Anthropology Full Set

Anthropology

The study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand another

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using one’s own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others

Ethnographic Fieldwork

Living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives

Cross-Cultural and Comparative Approach

Anthropologists compare practices across cultures to explore human similarities, differences, and the potential for human cultural expression

Biological Anthropology

The study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly how they have evolved over time and adapted to their environments

Archaeology

The investigation of the human past by means of excavating and analyzing artifacts

Linguistic Anthropology

The study of human language in the past and the present

Cultural/Socio-Cultural Anthropology

The study of people’s communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together

Holism

The anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life—culture, biology, history, and language—across space and time

Participant Observation

A key anthropological research strategy involving participation and observation of the daily life of the people being studied

Ethnology

The analysis and comparison of ethnographic data across cultures

Globalization

The worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders

Time-Space Compression

The rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space (distances) and time

Flexible Accumulation

The flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an eta of globalization, enabled by innovative communication and transportation technologies

Transnationalism

The intermixing of cultures

Multi-Sited Ethnography

A standard practice for anthropologists to trace cultural processes across time and space

Anthropocene

The current historical era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways

Climate Change

Changes to earth’s climate, including global warming, produced primarily by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases created by the burning of fossil fuels

Four-Field Approach

Biological, archaeological, linguistic, and cultural anthropology

Culture

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

Enculturation

The process of learning culture

Four Key Elements of Culture

Norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality

Cultural Appropriation

The unwanted taking of cultural practices or knowledge from one group by another, more dominant group

Unilineal Culture Evolution

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

American Historian Particularism

The idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories

British Structural Functionalism

The focus of early British anthropological research whose structure and function could be isolated and studied scientifically

Interpretivist Approach

A conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning

Thick Description

A research strategy that combines detailed description of culture activity with an analysis of the layers of deep cultural meaning in which those activities are embedded

Ethnocentrism

Evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture

Cultural Relativism

The idea that one must suspend judgement of other people’s practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms

Power

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

Stratification

The uneven distribution of resources and privileges among members of a group or culture

Hegemony

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

Material Power

Power exerted through brute force

Agency

The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power

Ethnology

The comparative study of cultures

Ethnographic Fieldwork

A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology that typically involves living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives

Culture Shock

A sense of disorientation caused by the overwhelmingly new and unfamiliar people and experiences encountered every day

Fieldwork as Science

An experimental method for testing hypotheses and building theories

Fieldwork as Art

Depends on an anthropologist’s ability to negotiate interpersonal interactions, build trust, make sense of cultural patterns, contend with their biases, and tell stories about subjects’ lives

Culture is…

learned, shared, dynamic

Barrel Model

A depiction of the functional relationships within a cultural system among the economic base (Infrastructure), the social organization (social structure), and the ideology (superstructure)

The Development of Culture Concept

Unilineal Cultural Evolution→Historical Particularism→Structural Functionalism→Interpretivist Approach 

Emic Perspective

Perspective of the person within the culture

Etic Perspective

The anthropologist’s interpretation of these beliefs and practices

Rapport

Building trust

Anthropological Ethics

Informed consent, anonymity, do no harm, reciprocity

Race

Race is a cultural category used to describe a group of people (usually an ethnic group) who are assumed to have a distinctively shared biology, often expressed as people who have the same “blood” or genes, and that uses physical characteristics to divide the human population

Phenotype

The set of observable traits—its anatomy and physiology

Genotype

An organism’s genetic information

Hypodescent

the automatic placing of children of a union between members of different racial groups in the minority group

Ethnic Group

a group of people who share certain beliefs, values, habits, customs, and sometimes an ancestral connection

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

Mental Maps of Reality

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

State

An institution exercising centralized rule over a territory

Features of a State

have bureaucracies that make, interpret, and enforce law, collect taxes and use them to build, organize and regulate the economy, and maintain a monopoly on the use of force

Nation-State

An autonomous political entity with geopolitical boundaries and a distinct political system

Assimilation

The process of change through which a minority ethnic group adopts the patterns and norms of its host cultures

Argument of Benedict Anderson

All modern states cultivate a shared sense of peoplehood for those living in the nation-state

Argument of Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson)

National Identity as a powerful sense of unity develops from participation in the systems of the state and mass media

Prejudice

the act of devaluing a group of people because of its assumed behavior, values, and capabilities

Stereotypes

Fixed ideas about how a group of people will behave and what they are like 

Discrimination

Policies and practices that harm a particular group and its members

De Facto [Discrimination]

Practiced but not legal

De Jure [Discrimination]

Part of the law

Proto-States

States in formation

Genocide

the deliberate elimination of a group through mass killings

Ethnocide

the attempted extermination of an entire culture

Ethnic Expulsion

a policy aimed at removing groups who are ethnically different form a country

Art

All ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies that humans employ to express themselves creatively and to communicate their creativity and inspiration to others

Visual Art

Created primarily for visual perception ranging from etchings and paintings on various surfaces to sculptures and weavings made with an array of materials

Representational Visual Art

imitating closely the forms of nature

Abstract Visual Art

drawing from natural forms but only representing their basic patterns or arrangements

Verbal Art

creative word use on display

Folklore

collected by academics in the 19th century to distinguish between folk art and fine art

Myth

sacred narrative where we and everything in our world came from, why we are here, and where we are going

Legend

stories about memorable events or figures

Tale

creative narratives recognized as fiction for entertainment

Musical Art

an art form whose medium is sound and silence; a form of communication that includes a nonverbal auditory component

Ethnomusicology 

the study of a society’s music in terms of its cultural settings

Fine Art

creative expression and communication often associated with cultural elites

Popular Art

creative expression and communication often associated with the general population

Universal Gaze

an intrinsic way of perceiving art that informs what people consider to be art or not

Role of Museums With Art

Serve a purpose in collecting, classifying, and preserving anthropological artifacts and ethnographic records

Kinetic Orality

A musical genre combining body movement and voice

Ethnography of Art

Anthropologists’ unique approach to art includes particular attention to how art is embedded in community

Primitive Art

Ethnographic museum collections displayed the art and lifeways of “other” cultures for western audiences

Mass Media

a set of technologies that connect multiple people at one time to shared content

Media Practices

the habits or behaviors of the people who produce media, the audiences who interact with media, and everyone in between

Global Mediascape

global cultural flows of media and visual images that enable linkages and communication across boundaries in ways unimaginable a century ago

Media Worlds

an ethnographic and theoretical approach to media studies that focuses on the tensions that may exist when visual worlds collide in the context of contemporary globalization 

Social Media

forms of communication founded on computer- and internet-based technologies that facilitate social engagement, work, and pleasure

Visual Anthropology

a field of anthropology that explores the production, circulation, and consumption of visual images, focusing on the power of visual representation to influence culture and cultural identity 

Photographic Gaze

the presumed neutral viewpoint of the camera that in fact projects the perspective of the person behind the camera onto human nature, the natural world, and history 

Indigenous Media

the use of media by people who have experienced massive economic, political, and geographic disruption to build alternative strategies for communication, survival, and empowerment 

Media Anthropology

Focuses on questions of meaning and how producers and audiences share or contest different types of meaning

Mass Communication

the process of sending a message to many people in a way that allows the sender complete control over the content (NOT MEANING) of a message

Gender Studies

The study of how gender identities and expression are shaped by and affect one’s life

Sex

the culturally agreed upon physical differences between male and female, especially biological differences related to human reproduction