Cultural Anthropology Exam 2

Kula

A ritualized pattern of delayed gift-giving involving the exchange of many items, including necklaces (clockwise) and armbands (counterclockwise)

Market Exchanges

a system of economic exchange where goods and services are traded based on supply and demand, often involving currency

Market Principles

A social institution in which people come together to exchange goods and services.

4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion

Currency

Scales of economic interaction

Neoclassical Economic Approach

-Exchange of goods/services and division of labor

-Value is easily calculated

Cultural Economy Approach

-Part of culture

-Is not always rational

-Assumes local morals and social structure are important in guiding economic acts

-Used by most anthropologists

Substantivist Approach

-Actual transactions to acquire what individuals need/desire -Assumes kinship, religion, and state impact economies

Marxist Economic Approach

-Includes natural cycles

-Assumes that different levels of economy rise and fall

-Views motive economy as being part of the natural cycles

-Exploits labor and social inequalities

Reciprocity

The back-and-forth exchange of products, gifts, and objects symbolizes obligations and individual relationships as well as satisfies material needs and wants

PURPOSES: Helping someone in need by sharing with them & Creating, maintaining, strengthening, or weakening relationships. Or, obtaining products made by others for oneself.

Balanced Reciprocity

-Exchanges that are roughly equal in value and exchange at specific intervals for specialized purposes

-These gifts may encourage relationships to stay in balance

Generalized Reciprocity

-Does not track the specific values of items traded

-Signifies close social ties

Negative Reciprocity

-Where people attempt to get the better deal, or create debts for others

-Iis seen as desirable to get as much as you can from outsiders but it is morally wrong to cheat an insider

Prestige Economies

Redistribution can be tied into the status of individuals or descent groups.

Moka

-Ceremonies occur in Papua New Guinea

-Rituals allow Big Men to compete for status

Potlach

-Ceremonies occur in the Pacific Northwest

-Ceremonies associated with funerals, names, status, and privileges can be transferred to the person who is most generous

Social distance

The degree to which cultural norms specify that individuals or groups should be helpful to, intimate with, or emotionally attached to one another.

Redistribution

The collection and distribution of goods by a centralized authority.

Tribute

Is the rendering of goods, including foods, to an authority, such as a chief, to be reallocated.

Taxes

Money is collected and used (redistributed) for the whole community or country.

The discussion of values and value

Your cultural morality not only varies but that the variation in moral/cultural values impacts how you value resources (to include material and non-material resources-like ideas)

Obligations

The expectations associated with gift giving

-Establishes the giver as generous and worthy of respect

-Respect to the giver

-Return the gift in appropriate ways, which demonstrates honor

Foragers

-Subsistence is based on the gathering, hunting, and fishing of wild materials

-Nomadic (highly mobile) and have low population density

-Live in structures that range from permanent to temporary based on level of group mobility and availability of resources

Horticulturalists

The cultivation of gardens or small fields to meet the basic needs of a household.

Pastoralists

-Adaptations based on tending, breeding, and harvesting the products of livestock

-Often puts people into conflict-prone situations

Agriculturalists

-Mode of cultivation in which animals or machinery are used to produce crops

-Soils are used more intensively, meaning that more crops are produced per land parcel

-Involves irrigation and fertilization techniques to replenish nutrients and maintain stable water sources

-Ranges from simple farms to industrial forms of food production

-Industrial applies industrial principles to farming

Nomadic

Moving the herds from pasture to pasture on a seasonal schedule within a well-defined territory.

Sedentism

The practice of establishing a permanent, year-round settlement. stationary living.

Herd animals

Cattle, camels, llamas and alpaca, yaks, reindeer, sheep, goats, horses, etc.

Slash and Burn

-Farming method in tropical regions in which the farmer slashes and burns small area of forest to release plant nutrients into the soil

-As soil fertility declines, the farmer allows the plot to regenerate into a forest.

