Universal: Being Human, Cultural Anthropology Methods, Data, and Subsistence Modes

A comprehensive vocabulary review set covering evolutionary concepts, anthropological fieldwork methods, historical theoretical frameworks, data analysis techniques, and modes of subsistence based on lecture materials.

Naive Realism

The idea or belief that human senses give an accurate, direct understanding of objective reality.

Instinct Blindness

The tendency to treat instinctual feelings and perceptions as self-explanatory or needing no explanation.

Culture

A group's shared values, beliefs, symbols, and practices.

Fieldwork

Spending time with a group in a non-laboratory environment (the real world) for a prolonged period to study their way of life.

Cultural Relativism

An anthropological approach that involves understanding a culture within its own context, initially withholding moral judgments and comparisons to one's own culture.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to judge other cultures by the standards and values of one's own culture.

Participant Observation

The primary fieldwork method in cultural anthropology, consisting of recording a group's activities while actively participating in their daily life.

Structured Interview

An interview method where specific questions are pre-planned and asked in a strict, predetermined order.

Semi-Structured Interview

An interview technique guided by pre-planned questions or topics that allows flexibility during the conversation.

Non-Laboratory Experiment

An artificial situation created in the field to test a hypothesis by manipulating one or more variables and measuring the outcomes.

Ethnography

A book-length description and analysis of a group's culture produced from fieldwork.

Armchair Anthropologists

The first generation of fieldworkers and scholars who were self-taught and lacked university degrees in anthropology.

Salvage Anthropology

An effort to document practices, photographs, and artifact collections of cultures thought to be on the verge of disappearing.

Unilineal Social Evolution

The outdated idea that all human societies progress through a fixed set of stages from a primitive state to a civilized state modeled after White European civilization.

Historical Particularism

A theoretical framework advocated by Franz Boas that focuses on evaluating each culture within the specific context of its own history and environment.

Functionalism

A theoretical framework that seeks to understand cultural elements by analyzing what purpose or function they serve for the group or individual.

Structural-Functionalism

A perspective associated with Radcliffe-Brown that examines how societal customs and practices support and sustain the society as a higher-level entity.

Naturalistic Fallacy

The logical error of inferring what ought to be true or moral directly from what is true or natural.

Ethnographic Record

The cumulative body of all ethnographies, academic journal articles, and historical accounts describing various human cultures.

Ethnographic Atlas

A directory of 1,264 world cultures created under George Peter Murdock containing coded data on societal variables.

Coding

The practice of systematically extracting standardized information from ethnographies to enable cross-cultural comparison.

Unit of Analysis Problem

The challenge arising from the lack of a rigorous, non-arbitrary definition of 'society' or 'culture' needed to count distinct cultural groups.

Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS)

A purposefully selected, regionally diverse subset of 186 cultures taken from the Ethnographic Atlas for comparative research.

HRAF Probability Sample

A randomly selected cross-cultural sample of 60 well-described societies from the Human Relations Area Files.

Sexual Jealousy

An evolved emotional state of proprietariness over a sexual partner designed to reduce the risk of mate-poaching and infidelity.

Principled Skepticism

Evaluating extraordinary cross-cultural claims using evolutionary models of human nature, broad ethnographic context, and close source analysis.

Mode of Subsistence

The primary method or strategy a society uses to acquire food.

Foraging

A mode of subsistence based on hunting wild animals, gathering wild plants, and fishing.

Ethnographic Analogy

The method of applying observations of recent or contemporary societies in the ethnographic record to draw inferences about prehistoric populations.

Original Affluent Society

A concept proposed by Marshall Sahlins suggesting mobile foragers had abundant leisure time, low material desires, and a 'Zen' outlook.

Horticulture

Small-scale plant cultivation for household needs using human-powered hand tools without draft animals, plows, or heavy machinery.

Pastoralism

A subsistence mode centered on breeding and herding domesticated animals on natural pastures, often practiced nomadically in semi-arid regions.

Agriculture

Food production involving plant cultivation and livestock raising on land permanently set aside for continuous production.

Intensive Agriculture

Agricultural production using permanent annual cropping, fertilization, and plows or industrial machinery.

Industrialism

A system of production relying on heavy machinery powered by electricity or steam, characterized by wage labor and large-scale manufacturing.