Chapter 2: Culture

Learning Objectives- After reading this chapter and coming to class you should be able to:
1.	Know the defining dimensions of culture. In particular, understand what it means that culture is learned, symbolic, shared, all-encompassing, and integrated.
2.	Consider how people may avoid, subvert, and manipulate particular cultural “rules” and expectations, and know how anthropologists today tend to view and analyze such practices. 
3.	Understand and be able to provide examples of cultural universalities, generalities, and particularities.
4.	Identify the three levels of culture and address why it is important to differentiate among them.
5.	Distinguish between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and consider how both relate to human rights. 
6.	Identify and understand the mechanisms of cultural change.
7.	Know how to define globalization and consider how people may affect and be affected by the interrelated forces of globalization.

Terms-  You should understand these terms and be ready to identify them:
acculturation The exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact.
core values Key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and help distinguish it from others.  
cultural relativism The position that the values and standards of cultures differ and deserve respect. 
cultural rights Doctrine that certain rights are vested in identifiable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. 
diffusion Borrowing of cultural traits between societies, either directly or through intermediaries.  
enculturation The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations.  
ethnocentrism The tendency to view one's own culture as best and to judge the behavior and beliefs of culturally different people by one's own standards.  
generality Culture pattern or trait that exists in some but not all societies.  
globalization The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems.  
hominid A member of the taxonomic family that includes humans and the African apes and their immediate ancestors.  
hominin A member of the human lineage after its split from ancestral chimps; all the human species that ever have existed.  
human rights Doctrine that invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. 
independent invention Development of the same cultural trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs, circumstances, and solutions.  
international culture Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries.
IPR Intellectual property rights Each society's cultural base—its core beliefs and principles, claimed as a group right, allowing indigenous groups to control who may know and use their collective knowledge and its applications.  
national culture Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.  
particularity Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.  
subcultures Different cultural traditions associated with subgroups in the same complex society.  
symbol Something, verbal or nonverbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no necessary or natural connection.  
universal Something that exists in every culture.