CHAPTER 3 SUMMARYCulture is defined as learned and shared behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and material objects that characterize a particular group or society. Culture is learned, transmitted from one generation to another, adaptive and always changing. A society is an organized population who see themselves as a social unit. Culture can be divided into material and nonmaterial culture. The building blocks of culture include symbols, or anything that stands for something else, and has a particular meaning for people who share a culture. Symbols take many forms. They distinguish one culture from another. Symbols affect ones cross cultural view. Within a country, cultural symbols can bothunify or divide. Finally, cultural symbols change over time. Language is a system of shared symbols. Language enables people to communicate with one another. Language is an important component of being human. Humans connect to a culture through language. Language influences perceptions of gender, race, and ethnicity. Language is in a constant state of flux. Values are standards that provide general guidelines for behavior. Values are emotion laden, vary across cultures, and change over time. Norms represent a particular society’s rules for behavior. Norms are called ought behaviors. Norms vary between cultures. Norms tend to be unwritten and conditional. Some norms are implicit and others are explicit. Norms maybe be rigid or flexible. Folkways are rules members of society see as important, but are not seen as critical. Contrary to folkways, mores are norms that members of a society consider very important because they maintain moral and ethical behavior. Laws are rigid norms strictly enforced by society. Laws are considered formalrules about behavior that are defined by political authorities, who have the power to punish violators. Laws are written and enforced by specialized bureaucracy. Sanctions are rewards for good or appropriate behavior, and punishment for bad or inappropriate behavior. Examples of positive sanctions are a smile or a hug for a child. Example of negative sanctions are spanking and scolding. Ideal culture is the beliefs, values, and norms that people say they hold and real culture are a society’s actual everyday behaviors. Cultural universals are customs and practices that are common to all societies. Culture shock is the state of confusion and uncertainty that accompanies exposure to an unfamiliar way of life or environment. A subculture is a group or category of people whose distinctive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting differ somewhat from those of the larger society. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s culture and way of life are superior to those of other groups. This attitude leads people to view other cultures as inferior, wrong, backward, immoral, or barbaric. Cultural relativism refers to recognizing that no culture is better than another and that a culture should be judged by its own standards. Multiculturalism refers to the coexistence of many cultures in the same geographic area, without any one culture dominating another. Multiculturalism is sometimes referred to as cultural pluralism. Popular culture refers to the beliefs, practices, activities, and products that are widely shared among a population in everyday life.The mass media includes forms of communication designed to reach large numbers of people. Cultural integration is the consistency of various aspects of society, and promotes order and stability. Cultural change is caused by diffusion, innovation, discovery, external pressures, and changing physical 1environment. Cultural imperialism is when the cultural values and products of one nation influence or dominate those of another country. Some of the major reasons for cultural change include diffusion,invention, innovation, discovery, external pressures, and changes in the physical environment. When some parts of culture change more rapidly than others, it is referred to as cultural lag. Cultural lag describes the gap when nonmaterial culture changes more slowly than material culture. Functionalists view culture in terms of its role in social integration. The perspective focuses on showing that similar norms and values create solidarity and stability in a culture. Conflict theorists argue that U.S.culture and others suffer from widespread inequality. They point out that as the powerful monopolize cultural resources, inequality increases. Scholars drawing on the feminism perspective emphasize how gender can lead to women experiencing culture differently than their male counterparts. Feminists argue that cultural values can lead to inequality because of gender, race/ethnicity, and social class. Symbolic Interactionists focus on how people interpret culture, transmit norms, and values through social interaction. They point out that cultural norms help people merge into a society despite their differences.STUDENT LEARNING
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