cultural anthropology midterm2

Enculturation

the process of being socialized to a particular culture. This includes learning the language, customs, biases, and values of the culture. also, the individual learns the statuses, roles, rules, and values of his or her own culture. The most intensive period of this is usually during early childhood, but the process continues throughout life.

Food foragers/Hunters and Gatherer's

people who live in more or less isolated, small societies and obtain their food by gathering wild plants and hunting wild animals. they generally have a passive dependence on what the environment contains. They do not plant crops and the only domesticated animals that they usually have are dogs. Most of these societies do not establish permanent settlements. Rather, they have relatively temporary encampments with tents or other easily constructed dwellings. The length of time that they stay in any one location is largely determined by the availability of resources.

Today's food foraging societies

...

Food Producers

people who raise crops and animals to produce food

Horticulture/Swidden

people who obtain most of their food by low intensity farming. This subsistence pattern involves at least part time planting and tending of domesticated food plants. Pigs, chickens, or other relatively small domesticated animals are often raised for food and prestige. Many horticultural societies supplement their farming subsistence base with occasional hunting and gathering of wild plants and animals. They usually practice slash and burn field clearing methods and do not add additional fertilizer or irrigate. Multi-cropping is common. They often have a partial reliance on foraging for wild foods. Their societies are usually larger and more sedentary than those of foragers but still are at a low technological level and relatively small-scale.

Intensive Agriculture

Crop cultivation using technologies other than hand tools, such as irrigation. fertilizers and machinery or the wooden or metal plow pulled by harnessed draft animals.

Pastoralism

is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. it is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep.

In a food foraging society, how do people store food for the future?

they rely on their environment as a natural storehouse

Big Man

refers to a highly influential individual in a tribe, such person may not have formal tribal or other authority (through for instance material possessions, or inheritance of rights), but can maintain recognition through skilled persuasion and wisdom. the big man has a large group of followers, both from his clan and from other clans. he provides his followers with protection and economic assistance, in return receiving support which he uses to increase his status.

Marriage

a socially approved sexual relationship between two individuals.

Functions of Marriage

it creates a family. It specifies legal, economic, and sexual rights and responsibilities. It creates alliances.

Incest Taboo

a norm forbidding sexual relations or marriage between certain relatives.

Endogamy

marriage between people of the same social category

Exogamy

marriage between people of different social categories

Polygamy

a form of marriage in which a person may have two or more spouses simultaneously.

Polygyny

a form of polygamy in which a man may have more than one wife at the same time.

Polyandry

a form of polygamy in which a woman may have more than one husband at the same time.

Sororal or fraternal polygamy

sororal polygamy is a polygyny in which the wives are sisters. fraternal polygamy is a form of polyandry in which a woman is married to two or more men who are one another's brothers.

Levirate and Sororate

a custom whereby a man marries the widow of his dead brother; a custom whereby, when a woman dies, her kin group supplies a sister as a wife for the widower

Cross cousin

the children of a parent's siblings of the opposite sex (mother's brothers, father's sisters).

Parallel cousin

your father's brother's children, or your mother's sister's children.

Unilineal

establishes group membership exclusively through either the male or female line

Matrilineal

relating to a social system in which family descent and inheritance rights are traced through the mother

Patrilineal

relating to a social system in which family descent and inheritance rights are traced through the father

Avuncolocal

system under which a married couple lives with the husband's mother's brother

Neolocal

refers to the pattern in which newly married couples set up their own households

Ambilocal

the couple may reside with either the husband's or the wife's group

Extended Family

a family consisting of parents and children as well as other kin, such as uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, cousins, and grandparents.

Nuclear Family

a married couple and their unmarried children living together.

Household

a person or group of people living in the same residence.

Matriarchal

a family unit that places the mother in the role of leadership

Patriarchal

relating to a society in which men hold the greatest legal and moral authority

Bride Price

money or property that the future groom pays the future bride's family so that he can marry her.

Clan

a group of people who claim uni-lineal descent from the same ancestor but who cannot specify all of the actual links. The ancestor is genealogically so remote that he or she is often thought of as a mythical being, animal, or plant. Clans usually consist of a number of related uni-lineages.

Lineage

bloodline descent from a common ancestor.

Phratry

a group of two or more clans that have a tie to one another, often based on a historical relationship; obligations and rights are expected between clans in this relationship.

Moiety

each group that results from a division of a society in to two halves.

Kindred

a person's relatives; a family relationship; related by blood; like, similar.

Age Grade

age-based categories of people recognized by a culture. In North America, for example, we generally label people as children, teenagers, adults, middle aged, and elderly or senior citizens.

Age Set

a formally established group of people born during a certain time span who move through the series of age-grade categories together.

By tracing membership either through males or through females, members of unilineal descent groups

know exactly to which group they belong and where their primary loyalties lie.

A phratry is a unilineal descent group composed of two or more _______________ that believe they are related to each other.

clans

In a(n) _______________ descent group, membership is traced either through males or through females but not both.

unilineal

The word "moiety" comes from the French word for _______________, and exists when a society is divided into two and only two major descent groups.

half

Iroquois kinship

bilateral system that distinguishes cross from parallel cousins

Descriptive kinship

most specialized system with a different term for each kin position.

Eskimo/Inuit kinship

bilateral system that distinguishes the nuclear family from all others

Crow kinship

a system linked to matrilineality

Hawaiian kinship

(Generational) generalized system that notes only generation and gender