SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Culture Shock, Jeans, Cultural Relativism
16 Dec 2015
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Document Summary
The knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next. Personal disorientation that comes form encountering an unfamiliar way of life. No cultural trait is inherently natural to humanity: What is natural to our species is the capacity to create and learn cultural traits. Material objects (artifacts, tools, technology, art, etc) Anything that meaningfully represents something else to others: words, numbers, pictures, colours, gestures, facial expressions, etc: example: d-o-g, insider/outsider. Symbolic gestures, hand gestures, showing soles of shoes = disrespectful. Vary even within a single society: the hummer. Change over time: blue jeans; meant working class before, now popular everywhere. Set of symbols that express idea and enable people to think and communicate with one another. Words and concepts cannot be translated into another language completely (don"t use the same words)
