Anthrcul101 Exam 1
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Holism/Holistic and Comparative
Past and present, different domains of life.
Blends biological, cultural, historical, material, linguistic, social, and historical perspectives.
Working to build theories about how social and cultural systems work.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Plane Example
Human are (often) eager to understand, be understood, cooperate with, and empathize with one another.
When people are on a plane together everyone tries to understand each other and be kind - e.g. baby crying is annoying everyone but people look at mom with sympathy, when a seated person is bumped by a person walking down the aisle they just smile
Ultrasocial behavior
Eagerness to collaborate, even with non-kin and strangers. “Ultra-Sociality” contributes to a uniquely human capacity for culture.
E.g. basketball game, shrek rave
Zhang Qian
2nd c BCE
Diplomat on behalf of the Han dynasty who traveled extensively through Asia, contributing to the development of the Silk Road.
Extensive travel reports
Herodotus
484-425 BCE
Greek traveler who wrote about “gold digging ants.”
In addition to recording history, he also made a point to describe the cultural backgrounds of the places he visited, especially the different peoples under the control of the Persian Empire.
Ibn Battuta
1304-1369 CE
Berber scholar and traveler.
Extensively traveled North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Asia.
Memoir and account of his journeys.
Which three ancient travelers produced early examples of the genre of “ethnography”?
Zhang Qian, Herodotus, Ibn Battuta
Ethnography
A type of writing about people based on fieldwork in a particular cultural setting - writing down details, making comparisons.
When/Where did anthropology as a discipline first develop?
Begins in the “Age of Enlightenment” in Europe (18th century) and continues into the 19th century.
Colonialism
The political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.
Most early anthropological studies (19th century) often took place in areas under European colonial domination.
Describe 19th century anthropology.
Ideas of law, social evolution, and societal progress towards “civilization.”
Very rarely based on direct research, or through actually speaking to members of a particular society about their experience. “Gentlemen travelers” or missionaries.
Rather than attempting to understand non-European societies on their own terms, scholars tell into the trap of taking own cultural background for granted and believing it to be the “correct” or “right” or “true” one, leading to ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to use one’s own standards and values in judging outsiders.
Saying unfamiliar practices are automatically “wrong” or “worse” than what one is culturally familiar with.
Describe contemporary anthropology.
Works to appreciate the breadth of human experience, not rank or exploit it.
Not classifying people as “un/civilized.”
Driven by principle of cultural relativism.
Cultural Relativism
The idea the behavior should be evaluated not by outside standards but in the context of the culture in which it occurs.
Put things in the context of the culture in which the thing takes place.
Prosocial Impulses
tendencies to voluntarily do things that benefit others
Intersubjectivity
The capacity and eagerness to share in the emotional states and experiences of other individuals
Describe culture.
Is everywhere, even those things we might think of as fully within the domain of “nature.”
Operates on levels (local, regional, national, global, etc.)
Constrains the ways we understand and assign meanings to things in the world.
An umbrella term
What is the point of the vampire argument related to culture?
There is not one answer to what is a vampire because of culture. Different cultures have different beliefs and cultural backgrounds that affect their views on what it is.
What are the 6 Characteristics of Culture?
Culture is Learned
Culture is Shared
Culture is Symbolic
Culture is Changeable
Culture is All-encompassing
Culture is Intergrated
Describe: Culture is Learned
We learn culture through observation and through direct teaching our entire lives, beginning in childhood.
We are enculturated- can be done unconsciously
Enculturation
Process of learning culture, not biologically inherited, we transmit it over time to others
Describe: Culture is Symbolic
Culture is about associating things with other things, sometimes arbitrarily.
We have systems of symbols, “something, verbal or nonverbal, that stands for something else.
Symbols’ meanings vary by context
Describe: Culture is Shared
There can be no “culture of one.” It must be a group.
Culture links us to other people through shared aspects of culture (rules, beliefs, memories, languages, etc.)
It is only possible to “break” cultural rules and expectations because they are held in common.
Describe: Culture is All-encompassing
In our framing here, there is no “high” or “low” culture.
