.

I. Culture
.....A. What Is Culture?
..........1. Nonmaterial Culture
..........2. Material Culture
.....B. Culture Shock: Confronting the Yanomamo
.............. Napoleon Chagnon & the "Fierce People"
.....C. Culture and Human Intelligence
..........1. Culture, Nation, and Society
..........2. Travelers Beware! The Meaning of Gestures in Other Societies
..................The unintended Insult
.....D. The Components of Culture
..........1. Symbols
..........2. Language -- Helen Keller
.....E. Is Langauge Uniquely Human?
................Washoe had a vocabulary of 200+ ALS words
.....F. Does Langauge Shape Reality?
................Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: People perceive the world through the cultural lens of language

II. Values and Beliefs
.....A. Values
.....B. Beliefs
.....C. Key Values of U.S. Culture
..........1. Equal Opportunity.
..........2. Achievement and Success.
..........3. Material comfort.
..........4. Activity and work.
..........5. Practicality and Efficiency.
..........6. Progress.
..........7. Science.
..........8. Democracy and free enterprise.
..........9. Freedom.
........10. Racism and group superiority.
.....D. Values: Inconsistency and Conflict
.....E. Values in action: The Games People Play
.....F. Don't Blame Me! The New "Culture of Victimization!"

III. Norms
.....A. Mores
.....B. Folkways
.....C. Technicways
.....D. Laws
.........1. Formal Social Control
.........2. Informal Social Control

IV. Cultural Variations
.....A. "Ideal" and "Real" Culture
.....B. Material Culture and Technology
.....C. Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life in One World
.....D. High Culture and popular Culture
.....E. Cultural Diversity
..........1. Subcultures
..........2. Multiculturalism
...............a. Eurocentrism
...............b. Afrocentrism
..........3. Countercultures
.....F. Cultural Change & Time
..........1. Cultural Integration
..........2. Cultural lag
.....G. Forms of Cultural Change
..........1. Invention -- New Technologies
..........2. Discovery -- worldwide practices of child labor
..........3. Diffusion -- Cultural Diffusion in Japan
.....H. Ethnocentrism -- The practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture
.....I. Cultural Relativism -- The practice of judging a culture by its own standards.
..........In other words: When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do.

V. Is a Global Culture evolving?
.....A. The global economy: worldwide flow of goods
.....B. Global communications: the worldwide flow of information
.....C. Global migration: the flow of people

VI. Theoretical Analysis of Culture
.....A. Structural-Functional Analysis
..........1. Social stability
..........2. Cultural universals
.....B. Social-Conflict Analysis
..........1. Conflicting values
..........2. Competition
.....C. Cultural Ecology
.....D. Sociobiology
.....E. What are the "Culture Wars?"
...........Cultural conflict is political opposition, often accompanied by social hostility,
............rooted in different cultural values.
.....F. Culture and Human Freedom
..........1. Culture as Constraint -- Total Institutions:
...............a. Prison
...............b. Military
..........2. Culture as Freedom

.

Go To Introductory Sociology Page