Sociology Unit 2 review, Chapter 6 (pp.155-164), material vs. non-material culture

Material Culture: Physical items (artifacts), manmade, man-used, something that can be held. Ex.) Baseball

Nonmaterial Culture: Ideas, Values, Beliefs, and language.

Material culture is always an outgrowth of non-material culture.

Ex.) Why you’re here

Group: People who have something in common and who believe that what they have in common is significant, also called a social group.

Society: People who share a culture and a territory.

Hunting and Gathering society: a human group dependent on hunting and gathering for its survival. 

Shaman: a priest (or intermediary with the spirit world) in a tribal society.

 Pastoral society: A society based on the pasturing of animals.

 Horticultural society: A society based on cultivating plants by the use of hand tools.

 Domestication Revolution: The first social revolution, based on the domestication of plants and animals, which led to pastoral and horticultural societies.

 Agricultural Revolution: the second social revolution, based on the invention of the plow, which led to agricultural society.

 Agricultural Society: A society based in large scale agriculture, dependent on plows drawn by animals.

 Industrial Revolution: The third social revolution occurring when machines powered by fuels replaced most animal and human power.

 Industrial Society: A society based on the harnessing of machines powered by fuels.

 Aggregate: Individuals who temporarily share the same physical space but do not see themselves as belonging together. 

Category: People who have similar characteristics.

 Primary groups: A group characterized by intimate, long-term, face to face association and cooperation.

Sociology Unit 2 Review, (pp.37-43,49-57,211-216)

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.

 Cultural Relativism: Not judging a culture, but trying to understand it on its own terms.

 Symbolic culture: another term for nonmaterial culture.

 Symbol: something to which people attach meanings and then use to communicate with others.

 Gestures: The ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another.

 Values: the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

 Sanctions: Expressions of approval or disapproval given to people for upholding or violating norms.

 Positive Sanction: A reward given for following norms, ranging from a smile to a prize.

 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.

 Folkways: norms that are not strictly enforced.

 Mores: norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought essential to core values.

 Taboo: a norm so strong that it brings revulsion if violated.

 Subculture: The values and related behaviors of a group that distinguish its members from the larger culture, a world within a world.

 Counterculture: a group whose values, beliefs, and related behaviors place its members in opposition to the broader culture.

 Value Cluster: A series of interrelated values that together form a larger whole.

 Value Contradiction: values that contradict one another, to follow the one means to come into conflict with the other.

 Ideal Culture: the ideal values and norms of a people, the goals held out for them.

 Real Culture: the norms and values that people actually follow.

 Cultural Universal: a value, norm, or other cultural trait that is found in every group.

 Deviance: the violation of rules or norms.

 Crime: the violation of norms that are written into law.

 Stigma: “blemishes” that discredit a person’s claim to a “normal” identity.

 Social Order: a groups usual and customary social arrangements, on which it’s members depend and on which they base their lives.

 Social Control: a group’s formal and informal means of enforcing it’s norms.

 Negative Sanction: a punishment or negative reaction for disapproved behavior, for deviance.

 Positive Sanction: a reward or positive reaction for approved behavior, for conformity.

 Degradation ceremonies: rituals designed to strip an individual of his or her identity as a group member, for example, a court martial or the defrocking of a priest

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