Social Science Terminology Useful in the Discussion of Culture and Schooling

ACHIEVED STATUS any social position gained through personal effort or open competition. As such, achievement is contrasted with ascription and ASCRIBED STATUS. While achievement in its widest sense can be seen as a particular feature of modern societies, with an open class society, for example, one in which careers are open to talents, its opposite, ascription, for example, taking over one's father's job, is a feature especially of traditional class divided societies. However, both modes of allocation of social position and social status will usually exist in any society. One reason for this is that some positions (for example, historically, especially gender roles) are mainly ascribed, while other positions, for example, where skills or talents required by the society are in short supply, tend to be subject to open competition. Teaching is an interesting occupation to think about since it has an achieved component: one must attain a certain level of education to become certified. On the other hand, especially in the lower grades the overwhelming preponderance of women in the occupation suggests an ascribed component is also operating.

ANOMIE 1. ("without norms" concept introduced into sociology by Durkheim) a condition of society or of personal relation to society in which there exists little consensus or a lack of certainty on values or goals; a loss of effectiveness in the normative and moral framework that regulates collective and individual life. 2. (a specification by Robert Merton, 1949, of Durkheim's concept) any social situations, and individual orientations in terms of these, in which a mismatch exists between culturally defined goals and the availability of institutionalized means of achieving these goals (for example, the social conditions in which organized crime flourished in the US during the depression). The view of human nature held by Durkheim stands in the tradition of Thomas Hobbes, namely that there is no natural or inbuilt limit to the desires, ambitions, or needs of individuals. For Durkheim, the required limits must be socially produced. Anomie exists, and unhappiness and social disorders result, when society fails to provide a limiting framework of social norms.

	Adoption of culturally approved means	Acceptance of culturally approved goals
(a)INNOVATION	-	+
(b) RITUALISM	+	-
(c) RETREATISM	-	-
(d) REBELLION	+ or -	+ or -

Fig. 1. Anomie. Merton's typology. As reformulated by Merton, anomie becomes a concept used in the analysis of DEVIANCE. What Merton suggests is that whenever there exists any disjuncture between culturally defined goals and the socially approved means available to individuals or groups, four logically possible responses are available (see Fig. 1.) 1) INNOVATION , crime or other socially disapproved means to achieve approved goals; RITUALISM , going through the motions of pursuing approved means With no prospect or expectation of success; 3) RETREATISM , simply opting out; 4) REBELLION , seeking to change the system. If Durkheim's focus on anomie can be seen as arising from a moral conservatism mixed with a social radicalism, Merton's approach reveals that anomie may be a source of social change as well as a locus of social problems.

CULTURE BEARER any individual, especially a migrant, who carries, and thus diffuses, cultural values and traits between societies. The role of culture bearers is particularly important within those cultures undergoing transition or experiencing threat from outside the culture. The role of culture bearer is particularly descriptive of teachers whose job includes socialization as much as the teaching of particular skills.

CULTURAL DEPRIVATION The lack of appropriate forms of language and knowledge which would ensure success in the educational system. This form of explanation has been used to account for the educational limitations of working class and ethnic minority children. It was particularly influential in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Headstart Project was designed to compensate working class children for lack of parental interest, the failings of home and neighborhood, and the inadequate provision of appropriate cultural experience. This deficit theory of educational failure has been heavily criticized because it suggests personal inadequacy. Some sociologists believe that the issue is one of cultural difference: the idea that the school incorporates social values and ideas of social knowledge which are distinct from those held by members of the working class.

