Glossary
See also: Quizlet Online Glossary Flash Cards
Acculturation - Learning process where knowledge is transferred from one culture to another.
Alienation - A sense of being an outsider, or 'alien', in a world that is hostile towards them.
Authority – The legitimate use of power
Beliefs - principles accepted and shared among a group of people.
Change - Understanding that something is different from the way it has been before.
Citizenship - Legally: a citizen is a member of a specific country . Socially: people participate in their community
Class - A group of people thought to have common features or characteristics
Communication - The way members of a society exchange messages and ideas. It may be verbal or non-verbal.
Community - This generally refers to people drawn together through common interests, locality and networks.
Conflict - This covers disagreements at a variety of levels within a society.
Continuity - Some elements of society and culture remain largely as they have always been.
Cooperation - This involves members of a society or culture working together to achieve accepted goals or aspirations.
Cultural Heritage - The shared understandings are passed on from generation to generation.
Cultural Relativism - Understanding that one’s culture cannot be judged according to the standards of another
Cultural Transmission - The processes by which knowledge and understanding of culture is conveyed from one group to another. Such processes include acculturation.
Culture - The values, arts, technology, laws and beliefs that link a society together.
Customs - Established ways of thinking and acting are represented in behaviour that will be immediately noticeable when we come into contact with a different society.
Discrimination - The active version of prejudice.
Empowerment - Obtaining access to power structures and gaining control over one’s destiny
Enculturation - Learning how to use the accepted patterns of cultural behaviour that your culture prescribes gives full membership of your society.
Environment - The physical, emotional or social setting of a society
Equality - Implies that all have equal access to societal benefits
Ethnicity - Identifying with a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition
Family - In past it referred to a husband, wife and children living in a single household. In Australia today, there are many possible combinations.
Gender - Refers to the socially constructed differences between men and women.
Globalisation – The emergence of a global culture through the existence of world information systems and the spread of global patterns of consumerism.
Heritage - The collective past of a country
Human Rights - This refers to those rights that it is generally agreed all human beings should be entitled to, race regardless of their politics or religious beliefs.
Identity – A person’s understanding of who they are
Ideology - A coherent set of ideas that binds together a set of beliefs.
Industrialisation – The process whereby the means of production are based in mass production utilising developing technology
Institutional power - Power that is an inherent and accepted part of a society.
Institutions - Accepted and organised patterns of behaviour in a society, responding to a particular social need.
Kinship - Links by heritage or marriage that bind people together
Life-stages - The stages of life one could be expected to move through: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and late adulthood.
Macro world – Interactions that are impersonal and relate to large institutions, the media, law and government and are evident at a national and international level.
Media - Mass communication that reaches large numbers of people, such as radio, television, the Internet and film.
Meso world - The interactions that occur between the micro and the macro levels of society. Meso-level structures are groups in the community, village, school, workplace, local interest club, branch, organisation and state.
Micro world - Interactions that are personal and occur between individuals and their family, peers and individuals in the community.
Modernisation - social change, often linked to westernisation and industrialisation
Mores – The moral rules designed by a society to maintain standards of appropriate conduct.
Multiculturalism – The existence of a range of different cultural practices within a society.
Myth - Traditional stories about supernatural beings or events that comprise a key element in many belief systems.
Norms – Shared expectation of behaviour
Power - capacity to influence or coerce others
Power structures – The institutionalised structures (such as parliaments, councils and police force) that link a society.
Prejudice – To prejudge something. It leads to bias for or against a person or thing and usually reflects a viewpoint based upon stereotypes.
Privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Rites of passage - Events or ceremonies recognised at either a personal or social level that acknowledge an accepted change of status.
Ritual - Prescribed procedures that people in a belief system must follow, perhaps for worship or life cycle ceremonies.
Social and cultural literacy – An awareness of the interactions between persons, societies, cultures and environments across time.
Social construct - an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.
Social differentiation – The criteria used to split society into groups according to apparent differences.
Socialisation – The ways in which we learn to become an accepted member of.
Social system - The patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. The term refers to the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group.
Society – Made up of people, groups, networks, institutions, organisations and systems.
Socioeconomic status (SES) – The position or status a person holds in society based on criteria that indicate social and economic achievement.
Status - The standing allocated by society to groups and individuals.
Stereotypes - Generalised views of how we expect a person of a certain cultural background to behave. Often leads to misleading assumptions being made about a whole group.
Symbols - The abstract principles that may be represented by images within a belief system.
Technology - The tools that make tasks easier, enhancing the natural ability of persons to perform those tasks.
Time - A constant in all societies and cultures. We choose to measure it in terms of past, present and future. Can be viewed as linear or cyclic.
Tradition – An activity or belief maintained in a society over a period of time
Values - The core beliefs of an individual or country.
Westernisation - Refers to the way a country adopts the values common in major western countries.
