UCI Anthropology 2A - Final Spring 2026

Flashcard set for James Egan's Anthro 2A course at the University of California (UCI). It is recommended to practice this set with answer with definition since the definitions contain the term. Credit to Christine Y. and Anthony S. for their notes for the days I missed.

Module 9

Module 9

Macro & Local Levels of Social Analysis

• Local Level: Analyzing the relationship of a single society (Ex. a single village).
• Macro Level: Analyzing relationships between societies (colonialism, globalization, trade).
  • Ex. Producing cash crops for global markets, colonialism, and migration.

Imperialism

Power and influence from a strong nation over a weaker nation. More general than colonialism, can be economic control for example. Example is British economic control of China.

Colonialism

A specific type of imperialism, where there is direct governmental control over colonies. Example is British rule over India.

3 Waves of European Colonialism

1. “Discovery” of the New World.
2. Early Industrial Capitalism.
3. Late 19th and 20th Century.

Colonialism: “Discovery” of the New World

The first wave of European Colonialism.

• Spain and Portugal – Formed colonies in the Americas
• Followed by the Netherlands, Britain, and France
• Imperialism: similar model to that of former empires

Colonialism: Early Industrial Capitalism

The second wave of European Colonialism

• Ex. Great Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries
• Industrial capitalism: Industrialization and production using industrial techniques
  • Industrialism brought new economic demands
    • Raw materials
      • Cotton: A crop that couldn’t be grown in Europe, so they had to move production to warmer areas like the Southern US.
      • Cash crops: Tobacco can only be grown in warmer climates
      • Rubber: Comes from rubber trees found in rainforests.
    • Markets
      • Demand to buy machinery requires a market for those products.

Colonialism: Late 19th and 20th Century

The third wave of European Colonialism.

• Other nations started to industrialize, this led to:
  • Division of the world
  • Japan becoming another major colonialist/imperialist state.

Profit and the Colonies

• Direct settlement of overseas territories
  • Getting your own people to work there
  • Establishment of communities in those territories
• Penal colonies
  • Botany Bay, Australia – convicts sent from Britain to Australia to work on blue collar jobs
• Develop resource extraction
  • Mining
  • Plantations growing cash crops

Colonial Strategies of Accessing Labor

Utilized two main strategies.

• Direct coercion
  • Slave trade
  • Conscription – demanding people to work on projects
• Indirect means
  • Taxes – Paid in colonial power’s currency
    • Purpose of taxes is to get people to work
  • Take away people’s land (so that they are forced to work)
    • Ex. Kenya: 70% of the arable land in British Kenya became reserves inaccessible to the native people

Local Impacts of Colonialism

• Depopulation
  • Ex. The Americas and Pacific islands
• Wars of Conquest and Subjugation
  • Ex. Herero in German SW Africa (Present day Namibia)
• Genocide: An extermination of a certain ethnic group
  • Ex. California and Native Americans.
• Loss of Land
  • Land Seizure
  • Indirect Methods
    • Land Tenure
    • Communal vs privatized land.
    • Commodification of land
• Abusive Labor Control
  • Ex. Belgian Congo and Rubber
• Degradation of Land
  • Ex. Nauru and Phosphate

Disease, Depopulation and Imperialism

Imperialism led to the deaths of many people.

• Diseases were brought from one area to another, to places where there were no immunities yet. Ex. the Americas and Pacific Islands
  • Smallpox, measles, influenza: Natives in those areas lacked immunity to those diseases versus people who lived in the Old World
  • Estimates: 50 million Native Americans died in the 15th century to 5 million in 1700.
  • Disease accounted for most deaths.

Herero Revolt

In the conquest caused by imperialism, grazing land was taken away by Germans, which led to the Herero Revolt.

• 8 thousand Herero people revolted against the Germans.
  • In response, 1500 German troops were sent to retake the colony
  • Herero population of 100,000 reduced to 20,000 by 1906.

Genocide

An extermination of a certain ethnic group

• Manifest Destiny – the Frontier
  • Cultural ordering of space: The East was seen as “Culture” and ordered, while the West was seen as “Nature” and chaotic (“Wild West”).
    • Wanted to domesticate the west, bring it from nature to culture.
  • This cultural ordering caused some to view Native Americans as part of the chaos.
    • To move California from “nature” to “culture”, the State of California paid Indian Bounty Hunters $10 a scalp and $20 a head to kill Native Americans.

The “Frontier”

• Manifest Destiny – the Frontier
  • Cultural ordering of space: The East was seen as “Culture” and ordered, while the West was seen as “Nature” and chaotic (“Wild West”).
    • Wanted to domesticate the west, bring it from nature to culture.

