All flashcards
Flashcard 1: What is a symbol in culture?
Answer: Something that represents an idea and carries shared meaning. Includes flags, religious icons, and gestures with cultural significance.
Flashcard 2: What is language as an element of culture?
Answer: A structured symbolic system used to communicate meaning. Enables transmission of culture across generations through communication.
Flashcard 3: What is nonmaterial culture?
Answer: Ideas and meanings such as norms, values, beliefs, and symbols. The intangible aspects that shape behavior and social organization.
Flashcard 4: What is material culture?
Answer: Physical objects and technologies that reflect a culture. Includes artifacts, buildings, clothing, and tools of a society.
Flashcard 5: What is a subculture?
Answer: A group with distinct norms/values within a larger culture. Shares broader cultural framework but maintains unique characteristics.
Flashcard 6: What is counterculture?
Answer: A subculture that rejects and opposes dominant cultural values. Actively challenges mainstream norms, like hippies in the 1960s.
Flashcard 7: What is cultural lag?
Answer: When nonmaterial culture changes more slowly than technology. Creates social strain as values struggle to adapt to new technologies.
Flashcard 8: What is the difference between formal and informal sanctions?
Answer: Formal: institutional; Informal: interpersonal/social reactions. Formal involves laws/policies; informal involves peer pressure.
Flashcard 9: What is a sanction in sociology?
Answer: A reward or punishment used to enforce norms. Can be positive (rewards) or negative (punishments) for norm compliance.
Flashcard 10: What is a taboo?
Answer: A norm that forbids a behavior viewed as highly offensive. Often culturally specific, like incest or cannibalism prohibitions.
Flashcard 11: What is a mores?
Answer: A strongly held norm tied to morality, with serious sanctions. Violations trigger strong social condemnation or legal consequences.
Flashcard 12: What is a folkway?
Answer: An informal norm governing everyday behavior and etiquette. Violations result in mild disapproval, like wearing pajamas to work.
Flashcard 13: What is a norm?
Answer: A socially defined rule or expectation for behavior. Guides appropriate behavior within specific social contexts.
Flashcard 14: What is a cultural universal?
Answer: A cultural element present in all known human societies. Examples include language, family structures, and religious practices.
Flashcard 15: What is culture in the sociological sense as tested on the MCAT?
Answer: Shared beliefs, values, norms, and practices learned socially. Encompasses the collective patterns that guide social behavior.
Flashcard 16: What is a value in cultural analysis?
Answer: A culturally defined standard of what is desirable or important. Shapes priorities and goals, like individualism vs. collectivism.
Flashcard 17: What is a belief in cultural analysis?
Answer: A conviction that something is true, regardless of evidence. Forms worldviews and assumptions about reality and human nature.
Flashcard 18: What is assimilation as a cultural process?
Answer: Complete adoption of a new culture with loss of original culture. Results in minority groups becoming indistinguishable from dominant culture.
Flashcard 19: What is acculturation?
Answer: Adopting elements of another culture after prolonged contact. Involves selective adoption while maintaining original cultural identity.
Flashcard 20: What is multiculturalism?
Answer: Maintaining multiple cultural traditions within one society. Promotes cultural diversity and equal respect for different traditions.
Flashcard 21: What is a sanction?
Answer: A reward or punishment used to enforce norms. Sanctions maintain conformity through social control mechanisms.
Flashcard 22: What is a value in sociology?
Answer: A shared standard of what a group considers desirable or important. Values guide behavior and serve as criteria for judging actions.
Flashcard 23: What is a belief in the context of culture?
Answer: A conviction that something is true, often culturally shared. Beliefs shape worldview and influence behavior within cultural contexts.
Flashcard 24: What is culture in the MCAT sociological sense?
Answer: Shared beliefs, values, norms, and practices learned socially. Encompasses all aspects of social life transmitted through interaction.
Flashcard 25: What is the difference between folkways and mores?
Answer: Folkways: mild norms; mores: morally significant norms. Violating folkways causes mild disapproval; violating mores causes outrage.
Flashcard 26: What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity)?
Answer: Language influences thought and perception of reality. Suggests language structure affects cognitive processes and worldview.
Flashcard 27: Identify the cultural term: A society enforces rules through formal written codes.
Answer: Law. Laws are formalized norms enforced by governmental authority.
Flashcard 28: What is a folkway, and what is the typical sanction for violating it?
Answer: Informal norm; violation usually brings mild disapproval. Examples include etiquette rules like table manners or dress codes.
Flashcard 29: What is acculturation?
Answer: Adopting traits of another culture after sustained contact. Involves partial cultural change while maintaining original identity.
Flashcard 30: What is language as a cultural element?
Answer: A symbolic communication system that transmits culture. Language preserves and passes cultural knowledge across generations.