Culture is not limited to fine arts or “sophisticated” things. It is also “mundane” or “everyday” things.
Describe: Culture is Changeable
Culture is “law-like” but it isn’t immutable law.
Culture can sometimes be made into formal laws. And those laws can be changed too.
Because culture is so engrained, it can be very hard to change.
Describe how culture change can affect laws.
Same sex marriage and interracial marriage were once not accepted in culture but as culture changes, laws can follow.
Describe: Culture is Integrated
If one aspect of culture changes, other aspects change too. This is because cultures are interconnected and patterned systems.
Members of a culture are often trained in core values (key, basic, and central) which keep aspects of culture bound together.
Think spider web.
What is a cultural universal and do they exist?
Something that exists in every culture.
E.g. long infant dependency.
There’s a few, but not many. More often, there are generalities.
What is a cultural generality?
Cultural patterns or traits that are present in some but not all societies.
E.g. remembering or celebrating the day of someone’s birth.
What is a cultural particularity?
Distinctive or unique traits.
E.g. Baby gender reveal party that causes forest fire.
What are the three ways culture can change?
Independent Invention
Acculturation
Diffusion
What is independent invention?
Independent development of a cultural feature within a group.
What is acculturation?
Exchange of cultural features between groups in continuous firsthand contact. Each group remains distinct.
Often take form in the context of trade between cultures, such as seaports.
What is diffusion and what are the three types?
Borrowing traits between cultures.
Direct, Forced, Indirect.
What is direct diffusion?
Two groups directly trade or fight.
What is forced diffusion?
One group subjugates another and forces its traits on that group.
What is indirect diffusion?
Traits exchanged between two groups via a third group, without the two groups being in contact.
Describe “finding your feet” in fieldwork.
Unnerving business, set down surrounded by all your gear and you just have to start and figure it out.
Describe culture shock in fieldwork.
Sense of panic and confusion that comes with (often rapid) disorientation.
What is anthropological fieldwork?
Anthropologists must leave the library, the classroom, and their offices to go out and live for extended periods of time with the people they study.
Describe participant observation.
Taking part in community life.
Not just watching what happens, actively participating.
Maintaining balance as a researcher.
Reliance on your senses (what you hear, see, smell, etc.)
How do you build rapport with interlocutors?
Join in and take notes.
Not letting your research question cloud your observations too much.
Look for multiple opportunities to engage.
What (who) are interlocutors?
Folks you get to know and who you build rapport with as you do your fieldwork.
Often tell you about what’s going on, informing your research.
Describe an interview in fieldwork.
Given an opportunity for a one-on-one conversation with a consultant/interviewee.
More structured that a conversation, intended to gather data.
Audio recording and/or taking notes, so you don’t need to perfectly recall everything in your mind.
Describe digital ethnography.
Ethnographic work that became digital, interacting without bodies to prevent transmission of covid.
E.g. gaming, social media, chat rooms.
What are the three components of thick description?
Rich detail.
Cultural context (emic perspective).
Scholarly analysis (etic perspective).
What is the emic perspective?
A strategy you use by focusing your research on local explanations and meanings.
What is the etic perspective?
A strategy focusing on anthropologists’ explanations, categories, and analysis. Attempting more “objectivity” (though this is not totally possible.
Why are ethics important in anthropology?
Anthropologists often with folks who are experiencing marginalization, even violence, and it is critical that one’s engagement as a researcher does not do additional harm to one’s interlocutors.
Describe the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Beginning in 1932, this study by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Tuskegee Institute recruited 600 Black men under false pretenses.
No informed consent or knowledge of the risks.
Intended to observe the effects of untreated syphilis. Even though penicillin began to be used for syphilis treatment in 1947, and the effects of untreated syphilis are extremely damaging, none of the the men were treated.
Describe the Stanford Prison Experiment.
2 week psychology experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971.
Simulations of a prison environment, with test subjects divided into “guards” and “prisoners.”
The psychologically damaging and brutal nature of the study led to more widespread ethical guidelines for work with human subjects.
What is informed consent?
An agreement to take part in research—after having been informed about its purpose, nature, procedures, and possible impacts.