Reserves

As Native Americans were pushed out of their lands, they were forced onto reserves.

• These reserves were essentially land that colonizers did not want.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

Several tribes of Natives lived on prime real estate land in the Southeastern US

• Native tribes were well-assimilated into US life (owned plantations, slaves, etc)
• In 1830 they were kicked out of their homeland and sent to Oklahoma, which was land nobody wanted
• “Trail of Tears”, many people died on the way

Land Tenure

Colonizers changed local systems to implement land tenure. the sets of rights in regards to ownership of land, and how these rights are passed down to another generation “Inalienable possession” – land is linked from you to future generations An indirect way of taking land from local people.

Privatization of Land v. Corporate Land

• Communal Land: Corporate possession (i.e. lineage)
• Privatized Land: Individual possession
• An indirect way of taking land from local people.
  • When colonists changed land rights from communal to privatized, many people lost rights to their land.

Commodification of Land

Colonizers commodified land, it had an exchange value in the market and could be purchased.

Alienable and Inalienable Views of Land

For many local people, land was inalienable, it had the equivalent value of a family heirloom.

• This contrasted the colonizers’ views of land as a commodity.

Kingdom of Hawai’i: the Mahele of 1848

During this time there was a land redistribution act that privatized land in Hawai’i.

• However, because land could be bought and sold, eventually all the land was owned by a couple Americans.
• When the Hawaiian monarch tried to change the constitution so that the land would go back to the Hawaiian people, the US Marines overthrew the monarchy and Hawai’i became a US state with a constitutional monarchy..

Rubber Production in the Belgian Congo

Rubber was a prized material for automobiles and the Rubber Boom, thus making it an essential resource for industrialization. Rubber plants found in the Belgian Congo

• Colonizers needed rubber by whatever means necessary, leading to abuse forms of labor control.
  • Outcomes:       -Women and children held hostage while men were forced to work at plantations
    • Punishments included cutting off body parts

Phosphate Mining on Nauru

Colonial administrations had short-sighted initiatives. Phosphate is a commonly used mineral for detergent, so they implemented phosphate mining on Nauru.

• Strip mining led to the degradation of topsoil, leaving Nauru with unfarmable land.

Scientific Racism & Colonialism

Dehumanization: Failure to qualify for human rights.

• The complete rejection of equality, of inalienable rights, that “All men are equal.”
  • Treating these peoples as “not really people” helped justify the impacts of colonialism.

Unilinear Social Evolutionism & Colonialism

The idea that all human societies go through the same process of developing culture.

• The idea that some societies got stuck in the process of unilinear evolutionary development.
  • Thus, the “White man’s burden”: A rationalization for colonialism. That they had to “help” these societies… except it led to slavery and gross exploitation disguised as help.

Social Darwinism & Colonialism

The idea of a natural process that some societies were superior to others. This idea helped justify colonialism as a “natural” process.

Power and Representations

There was the idea of two world orders, the first and second world nations, competing over the third world.

Module 10

Module 10

Imperialism & the Postcolonial World

Imperialism continues in the post-colonial world. Colonialism is only a form of imperialism, other means (like puppet leaders) can still be in place.

“Development”

A strong current of thought viewed industrialization as a beneficial process of organic development and progress. Many economists still assume that industrialization increases production and income. They seek to create in today’s “developing” countries a process like the one that first occurred spontaneously in eighteenth-century Great Britain.   Intervention Philosophies

Capitalist World System

Global system of economic and political relations in which capitalist relations of production and exchange dominate.

• Includes three positions: Core, Periphery, and Semi-periphery.

Core

Industrialized, higher quality of living. Diverse economies. Capitalist.

• Imported raw materials and exported manufactured goods. However, in modern days this relationship is changing for this group.
• Ex. U.S., Germany, U.K, France, Canada, Japan

Semiperiphery

Industrialized areas, but does not have the wealth of influence of the core.

• Ex. Mexico, India, Spain.

Periphery

Has little industrialization. Poorer, lower standards of living. Less global power. Typically has one major export material.

• Exports raw materials and cash crops, imports manufactured goods.
• Ex. Guatemala, Peru, Bangladesh, Cambodia.

Globality & Linkages

Living in a world of global interlinkages.

• Interlinkages can be economic, social, cultural, political, etc.
• Ex. Lives in diaspora, connections to a homeland separate from one’s current living area.
• Interlinkage is not new. It has been around for millenia.