Dry Farming

method of agriculture where farmers grow crops using only the rainfall available in the specific are without relying on irrigation systems

considered more sustainable

Timing of the "agrarian/agricultural" transition

10,000-12,000 years ago

Foraging Benefits

-Enables greater surpluses of resources

-It reduces the distance needed to seek food-it allows for population size and density to increase

-It frees up a large portion of the population to engage in other (non-food based) occupations

Foraging Consequences

-Increased labor requirements

-Reduced mobility

-Environmental conditions like droughts or increased rain can be more significant-increased disease load-increased waste and waste management issues

-Fewer individuals work directly with food production-leaders of condensed settlements need to organize labor to construct public works

-Conflicts and disputes between families may require outside mediation and settlement requiring leadership positions to handle these incidences

Misconceptions of foraging

-They have a difficult time finding food

-They need to compete with dangerous conditions in nature like wild animals

-They consume mostly meat products-that they work very hard, long hours-that they are more prone to illness and injury

-These misconceptions suggest that modern (industrialized) agricultural lifestyles are superior to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which is ultimately not the case

Persuasion

Leaders can try to convince others using their charisma or social influence

Coercion

Leaders may use force and authority to command actions

Centralized Political System

-A system where some individuals or institutions hold power and control over resources.

-Commonly found in chiefdoms and states. Ranked societies like chiefdoms have distinctions in access or acquisition of status and wealth based on kinship exist, but access to basic resources do not have important restrictions.

-Kin groups and their members can be ranked, with greater ranks obtaining greater rewards.

Non-Centralized Political System

-Dispersed power and resources. Commonly found in bands and tribes.

-Primary ideas are: you're not born into vastly different power/prestige/ wealth positions, and there are not external governing bodies

Ranked Societies

-Distinctions in access or acquisition of status and wealth based on kinship exist, but access to basic resources do not have important restrictions

-There are few high-ranked positions available

-Kin groups and their members can be ranked (by seniority), with greater ranks obtaining greater rewards-chiefdoms are an example of ranked societies

Stratified Societies

characterized by a hierarchical ranking of individuals and groups based on factors like wealth, power, and status, leading to unequal access to resources and opportunities

Egalitarian Societies

-Little to no distinctions in access of acquisition of status

-Leadership roles are temporary and based on situational needs and appropriate skill sets

Achieved Status

Earned accomplishments (individual choices, desires, efforts, skills)

Ascribed Status

Born into heredity

Simple Ranked

one that ranks individuals in terms of their genealogical distance from the chief

Caste System

Social stratification where membership is hereditary, strata are endogamous, and contact/relationships between strata are prohibited or otherwise limited. Social mobility between castes is not allowed.

Class System

System of stratification that can be altered by marriage or other increases in access to power, wealth, and prestige

Intensive land use

-Large-scale, often commercial, agriculture.

-Largely affects the land

-Technology and other tools are used for efficiency

Extensive land use

use covers a large area with less intensive management, resulting in lower yields but potentially more sustainable practices.

Bands

-25 to several hundred people

-Hunter-gatherers

-Informal politics

-Egalitarian. Differential wealth is not desired

-Highly mobile, nomadic

-Temporary, but easily detected archaeologically. Requires temporary, short-term access to much land

Tribes

-1,000-20,000 members

-Part-time slash-and-burn along with pastoralism (herding).

-Few formalized roles of leadership with limited authority

-Egalitarian

-Semisedidentary/seminomadic

Chiefdoms

-Few thousand-30,000 members

-Horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism

-Formalized political organization

-Limited mobility, sedentary

States

-Tens of thousands-millions

-Agriculture

-Highly developed state organization of politics

-Sedentary

Rite of passage ceremony

A public ceremony that marks, recognizes, celebrates, or is believed to actually cause a change in a person's status (marks milestones)

3 phases of rights of passage

1-Separation

2-Liminal

3-Reintegration

Liminality

Apply all transitions and rituals everywhere, including resolving conflict.

Communitas

-Spirit of community where people are equal

-Used to describe a society in a transitional period