M03 Chapter 3 Outline PDF

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M03 Chapter 3 Outline Definitions of Culture  

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Culture can be loosely defined as a set of beliefs, traditions, and practices. The concept of culture has evolved and expanded throughout history. Perhaps one of the oldest understandings of culture focuses on the distinction between what is part of our natural environment and what is modified or created by humans. As Europeans came into contact with non-Westerners, they began to think of culture in terms of differences between peoples, which could be viewed positively or negatively. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a new dimension was added to the concept of culture—the idea that culture involved the pursuit of intellectual refinement.

Material versus Nonmaterial Culture 

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Material culture is everything that is a part of our constructed environment, such as books, fashion, and monuments. Nonmaterial culture encompasses values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms. Culture includes language, the meanings we assign to words, and concepts such as class, inequality, and ownership. Nonmaterial culture can take the form of ideology, which is a system of concepts and relationships that includes an understanding of cause and effect. Cultural relativism, a term coined by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict in the 1930s, is the idea that we should recognize differences across cultures without passing judgment on, or assigning value to, those differences. Cultural scripts are modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural, but that may strongly shape beliefs or concepts held by a society. A subculture is a group united by sets of concepts, values, traits, and/or behavioral patterns that distinguish it from others within the same culture or society. Values are moral beliefs and norms are how values tell us to act. Socialization is the process by which a person internalizes the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learns to function as a member of that society. Reflection theory states that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere. A Marxist version of

reflection theory argues that cultural objects reflect the material labor and production relationships that went into making them. Media 

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Media are any formats or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate information. Examples of media include books, posters, Web pages, clay tablets, and radio. Mass media refers to any form of media that reaches the mass of the people. The concept of hegemony, which is different from domination, is important for understanding the impact of media on culture and for examining how people and societies shape, and are shaped by, culture.

The Media Life Cycle Media studies open paths of investigation, including textual analysis and audience studies, that allow us to see how people create media and the biases involved in that creation, how media reflect the culture in which they exist, and how individuals and groups use the media to change culture. Media Effects Media effects can be placed into four categories according to their duration and intention: short term and deliberate, long term and deliberate, short term and unintentional, and long term and unintentional. Mommy, Where Do Stereotypes Come From? Intentionally or unintentionally and subtly or overtly, the media can create or reinforce ethnic, racial, gender, religious, and other stereotypes, and sometimes in the process they distract people's attention from foundational issues or tensions that need to be addressed. Political Economy of the Media 

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Media ownership in the United States is concentrated in the hands of six companies, and those companies in turn can affect the information and messages communicated to the public. The media, especially advertising, play a large role in the maintenance of consumerism, which is the belief that happiness and fulfillment can be achieved through the acquisition of material possessions. Culture jamming is one example of subverting the power of media. With the global reach of media today, American culture can be found in the farthest corners of the world. This soft power—the effects of culture, values, and ideas on others' behavior—has experienced a backlash recently, in part due to negative reactions to certain American foreign policy measures....