Globality & The Nation State / New forms of Governmentality

Do nation states have a diminished importance? They give up some of their sovereignty like through:

• International trade agreements and environmental packs.
• European Union: Confederation of countries with significant influence on many European countries’ politics
• Non-Government Organization: Has policies that have effects across the world.
  • Ex. Sierra club or the world bank. Has money to effect worldwide policies.
• Multinational Corporations: Supply chains and demand of workforce can be controlled by corporations There is some backlash caused by this loss of sovereignty, there are winners and losers.
• Ex. Local workers could lose jobs to workers in a foreign country via outsourcing labor (Ex. China).

Globality & Identity

Identity, sense of self. Part of our identity is the society you are in.

• Imaginaries/Imagination: Capacity for creating things we have not experienced
  • Imaginaries (resources) are used to build our own imagination
    • Backlash to globalization.
    • Nation & Citizenship cast in terms of race, ethnicity, religion. Who is in our imagined community?

Capitalism

A kind of socio-economic order.

• Can be seen using an anthropological perspective.
  • Capitalism in anthropology is an appreciation of the broad world of cultural diversity.
    • Ex. Were the Trobrianders capitalist/socialist? Neither really fit.

Features of Capitalism

• Logic Governing Use of Wealth: Reinvestment for never-ending capital accumulation. Uses money as a medium of exchange between commodities.
• Organization of Labor:
  1. Class organization includes the bourgeoisie (Invest capital) and the proletariat (Sell labor).
  2. Labor Power is bought and sold as a commodity.
• Control of Means of Production: Private ownership.

Totalizing

A form of misrepresentation

• The idea of taking an order with many things going on, and then picking one thing, then representing that as the only thing going on.
  • Ex. The USA in the early 21st century:
    • Is the capitalistic logic of reinvestment for never-ending capital accumulation the only logic governing our economic practices? No. For example, giving/receiving gifts is not represented, nor are tributes (taxes).

Capitalism on the Periphery

Economic activities tend to be less mechanized. They mainly produce raw materials, agricultural commodities, and, increasingly, human labor for export to the core and the semiperiphery.

• Communities that are poorer and predominantly minority are more likely to be the victims of toxic waste exposure than are more affluent or even average (middle-class) communities, these poor living conditions reduce life expectancy.

Routinization of Production & Taylorism

Getting production to seem so routine it becomes “automatic”

• Achieved via automation – usage of machinery in the production process
  • Improving assembly lines
  • Taylorism: Named after the inventor of the scientific approach of massive scale production to improve efficiency, it included optimizing layouts of factories, placements of machines, etc., removing the need for skilled labor.

Multi-National Corporations

Business entity that maintains headquarters in one home country but owns, manages, or controls production, sales, or service facilities in one or more other countries

Free Trade Zones (FTZ)

A designated, secured geographic area where goods can be imported, stored, manufactured, or reconfigured under special customs regulations.

• It was a way to get companies to come to your country, foreign companies were exempt from local laws like pollution reduction.

Proletarianization

Turning workers into efficient production

• A part of achieving the Capitalist Discipline

Capitalist Discipline (In Malaysia)

The goal is to produce as many microchips as possible.

Anthropological Perspectives on "the Political"

Assumptions, contestations, and relations to power.

• Assumptions / Beliefs: Sets up power relations
  • Ex. Malaysian women were spiritually weak compared to men.
• Contestations: Compétitions over power. Ex. elections.
• Everything that links and governs relations between societies.

Power

A form of energy operating through a form of technology to achieve a goal.

• In this definition, people do not “possess” power, it is purely an energy term.

Docile Bodies

Workers who don’t complain, they are compliant.

• Uniforms were also used to be inflexible, it made it difficult to turn and have conversations with others.

Malaysia

Former British colony, now an independent nation for some time

• Malaysia has been pushing for industrialization
  • Encouraged foreign investment
    • Asked foreign companies to invest in infrastructure, manufacturing, etc.
    • Tensions arose as women became industrial workers, working in industries like microchip production.
    • Women were the focal point of discussion of economic “development” in Malaysia

2020 Plan

Produced major changes to the lives of those living in Malaysia.

• People talked about the changes, but talked about them indirectly.
  • Women factory workers were seen negatively. They were seen as TOO bebas (Free, unrestricted by custom), seen as bad and immoral.

Kampung (Village)

Had two cultural sources:

1. Adat
2. Islam

Adat

Unwritten system of customary laws, traditions, and moral norms that govern indigenous and local communities. An Austronesian cultural tradition.

• Once were matrilineal
• There is a strong connection between a mother and her children.

Islam

Introduced to the area around the 13th century

• Authority lied with the father

Rural Malay Gender Constructions

Men had a stronger spiritual essence and spiritual purity. Women had a weaker spiritual essence and could be possessed by spirits. Men therefore have authority over women. Women are controlled because they are seen as a threat to men’s spiritual purity.