Do your interlocutors know why you are asking them questions, working with them, or conducting archaeological excavations?
Do they know the potential risks and benefits?
Do they consent to be part of the research?
How do you evaluate the risk and harm of research?
Thinking through the kinds of risk interlocutors might experience through participating in the project. This can range from reputational risk to threat of bodily harm.
Working with experts in research ethics to adopt methods that minimize those risks.
Example: Changing the names of people you interview.
What is collaborative partnership?
Making sure interlocutors can give feedback and input on the process.
Making sure what has been observed/disclosed is accurately represented (e.g., not using AI to make up data)
Making sure the anthropologist doesn’t just “extract” something and leave.
Making sure interlocutors have access to results. Giving back in some way.
Define ethnicity.
“Identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation.”
Etic term developed by social scientists to denote a shared origin.
“Origin” can mean shared geographic origin, or more of a shared lifestyle.
What are cultural sources of group solidarity?
Shared language
Shared beliefs, customs, and/or norms. Shared religious heritage.
A collective name.
Belief in common descent.
Shared historical experience.
A shared origin story.
Connection to a place: Association with a specific territory, or even a specific physical location.
What is an ethnic group?
“One among several culturally distinct groups in a society or region.”
This means that an ethnic group may not be all members of a particular society, or all people that live in a certain place.
There can be narrower ethnic identities nested inside broader ones. Sometimes these can be specific regions or religious affiliations.
What is a nation?
“A society that shares a language, religion, territory, ancestry, and kinship.” (Note the similarity to ethnicity)
What is a nation-state?
An autonomous political entity; a country
What is a nationality?
Ethnic groups that have, once had, or want their own country
What is assimilation?
The absorption of minorities within a dominant culture.
A group adopts the patterns and norms of the host culture/dominant group, and no longer exists as a separate unit.
Assimilation requires an abandonment of cultural traditions in favor of those of the majority population.
Define multiculturalism.
The view of cultural diversity as valuable and worth maintaining.
Contrasts the assimilationist model by encouraging the practice of diverse traditions.
Unity not through sameness but through respect of difference.
Describe the idea of salads vs melting pots.
There are different components present within the unified whole, and there is not an attempt to erase those differences.
Define genocide.
The deliberate elimination of a group through mass murder.
Define ethnocide.
The deliberate suppression or destruction of an ethnic culture by a dominant group.
Describe status/social identity.
Identification with an ethnic group is one example among a constellation of different social identities one individual may hold.
Kottak uses the term “status” here, not to signify prestige, but to signify social identities, “any position…that someone occupies in society.”
Describe intersectionality.
Being apart of multiple social identities at once.
E.g. being black and a woman.
What is achieved status?
Social status based on choices or accomplishments.
When you graduate from UofM, the title of “college graduate” will be among the statuses you have achieved.
You have some degree of agency in these statuses.
Agency: The capacity of individuals to have the power and/or resources to do something.
What is ascribed status?
Social status based on limited choice.
There is not much agency you personally have in affecting this status.
E.g. age
Define race.
An ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
Race and ethnicity are often used interchangeable in U.S. contexts, but they are not the same, even if they may overlap conceptually.
Race is heavily invested with social meanings.
How does race differ from ethnicity?
Assigning people to groups based on an assumed biological difference.
Unlike ethnicity, race tends to be associated with common phenotypic characteristics a group of people share.
Presuming “shared blood” or “shared genes” that makes a group biologically dissimilar to other groups.
Tends to be associated with phenotype: “The expressed biological characteristics of an organism.”
The characteristics most frequently chosen as markers of race include skin tone, hair texture, and facial features.
What is Audrey Smedley’s core argument about race?
What modern scientists are saying is that race as a biological concept cannot be supported by the facts that we have learned about human biophysical variations and their genetic basis.
Despite referential discrepancies, the social categories of race are still very real.
Smedley talks about a “social reality”
Define descent.
Social identity based on ancestry
Define hypodescent.
Children of mixed unions assigned to the same group as their minority parent.
What are the goals of archaeology?
Archaeology attempts to reconstruct and understand human behavior and social patterns, much like sociocultural anthropology.
