Cultural Diversity and Similarity

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Cultural Diversity and Similarity
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Cultural Change

• All cultures experience change
• Norms, Values, and beliefs are relatively stable
  but do change over time

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Cultural Change

• Cultures change for 3 reasons
• Discovery the process of finding something that
  already exists
• Ex Athletic ability of women
• Invention the creation of something new
• Ex Steam engine
• Diffusion the borrowing of aspects of culture
  from other cultures
• Ex food, piñatas, Japan

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Cultural Diversity

• Cultural diversity exists in all societies
• Some diversity is due to social categories
• Social categories groups that share a social
  characteristic
• Ex Age, gender, or religion

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Cultural Diversity

• Cultural Diversity also comes from groups that
  differ in particular ways from the larger
  culture.
• These groups participate in the larger culture
• Have some way(s) of thinking, feeling, and
  behaving that sets them apart
• Subcultures and countercultures are often found
  in large, complex societies.

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Subculture

• Part of the dominant culture but differs from it
  in some important aspects.
• The formation of subcultures as a collective
  solution to, or resolution of, problems arising
  from the blocked aspirations of members, or their
  ambiguous position in the wider society. Thus
  subcultures are distinct from the larger culture
  but borrow (and often distort, exaggerate, or
  invert) its symbols, values, and beliefs.
  (Encyclopedia.com)

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Counterculture

• Countercultures are subcultures that are
  deliberately and consciously opposed to certain
  central beliefs or attitudes of the dominant
  culture.
• Countercultures can only be understood within the
  context of this opposition.

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Ethnocentrism

• Judging others in terms of ones own culture
• Once people learn their culture, they become
  strongly committed to it
• Ex Olympic Games

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Ethnocentrism

• Advantages
• People feel good about themselves and others
• Stability is promoted
• Disadvantages
• Extreme ethnocentrism can prevent change for the
  better
• Tend not to create new things
• Civil Rights Movement
• Great Wall of China

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Cultural Universals

• General cultural traits that exist in all
  cultures
• 70 common cultural traits
• Sports
• Cooking
• Courtship
• Division of Labor
• Education
• Mourning
• Music
• Property
• Cultural Particulars the ways in which a culture
  expresses universal traits.

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Cultural Universals

• Why do cultural universals exist
• Biological similarity
• Physical environment
• Similar social problems