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Higher Education

Sociology: A Canadian Perspective, Third Edition — Chapter 3

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the 'Submit my answers' button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:


a) widely held preference for representative democracy
b) belief that representative democracy is a legitimate and necessary form of self-government
c) that it is normal or proper for men to be principals and women to be elementary school teachers
d) belief that there should be a high degree of occupational segregation by gender
e) that we respect our Canadian flag and our national anthem

Question 2:


a) advertising campaigns that link white skin to getting a better paying job or finding a mate
b) advertising campaigns that show that any skin colour is beautiful
c) advertising campaigns that promote the appearance of Bollywood actors over Hollywood actors
d) promoting the use of Facebook
e) all of the above

Question 3:


a) The nature of society is determined primarily by the prevailing mode of economic production.
b) All social change is a result of the economic organization of society.
c) The economic mode of production forms all the cultural elements of society.
d) Culture is more than simply the reflection of the underlying economic base.
e) Culture maintains and supports capitalism and inequality.

Question 4:


a) Our current mode of production is accompanied by a dominant ideology that perpetuates capitalism.
b) Intellectuals within spheres such as politics, religion, the mass media, and education provide knowledge, values, advice, and direction to the general population that serve to perpetuate the status quo and to suppress revolutionary tendencies.
c) Culture is simply the reflection of the underlying economic base.
d) The entertainment industry is of great use to the capitalist order through the cultural products it creates.
e) Culture can be shaped and manipulated by dominant groups and employed to maintain hegemony.

Question 5:


a) Class conflict is only one of many sites of ideological dominance.
b) Dominant groups can be defined not only by class position but also by race, gender, geography, and sexual orientation.
c) Communication of meaning requires both encoding and decoding.
d) Advertisements encode assumptions and messages about gender and social class relations.
e) Meaning simply exists as part of cultural creations.

Question 6:


a) Culture can create social stability and solidarity.
b) Culture rises out of a particular society’s social structure to produce a general consensus about the goals and nature of society.
c) Culture supports dominant groups in their efforts to maintain their dominance.
d) Through common cultural values and beliefs, society is able to remain coherent, and all the different parts of society can effectively carry out their specific purpose.
e) Different aspects of culture, such as religion, play an important role in strengthening social bonds that then strengthen and reinforce the fabric of society.

Question 7:


a) Marx
b) Hall
c) Durkheim
d) Gramsci
e) the Frankfurt School

Question 8:


a) Culture is generated by individuals in face-to-face interactions.
b) Culture is a product of social action.
c) Culture is the enacted signals and attitudes that people use to communicate effectively in order to go about their daily lives.
d) Culture is a product of creative individual agents who use it to manage their everyday tasks and routines.
e) Culture is a tool for creative individuals to manipulate strategically.

Question 9:


a) Goffman
b) Mead
c) Cooley
d) Peterson
e) Durkheim

Question 10:


a) Culture is a manifestation of underlying social-structural needs or realities.
b) Canadian literature takes on the characteristics of and reflects the essence of Canadian society.
c) Baroque art forms are expressions of society in the baroque period.
d) Modernist art is an expression of societal sentiments and values in the early decades of the twentieth century.
e) We need to examine the resources and constraints that specific actors were working with and that influenced the kind of art or other symbols that they created.

Question 11:


a) Culture is a tool of conflict in society.
b) Culture is a key factor in creating social stability.
c) Culture is produced in the meanings that people create through social interaction at the micro level.
d) Culture originates in purposive productive activity.
e) Culture originates in the work of hegemonic leaders who create the texts, symbols, and discourses that embody particular ideologies.

Question 12:


a) Communication
b) Discourse
c) Language
d) Social construction
e) Values

Question 13:


a) A collectivist discourse would understand crime as the actions of a self-interested individual who is presented with options and makes certain choices.
b) A collectivist discourse encourages an understanding of the psychological factors involved in criminal behaviour and leads to solutions that work at the level of the individual.
c) A collectivist solution would advocate making penalties harsher for those who are caught, so that the individual would no longer choose to commit crime.
d) A collectivist discourse focuses on the social conditions that influence the likelihood that crime will be committed in society.
e) all of the above

Question 14:


a) the problems plaguing people in the inner-city have little to do with racial discrimination or the effects of living in segregated poverty
b) in America, it is the individual and the family who bear the main responsibility for the low social and economic achievement of people living in the inner-city
c) one of the effects of living in a racially-segregated poor neighbourhood is the exposure to cultural traits that may not be conducive to facilitating social mobility
d) cultural traits are at the root of problems experienced by the ghetto poor
e) the culture of the inner-city is changing and young black men are finally overcoming the structural impediments of the inner-city and managing to increase their social mobility in the larger society

Question 15:


a) The mass media serve as informational gatekeepers.
b) Through the mass media most discourses are disseminated to the general public.
c) The mass media are the primary source of high culture.
d) Popular culture productions have a negative impact on society because of the materialistic values they explicitly and implicitly advocate.
e) Portrayals of violence in the media incite violent acts and desensitize people to the presence of violence.

