SY101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Culture Shock, Online Dating Service, Cultural Relativism

• School: WLU
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SY101
• Professor: All

Document Summary

What is culture: the way we make sense of and give meaning to things, the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviour, and material objects that are passed from one generation to the next, humans create culture, there is nothing natural about culture, provides ideas of right and wrong, adaptive but cumulative through interactions with others. Key terms ethnocentrism: a tendency to use our own group"s way of doing things as a yardstick for judging others (creates in group loyalties, can lead to harmful discrimination) cultural relativism: trying to understand a culture on its own terms culture shock: when one"s culture fails to make sense, people experience disconnection (shock) cultural lag: a group"s material culture usually changes first, with the nonmaterial culture lagging behind (william ogburn) cultural diffusion: transmission of cultural/social practices, technologies, etc. cultural leveling: a process in which cultures become more similar to one another through expanding industrialization (mcdonald"s) cultural imperialism: the global americanization of values and culture.