Chapter 3
A group of people who live in a defined territory and participate in a common culture
What is a society?
Norms that are formally defined and enforced by officials.
What are laws?
How we relate to physical objects.
What is material culture?
Part of the dominant culture but differs from it in some important respects.
What is subculture?
A norm so strong that its violation demands punishment by the group.
What is a taboo?
Broad ideas about what most people in a society consider to be desirable.
What are values?
Ideas about the nature of reality - can be true or false.
What are beliefs?
Common cultural traits that exist in all cultures.
What are cultural universals?
Norms of great moral significance and are vital to the well-being of a society.
What are mores?
Rewards and punishments used to encourage conformity to norms - can be formal or informal.
What are sanctions?
Refers to cultural guidelines publicly embraced by members of a society.
What is ideal culture?
Different cultures that have developed quite different ways to express universals.
What are cultural particulars?
Rules that cover customary ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving but lack moral overtones.
What are folkways?
Sanctions that may be applied only by officially designated persons, such as judges and teachers.
What are formal sanctions?
A subculture that is deliberately and consciously opposed to certain central beliefs or attitudes of the dominant culture.
What is counterculture?
Our perceptions depend in part on the particular language we learn - since languages differ, perceptions differ as well.
What is the hypothesis of linguistic relativity?
Sanctions that can be applied by most members of a group.
What are informal sanctions?
Those who are strongly committed to their culture and cannot imagine any other way of life - they may judge others in terms of their own cultural standard.
What is ethnocentrism?