Chapter 2: Culture

Culture

The shared ways of life of a group of people, including their beliefs, values, behaviors, language, and products.

Culture as Cohesion

Culture brings people together by giving them shared beliefs, values, norms, and ways of understanding the world.

Culture as Coercion

Culture pressures people to behave in ways that society considers acceptable.

Culture as Constraining

Culture limits the behaviors and choices that people see as acceptable or possible.

Culture and Inequality

Societies can produce inequality while using cultural beliefs and values to justify why that inequality exists.

Non-material Culture

The nonphysical parts of culture, such as values, beliefs, norms, language, and ideas.

Values

Abstract ideas about what a culture considers good, bad, right, wrong, important, or desirable.

Norms

Rules or expectations for behavior based on a culture's values.

Material Culture

The physical objects or products created and used by a culture.

Products

Physical objects produced or used by a culture, such as clothing, technology, buildings, food, and art.

Language

A system of symbols used as a primary way of communicating and creating meaning.

Symbol

Something that represents or communicates a meaning understood by members of a culture.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

The idea that the language people use influences or limits how they understand and think about the world.

Language Constrains Cultural Imagination

The language available to people can influence what concepts or ideas are easier for them to imagine and understand.

Cross-Cultural Contact

Interaction between people or groups from different cultures.

Ethnocentrism

Judging another culture using the standards and values of your own culture.

Cultural Relativism

Understanding or judging another culture according to that culture's own standards and values.

Assimilation

The process in which a group adopts another culture and may lose much of its original culture.

Acculturation

The process of learning and adopting parts of another culture while still keeping parts of one's original culture.

Accommodation

A situation in which different cultures are allowed to exist side by side without one completely replacing the other.

Multicultural Society

A society made up of many different cultural groups or subcultures.

Subculture

A smaller cultural group that exists within a larger culture and has some distinct values, norms, or practices.

Counterculture

A group that rejects or strongly opposes important values and norms of the larger culture.