The Characteristics of Culture Key Terms

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Chapter 14

• The Characteristics of CultureKey Terms

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• cultureThe values, beliefs, and perceptions of
  the world shared by members of a society, that
  they use to interpret experience and generate
  behavior, and that are reflected in their
  behavior.
• societyA group of interdependent people who
  share a common culture.

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• subcultureA distinctive set of standards and
  behavior patterns by which a group within a
  larger society operates.
• ethnic groupPeople who collectively and publicly
  identify themselves as a distinct group based on
  various cultural features such as shared ancestry
  and common origin, language, customs, and
  traditional beliefs.

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• ethnicityThis term, rooted in the Greek word
  ethnikos (nation) and related to ethnos
  (custom) is the expression of the set of
  cultural ideas held by an ethnic group.
• pluralistic societiesSocieties in which there
  exist a diversity of cultural patterns.

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• enculturationThe process by which a societys
  culture is passed from one generation to the next
  and individuals become members of their society.
  
• symbolsSigns, emblems, and other things that
  represent something else in a meaningful way.

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• social structureThe rule-governed relationships
  of individuals and groups within a society that
  hold it together.
• infrastructureThe economic foundation of a
  society, including its subsistence practices, and
  the tools and other material equipment used to
  make a living.

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• superstructureA societys shared sense of
  identity and worldview. The collective body of
  ideas, beliefs, and values by which a group of
  people makes sense of the worldits shape,
  challenges, and opportunitiesand their place in
  it. This includes religion and national ideology.

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• Human relations area files (HRAF)An ever-growing
  catalogue of cross-indexed ethnographic data,
  filed by geographic location and cultural
  characteristics. Housed at Yale University, HRAF
  is also electronically available on the Internet.

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• ethnohistoryThe study of cultures of the recent
  past through oral histories accounts left by
  explorers, missionaries, and traders and through
  analysis of such records as land titles, birth
  and death records, and other archival materials.
• ethnocentrismThe belief that the ways of ones
  own culture are the only proper ones.

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• cultural relativismThe thesis that one must
  suspend judgment on other peoples practices in
  order to understand them in their own cultural
  terms.