Anthro vocab #5

Agency

Agency

the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. May be constrained by class, gender, religion and social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events.

Analytical catergories

An outsider’s view of a culture sometimes referred to as an “etic” view: classifying and understanding traits as representing cross-culturally applicable terms and categories rather than culturally specific meanings.

Comparative

Comparison of the diverse and various ways that people make sense of their world brings anthropologists greater understanding of communities, cultures and societies.

Cosmopolitanism

Communities include individuals who live together with cultural difference.

Cultural boundaries

An essentialist view presumes fixed boundaries for a culture; a constructivist view assumes individuals and groups have the capacity to define and redefine their cultural identities and spheres of influence.

Development

The concept of development refers to more economically developed societies providing assistance and resources to less economically developed societies, either directly through bilateral aid or indirectly via other agencies. Development also refers to self-directed industrial, technological and economic improvement.

Diaspora

The dispersal of peoples from homelands to establish new, migrated communities in other places.

Exclusion

The failure of society to provide certain individuals and groups with those rights and benefits normally available to its members.

Fieldwork

When an anthropologist becomes immersed in the local life of a group of people for the purpose of learning about their culture.

Imagined Community

The idea that a community is to some extent constructed in the minds of the people who consider themselves to belong to it.