CULTURE OF POVERTY The way of life developed and reproduced by poor people; an explanation for the existence of poverty in terms of the cultural characteristics of the poor themselves. The term was first used by Oscar Lewis who emphasized fatalism' as the particular aspect of underclass subculture which ensured the inheritance of poverty. Lewis argued that the cycle or deprivation was self-perpetuating and that children were quickly socialized into the values and attitudes of being poor. Lewis argued that the culture of poverty in underdeveloped societies, typified by a cash economy and high unemployment, inhibited the inculcation of the modern values appropriate for social and economic development. The idea of a culture of poverty has been criticized, notably by Valentine for its concentration on the familial and local view of poverty which largely places responsibility for poverty on the individual and the family rather than examining the external influences which may preclude social and economic development. Backward values, such as fatalism and resignation , were contrasted with modernizing values of 'enterprise' and 'achievement' visible in affluent capitalist societies. More recent research suggests that people living in the poor shanty towns described by Lewis do not have a fatalistic attitude within a culture of poverty, rather families and neighbors work together to devise strategies in order to adapt and cope with their changing social and economic circumstances.

CULTURAL CAPITAL Pierre Bourdieu (in 'Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction', 1973) argued that middle class parents endow their children with a cultural capital of various linguistic and cultural competencies. Schools require these competencies (whose content is controlled by the rich) for educational success, yet fail to teach them to working class children. Thus, school assessment which looks neutral actually legitimates economic inequality, by transforming sociocultural competencies into hierarchies of attainment which appear to be the outcome of inequalities of natural ability. In her article: Social Class Differences in Family-School Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Capital, Annette Lareau states that: Schools draw unevenly on the social and cultural resources of members of society. For example schools utilize particular linguistic structures, authority patterns, and types of curricula; children from higher social locations enter schools already familiar with these social arrangements (p. 74). Not all cultural resources are equally valuable, however, for complying with school requests. The resources tied directly to social class (e.g., education, prestige, income) and certain patterns of family life (e.g., kinship ties, socialization patterns, leisure activities) seem to play a large role in facilitating the participation of parents in schools (p. 83). Michael Apple in What do Schools teach? put it more bluntly: If you look at schools, you find out that those students who succeed have cultural capital when they enter; they come from the social class that has certain expectations built in. The schools accept that and go further. Children who do not have that cultural capital don't make it. '

CULTURE SHOCK the disruption of one's normal social perspectives (own society, subculture, membership groups) as the result of confrontation with an unfamiliar or alien culture. While culture shock can be psychologically unsettling and troublesome to individuals (as when violently removed from their own society or when this has been undermined by outside intervention), it can also be liberating, leading to a new depth of understanding of sociologically significant relationships. It is in this latter context that sociology and anthropology often pride themselves in providing an element of culture shock for new students of their disciplines.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE A major cognitive theory propounded by Leon Festinger in Theory of Cognitive Dissonance . The theory addresses competing, contradictory, or opposing elements of cognition and behavior: for example, why do young people drop out of school when they know that lack of education will keep them from getting a good job? Festinger suggests that individuals do not believe so much out of logic as out of psychological need a kind of psychologic. He argues that, striving for harmony and balance, there is a drive towards consonance amongst cognitions. Dissonance reduction may happen either through a change in a person's behavior or a shift in attitude; thus, in the example cited above, either they return to school, or else they modify their knowledge, for example to the belief that "most people they know with a high school diploma are either unemployed or hold low wage jobs."

CULTURAL LAG Results when a culture's social institutions fail to adapt their functions so as to mesh with changes in other parts of the larger sociocultural system. The doctrine of cultural lag was proposed by William F. Ogburn who was largely concerned with uneven social changes in complex industrialized nations, especially technological changes. The general phenomena of uneven change refers to the easily observable fact that some individuals, institutions, or cultural complexes change more rapidly than others, resulting in disequilibrium. The "generation gap," the failure of the family to adjust its internal organization while losing key functions such as education and economic production as well as the disparity between rapid technological innovations and modes of social control exemplify cultural lags.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM Cultural relativists assert that concepts are socially constructed and vary cross-culturally. These concepts may include such fundamental notions as what is considered true, morally correct, and what constitutes knowledge or even reality itself. In 'Understanding a Primitive Society' (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1964), Peter Winch argues that our sense of reality is a social construction, based upon the prevailing discourse of a society. Thus, cultural relativists reject the *rationalist and universal premises of grand theories such as *functionalism, *Marxism, or Freudian *psychoanalysis. Cultural relativism draws upon the tradition of linguistic philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Willard Quine, Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir. These writers have contended that if language constructs the world, then reality is not independently existing, but is shaped by cultural and linguistic categories. Two cultures can thus be incommensurable since their world-views are based on quite different languages and premises. Paul Feyerabend (in Against Method, 1975), says that there are cultures so different from the West that they are incomprehensible to outsiders, who therefore cannot translate them into their own terms. This has major implications for the study of non-Western societies. If importing a Western rationalist approach is *ethnocentric, then we must understand cultural patterns in their own terms, adopting an insider's view of the culture. *Ethnography thus becomes a process of uncovering the meanings by which people construct reality and translating this knowledge into the discourse of the field worker's own society. See also Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

