SOC 001 Study Guide - Final Guide: Nine Inch Nails, Trans-Cultural Diffusion, Whopper
Document Summary
Makes a difference in how people live their lives. Influences what one eats, how they speak, what they believe, how they behave, and what they value. Clearly an understanding of culture is essential for anyone who wants to understand people"s behaviors and interactions with others. Culture has both material and nonmaterial attributes. Includes all those things that humans make or adapt from the raw stuff of nature: computers, houses, forks, bulldozers, jewelry, telephones, socks, bologna sandwiches, oil paintings, and so on. To create a piece of material culture, one does not have to bring a thing very far form its natural state. Material culture is made up of artifacts. Different first of all because it is made up of intangible things and these intangible things also vary from simple to complex. We can divide up nonmaterial culture into five basic categories: symbols, language, norms, values, and beliefs. A symbol is anything that represents something else to more than one person.
