Chapter 3 Culture Key Terms

Culture All 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. Ideas Ways of thinking that organize human consciousness.

Norms Specific rules of behavior. Material culture Patterns of possessing and using the products of culture.

Values The ideas that support or justify norms. Laws Norms that are written by specialists, collected in codes or manuals of behavior, and interpreted and applied by other specialists.

Ideologies Systems of values and norms that the members of a society are expected to believe in and act on without question. Technologies The products and the norms for using them that are found in a given culture.

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

Sanctions Rewards and punishments for abiding by or violating norms. Mores Strongly sanctioned norms.

Folkways Weakly sanctioned norms. Natural selection The relative success of organisms with specific genetic mutations in reproducing new generations with the new trait.

Cultural evolution The process by which successful cultural adaptations are passed down from one generation to the next. Social Darwinism The 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.

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

Ethnocentrism The tendency to judge other cultures as inferior to one’s own. Cultural relativity The recognition that all cultures develop their own ways of dealing with the specific demands of their environments.

Hegemony Undue power or influence. Civilization A cultural complex formed by the identical major cultural features of several societies.

Acculturation The process by which the members of a civilization incorporate norms and values from other cultures into their own. Assimilation The 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.

Subculture A 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. Counterculture A subculture that challenges the accepted norms and values of the larger society and establishes an alternative lifestyle.

Accommodation The 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.