Practice Quiz: Sociocultural Materialism

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1. The technology and the practices employed for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production, especially the production of food and other forms of energy. Examples would include the technology of subsistence, technological/environmental relationships, and work patterns

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2. Sociocultural materialism term referring to the dynamic relationships between the different components of sociocultural systems. While the theory begins from an examination of infrastructural determinism, it recognizes that structure and superstructure can play an independent role in determining the character of the system.

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3. The major principle of sociocultural materialism (borrowed and modified from Harris' cultural materialism). "The mode of production and reproduction (probabalistically) determines primary and secondary group structure, which in turn determines the cultural and mental superstructure."

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4. Sociocultural materialism term used to refer to conscious and unconscious motives for human behavior. Borrowed from Max Weber, there are four basic motivations for human behavior: wertrational (or value oriented rationality), affective action (action motivated by emotions), traditional action (action motivated by what Weber calls the "eternal yesterday"), and zweckrational (goal oriented rational action).

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5. One of the primary constraints of the environment on sociocultural systems. Refers to the limited supplies of natural resources (although the limits are unknowable, that there are limits can be inferred). These limits can often be stretched through the use of technology, but they cannot be overcome.

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6. The interface between a sociocultural system and its environment. In sociocultural materialism it contains the principle mechanism by which society regulates the amount and type of energy from the environment

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7. A group of individuals who do not know each other on a personal level interacting in pursuit of a goal

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8. Weber's concept to refer to the process by which modes of precise calculation based on observation and reason increasingly dominate the social world.

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9. A general term used in sociocultural materialism to refer to the symbolic universe--the shared meanings, ideas, beliefs, values, and ideologies that people give to the physical and social world.

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10. Refers to the growth in the complexity of the mode of production (greater energy expenditures as well as energy produced/consumed), and population over the course of social evolution.

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