SOCI 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Gerhard Lenski, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Edward Sapir

• School: UBC
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 100
• Professor: A L L

Document Summary

Culture and human intelligence: primates 12 million years ago, leading humans away from great apes, stone age culture, primary strategy for survival. 12,000 years ago: permanent settlements, specialized occupations, fashioning the natural environment to our purposes. 7000 languages globally declining (high-technology communication, increasing international migration, expanding global economy reducing global cultural diversity: more than half are now spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. Symbols: symbols anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture, culture shock either experience or inflict it. Language: language system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another, alphabets, rules for writing different. Family , children understand it before they learn the word; adults imagine new ideas or things before devising a name for them. Low-income (survival, traditional, family, religious beliefs) vs high-income values (individualism, self-expression, personal happiness, rational, secular, thinking for themselves)