5.8 Application and Discussion: Questions and Key Terms
Application and Discussion questions are intended to be used for student reflection and response; in class discussions or online forum discussions.
Key terms are needed to understand the concepts in this chapter and will appear in other chapters in the text.
5.8.1 Reflective Questions
- Think about a ritual or tradition that you have practiced with your family or loved one. Describe the ritual or tradition. What is the ritual? Who participates and what are their roles? What is the context of the ritual or tradition, such as a religious holiday or annual event? When or how did the ritual or tradition become part of the family’s practices, if known? How do you feel during the ritual or tradition?
- This chapter discusses common rites of passage, and gives some examples of four life stages that are commonly marked by rites of passage: birth/family formation, coming-of-age, union formation/marriage, and dying/bereavement. Identify and describe a rite of passage in your own life, or that of a family member or friend. The example you come up with does not have to be limited to birth/family formation, coming-of-age, union formation/marriage, and dying/bereavement.
- Anchoring practices are the behaviors, efforts, and actions people carry out to seek, create, and maintain a sense of community and rootedness. What are things you have done to create a sense of belonging, community, or rootedness?
- Routines can be tricky to establish and maintain while attending college. What are some routines or habits you have tried to start or maintain? What has been helpful in keeping a routine going? What are some things that get in the way of maintaining a routine or habit?
- The chapter has some examples of ways that people have created communities of belonging and practice their heritage cultures. What are some examples in your community, such as your college campus, city, or state, of groups that have found creative ways to continue practicing their heritage culture?
- What happens when there are overlapping, or even conflicting religions or cultures within a family? What are some ways in which families can negotiate overlapping or conflicting religions or cultures within a family? Can you name any content creators on social media who talk about their experiences growing up in a home where the parents had different religious or cultural backgrounds?
5.8.2 Key Terms
These terms are needed to understand the concepts in this chapter and will appear in other chapters in the text.
- acculturation: the process of adapting to a new culture.
- anchoring practices: the behaviors, efforts, and actions people carry out to seek, create, and maintain a sense of community and rootedness.
- assimilation strategy: an acculturation strategy consisting of pursuing and adopting the cultural norms, values, and traditions of the new society or dominant culture.
- biculturalism: when a person has been exposed to and has internalized elements from two or more cultures
- Culture: the shared meanings and shared experiences passed down over time by individuals in a group, such as beliefs, values, symbols, means of communication, religion, logics, rituals, fashions, etiquette, foods, and art that unite a particular society
- cultural erasure: the practice of a dominant or hegemonic culture actively or passively contributing to the erasure, or disappearing, of a non-dominant or minoritized culture.
- dominant cultural orientation: the extent to which acculturating individuals are involved with the receiving or host culture.
- ethnic group: a subgroup of a population with a set of shared social, cultural, and historical experiences; with relatively distinctive beliefs, values, and behaviors; and with some sense of identity of belonging to the subgroup.
- ethnic identity: a sense of self that is derived from a sense of belonging to a group, a culture, and a particular setting.
- ethnicity: the shared social, cultural, and historical experiences, stemming from common national, ancestral, or regional backgrounds, that make subgroups of a population different from one another.
- family ritual: behaviors with symbolic meanings that can be clearly described and serve to organize and affirm central family ideas.
- family routine: the predictable, repeated consistent patterns that characterize everyday home life.
- heritage cultural orientation: the extent to which individuals are involved with their heritage, ethnic, or nondominant culture.
- integration strategy: an acculturation strategy utilized by those who wish to maintain one’s original culture, as a member of an ethnocultural group, while also participating as an integral member of the larger social network.
- marginalization strategy: an acculturation strategy where a person seeks little. relationships with aspects of the host culture, nor maintains their heritage culture and identity.
- pan-ethnicity: the grouping together of multiple ethnicities and nationalities under a single label.
- rite of passage: a ritual or celebration that marks the passage when a person leaves one status, role, conditions, or group to enter another.
- Separation strategy: an acculturation strategy where a person places a high value on maintaining the integrity of their original cultural identity, and avoids interaction with those of the new society.
5.8.3 Licenses and Attributions for Application and Discussion: Questions and Key Terms
5.8.3.1 Open Content, Original
“Application and Discussion: Questions and Key Terms” by Monica Olvera is licensed under CC BY 4.0.