UConn ANTH 1000 Final Study Guide

Religion as a social fact

Anthropologists study religion as a _______, not as a theological fact.

Sacred

Things we set apart as extraordinary, inspiring awe and reverence

Profane

Routine aspects of our day-to-day existence

Animism

Earliest form of religion, belief in spiritual beings

Polytheism

Belief in multiple gods

Monotheism

Belief in a single, all-powerful diety

Rite of passage

1. Separation

2. Liminality

3. (Re)Incorporation

Emile Durkeim

Said religion revolves around a distinction between the sacred and the profane

Mana

Sacred impersonal force that can reside in people, animals, plants, objects. Similar to good luck.

Imitative Magic

Magicians produce the desired effect by imitating it

Contagious magic

Whatever is done to an object is believed to affect the person who once had contact with that object

Origin Myth

How the physical world came to be, how beings came to be, how the relationship between gods and humans came to be

Religion as social control

Religion helps people cope with uncertainty, adversity, fear, tragedy. Can also be used by political leaders to justify their views and policies.

Religious specialists

Religious figures believed capable of mediating between human and supernatural

Communitas

Intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness

Costly Signalling

Promote intragroup cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion

Cargo Cults

A system of belief based around the expected arrival of ancestral spirits in bringing cargoes of food and other goods

Nowruz

Islamic New Year/Persian New Year

Social Constructs

Socially created concepts with social meaning and function

Social Construction Examples

Race, ethnicity, gender, nation-states, etc

Ethnicity

A sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group

Race

Social construct, skin color

Nation-States

Autonomous, centrally organized political entity that claims to represent a single nation

Scientific Racism

1. Biological races are real

2. Biological race is strongly associated with other human phenomena

3. Race is a valid scientific category that can be used to explain and predict individual & group behavior

Fallacy of Biological Race

Pretending race doesn't exist does not create equality

Medical Anthropology

A subfield of anthropology that draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand certain factors.

Medical Anthropology Focus

Health inequality

Medical Anthropology Approaches and Traditions

Biological, ecological, ethnomedical, clinical, experiential, critical

Disease

Rooted in biology, quantifiable, based on Western science based technological interventions, anchoring concept in biomedicine, finds pathology in the individual body, assumed to be universal

Illness

How disease is experiences by patients and their families and communities

Biopychosocial Model of Health

Focuses on the relationships between: Mind & Body, Cognition & Behavior, Internal & External, Expectation & Outcome, Religion & Health, Belief & Healing

Ethnomedicine

Focuses on how members of different cultures think about disease and treatment of health concerns

Biomedicine

Emphasizes disease, sees body as a machine, deeply concerned with normal v. abnormal, taps powerful emotions

N/um Tchai

Healing power

Healing Process

1. Healer must believe in their power to heal

2. Patient must believe in the healer's power to heal

3. The broader social group must believe in the power of the healer and the possibility of recovery

Claude Levi-Strauss

Created the healing process steps

Byron Good

Concerned with the social construction of medical reality and the process students becoming doctors

Socialization into the Medical Profession

Process of coming to inhabit a new world. New ways of seeing, speaking, and writing

Arthur Kleinman

Separated disease v. illness

Illness Narratives

Book by Arthur Kleinman

Marry Jo DelVecchio-Good

The medical imaginary, the biotechnical embrace, and salvation ethos

The Medical Gaze

Leads to new understandings of: human body, relationship between body and a person, boundaries who can cross them and when, responsibilities for handling information including secrets, how to see speak and write

Medical Imaginary

"The cure" that is not yet discovered provides medical enthusiasm

Biotechnical Embrace

Surrounded by technology in the medical field

Salvation Ethos

Death = Failure

Tanya Luhrmann

Said the experience of disorder can be influenced by culture

Culture and Mental Health

Mental illnesses may be shaped by cultural location and this affects the treatment and outcome

Culture-Bound Syndrome

Illnesses specific to certain cultures. Susto, anorexia, ADHD

Industrialization

Export industrial good and commodities

Immanuel Wallerstein

Created the World-System Theory

Stratification

The world system is characterized by substaintial divide between those in the core countries who control capital and workers. Fundamental cause of inequality

World Systems Theory

An identifiable social system based on wealth and power differentials, extends beyond individual countries. Core, periphery, and semi-periphery

Imperialism

Policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations and of taking and holding colonies

Colonialism

Political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended period of time

Development

First world, second world, third world, common but ethnocentric way of categorizing countries

Triangle Trade

Slave trade. Africa -> Americas -> Europe. Slaves and goods.

