Culture

Culture: Everything we make and consume, including ideas, attitudes, traditions, and pratices 

Rituals: Routinized and highly important group activities 

Symbols: Material or immaterial objects that groups affix meaning to  

Material culture: Physical goods people make and use in a society, like clothes, phones, buildings, etc... 

Symbolic culture: Aspects of culture that includes beliefs, values, norms, and languages 

Collective representation: A set of images and words that represent a particular cultire  

High culture: Cultural goods made for and enjoyed by elite groups  

Popular culture: Heavily produced and commercialized goods made for and consumed by a large audience 

Values: Moral beliefs  

Norms: Rules for group behaviours, informed by values, specifying appropriate and inappropriate activities 

Code switching: Adopting a set of informal rules and manner attuned to a particular setting  

Cultural toolkit: Using a stash of beliefs, values, and attitudes that we learn how to deploy based upon the situation at hand  

Cultural industries: A system of organizations that produce ad distribute cultural goods (food, music, art, etc...) 

Diversity capital: Corporations supporting cultural institutions in order to improve their reputation  

Branding indigeneity: Investing in cultural institutions focused on Indigenous peoples in order to appear supportive of indigenous groups  

Conspicuous consumption: Gaining prestige by exhibiting valuable cultural goods  

Subculture: A group that uses alternative symbolic and material goods to distinguish themselves from the wider society  

Taboo: A very strongly held and enforced social norm  

Cultural capital: Non-economic cultural resources (skills, behaviours, etc...) attuned to a particular sphere of social life  

Field: A context of social relations (profession, community, etc...) where a particular kind of cultural capital is exchanged  

Habitus: Learned habits, behaviours, and ways of thinking you learn from your environment  

Status: A level of respect or honor a person has in society  

Status group: Collection of people who share similar characteristics that a community has given a certain level of prestige  

Symbolic boundaries: Conceptual ways people separate each other into groups (traditions, styles, tastes, etc..) 

Boundary work: Creating and maintaining symbolic boundaries to limit group membership and access to resources  

Cultural omnivores: People who differentiate themselves by knowing a lot about many different cultural fields  

Globilization: Integration of political and economic systems; has brough about intercultural communication and an exchange of ideas and values 

Rationalization: The process of organization society around efficiency, rules, and predictability  

McDonaldization: The spread of efficiency, standardization, and predictability from fast-food models to many parts of society  

Cultural imperialism: Imposition of a dominant group’s material and symbolic culture onto another group  

Cultural appropriation: Members of a dominant culture adopting cultural goods of other cultural groups for profit  

Cultural jamming: Efforts to raise awareness around issues of hegemony through informal and often illegal guerilla marketing campaigns. Actions that disrupt or challenge dominant messages (like ads or media) to expose power and influence in society.  

Global commodity chain: The worldwide network of people and processes involved in making, distributing, and selling a product