48-110 (Foundations of Social Life) - Lesson Objectives:
1. Define culture;
2. Identify and describe the components of culture;
3. Identify and describe key concepts relating to cultural diversity;
4. Recognize components of culture and cultural diversity in popular culture examples;
5. Provide examples of subcultures and countercultures;
6. Differentiate cultural exchange from cultural appropriation;
7. Describe what is meant by 'cyberculture'
11. Language
• Language reflects and reinforces our cultural
values and beliefs
• Some words are used to describe women but
not men
• These words reflect values and beliefs
associated with gender and gender roles
12. Language
Women leaders often face a double-bind that is underscored
through language. Words like ‘bitch’ and ‘bossy’ are often
used to describe women leaders, regardless of their leadership
style, which convey negativity. (Deborah Tannen)
13. Language
In Scandal, Olivia confronts Fitz about his use of the
word ‘bitch’ to describe a fellow woman colleague.
14. Language
• Nags, Housewives, and Sluts: Language and
Women’s Place (53-270) tackles the invisible
politics of the English language.
• Students learn how to identify and challenge
aspects of language structure and use that
perpetuate power and privilege.
15. NORMS
• Rules by which a culture guides the
behaviour of its members
Can you think of an example of
a norm in Canadian culture?
16. NORMS
• Norms vary across cultural groups
• Norms may be folkways, mores or taboos
• In criminology, we talk about laws,
deviance, and crime
• Deviance involves breaking a norm while
crime is deviance that breaks a law
17. NORMS
• Norms and laws change over time and vary
across culture
Is killing someone always murder?
Is violence in hockey considered
normative, deviant, or a crime?
19. Ethnomethodology
• Approach developed by Harold Garfinkel
• Discover the normal social order of a
society by disrupting it
• Deliberately disrupt social norms to see
how people respond and how they try to
restore social order
Give an example of something you
might do to disrupt a social norm?
20. Flash Mobs
• A flash mob involves a group of people who
suddenly assemble in a public place, perform a
seemingly random act, and then disperse.
• Grand Central Flash Mob
22. Cultural Lag
• Tendency for changes in material and
non-material culture to occur at different
rates
• Changes in non-material culture (ideas)
tend to lag behind changes in material
culture
29. Culture Shock and Culture Clash
• Cultural diversity can lead to culture shock
• Culture clash can also arise from people
with different cultures interacting
30. Outsourced (2006)
When his department is
outsourced to India, customer
call manager Todd Anderson
heads to Mumbai to train his
successor.
32. Subcultures and Countercultures
• A subculture is a segment of society that
shares distinctive norms, values and
practices within a larger society.
• A counterculture is a subculture that
opposes the dominant norms, values and
practices of larger society and seeks to
replace them.
35. Deviant Subcultures
• Sons of Anarchy illustrates the outlaw
biker gang subculture with themes of
family, camaraderie, and loyalty
36. Deviant Subcultures
• Narco-culture is a growing subculture focused
around the drug trade that celebrates a
glamorized lifestyle of drug trafficking,
violence, money and power
37. Subcultures and Countercultures
Prison/er Subculture
•Social hierarchy
•Inmate Code
•Slang or lingo
Police Subculture
•Crime-fighting
•Group loyalty
•Code of silence
38. CULTURAL SHIFTS AND CHANGES
Cultural diffusion is the process whereby an aspect
of culture spreads throughout a culture or from one
culture to another.
Acculturation is the process in which members of
one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviours
of another group, or the merging of cultures.
Transculturation is what happens to an individual
when he or she moves to another society and
adopts its culture.
39. Cultural Exchange and Appropriation
Cultural appropriation happens when
members of a dominant group ‘borrow’
elements of culture from historically
marginalized groups.
Cultural exchange is more mutual and
equal.
42. Cultural Appropriation is Exploitive
• Privileged people want to borrow the ‘cool’
of disenfranchised people but they don’t
have to face any of the discrimination or
marginalization that comes with it.
44. Cyber Culture
Is there a distinctive cyber or online culture?
•Memes are probably the closet thing to a
native culture form the Internet has
•A meme is a funny image, video, or text that
is copied, often with slight variations, and
spread rapidly by Internet users