ECOLOGICAL FALLACY This occurs when relationships between properties of groups are used to make inferences about the individual behaviors of the people within those groups. Political analysts who use aggregate data from elections to study individual voting behavior are particularly susceptible to the ecological fallacy. Suppose, for example, that a researcher wanted to know whether black students or white students performed better on a standardized test. The researcher has aggregate test data from two schools, one of which has a majority of black students and the other has a majority of white. The researcher knows the percentage of black and white students and the average score. In short, the researcher wants to draw conclusions about individual students but only has collective information about schools. Knowing that the majority black school had a relatively lower score does not permit the conclusion that black students were likely to score less well than whites. It may well be that black students perform worse in a segregated school, and that they do as well as whites in the majority white school. We simply do not know how individuals performed because the unit of analysis here is the school and not the individual student.

ETHNIC GROUP A group of people sharing an identity which arises from a collective sense of a distinctive history. Ethnic groups possess their own culture, customs, norms, beliefs and traditions. There is usually a common language: boundary maintenance is observed between members and non-members and such groups are traditionally exclusive. Typically, they are transgenerational and biologically self-perpetuating. Not all ethnic groups are endogamous, and membership may be acquired through marriage or other socially approved routes. Whilst socially perceived racial characteristics may be a feature of such groups, ethnic groups are not synonymous with racial groups. Some Anthropologists stress the importance of shared cultural values and a group awareness of cultural distinctiveness as key elements in ethnic group membership. Others emphasize group organization and the maintenance of ethnic boundaries via ethnic markers. Barth argued that cultural traits are a consequence of ethnic group organization, and ethnic boundaries entail a complex pattern of behavior and social relations. The boundaries between ethnic groups are maintained not through isolation, as Narroll argued, but through social processes of exclusion and incorporation, I. e. ethnic group members identify themselves in terms of ethnic categories and are in turn recognized as members by outsiders.

ETHNIC MARKER The means whereby the social boundaries between ethnic groups are maintained. Territoriality, history, language and symbols may all serve as ethnic markers emphasizing distinctions between one ethnic group and another. Proscriptions on intermarriage and restrictions on religious worship may also act as ethnic markers. While different ethnic groups may interact for the purpose (for example) of economic activity, ethnic markers ensure the continuity of separate group identity.

ETHNOCENTRISM The attitude of prejudice or mistrust towards outsiders which may exist within a social group; a way of perceiving one's own cultural group (in group) in relation to others (out groups). The term was introduced by W.G. Sumner (1906) and involves the belief that one's own group is the most important, or is culturally superior to other groups. Thus, one's own culture is considered to be radically morally and culturally of greater value or significance than that of others, and one becomes distrustful of those defined as outsiders. It also involves an incapacity to acknowledge that cultural differentiation does not imply the inferiority of those groups who are ethnically distinct from one's own.

EMIC AND ETIC a distinction widely used in sociology and anthropology, between accounts made from a perspective indigenous or internal to a language or social situation (an emic account), and those made from a perspective external to the language or social context, including sociological observers' accounts (etic accounts). Emic accounts are the Experience Near explanations made by members of a culture, Etic accounts are the more general Experience Distant or technical explanations made by social scientists, teachers and other professionals who are not members of the culture. Most of the terms in this glossary are Etic. Neither term is more correct than the other, nor is the goal to move from one form of understanding to the other, they are different ways of describing and understanding human experience.

