MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Conspicuous Consumption, Doxa, Stereotype
Document Summary
Culture: the collection of artifacts, practices, and beliefs of a particular group of people at a particular historical moment, supported by symbolic systems and directed by ideology. Culture is simply what human beings produce and the means by which we preserve what we have produced. Society is a collection of cultures or sub cultures. The artifacts of a particular culture only have significance because members of the culture can name them, and the customs or attitudes of a cultural group can only be meaningful because that can be described as such. Culture is historical, changes, evolves, mutates, fades, disappears over time. Culture is ideological, teach us to see the world in some ways and not in others. Ideology: a system of ideas that unconsciously shapes and constrains our beliefs and behaviours. The four ways that ideology structures our social world are through limitation, normalization, privileging.
