Lecture Notes on Socialisation and Culture

Flashcards for vocabulary review of lecture notes.

Society

A group of people who see themselves as having something in common and different from other societies.

Physical Space

A distinctive geographical area marked by a physical or non-physical border.

Mental Space

Separates people based on beliefs about similarities with their society and differences from others.

Imagined communities

Things that exist only in the mind; societies are mentally constructed.

Culture

A 'way of life' taught and learnt through primary and secondary socialisation.

Material culture

Physical objects ('artefacts') reflecting cultural knowledge, skills, and interests.

Non-material culture

Knowledge and beliefs valued by a particular culture, including religious and scientific beliefs.

Manifest function

The intended purpose for which something exists.

Latent function

Hidden or unintended function of a material object, e.g., status symbols.

Customs

Established and accepted cultural practices and behaviours.

Socialisation

The process through which people learn the behaviour needed for membership in a particular culture.

Social constructions

The idea that our perception of reality is created through historical and cultural processes.

Roles

Expected patterns of behaviour associated with a particular position.

Values

Beliefs or ideas that are important to the people who hold them.

Norms

Socially acceptable ways of behaving in different roles.

Role-sets

When the role involves a set of different relationships with different types of people, such as a doctor's relationship with patients, nurses, other doctors, patient's relatives and so on.

Anomie

A situation in which people are unable to predict the behaviour of others because the system of norms and values is not being followed

Beliefs

Important, deep-rooted ideas that shape our values.

Instincts

Fixed human features. These are things we are born knowing and our cultural environment plays little or no role in the development of these instincts