FOLKWAYS: the everyday customs of a social group or community (W. Sumner, 1906). Folkways are contrasted with MORES, being less strongly sanctioned and less abstractly organized.

GENDER ROLES: the behaviors, attitudes, and activities prescribed for males and females. Gender role stereotypes are social definitions of what is proper or "natural" for men and women to look like, wear, talk about, be interested in, work at and play at. Some societies have a strict sexual division, others do not. In gender segregated societies, men and women who indulge in cross gender behavior are frequently considered highly deviant. Although every society classifies its members by gender, the content of the categories masculine and feminine differ from group to group. In America men are supposed to be dominant, assertive, sexually aggressive, quick to take offense, physically active, hardworking, and ambitious. As little boys, they are expected to he messy, fight a lot and in imitation of their fathers, learn to be brave and not cry. As adults, they are expected to provide financially for a wife and children. The ideal American woman is pretty, has a good figure, is sexually responsive but not aggressive, loves children, and knows how to listen to a man and build up his ego. Little girls in our society are expected to be neat, talk a lot, cry easily, and play with dolls and miniature housekeeping equipment in imitation of their mothers. Although girls generally do better in school than boys, adolescent girls are expected to curb their curiosity and intellectual interests in order to attract a husband, for whom they will raise a family and keep house.

GENDER ROLE SOCIALIZATION Children are born biologically male or female, but they must learn their gender identity and what their social group expects of boys and girls. Gender role socialization starts at birth with naming and pink blankets for girls and blue for boys, and so forth.

HIDDEN CURRICULUM Term coined by Philip Jackson in Life in Classrooms . Originally referred to elements of classroom discipline and school rules but actually refers to socialization. The tacit teaching of social and economic norms and expectations, Michael Apple. Jean Anyon and Michael Apple have pointed out that the hidden curriculum is applied differentially on a social class basis and is strongly influenced by the need for a stratified workforce. The hidden curriculum has to be viewed in two ways. One consideration is what every youngster gets in school, regardless of race, sex, social class, or any other quality, or, what is the social meaning behind schools being schools? A more important consideration, however, is identifying the differential curricula. What different kinds of schooling (content and process) do youngsters get, and does this depend on their future probable positions on the economic ladder? Michael Apple

MORES the accepted and strongly prescribed forms of behavior within any society or community (W.G. Sumner, 1906). Mores are contrasted by Sumner with FOLKWAYS in that the latter, though socially sanctioned, are less fundamental, less abstract in organization, and folkways transgressions are less severely punished than those of mores. NORM, SOCIAL NORM, NORMATIVE: 1) A norm is a shared expectation of behavior that connotes what is considered culturally desirable and appropriate. Norms are similar to rules or regulations in being prescriptive, although they lack the formal written down status of rules. Actual behavior may differ from what is considered normative and, if judged by existing norms, may be deemed deviant. Consequently the concept is intimately linked to issues of social regulation and social control. The idea of what is normative is crucial to lay and sociological understandings of social interaction. The sociological concept of norm is closely allied to that of ROLE , which is commonly defined as a set of norms attached to a social position. 2) The terms norm and normative are also frequently used in a statistical sense to refer to what is common or typical.

PHENOMENOLOGY The branch of a science that classifies and describes its phenomena without any attempt at explanation.

RITES OF PASSAGE Ceremonies that dramatize and validate change in a person's status. In schooling we are concerned with two major phases marking the performance of rituals connected with a person's 1) admission to a group, and 2) entry into a new social position. Cultural rituals such as high school graduation, sweet sixteen parties, first date, manifest an ordered sequence from separation through transition to incorporation. During these stages taboos may impose restrictions upon the participants' normal activities, and other rules may prescribe the performance of certain acts. These regulations may define the preparation and consumption of food, the wearing of clothes, the assumption of body postures, and the adoption of modes of interaction, including speech patterns. Rites of passage enable the participants to cope with critical life experiences by providing a structure that accommodates change in an orderly process.