Worldviews - The shared principles (philosophy) of a belief system and the associated ideology help people arrive at a certain way of perceiving the world.
Alienation - A sense of being an outsider, or 'alien', in a world that is hostile towards them.
Authority – The legitimate use of power
Beliefs - principles accepted and shared among a group of people.
Change - Understanding that something is different from the way it has been before.
Citizenship - Legally: a citizen is a member of a specific country . Socially: people participate in their community
Class - A group of people thought to have common features or characteristics
Communication - The way members of a society exchange messages and ideas. It may be verbal or non-verbal.
Community - This generally refers to people drawn together through common interests, locality and networks.
Conflict - This covers disagreements at a variety of levels within a society.
Continuity - Some elements of society and culture remain largely as they have always been.
Cooperation - This involves members of a society or culture working together to achieve accepted goals or aspirations.
Cultural Heritage - The shared understandings are passed on from generation to generation.
Cultural Relativism - Understanding that one’s culture cannot be judged according to the standards of another
Cultural Transmission - The processes by which knowledge and understanding of culture is conveyed from one group to another. Such processes include acculturation.
Culture - The values, arts, technology, laws and beliefs that link a society together.
Customs - Established ways of thinking and acting are represented in behaviour that will be immediately noticeable when we come into contact with a different society.
Discrimination - The active version of prejudice.
Empowerment - Obtaining access to power structures and gaining control over one’s destiny
Enculturation - Learning how to use the accepted patterns of cultural behaviour that your culture prescribes gives full membership of your society.
Environment - The physical, emotional or social setting of a society
Equality - Implies that all have equal access to societal benefits
Ethnicity - Identifying with a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition
Family - In past it referred to a husband, wife and children living in a single household. In Australia today, there are many possible combinations.
Gender - Refers to the socially constructed differences between men and women.
Globalisation – The emergence of a global culture through the existence of world information systems and the spread of global patterns of consumerism.
Heritage - The collective past of a country
Human Rights - This refers to those rights that it is generally agreed all human beings should be entitled to, race regardless of their politics or religious beliefs.
Identity – A person’s understanding of who they are
Ideology - A coherent set of ideas that binds together a set of beliefs.
Industrialisation – The process whereby the means of production are based in mass production utilising developing technology
Institutional power - Power that is an inherent and accepted part of a society.
Institutions - Accepted and organised patterns of behaviour in a society, responding to a particular social need.
Kinship - Links by heritage or marriage that bind people together
Life-stages - The stages of life one could be expected to move through: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and late adulthood.
Macro world – Interactions that are impersonal and relate to large institutions, the media, law and government and are evident at a national and international level.
Media - Mass communication that reaches large numbers of people, such as radio, television, the Internet and film.
Meso world - The interactions that occur between the micro and the macro levels of society. Meso-level structures are groups in the community, village, school, workplace, local interest club, branch, organisation and state.
Micro world - Interactions that are personal and occur between individuals and their family, peers and individuals in the community.
Modernisation - social change, often linked to westernisation and industrialisation
Mores – The moral rules designed by a society to maintain standards of appropriate conduct.
Multiculturalism – The existence of a range of different cultural practices within a society.
Myth - Traditional stories about supernatural beings or events that comprise a key element in many belief systems.
Norms – Shared expectation of behaviour
Power - capacity to influence or coerce others
Power structures – The institutionalised structures (such as parliaments, councils and police force) that link a society.
Prejudice – To prejudge something. It leads to bias for or against a person or thing and usually reflects a viewpoint based upon stereotypes.
Privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Rites of passage - Events or ceremonies recognised at either a personal or social level that acknowledge an accepted change of status.
Ritual - Prescribed procedures that people in a belief system must follow, perhaps for worship or life cycle ceremonies.
Social and cultural literacy – An awareness of the interactions between persons, societies, cultures and environments across time.
Social construct - an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.
Social differentiation – The criteria used to split society into groups according to apparent differences.
Socialisation – The ways in which we learn to become an accepted member of.
Social system - The patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. The term refers to the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group.
Society – Made up of people, groups, networks, institutions, organisations and systems.
Socioeconomic status (SES) – The position or status a person holds in society based on criteria that indicate social and economic achievement.
Status - The standing allocated by society to groups and individuals.
Stereotypes - Generalised views of how we expect a person of a certain cultural background to behave. Often leads to misleading assumptions being made about a whole group.
Symbols - The abstract principles that may be represented by images within a belief system.
Technology - The tools that make tasks easier, enhancing the natural ability of persons to perform those tasks.
Time - A constant in all societies and cultures. We choose to measure it in terms of past, present and future. Can be viewed as linear or cyclic.
Tradition – An activity or belief maintained in a society over a period of time
Values - The core beliefs of an individual or country.
Westernisation - Refers to the way a country adopts the values common in major western countries.
Worldviews - The shared principles (philosophy) of a belief system and the associated ideology help people arrive at a certain way of perceiving the world.
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