Cultural Anthropology

Globalization

The increasing worldwide integration of economies, cultures, politics, and people through trade, migration, technology, and communication.

Transnationalism

Social, economic, and cultural ties and practices that cross national borders, such as migrants maintaining life in two or more countries.

Columbian Exchange

The massive transfer of plants, animals, people, diseases, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World after 1492.

Supranational Organization

An entity or governing authority that transcends national boundaries and holds jurisdiction or power over member states.

Washington Consensus

A set of free-market policy prescriptions—including privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization, and fiscal austerity—promoted in the 1980s and 1990s for developing economies.

World Bank

An international financial institution that provides loans and grants to governments of low- and middle-income countries for development projects.

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

A 1994 trade agreement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico that removed most tariffs, later replaced by the USMCA in 2020.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

An international institution that lends capital to countries facing balance-of-payments crises, typically requiring conditional reforms like austerity or structural adjustment.

Neoliberal Economics

An economic ideology favoring free markets, privatization, deregulation, reduced public spending, and limited state intervention.

Extractivism

An economic model based on removing large quantities of raw natural resources for export, typically benefiting outside entities while harming local communities and environments.

Four I's of Oppression

A framework identifying oppression across four distinct domains: ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.

Structural Violence

Harm caused by inequitable social structures and institutional arrangements that prevent people from meeting basic human needs, without a single direct perpetrator.

Structural Power

A form of power, described by Eric Wolf, that organizes and shapes the settings of social interaction and dictates what is possible rather than operating in direct interactions.

Intersectionality

A framework developed by Kimberle Crenshaw analyzing how overlapping social identities interact to produce distinct experiences of discrimination and privilege.

Praxis

The ongoing cycle of theory and reflection translated into concrete action, particularly for social change.

Biological Sex

Physical and physiological characteristics, including chromosomes, hormones, and anatomical traits, used to categorize organisms as male, female, or intersex.

Gender

The socially and culturally constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and expectations learned within a given society.

Gender Expression

The external presentation of gender through clothing, appearance, mannerisms, and voice.

Gender Identity

An individual internal, deeply felt sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth.

Nature vs. Nurture

The long-standing debate concerning the degree to which human traits and behaviors arise from biological/genetic factors versus environmental and cultural influences.

Gender Binary

A cultural classification system dividing gender into only two mutually exclusive, opposite categories.

Sexuality

A person patterns of romantic, emotional, physical, and sexual attraction toward others.

Homophobia

Prejudice, aversion, hatred, or discrimination directed against lesbian, gay, or bisexual individuals.

Heterosexism

An institutional and cultural system that privileges heterosexuality and treats other sexual orientations as subordinate or deviant.

Heteronormativity

The societal assumption that heterosexuality is the default or natural orientation, coupled with the expectation that people conform to traditional gender roles.

Cisnormativity

The cultural assumption that all individuals identify with the gender typically associated with the sex designated to them at birth.

Cissexism

Systemic bias, prejudice, and discrimination that privileges cisgender people over transgender and nonbinary people.

Transphobia

Aversion, hatred, hostility, or discrimination directed at transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

The Trevor Project

A national nonprofit organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.

Settler Colonialism

A form of colonial domination where colonizers permanently settle to replace Indigenous populations and gain permanent control of land.

Decolonization

The ongoing process of dismantling colonial structures, mindsets, and power systems, including restoring Indigenous sovereignty, knowledge, and land rights.

Cultural Determinism

The theoretical viewpoint that learned culture, rather than biology, primarily shapes human thought, emotion, and behavior.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to evaluate other cultural practices by using the standards and values of one own culture, often presuming one own is superior.

Cultural Relativism

The anthropological principle of interpreting beliefs and behaviors within the context of the culture in which they occur rather than through external moral judgments.

Holism

The anthropological approach of examining human life by analyzing its biological, social, linguistic, and historical dimensions as an interconnected whole.

Cognitive Sovereignty

The recognized right of a distinct community or Indigenous group to govern their own knowledge systems, epistemologies, and representations.

Four Fields of Anthropology

The four traditional subdisciplines comprising academic anthropology: cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological.

Fieldwork

Firsthand, immersive empirical research conducted directly within the community or setting under study.

Participant Observation

A core ethnographic method involving immersion in the everyday life of a group while systematically observing and recording interactions.

Field Notes

The descriptive, systematic written records of observations, dialogue, and reflections compiled by a researcher during fieldwork.

Informed Consent

The voluntary agreement given by participants to take part in research after being fully briefed on the project purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits.

Museum Collections and Repatriation

The ethical and political debate over the ownership, display, and return of cultural artifacts and human remains acquired during colonial eras.

Race (Social Construct)

A socio-historical system of grouping humans based on perceived physical traits, having profound social consequences despite lacking a biological basis.

Racism

Prejudice and discrimination reinforced by social and institutional power systems that confer systemic advantage to some groups over others.

Cline

A gradual, continuous change in a genetic trait or phenotypic frequency across a geographic gradient.

Ethnicity

Social affiliation and group identity grounded in shared cultural heritage, ancestry, language, history, or religion.

Assimilation

The social process through which a minority group adopts the cultural practices and values of a dominant group, frequently at the expense of their original identity.

Multiculturalism

An ideology or public policy that recognizes, values, and preserves distinct cultural identities coexisting harmoniously within a single society.

Amalgamation

The biological and cultural blending of distinct populations into a unified group through widespread intermarriage and integration.