RITUAL the most directly observable, manifest, and salient part of religious observance. The terms ritual and rite are often used interchangeably. Consisting of goal directed, individually or collectively performed acts, rituals are aimed at manipulating humans, human like supernatural creatures, or natural phenomena. Myths are universally associated with, but secondary to, ritual and consist of rationalizations or explanations for the ritual proper. In a general sense ritual is behavior that plays an important role in structuring a social setting and takes on a religious nature because of the emotion and sentiment stimulating it. Examples in schools include: assembly, field days, the pledge of allegiance and taking the role.

ROLE The set of normative expectations attached to a social position. Generally, a role consists of those behaviors typically performed by an individual in a particular situation. The individual's assumption of a role implies her acceptance of the need to act in ways that are socially agreed upon as being appropriate in that situation. Some roles are quite diffuse in that the behaviors are not tightly specified. Diffuse roles are broad general principles of behavior often involving occupational or kinship systems teacher, lawyer, or father, mother, uncle and they leave wide leeway for the individual to tailor the role to suit themselves. Other roles are based on extremely specific expectations of performance quarterback or police officer, for instance. Some sociologists focus less on role behaviors that are learned early in life, perfected through practice in schools and early adulthood, and then passed on to others. Instead they examine Role Expectations . Role expectations are the set of socially agreed upon assumptions about the behavior of people in certain social situations. In this view the individual is born into a social world composed of intersecting and overlapping expectations of behavior organized into roles. As the individual moves into various roles their behavior is constantly formed and reformed in an interactive negotiation process.

SANCTION any means by which a moral code or social norm is enforced, either positively in the form of rewards or negatively by means of punishment. Sanctions may also be formal(for example, legal penalties) or informal (for example, criticism, ostracism). The operation of social sanctions is an all pervasive factor in social relations.

SAPIR WHORF HYPOTHESIS Edward Sapir, an anthropologist, and Benjamin Whorf, a student of linguistics postulated that a language is more than simply a vehicle for interpersonal communication and that in learning a language, we also learn a framework for interpreting social reality and the world around us. As languages vary in structure, interpretations of social reality vary accordingly.

SCHOOL The age specific, teacher related process requiring full time attendance at an obligatory curriculum. An institution based on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. Ivan Illich

SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOR A specific expression of the division of labor where workers are divided according to certain assumptions about "men's work" and "women's work. The sexual division of labor is based on gender divisions that, although socially constructed, are frequently believed to be the outcome of so called natural attributes and aptitudes of the sexes. Some form of sexual division of labor is apparent in most known societies but its particular manifestations and degrees of differentiation are socially and historically relative. It is particularly marked in industrial societies where it is accompanied by a distinction between unpaid domestic labor and wage labor, between the private and public spheres. While the spheres are gendered (the private sphere being associated with women the public sphere with men) such divisions are more ideological than empirical. In contemporary societies, women are concentrated in particular industries, services, and caring professions. Thus sewing, social services teaching and nursing are seen as women's work because they are natural extensions of domestic and private sphere occupations. Women's experience of paid work is predominantly one of poorer working conditions, lower levels of pay, and under unionization relative to men. Men in our society can be anything from ditch diggers to president. Although held back by their social class or color, men are not felt to be limited by their biology or by their role as fathers. Indeed, their work and family roles are congruent in that the more successful their jobs, the better economic providers they will be. In the work world and in the family, the male role is defined as "instrumental" or task oriented. Women, on the other hand, are severely limited socially by their biology in that they are defined primarily as wives and mothers. Whatever other work they do, whether it is home sewing or nuclear physics, must be subordinated to their chief responsibility in their families. Women work in every society, but whatever they do is expected to fit into their prime social task of childbearing and childrearing. Women's work is usually done close to home and is repetitive, so it can easily easily be picked up after interruption. In our society housework is the typical female occupation and is combined with childrearing and child rearing . Within the family, and in the work world, too, the female role is "expressive," emotionally supportive, sympathetic, and comforting. Women in America typically work at jobs outside the home before they have children and, although not as often, after the children are self sufficient. The interruption of career by childrearing child rearing and the need for any married working woman with children to subordinate her career to her family have resulted in the choice of either interrupted low level jobs bracketing childbearing child rearing or a fulltime career without marriage or without children. Women who have tried to combine highlevel careers and families suffer much social criticism and role conflict.

