SOC100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: High Culture, Ethnocentrism, William Fielding Ogburn
Document Summary
Culture is the sum total of the social environment we exist in for the duration of our lives. It encompasses a wide variety of ideas, customs, behaviors, and practices. Cultural universals are qualities that exist in all known cultures. All societies develop forms of communication, technologies, means of self-expression, and familial structures. William fielding ogburn (1922) used the term social heritage to describe the cultural inheritance that each child is born into. For example, white people are born with the social heritage of both the history of tearing apart nations to further the spice trade, and the practice of refusing to use any spices in food. Material culture is the importance that people attach to material objects and the role that material objects take on in any given culture. Nonmaterial culture is the intangible intellectual or spiritual meanings that people attach to artifacts.