Question 16:


a) the Internet as a medium of communications and retail is available to a mass consumer base which encompasses the niche consumer base that luxury goods have always targeted
b) luxury can be successfully positioned online, and as a result several luxury brands have currently adopted e-retail
c) luxury goods are unsuitable to be placed and retailed on the Internet
d) the Internet and e-retail are a push medium where customers are driven by advertising
e) luxury brands such as Chanel have adopted e-commerce in order to combat the profits of fake luxury goods traders who are currently rampant online

Question 17:


a) the moral code undergirding much of the legal system
b) beliefs in the value of punishment and the possibility of rehabilitation
c) social action on behalf of the underprivileged, sick, disabled, and terminally ill
d) attitudes towards work and leisure
e) all of the above

Question 18:


a) Several aspects of Protestant (specifically Calvinist) doctrine encouraged the values and behaviour of economic rationalism, thereby promoting the rapid advancement of capitalism in Protestant societies.
b) Several aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition encouraged the values and behaviour of economic rationalism, thereby promoting the rapid advancement of capitalism in Western countries.
c) Capitalism developed in Western countries as a result of the values that Catholics learned during feudalism.
d) As a result of industrialization, religious observance declined, and people began to believe in individualistic values rather the moral and ethical values promoted in Catholicism and Protestantism.
e) Capitalism would not have emerged if it were not for the cultural values adopted by Protestants.

Question 19:


a) filmmaking is higher on the hierarchy than television
b) works by certain artists command higher prices than those of others
c) operas are attended by more elite audiences than rock concerts
d) the fact that audiences who typically attend the opera are wealthy and highly educated encourages an understanding of opera as high culture
e) classical concerts require more knowledge than rock concerts

Question 20:


a) As explained by the production of culture perspective, art does not just spring out of a collective or individual consciousness, but rather it is a collective activity that requires collaboration between many actors in the art world.
b) The socially-constructed nature of distinction between high and low in art points to the significance of art in helping to determine the contours of social stratification.
c) Artistic consumption creates social groupings in society.
d) High cultural capital provides access to informal interpersonal connections that can influence our occupational and economic prospects.
e) all of the above

Question 21:


a) since reality television shows do not rely on traditional scripts, producers avoid the risks and expensive costs associated with hiring unionized writers and actors
b) reality television creators have taken advantage of the globalization of markets and flexibility of national borders that neo-liberal policies make possible
c) many reality shows are shot in First World countries as opposed to Third World countries because audiences in First World countries are the main viewers
d) reality shows usually celebrate the radical right-wing values championed by free-market republicans, so that people continue to blame the victims of poverty for their own misfortune
e) reality shows inevitably emphasize the moral failings of each contestant just before they are deposed

Question 22:


a) Cultural
b) Social
c) Human
d) Financial
e) Consumption

Question 23:


a) functionalists
b) Marxists
c) symbolic interactionists
d) postmodernists
e) the production of culture perspective

Question 24:


a) Rising levels of affluence made it possible for teenagers to possess a certain amount of disposable income.
b) Economic changes created consumers out of young people and encouraged cultural producers to target and cater to youth.
c) The continued growth in spending power of teenagers has allowed them to become the primary demographic target of Hollywood film studios.
d) The maintenance of a middle-class standard of living required that more youth enter the labour market.
e) Advertisers started to target to youth’s tastes and expectations.

Question 25:


a) Technological advances and changing attitudes about women and work lead to more women entering jobs that used to be the exclusive domain of men, such as engineering.
b) The printing press has been credited with transforming European culture in diverse ways, including bringing the cost down of books so that more people could own, read, and interpret the bible.
c) The technological innovation of the electrification of musical instruments has influenced tastes in musical styles.
d) The invention of the telegraph, which vastly hastened the speed with which information could travel over great distances, changed our attitudes concerning the pace of life.
e) The idea of ‘nightlife’ and all its attendant activities is predicated on the existence of electricity and the light bulb.

Question 26:


a) culture is progressive
b) culture is composed of both individual and collective self-expression
c) culture is evolutionary
d) culture is volatile
e) culture is unstable

Question 27:


a) Fashion
b) Technology
c) Consumerism
d) Art
e) Leisure

Question 28:


a) ethnic subcultures thriving
b) the tolerance and encouragement of the maintenance of the national cultures that immigrants bring with them from their countries of origin
c) easing the transition of new immigrants into Canadian society
d) encouraging self-segregation rather than facilitating the full cultural integration of immigrants into Canadian life
e) all of the above

Question 29:


a) young Chinese shoppers are only interested in buying products made in China
b) from clothes to hairstyle, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half-decade
c) Chinese always follow the Japanese Wave of pop culture
d) China’s ‘soft power’ extends to the material and spiritual spheres
e) Japan acts as a filter for Western values, making them more palatable to Chinese and other Asians

Question 30:


a) Technological advancements in mass media have made possible easy and abundant access to the sights and sounds of geographically distant locales.
b) We can be made aware of cultural elements from across the globe.
c) Popular culture is one of the largest American exports, reaching every corner of the globe.
d) American culture is dominating the globe, which is referred to as ‘cultural imperialism’.
e) National governments around the globe are now more able to impede American cultural dominance through laws that require national medias to maintain a sizeable proportion of their content to be of national origin.