SOCIAL DARWINISM the application of Darwin's principle of natural selection to human society. Social Darwinism received wide acceptance in the latter part of the 19th century. The essential argument was that the process of the "survival of the fittest" was operant in the human species, but there was considerable divergence among individual Social Darwinists on the problem of exactly which social unit (individual, class, or race) corresponded to the "species" in the animal kingdom. Social Darwinists argued that classes or races were dominant or subordinate because they were biologically better or less well adapted to the conditions of life. The survival of the species accordingly depended on ensuring that the fittest element in each society did not have its changes in life unduly inhibited by misguided attempts at bringing about social equality. Social Darwinism appealed to those in the privileged strata of society, and it reinforced ethnocentric and evolutionist attitudes toward what were called primitive peoples. Social Darwinism has now been recognized as based on a false analogy with the animal world.

SOCIALIZATION The process in which the culture of a society is transmitted to children; the modification from infancy of an individual's behavior to conform with the demands of social life (see ACCULTURATION ). In this sense, socialization is a prerequisite for any society, essential to any social life, as well as to the cultural and social reproduction of both general and particular social forms. In other words, a society that fails in socialization will cease to exist. Socialization undertaken in the family and most importantly the schools involves both integration into society ( ROLES , institutions, etc.) and the differentiation of one individual from another. Durkheim discussed the importance of school in the differentiation process: The child reared exclusively in his family becomes its creature: he reproduces all its peculiarities, all its characteristics... but he will not be able to develop his own personality. The school frees the child from this extensive dependency. But even at school ... he should be successively entrusted to different teachers.

STIGMA any physical or social attribute or sign (for example, physical deformity or a criminal record) that so devalues an actor's social identity as to "disqualify from full social acceptance" (Goffman, 1964). Different implications follow for the stigmatized person according to whether the stigma is visible (the individual is obviously discredited), or hidden (the individual is potentially discreditable). The latter allows a greater number of options to the stigmatized person to manage his or her stigma. But in both cases the actor's problems lie in finding a means of limiting, or even turning to some advantage, the damaging effects of stigma. In addition to being of Interest in its own right, the study of stigmatized identities also throws light on the social construction of normal identities. Stigmatization can frequently be seen among groups of children when individuals are ostracized or shunned because of linguistic, cultural, racial, physical or behavioral characteristics.

SYMBOL in general, anything that stand for or represents something else. Of special interest to sociologists are the symbolic words, phrases, and images associated with social movements and ideologies, which can provoke powerful stereotyped images and emotional reactions. Examples include the swastika as a symbol of Nazi power, the flag for patriotism, and the cross for Christianity. Phallic, vaginal and death symbols are frequently employed in advertisements to evoke emotional reactions. Additional powerful symbols include the association of white with purity and goodness, black with evil and the primitive, youth with progress and the future, age with wisdom, etc.

TABOO The Polynesian word tapu has become an anthropological concept denoting the prohibition of some action. Taboo proscriptions may apply to dealings with deities, to the use and consumption of resources, and to modes of conduct among people. Some taboos, for example, govern sexual relationships. Because their violation often incurs automatic punishment, taboos serve to define and support cultural norms of behavior. In the context of schools, taboos might include never touching students, not using certain words or discussing certain concepts, and so on.

VALUES The central beliefs and purposes of an individual or society. In Talcott PARSONS' structural-functionalism, internalized shared values are regarded as playing a decisive role in the social integration of any society. Criticism of this view is that it overstates the extent to which social integration depends on shared values and understates the importance of political or economic power. Most Sociologists recognize that societies can exist even though riven by value divisions, and that an adherence to prevailing beliefs and values is often expedient or pragmatic rather than deeply held. Equally, however, most sociologists also acknowledge that naked economic or political force is rarely the sole basis of social integration (for example, is an unstable bases of political power) and that values usually play an important role.