Anthropology Final Exam

Cross Cultural Perspective

• Promotes the erroneous idea that people in other countries have the same desires, feelings, values, and aspirations.

Anthropology

• It is a comparative science that examines all societies, ancient and modern, simple and complex.

• Offers a unique cross-cultural perspective, constantly comparing the customs of one society with those of others.

Ethnography

• (the firsthand, personal study of local settings).

• Ethnographic fieldwork usually entails spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their way of life.

Human Adaptability

•Anthropology is the exploration of human diversity in time and space.

•Anthropology studies the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.

• Of particular interest is the diversity that comes through human adaptability.

Anthropology

The study of humans around the world and through time.

Holistic science.

Holism refers the study of the whole human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.

Society

Organized life in groups.

Cultures

Traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that form and guide the beliefs and behavior of the people exposed to them.

• Children learn such a tradition by growing up in a particular society, through a process call enculturation.

adaptation

Refers to the processes by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses, such as those posed by climate and topography or terrains, also called landforms.

3 ways of adapting to high altitudes

• genetic adaptation

• long-term physiological adaptation

• short-term physiological adaptation.

Food production

The cultivation of plants and domestication of animals

Biocultural

Refers to using and combining both biological and cultural perspectives and approaches to analyze and understand a particular issue or problem.

Culture

Is a key environmental force in determining how human bodies grow and develop.

•Cultural traditions promote certain activities and abilities, discourage others, and set standards of physical well-being and attractiveness.

General Anthropology or “Four-field”

Includes four main subdisciplines, or subfields.