Gender & Authority in Village Homes

Men would make decisions of authority

• Women are a threat to men
  • Women can tempt men, so they must be controlled.

Female Threats to Male Spiritual Purity

Men had a stronger spiritual essence and spiritual purity. Women had a weaker spiritual essence and could be possessed by spirits. Men therefore have authority over women.

• Women were controlled because they are seen as a threat to men’s spiritual purity.

Dangerous Places

Places where women were not under male authority. This is due to the cultural belief that women were spiritually weak, while men were spiritually strong and pure, thus being able to protect the women from the Hantu.

Spirits (Hantu)

Evil nature spirits that resided in jungles, Malaysians believed that they could possess people.

Stages of Woman’s Life

• Youth – virgins
  • Weakest state, most vulnerable to evil spirits
  • Under authority of father
  • Stay in village
    • Father can “shield” the woman from evil spirits
    • Supervision is unlike that in factories
• Sexually mature woman
  • A little stronger spiritually
  • Greatest threat to males – can use sexuality to threaten women
  • Married woman
    • Passes authority from her father to her husband
    • Self-disciplining instead of being disciplined by another individual
      • May leave the village and talk to others
    • Divorced/widowed woman (Janda)
      • Most dangerous woman of all
      • Not only can she tempt other men, but she is also not under male authority
      • The janda lies outside villager cultural categories
• Elderly
  • Most spiritually strong

Janda

Divorced/widowed women.

• They were seen as the most dangerous women of them all in Malaysia’s culture.
  • This was because not only could she tempt other men, but she is also not under male authority.

Time in the Kampung vs the Factory

• In the village:
  • Time is passed, not spent.
  • There was no rigid schedule.
  • Time flowed with the rhythm of prayers, chores, and activities.
  • Socializing and work were seamless parts of the daily experience.
    • People would usually work and socialize at the same time. If you could not take the time off to talk to someone, it may be seen as suspicious.
• In the factory:
  • The clock regulates the day
  • “Now is spent”
  • Factory schedules for women factory workers
  • Constantly changing work shifts

Tyranny of the Clock

The clock regulates workers. Where you can be / what you can do is regulated by the clock.

Fractured Day

What used to be a seamless day (Work + gossip together) was broken into a clear work time vs a clear social time.

• As a result of factories regulating workers with clocks.

Differences between Sons and Daughters in Education & Workforce

By secondary school, boys would begin outperforming girls.

• This is due to the fact that many girls were assigned to do household chores, being expected to marry and start families, limiting their time for studying.
  • In recent years, women had a new and unprecedented opportunity: Factory employment.
    • This was a convergence of both the government (Strong economy) and families (New career path).
• Meanwhile boys were excused from chores, expected to study hard and get a government job.
  • These jobs were high paying and had lots of benefits.
  • Thus, families were tolerant of long periods of unemployment.

Changes in Authority in the Village

With the introduction of factory work as an opportunity for women, they started bringing in income for the household. Mothers and daughters became the de facto allocators of income.

• This granted them a bit more power, gave them leverage over their brothers.

Micro-Chip Factories: Attracting a Young Female Workforce

Micro-chip assembly factories hired young women. The reason for this is that it brought certain economic advantages:

1. Low Wages / Labor Costs
   • When a person works at a company for a while, they will get pay raises. But in their culture, women were expected to leave work and start a family, so they would continuously cycle young women workers, keeping wages down.
2. Avoiding Costs Associated With Deteriorating Worker Eyesight:
   • Inefficiencies occur if microchips are not put in well. When their eyesight gets worse, women quit anyway to leave work and raise a family.
3. Tap into structures of local patriarchal authority to get worker compliance.
   • Malaysian women were taught that they were spiritually weaker in comparison to men, so they were less likely to complain/resist, thus making them not protest, go on strike, or elect officials to pass favorable legislation.

Reproduction of Patriarchy in the Factory

Family terms were used within the factory.

• Supervisors are “fathers” to “daughters” (workers).
• Included prayer halls and had tours for parents.

Micro-Chips and Unlimited Production Demands

The goal of power of capitalist discipline in Malaysia was to produce as many micro-chips as possible.

• Women were always encouraged to work faster.

Discipline in the Factory v. the Kampung

• In the factory, there was the sensation that you were always being watched.
  • This stemmed from male supervisors making sure people were focused on making microchips, and two-way mirrors, which created the illusion that somebody could be there, even if there was not anybody.
    • Violating rules in front of the mirror was risky, the mirror changed the women' s behavior
• In Kampung, children had very little supervision, if any, by the parents..

