based on common ancestry, language, history, society, religion, or traditions rather than physical traits

  • Ethnic identity → part of self-concept

  • Assimilation → adopt dominant culture

  • Multiculturalism → maintain both cultures

Gender

• cultural expectations

• self concept of identity

Sexuality

• romantic/physical/psychological attraction

• Sexuality is both a physiological process (biological desires/behaviors) and a cultural construct (rules about what is acceptable).

  • Cultures regulate sexuality through norms about when, why, and with whom sexual activity is appropriate

Social class

• generational wealth stratification

• Social class is based on wealth, income, and status, leading to unequal access to resources.

  • Early human societies were largely egalitarian, but inequality increased with agriculture and surplus resources

Disability

• excluding from “normal”

• “those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others

• Ableism privileges non-disabled people and marginalizes disabled individuals.

• Forms of ableism:

  • Hostile (discrimination, aggression)

  • Benevolent (pity, patronizing behavior)

  • Ambivalent (mixed attitudes)
    

Power differential

• Ability to determine what is “normal.” Ability to maintain social and structural systems to continue advantage.

Unearned advantage

• benefits to one group at the expense of another

• advantaged group taught not to see

• denial of history - re-writing of history

  • agent and target roles

    • agent is the one in power

  • “elusive and fugitive” - its hard to hold in your head and then it leaves your mind

Five Faces of Oppression (Iris Young)

• Exploitation: benefitting off of someone else’s labor

  • immigrant workers, men earning more than women

• Marginalization: excluding groups from full participation

  • “same sex cant marry”, no ramps for wheelchairs, segregation

• Cultural Imperialism: erasing culture, history, enforcing
  “normal”

  • making a group seem bad or wrong

• Powerlessness: believing you are powerless, less than, inferior

  • internalized sense of oppression

• Violence: threats and acts of harm and murder

  • oppression: racism/sexism/homophobia/abelism/transphobia/classism

Bobbie Harro’s Cycle of Socialization (1997)