SOC 302 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Cultural Relativism, Symbolic Culture, Culture Shock

• School: UT-Austin
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 302
• Professor: Hossein Haghshenas

Document Summary

Culture-the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviours, and even material objects that are passed from one generation to the next. Material culture: jewelry, art, buildings, weapons, machines, and eating utensils. Nonmaterial culture: group"s way of thinking (beliefs, values, and other assumptions about the world) Culture becomes the lens throught which we perceive and evaluate what is going on around us. Culture shock: disorientation that people experience when they come in contact w/a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken-for-granted assumptions about life. Ethnocentrism: tendency to use our own group"s ways of doing things as a yardstick for judging others, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviours. Cultural relativism: not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms. Symbols: something to which ppl attach meaning & use to. Include gestures, language, values, folkways : language allows human experiences to be cumulative.