Sociology Key Terms Chapter 3: Culture

Directions:
1. Define each key term.
2. I recommend you use the online textbook for all key terms. (Textbook is linked on
our home page in Canvas.
3.These key terms are an excellent resource for preparing for quizzes and tests.
4. You must number each key term; you must also include the key term with its
definition.

1. Beliefs -- things that people hold to be true

2. Cultural Universals -- traits that are globally common to all societies
3. Countercultures -- groups that reject and oppose societies widely accepted cultural
patterns
4. Culture -- Shared beliefs values and practices
5. culture lag -- the gap of time between the introduction of material culture and
nonmaterial cultures
6. Diffusion -- the spread of material culture and nonmaterial culture from one to another
7. Discoveries -- things and ideas found from what already exists
8. Folkways -- appropriate behavior in the day to day practices and expression of a culture
9. formal norms -- written rules
10. Globalization -- the integration of international trade markets
11. high culture -- the cultural patterns of a society's elite
12. ideal culture -- the standards a society would like to embrace and live up to
13. informal norms -- causal behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to
14. Innovations -- new objects or ideas introduced to culture for the first time
15. Inventions -- a combination of pieces of existing reality into new forms
16. Language --a symbolic system of communication
17. Mores -- the moral views and principles of a group
18. Norms -- the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are
structured
19. popular culture -- mainstream, patterns among a society's population
20. Real Culture -- the way society really is based on what actually occurs and exists
21. Sanctions -- a way to authorize or formally disapprove of certain behaviors
22. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis --the way people understand the world based on their form of
language
23. social control -- a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms
24. Society -- People who live in a definable community and who share a culture
 Sociology Key Terms Chapter 3: Culture

25. Subcultures -- groups that share a specific identification, apart from a societies
majority.
26. Symbols -- gestures or objects that hold meaning
27. Values -- a cultures standard for discerning what is good and just in society
28. Ethnocentrism -- the evaluation and judgment of another culture based on one’s own
cultural norms

Example:

1. Karl Marx: Karl Marx was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848, he and
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) co-authored the Communist Manifesto. This book is one of
the most influential political manuscripts in history.