By contrast, archaeology makes use of: Material culture, specifically artifacts, which are usually objects made or modified by humans; human and faunal remains; written sources.
What are the methods of archaeology?
Systematic Survey: “The study of settlement patterns over a large area.
• Looking at settlement patterns, the distribution of sites across a region.
• Remote Sensing: “The use of aerial photos and satellite images to locate sites on the ground.”
Excavation: “Digging through layers at a site.”
• Working in “units” or “trenches.”
• Determining stratigraphy, layers of deposits.
How was race defined at the time of English settlement?
As they establish colonies, English colonists begin to view indigenous peoples of the Americas more negatively, standing in the way of colonization.
Indigenous peoples were framed as ”uncivilized,” “savage,” and belonging to “a lesser race.”
This framing served to justify seizure of land, violence, and genocide.
Close to our present day definition of ethnicity.
What is Point Comfort, VA?
In August of 1619, two English privateer ships, The White Lion and The Treasurer, make landfall on the Virginia coast.
These ships contained captives taken against their will from the Kingdom of Ndongo, within the borders of what is now Angola, by the Portuguese.
This event marks the beginning of African slavery in the territory that would become the United States.
Who is Angela and what is Angela’s site?
An enslaved woman from Ndongo taken captive by the Portuguese.
Angela arrived in Virginia in 1619 on The Treasurer and was sold to William Pierce of Jamestown, but she does not appear in any historical records after 1625.
From 2017-2019, archaeologists from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project excavated the area where Angela lived and worked, in order to learn more about her life and the lives of other enslaved people at Jamestown.
Define discrimination.
Policies and practices that harm a group and its members.
Define prejudice.
Devaluing a group because of its assumed attributes.
Define stereotypes.
Fixed ideas - often unfavorable - about what members of a group are like.
What is Titus Kaphar’s argument about the relationship between art, culture, and inequality?
In old art the person of color is an accessory. We know more about the clothes of the wealthy whites family than about the black slave.
What is racism?
“Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.”
Racism has very real, physical effects on peoples’ lives, livelihoods, bodies, and access to benefits and protections.
Anthropologists look at the ways racism is systemically embedded
How do we reckon with racism?
As anthropologists, we are interested not only in how inequality is created and maintained, but also how people respond to that inequality.
Critiquing cultural systems and not just individual racist acts.
What are Alexander’s arguments about racism?
Racism is highly adaptable, and systems of social control using race and racial prejudice as a basis have evolved over time.
Mechanisms for maintaining racial hierarchy have changed, but the animus behind those mechanisms has endured.
Alexander argues that a de facto racial caste system still exists in the U.S., even after the abolition of slavery and dismantling of de jure Jim Crow laws.
Describe De Jure: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Initially intended for 10 years but extended until it wall fully nullified in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
The act prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. This was the first significant law restricting immigration to the U.S.
Fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment, racism, and prejudice.
The law accompanied a wave of violence against Chinese Americans in the U.S., who were subjected to new requirements.
Describe De Jure: SCOTUS and Whiteness involving Bhagat Singh Thind and Takao Ozawa.
We see legal proceedings utilized to construct and reinforce a category of whiteness, showing how how that concept can be used to exclude and hierarchize.
The U.S. Supreme Court cases brought by Bhagat Singh Thind and Takao Ozawa show the social-constructedness of whiteness through the shifting criteria of what it means to be “white.”
Describe De Facto: The GI Bill
The GI bill’s benefits and opportunities low-cost mortgages and low interest loans were not equally offered to nonwhite folks, who were often denied loans.
This happened IN SPITE OF the language of the bill not explicitly excluding nonwhite Americans.
The FHA encouraged housing developers not to sell homes to nonwhite families.
Describe redlining’s impact.
Based on how a neighborhood was designated, financial services and benefits were withheld from some neighborhoods, because they were perceived to be economically or socially unstable.
This became a process of racial discrimination.
The neighborhoods most often labeled “red” were usually majority-African American.
This process supports racist ideologies by linking “best” spaces with spaces that lack racial diversity.
Note 
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