Anthropology: Economic Systems, Political Organization, and Ethnographic Studies

Vocabulary flashcards detailing key anthropological theories, economic systems, political typologies, rites of passage, and ethnographic case studies from lecture notes.

Kula

Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea) ceremonial exchange ring studied by Malinowski; shell necklaces and armbands circulate between lifelong partners for prestige and alliance, not profit; balanced reciprocity.

Soulava

Red shell necklaces that travel CLOCKWISE in the Kula ring.

Mwali

White shell armbands that travel COUNTERCLOCKWISE in the Kula ring.

Gimwali

Ordinary barter of everyday goods that happens alongside Kula voyages.

Bronislaw Malinowski

Anthropologist who studied the Kula ring (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922).

Market exchange

Buying and selling at prices set by supply and demand, usually with money; impersonal, profit-oriented, relationship ends after the transaction.

Reciprocity

Exchange of goods/services between relative equals, embedded in social relationships; no central collector.

Redistribution

Goods/money flow INTO a central authority and are then given back OUT; requires centralization (chiefdoms, states).

Supply and demand

Market principle: prices are set by how scarce something is and how much people want it.

Invisible hand

Adam Smith's idea that individuals pursuing self-interest and competing for limited resources produce efficient allocation overall.

Currency (money)

Medium of exchange, standard of value, store of wealth, and means of payment.

General-purpose money

Money that can buy almost anything (e.g., dollars).

Special-purpose (limited-purpose) money

Money exchangeable only for certain things (e.g., shell valuables, pigs, coppers, cattle as bridewealth).

Neoclassical (Formalist) approach

Assumes a universal rational actor who maximizes profit/benefit under scarcity; applies Western market models to all cultures.

Cultural economy approach

Economic behavior is shaped by cultural values, beliefs, and meanings; what is valuable is culturally constructed.

Substantivist approach

Karl Polanyi's framework stating the economy is embedded in social relationships; Western market models are not universal; identifies three modes of exchange: reciprocity, redistribution, market.

Karl Polanyi

Substantivist economist who identified reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.

Marxist economic approach

Focuses on modes of production, who controls the means of production, class, power, inequality, and exploitation.

Prestige economy

Economic system where people seek status by GIVING AWAY wealth; gifts create debt and raise the giver's standing.

Moka

Competitive ceremonial exchange in the Papua New Guinea highlands organized by big men; recipients must later return MORE to gain prestige.

Potlatch

Pacific Northwest Coast feast where a host gives away (sometimes destroyed) wealth to validate rank, hereditary names, and titles; guests act as witnesses.

Big man

Leader whose status is ACHIEVED through generosity, persuasion, and organizing exchanges; cannot coerce (e.g., Ongka).

Rubbish man

In Papua New Guinea highlands, a man with nothing to give and no prestige.

Social distance

How close or distant a relationship is; closest = generalized reciprocity, intermediate = balanced, most distant = negative reciprocity/market (Sahlins).

Tribute

Goods or labor given to a chief or ruler, often partly redistributed through feasts; form of redistribution in chiefdoms.

Taxes

State-level redistribution: government collects money and returns it as public services.

Household (pooling)

Smallest-scale redistribution: members pool resources that are shared out to meet everyone's needs.

Gift economy

System where goods circulate as gifts that create and maintain social bonds.

Marcel Mauss

Author of The Gift (1925); established that gifts are never free and identified obligations to give, receive, and reciprocate.

Three obligations of the gift

To give, to receive, and to reciprocate (repay).

Balanced reciprocity

Return of roughly equal value expected within a set time frame; intermediate social distance (e.g., Kula, taking turns buying lunch, holiday gift swaps).

Generalized reciprocity

Giving without expecting immediate or equal return; no one keeps count; closest relationships (e.g., parents feeding kids, foragers sharing meat).

Negative reciprocity

Trying to get something for nothing or more than you give; strangers/enemies (e.g., hard haggling, cheating, theft, raiding).

Value vs. values

Value = an item's worth; values = cultural morals and beliefs that shape what is valued and how it is exchanged.

Subsistence strategy

The way a society gets its food.

Foragers

Hunt, gather, and fish wild resources; small mobile egalitarian bands; low density; extensive land use; more leisure (e.g., Ju/'hoansi, Hadza, Inuit).

Horticulturalists

Grow crops with simple hand tools (digging stick, hoe), no plow/irrigation; fields left fallow; semi-sedentary tribes; extensive (e.g., Yanomami, Trobrianders, Kawelka).

Pastoralists

Herd domesticated animals; nomadic or transhumant; trade with farmers; livestock = wealth; extensive (e.g., Maasai, Nuer, Basseri).

Agriculturalists

Intensive farming with plows, draft animals, irrigation, fertilizer; continuous field use; sedentary, dense, surplus, stratified, states.

Traditional (peasant) agriculture

Intensive farming using family labor, animal power, irrigation, and terraces.

Industrial agriculture

Intensive farming using machinery, fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers/pesticides, monocrops; few farmers feed many.

Nomadism

Regularly moving residence to follow resources; foragers and pastoralists.

Transhumance

Part of a group moves herds seasonally between pastures while others stay.

Sedentism

Living in permanent year-round settlements; associated with agriculture.

Herd animals

Social grazing animals suited to domestication: cattle, sheep, goats, camels, horses, reindeer, yaks, llamas.

