Unit 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes

Culture: the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors of a society.

Cultural Attitudes:

  • customs: patterned behavior that is characteristic of a society or group

  • Taboo: a restriction on a behavior imposed by a social outcome.

Folk Culture: a traditional, localized group with its own customs and traditions

  • Amish

Popular Culture: The dominant culture in a society with mass accessibility

  • promotes a uniform landscape

  • “Placelessness”

Cultural Relativism: understanding one’s culture in its own context

Ethnocentrism: Judging a culture based on their own

Sequent Occupancy: Societies leave their cultural imprints when they live in a place, creating layers on the cultural landscape.

  • Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Types of Diffusion:

  • Relocation Diffusion: spread of culture through the movement of people from one place to another.

    • English colonizers to the USA

  • Expansion Diffusion:

    • Contagious: rapid, widespread diffusion through a population

      • Songs, Black Plague, Islam

    • Hierarchical Diffusion: spread of an idea from someone with authority or a large city; central node of powers

      • Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and everyone else followed

    • Stimulus Diffusion: spread of an underlying principle that changes to match the adoptive culture

      • McDonald’s not having beef in India

Cultural Divergence: preserve folk culture or keep separate from pop. culture

  • Amish

Cultural Convergence: two culture’s traits adopt each other’s and become more alike

  • Global lingua franca: English

  • Can lead to loss of folk cultures

Acculturation vs. Assimilation:

  • Acculturation: adopting traits of a new culture while still maintaining elements of original

    • Speaking English at school but native at home

    • Dia de los Muertos

  • Assimilation: adopting the culture of the dominant society while losing native culture

    • Religious ideas being forced onto people

    • American Indians being forced to adopt American culture

Syncretism: A new cultural trait created from blending two or more cultures.

  • Catholic and West African culture into voodoo

  • Sikhism: a mix of Islamic and Hindu Culture

Multiculturalism: the presence of several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society

  • Different religions and languages in a country

Dialect: A regional variation of a language

Centripetal vs Centrifugal forces:

  • Centripetal: A force that brings/unites people together.

    • Japan consisting of mostly ethnic Japanese

  • Centrifugal: A force that separates people.

    • Quebec, Canada

  • Religion, Language, and Ethnicity can be both