The White Man's Burden

Ideology that native peoples in the empire could not govern themselves and British guidance was needed to civilize and Christianize them

Applied Anthropology

Uses anthropological theories, methods, and data to solve human problems

Ruth Benedict

A student of Franz Boas, and a teacher of Margaret Mead, culture at a distance

Business Anthropology

Using key features in business: Ethnography and observation as ways of gathering data, cross cultural expertise, focus on cultural diversity

Roles of Applied Anthropologists

Help make anthropology relevant and useful to the world beyond anthropology

Ethical Responsibilities of Applied Anthropologists

Primary obligation to the people, species, or materials they study. Respect safety, dignity, and privacy of subject studied. Informed consent.

Diaspora

People who come from a common ethnic background but who live in different regions outside of the home of their ethnicity

Globalization

Web of processes that promote change in an increasingly interlinked and mutually interdependent world

Cultural Hybridity

Cultural mixing, borrowing with modification, domesticating or individualizing cultural forms or practices from elsewhere

Cultural Imperialism

The spread or advancement of one culture at the expense of others, which it modifies, replaces, or destroys

Climate Change

Causes are mainly anthropogenic, caused by humans and human activities

Environmental Anthropology

Attempts to not only understand, but also work towards solving environmental problems

Liminality

The critically important marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage

Magic

Use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims

Religion

Beliefs and rituals concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces

Revitalization Movements

Movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society

Rituals

Behavior that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as a social act; held at set times and places and have liturgical orders

Shaman

A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between ordinary people and supernatural beings and forces

Taboo

Prohibition by supernatural sanctions

Totem

An animal, plant, or geographic feature associated with a specific social group, to which that totem is sacred or symbolically important

Assimilation

The process of change that a minority group may experience when it moves to a country where another culture dominates; the minority is incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit

Clines

Gradual shift in gene frequencies between neighboring populations

Cultural Colonialism

Within a nation or an empire, domination by one ethnic group or nationality and its culture/ideology over others

Descent

Rule assigning social identity on the basis of some aspect of one's ancestry

Discrimination

Policies and practices that harm a group and its members

Ethnocide

Destruction by a dominant group of the culture of an ethnic group

Genocide

Policies aimed at, and/or resulting in, the physical extinction (through mass murder) of a people perceived as a racial group, that is, as sharing defining physical, genetic, or other biological characteristics

Hypodescent

Rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less privileged group

Multiculturalism

The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable, a multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture

Nationalities

Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country)

Natural Selection

The process by which nature selects the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment, such as the tropics

Phenotype

An organism's evident traits

Plural Society

A society that combines ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization and the economic interdependence of those groups

Prejudice

Devaluing a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes

Racial Classification

The attempt to assign humans to discrete categories based on common ancestry

Racism

Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis

Refugees

People who have been forced or who have chosen to flee a country, to escape persecution or war

Stereotypes

Fixed ideas, often unfavorable, about what members of a group are like

Anthropology and Education

Anthropological research in classrooms, homes, and neighborhoods, viewing students as total cultural creatures whose enculturation and attitudes toward education belong to a larger context that includes family, peers, society

Curer

Specialized role acquired through a culturally appropriate process of selection, training, certification, and acquisition of a professional image; the curer is consulted by patients, who believe in his or her special powers, and receives some form of special consideration; a cultural universal

Development Anthropology

The branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development

Health Care Systems

Beliefs, customs, and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal

Increased Equity

A reduction in absolute poverty, with a more even distribution of wealth

Overinnovation

Characteristic of development projects that require major changes in people's daily lives, especially ones that interfere with customary subsistence pursuits