Slash-and-burn (swidden)

Cut and burn vegetation (ash fertilizes), plant a few years, then leave fallow and move to a new plot; horticulture.

Fallow

Leaving a field unplanted so the soil can recover.

Dry farming

Farming without irrigation in arid areas, relying on rainfall and moisture-saving techniques (e.g., Hopi corn).

TEK

Traditional Environmental/Ecological Knowledge: multigenerational Indigenous/local knowledge of plants, animals, seasons, fire, and sustainable use.

Agricultural (Neolithic) transition timing

Began about 10,000-12,000 years ago, first in the Fertile Crescent, then independently elsewhere.

Fertile Crescent

Southwest Asia region where agriculture first appeared.

Original affluent society

Marshall Sahlins' description of foragers: fewer work hours, more leisure, adequate diets.

Extensive land use

Large areas of land, low labor/technology per unit, land rests; low density; foraging, pastoralism, horticulture.

Intensive land use

Same land used continuously with heavy labor/technology inputs to maximize yield; high density; agriculture.

Unilineal cultural evolution

19th-century idea (Morgan, Tylor) that all societies progress through the same stages (savagery, barbarism, civilization) with the West at the top; rejected as ethnocentric.

Ethnocentrism

Judging other cultures by the standards of your own and seeing yours as superior.

Power

The ability to get others to do what you want.

Authority

Power that is seen as legitimate.

Coercion

Getting compliance through force or threat of force; typical of states.

Persuasion

Influencing others through argument, charisma, generosity, reputation; no ability to force; typical of bands and big men.

Non-centralized political system

No permanent ruling authority; consensus decisions; informal leaders; bands and tribes.

Centralized political system

Authority concentrated in permanent offices; hierarchical; chiefdoms and states.

Egalitarian society

Equal access to resources, power, and prestige for people of the same age and gender; foraging bands.

Ranked society

Unequal access to PRESTIGE but everyone has access to basic resources; chiefdoms (e.g., Pacific Northwest Coast, Polynesia).

Stratified society

Unequal access to WEALTH, POWER, and PRESTIGE; distinct classes or castes; states.

Leveling mechanisms

Practices that prevent anyone from gaining too much status or wealth (e.g., sharing, joking, insulting the meat).

Achieved status

Status earned through actions or choices (e.g., college graduate, doctor, spouse, big man).

Ascribed status

Status assigned at birth or without choice (e.g., sex, age, race, caste, royalty, hereditary title).

Acephalous

'Headless'; a society with no formal leader or central government; decisions by consensus.

Autonomous society

Local groups govern themselves without a central authority.

Caste system

Closed, ascribed at birth, endogamous, hereditary occupations, purity/pollution rules, little or no mobility (e.g., Hindu India).

Class system

Relatively open stratification based on wealth, income, occupation, education; mobility possible (e.g., U.S.).

Endogamy

Marrying within your own group (e.g., caste).

Varna

The four main Hindu caste categories: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra (Dalits outside).

Jati

Local, occupation-based caste groups in India.

Sahlins and Service

Anthropologists whose typology ranks socio-political organization: band, tribe, chiefdom, state.

Band

Dozens of people; foragers; nomadic; low density; egalitarian; informal leader by persuasion; most leisure.

Tribe

Hundreds to a few thousand; horticulturalists or pastoralists; semi-sedentary villages; kin groups and sodalities; mostly egalitarian; big men or village heads.

Chiefdom

Thousands+; intensive farming or rich fishing; permanent settlements; ranked; hereditary chief; redistribution via tribute; centralized.

State

Large; intensive/industrial agriculture; cities; stratified; bureaucracy, laws, taxes, army; monopoly on legitimate force; least leisure.

Sodality

Group that cuts across kin and villages to unite a tribe (e.g., age sets).

Rite of passage

Ritual marking a person's transition from one social status or life stage to another (Arnold van Gennep).

Arnold van Gennep

Defined rites of passage and their three phases (1909).

Separation phase

First phase of a rite of passage: removal from the old status (e.g., head shaving at boot camp, initiates taken to the bush).

Liminal (transition) phase

Second phase of a rite of passage: 'betwixt and between' old and new status; seclusion, ordeals, instruction, uniform clothing.

Incorporation (reaggregation) phase

Third phase of a rite of passage: return to society with new status (e.g., receiving diploma, being pronounced married).

Liminality

Victor Turner's term for the ambiguous in-between state where normal rules and statuses are suspended.

Communitas

Victor Turner's term for intense solidarity and equality among people who go through the liminal phase together.

Victor Turner

Anthropologist who developed the concepts of liminality and communitas.

Hurston 'Zombies' : country

Haiti.

Zombie (Hurston)

'Bodies without souls. The living dead.' Once dead, then called back to life.

Hounfort

Voodoo temple and its surrounding grounds.

Loa

Spirits in Haitian Voodoo.

Houngan

Voodoo priest who serves the loa.

Bocor

Sorcerer who works harmful magic and makes Zombies; line between bocor and houngan is blurry.

How the Bocor steals the soul

Rides a horse BACKWARDS to the victim's house at night and sucks out the soul through the crack of the door.

Why the zombie is led past his old house

So he will never recognize it and return.

What makes the victim a Zombie at the hounfort

A drop of a secret liquid.

What lets a Zombie speak again

Salt.

Ba Moun ('give man')

Pact with a spirit for wealth paid by sacrificing family members or close friends each year; finally the man himself.