Understanding Culture: Key Terms & Concepts

1. Chapter 3 Culture Key Terms

2. CultureAll the modes of thought, behavior, and production that are handed down from one generation to the next by means of communicative interaction rather than by genetic transmission. • IdeasWays of thinking that organize human consciousness.

3. NormsSpecific rules of behavior. • Material culturePatterns of possessing and using the products of culture.

4. ValuesThe ideas that support or justify norms. • LawsNorms that are written by specialists, collected in codes or manuals of behavior, and interpreted and applied by other specialists.

5. IdeologiesSystems of values and norms that the members of a society are expected to believe in and act on without question. • TechnologiesThe products and the norms for using them that are found in a given culture.

6. Social controlThe set of rules and understandings that control the behavior of individuals and groups in a particular culture. • Normative orderThe array of norms that permit a society to achieve relatively peaceful social control.

7. SanctionsRewards and punishments for abiding by or violating norms. • MoresStrongly sanctioned norms.

8. FolkwaysWeakly sanctioned norms. • Natural selectionThe relative success of organisms with specific genetic mutations in reproducing new generations with the new trait.

9. Cultural evolutionThe process by which successful cultural adaptations are passed down from one generation to the next. • Social DarwinismThe notion that people who are more successful at adapting to the environment in which they find themselves are more likely to survive and to have children who will also be successful.

10. SociobiologyThe hypothesis that all human behavior is determined by genetic factors. • Linguistic-relativity hypothesisThe belief that language determines the possibilities for thought and action in any given culture.

11. EthnocentrismThe tendency to judge other cultures as inferior to one’s own. • Cultural relativityThe recognition that all cultures develop their own ways of dealing with the specific demands of their environments.

12. HegemonyUndue power or influence. • CivilizationA cultural complex formed by the identical major cultural features of several societies.

13. AcculturationThe process by which the members of a civilization incorporate norms and values from other cultures into their own. • AssimilationThe process by which culturally distinct groups in a larger civilization adopt the norms, values, and language of the host civilization and are able to gain equal statuses in its groups and institutions.

14. SubcultureA group of people who hold many of the values and norms of the larger culture but also hold certain beliefs, values, or norms that set them apart from that culture. • CountercultureA subculture that challenges the accepted norms and values of the larger society and establishes an alternative lifestyle.

15. AccommodationThe process by which a smaller, less powerful society is able to preserve the major features of its culture even after prolonged contact with a larger, stronger culture.