| acculturation | The exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the cultural patterns of either or both groups may be changed, but the groups remain distinct.
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| core values | Key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and help distinguish it from others.
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| cultural relativism | The position that the values and standards of cultures differ and deserve respect. Extreme relativism argues that cultures should be judged solely by their own standards.
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| cultural rights | Doctrine that certain rights are vested in identifiable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. Cultural rights include a group’s ability to preserve its culture, to raise its children in the ways of its forebears, to continue its language, and not to be deprived of its economic base by the nation-state in which it is located.
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| diffusion | Borrowing of cultural traits between societies, either directly or through intermediaries.
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| enculturation | The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations.
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| ethnocentrism | The tendency to view one’s own culture as best and to judge the behavior and beliefs of culturally different people by one’s own standards.
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| generality | Culture pattern or trait that exists in some but not all societies.
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| globalization | The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems.
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| human rights | Doctrine that invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. Human rights, usually seen as vested in individuals, would include the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and to not be murdered, injured, enslaved, or imprisoned without charge.
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| independent invention | Development of the same cultural trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs, circumstances, and solutions.
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| international culture | Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries.
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| IPR | Intellectual property rights, consisting of each society’s cultural base—its core beliefs and principles. IPR are claimed as a group right—a cultural right, allowing indigenous groups to control who may know and use their collective knowledge and its applications.
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| national culture | Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.
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| particularity | Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.
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| subcultures | Different cultural traditions associated with subgroups in the same complex society.
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| symbol | Something, verbal or nonverbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no necessary or natural connection.
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| universal | Something that exists in every culture.
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