Macionis Sociology Chapter 3

Ideal culture

Cultural guidelines that group members claim to accept

Real culture

What actually occurs in everyday life

Values

Culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.

Cultural lag

Ogburn's term for human behavior lagging behind technological innovations

Culture

The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people's way of life

Subculture

Refers to cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society's population

Cultural transmission

Process by which one generation passes culture to the next

multiculturalism

A perspective recognizing the cultural diversity of the United States and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions

As our society has entered a postindustrial, computer-based phase, what type of skills do workers need to gain?

Workers need symbolic skills in place of the mechanical skills of the industrial age. This is the ability to speak, write, compute, design, and create images in fields such as art, advertising and entertainment.

What are symbols according to sociologists?

Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture

Norms

A society's stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.

Mores

Norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance

Folkways

Norms for routine or casual interaction

Ethnocentrism

Practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture

Cultural relativism

Practice of judging a culture by its own standards