Worker Responses to Stress

• Crying.
• “Accidents”: A subtle form of rebellion (Ex. Dropping/breaking microscopes or making a poor match of microchips).
  • Implies that something was inherently wrong, something needed to change.
• Requests to go to the restroom / prayer hall: There were no supervisors / two-way mirrors there. They were out from under the male eye.
  • However, they were no longer under the supervision and protective authority of men, where hatu may be lurking. This led to spirit possessions.

Spirit Possessions on the Shop Floor

Spirit Possession in the factories regularly interrupted production. It came to the point where companies would have shamans on site to perform exorcisms when they happened (because women wouldn’t come back to a factory until the Hantu were removed).

Bio-Politics (Bio-Power)

The inscription of power relations onto the body.

• Ex. That Malaysian women were spiritually weaker than men.

Malaysia and Constructions of Female Bodies

Micro-Chip Factories used Bio-Politics to justify their use of 3rd world women.

• Oriental Female body: A cultural construction.
  • Ex. They work with great precision with their fingers by nature.
  • “Women get paid to do what they are naturally fit for”
• Corporations SELL this image of East Asian women to negotiate with stakeholders or governments.

Biological Determinism

Constraints/propensities set by biological makeup.

• Instead, these are determined by people’s ideas/imaginations regarding biology.
  • Power differences between men and women are naturalized, as if emanating from biology.

Public Perceptions of Female Factory Workers

Women factory women were seen negatively. They were seen as bad, immoral women. Believing this was indicative of moral collapse, decadence.

• They believe the women were too bebas, that they abused their freedom and fell into sinful ways.
  • This untrue image became so widespread since the young female factory workers were operating outside of Malaysian cultural categories, challenging those traditional, predefined cultural categories.

Bebas

Describes someone who is free, and unrestricted by custom.

• The female factory workers in Malaysia were seen as TOO bebas, abusing their freedom and falling into sinful ways.

Spirit Possession as Resistance

Aihwa Ong argues that is a culturally appropriate way for powerless women in dangerous social spaces to express resistance.

• By being spirit possessed, they are acting exactly how you would expect them to act given the hegemonic discourse of gender.
  • Not done as a deliberate planned form of resistance, essentially a nervous breakdown caused by the tremendous stress the women were under.
• However, it is a weak form of resistance.
  • It does not draw attention to the nature of the problem, but rather dismiss it as Hatu rather than the poor working conditions.
  • They have already accepted a large part f the hegemonic discourse, seeing themselves as spiritually weak.

Hegemony

A condition where the power relations of society are seen as nature/legitimate by the people in the society.

• People accept it as natural, god-give, or the best of other possibilities. Then the inequality will stay since no one goes against it, the inequality will continue.

Public Transcript & Hidden Transcript

• Public Transcript: Deceptive showing to the agents of the power structure that they are not against the hegemonic discourse.
• Hidden Transcript: Real following of counter-hegemonic discourse hidden from the agents of hegemonic discourse.
• Challenging the status-quo can be risky, so having two different transcripts is necessary.

Discourse

A communicated message about truth.

• Ex. Discourse that sickness is caused by pathogens vs a discourse that sickness is caused by black-magic by a sorcerer.
• People’s courses of actions depend on what discourse they follow.
  • Ex. If you believed sickness is caused by pathogens, you would get a vaccine.

Hegemonic Discourse

A message about truth that supports the power relations currently in society.

• Ex. In lords and peasants from Europe’s past. On farms, the hegemonic discourse was that their social order reflected the social order of heaven. This prevented the peasants from rioting, as they believed the inequality was the will of god.

Counter-Hegemonic Discourse

Opposed to hegemonic discourse. A different message of truth that challenges the power relations that were status quo.

• There is a risk in challenging the status quo.

• Can operate underground, hidden from the surveyors of power.

Applied Anthropology

The use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary problems

Cultural Imperialism

The spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures, which it modifies, replaces, or destroys—usually because of differential economic or political influence.

Indigenizing Popular Culture

People continually make and remake culture as they assign their own meanings to the information, images, and products they receive from outside. They fit the culture to fit their own local culture.

Diaspora

A group of people who are dispersed from their original homeland, yet continue to maintain strong cultural, emotional, or political ties with their ancestral roots.

• An example of globality.

Postmodernism in Anthropology

People travel more than ever. But migrants also maintain ties with home, so they live multilocally. The world is in flux, with so many people “in motion,” with people on the move who manage multiple social identities depending on place and context. With globalization, new kinds of political and ethnic units are emerging as others break down or disappear.