Culture Terms

Key Terms from presentations
Culture
Counterculture: a group whose values, beliefs, and related behaviors place

its members in opposition to the values of the broader culture.
Cultural diffusion: the spread of cultural characteristics from one group to
another.
Cultural lag: William Ogburn’s term for human behavior lagging behind
technological innovations.
Relativism: not judging a culture, but trying to understand it on its own
terms.
Cultural universal: a value, norm, or other cultural trait that is found in every
group.
Culture: the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material
objects that are passed from one generation to the next.
Culture shock: the disorientation that people experience when they come in
contact with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on
their taken-for-granted assumptions about life.
Ethnocentrism: the use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging the
ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative
evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors.
Folkways: norms that are not strictly enforced.
Gestures: the ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one
another.
Ideal culture: the ideal values and norms of a people, the goals held out for
them.
Material culture: the material/physical objects that distinguish a group of
people, such as their art, buildings, weapons, utensils, machines, hairstyles,
clothing, and jewelry.
Mores: norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought essential to
core values.
Negative sanction: an expression of disapproval for breaking a norm, ranging
from a mild, informal reaction such as a frown to a formal prison sentence or
an execution.
Nonmaterial culture: a group’s nonphysical ideas about culture, like the
ways of thinking (including its beliefs, values, and other assumptions about
the world) and doing (its common patterns of behavior, including language
and other forms of interaction.
Norms: the expectations, or rules of behavior, that reflect and enforce values.
Positive sanction: a reward given for following norms, ranging from a smile
to a prize.
Sanctions: expressions of approval or disapproval given to people for
upholding or violating norms.
Subculture: the values and related behaviors of a group that distinguish its
members from the larger culture; a world within a world.
Socialization
Social Environment: The entire human environment, including direct contact

with others.
Feral Children: Children assumed to have been raised by animals, in the
wilderness, isolated from humans.
Socialization: The process by which people learn the characteristics of their
group—the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, norms, and actions thought
appropriate for them.
Self: The unique human capacity of being able to see ourselves “from the
outside”; the views we internalize of how others see us.
Significant Other: An individual who significantly influences someone else’s
life.
Generalized Other: The norms, values, attitudes, and expectations of people
“in general”; the child’s ability to take the role of the generalized other is a
significant step in the development of a self.
Gender socialization: The ways in which society sets children on different
paths in life because they are male or female.
Gender Role: The behaviors and attitudes expected of people because they
are female or male.
Latent Functions: Unintended beneficial consequences of people’s actions.
Anticipatory Socialization: The process of learning in advance an
anticipated future role or status.
Resocialization: The process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and
behaviors.
Transitional Adulthood: A term that refers to a period following high school
when young adults have not yet taken on the responsibilities ordinarily
associated with adulthood; also called adultolescence.
Societies to Social Networks
 aggregate: individuals who temporarily share the same physical space

but do not see themselves as belonging together (155)
 agricultural society: a society based on large-scale agriculture (150)
 biotech society: a society whose economy increasingly centers on the
application of genetics to produce medicine, food, and materials (152)
 clique: a cluster of people within a larger group who choose to interact
with one another (159)
 coalition: the alignment of some members of a group against others
(161)
 electronic community: individuals who regularly interact with one
another on the Internet and who think of themselves as belonging
together (160)
 horticultural society: a society based on cultivating plants by the use
of hand tools (149)
 hunting and gathering society: a human group that depends on
hunting and gathering for its survival (148)
 Industrial Revolution: the third social revolution, occurring when
machines powered by fuels replaced most animal and human power
(150)
 industrial society: a society based on the use of machines powered by
fuels (150)
 in-groups: groups toward which people feel loyalty (157)
 out-groups: groups toward which people feel antagonism (157)
 pastoral society: a society based on the pasturing of animals (149)
 postindustrial (information) society: a society based on information,
services, and high technology, rather than on raw materials and
manufacturing (152)
 primary group: a group characterized by intimate, long-term, face-to-
face association, and cooperation (155)
 reference group: a group whose standards we refer to as we evaluate
ourselves (158)
 secondary group: compared with a primary group, a larger, relatively
temporary, more anonymous, formal, and impersonal group based on
some interest or activity (155)
Deviance and social control
Strain: refers to the frustrations people feel when they want success but find their
way to it blocked.
Anomie: experiencing a sense of normlessness, as if mainstream rules seem
illegitimate
cultural goals: the objectives held out as legitimate or desirable for the members
of a society to achieve
Institutionalized means: approved ways of reaching cultural goals
Conformity: people using socially acceptable means to try to reach cultural goals.
Innovators: are people who accept the goals of society but use illegitimate means
to try to reach them.
Ritualism: people who become discouraged and give up on achieving cultural
goals. Yet they still cling to conventional rules of conduct.
Retreatism: are people who reject both the cultural goals and the
institutionalized means of achieving them.
Differential association: term to indicate that people who associate with some
groups learn an “excess of definitions” of deviance. From the different groups we
associate with, we learn to deviate from or conform to society’s norms
Control theory the idea that two control systems—inner controls and outer
controls— work against our tendencies to deviate
Deviance to refer to any violation of norms, whether the infraction is as minor as
driving over the speed limit, as serious as murder, or as humorous. The most
obvious example is crime

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Key Terms from presentations

Counterculture: a group whose values, beliefs, and related behaviors place

Social Environment: The entire human environment, including direct contact

 aggregate: individuals who temporarily share the same physical space

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