Chapter 3, Culture Key Terms

material culture All physical objects that people have borrowed, discovered or invented and to which they have attached meaning. nonmaterial culture Intagne creations or things that we cannot identify directly thought seems.

beliefs Conceptions that people accept as true, concerning how the world operates and where the individual fits in relationship to others. values General, shared conceptions of what is good, right, appropriate, worthwhile and important with regard to conduct, appearance and states of being.

norms Written and unwritten rules that specify behaviors appropriate and inappropriate to a particular social situation. folkways Norms that apply to the mundane aspects or details of daily life.

mores Norms that people define as essential to the well-being of a group. denotation A literal definition.

connotation The set of associations that a word evokes. idiom A group of words that when taken together, have a meaning different from the internal meaning of each word understood on its own.

social emotions Internal bodily sensation that we experience in relationships with other people. feeling rules Norms that specify appropriate ways to express internal sensations.

diffusion The process by which an idea, an invention, or some other cultural item is borrowed from a foreign source. culture shock The strain that people from one culture experience when they must reorient themselves to the ways of a new culture.

reentry shock Culture shock in reverse; it is experienced upon retiring home after living in another culture. ethnocentrism A view point that uses one culture as the standard for judging the worth of foreign ways.

cultural genocide A form of ethnocentrism in which the people of one society define the culture of another society not as merely offensive, but as so intolerable that they attempt to destroy it. reverse ethnocentrism A type of ethnocentrism in which the home culture is regarded as inferior to a foreign culture.

cultural relativism The perspective that foreign culture should not be judged by the standards of a home culture and that a behavior or way of thinking must be examined in its cultural context. subcultures Groups that share in some parts of the dominant culture but have their own distinctive values, norms, language or material culture.

institutionally complete Subcultures whose members do not interact with anyone outside their subculture to shop for food, attend school, receive medical care, or find companions because the subculture satisfies those needs.