Cultural Anthropology Quiz 1

ethnocentrism

the impulse to use our own cultural norms to judge the cultural beliefs and practices of others

ethnographic fieldwork

research strategy that involves living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period

globalization

worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas

time-space compression

rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies that transform how people look at distance and time

flexible accumulation

increasingly flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits enabled by innovative communication and transportation technologies

culture

system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shares and contested by a group of people

norms

ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people

values

fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful

symbols

anything that represents something else

mental map of reality

cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications

enculturation

the process of learning culture

unilinear cultual evolution

theory proposed by 19th century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex

structural functionalism

conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium

power

the ability or potential to bring about change through action or influence

stratification

the division of society into ranked groups based on factors like wealth, education, and power

hegemony

the ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use of threat or force

cultural relativism

understanding a groups beliefs and practices within their own cultural context, without making judgements

reflexivity

critical self-examination of the role anthropologists play and an awareness that one’s identity affect’s ones fieldwork and theoretical analyses

linguistic relativity

notion that all languages will develop the distinctive categories necessary for those who speak them to deal with the realities around them

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

idea that different languages create different ways of thinking

dialect

A nonstandard variation of a language

language ideology

beliefs and conceptions about language that often serve to rationalize and justify patterns of stratification and inequality

code switching

switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and and another depending on the cultural context

race

flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups

racism

individuals thoughts and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups

white supremacy

belief that white people are biologically different from and superior to people of other races

whiteness

culturally constructed concept originating in 1691 Virginia designed to establish clear boundaries of who is white and who is not, a process central to the formation of U.S. racial stratification

hypodescent

“one drop of blood rule” assignment of racially “mixed” unions to the subordinate group

racialization

process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a person or group of people

individual racism

personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race

institutional racism

patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems

racial ideology

set of popular ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal

unmarked category

white, male, middle class