Key Concepts in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Acculturation

Cultural change related to contact with another culture.

Agency

Agency is the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class, gender, religion and social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events.

Agency-centred

Anthropological research that emphasizes agency focuses on humans acting to promote their interests and the interests of the groups to which they belong (although what constitutes "interest" may be subject to debate).

Alterity

"Otherness". Used in anthropology to describe and comment on the construction and experience of cultural difference.

Analytical categories

An outsider's view of a culture, sometimes referred to as an "etic" view: classifying and understanding traits as representing cross-culturally applicable terms and categories rather than culturally specific meanings.

Authority

Power is exercised with the consent of others.

Belief and knowledge

A set of convictions, values and viewpoints regarded as "the truth" and shared by members of a social group. These are underpinned and supported by known cultural experience.

Biomedicine

A term used in medical anthropology for conventional western medicine.

Biopsychosocial model

Interactions between biological, psychological, and social factors determine the cause, manifestation, and outcome of wellness and disease.

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a society's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Causation

The capacity of one cultural feature to influence another.

Change

The alteration or modification of cultural or social elements in a society. Change may be due to internal dynamics within a society, or the result of contact with another culture, or a consequence of globalization.

Class

Division of people in a society based on social and economic status.

Classification

Assigning common knowledge to describe a large number of people or things as belonging to a recognizable system.

Cohesion

The practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically, socially and politically.

Cohesion-centred

Some anthropologists see cohesion and consensus as central to the proper functioning of society and culture. Many anthropologists were influenced by Emile Durkheim who claimed that society could only function properly if its members experienced "solidarity", that is, a moral duty to work for the maintenance of society.

Commodification/commodified body

The transformation of goods and services, as well as concepts that normally may not be considered goods, into a commodity, something of value.

Communication

Language influences social life, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds.

Community

A group of people who share a common interest, or a common ecology and locality, or a common social system or structure. Anthropologists have traditionally studied communities through the lens of ethnographic fieldwork.

Comparative

Comparison of the diverse and various ways that people make sense of their world brings anthropologists greater understanding of communities, cultures and societies.

Conflict

Disagreements between individuals, groups, cultures or societies may result from differences in interests, values or actions. Conflict theory presents a lens, or framework, which can give anthropologists insight into the social impact of disharmony.

Consensus

Theories around the concept of consensus assume that cultural values and beliefs are learned and shared to a significant extent across a society and that there is a general level of agreement about these values and beliefs.

Consumption

The meaningful use that people make of the objects that are associated with them. The use can be mental or material; the objects can be things, ideas or relationships.

Contextualization

Making sense of anthropological data in terms of the situation or location in which it was obtained.

Cosmology

Social groups perceive the universe and describe their relationship with it in different ways.

Cosmopolitanism

Communities include individuals who live together with cultural difference.

Cultural boundaries

An essentialist view presumes fixed boundaries for a culture; a constructivist view assumes individuals and groups have the capacity to define and redefine their cultural identities and spheres of influence.

Cultural capital

The knowledge and experience individuals acquired through socialization, which enables successful interaction in their social world.

Cultural relativism

Not making value judgments about cultural differences; understanding a different culture in its context.

Culture

Culture refers to organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. Culture includes the customs by which humans organize their physical world and maintain their social structure. More recent approaches to culture recognize that cultures are not static, homogenous or bounded but dynamic and fluid. Culture refers to the shared social construction of meanings, but simultaneously culture is often also a site of contested meanings. These recent formulations of the concept recognize that culture may be the subject of disagreement and conflict within and among societies, and this disagreement may include the definition of culture itself.

Development

The concept of development refers to more economically developed societies providing assistance and resources to less economically developed societies, either directly through bilateral aid or indirectly via other agencies. Development also refers to self-directed industrial, technological and economic improvement.

Diachronic

A diachronic perspective in anthropology seeks to understand society and culture as the product of development through time, shaped by many different forces, both internal and external. A diachronic perspective is generally historical, as illustrated by recent efforts to use historical methods and findings in anthropology.

Dialectic

Discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation.

Diaspora

The dispersal of peoples from homelands to establish new, migrated communities in other places.

Discourse

Written or spoken intellectual communication or debate in a discipline such as anthropology.

Embodiment

The process by which people incorporate biologically the social and material world in which they live. A person knows, feels, and thinks about the social world through the body.

Empirical

Anthropological data is acquired through first-hand participant observation, rather than secondary research.

Enculturation

The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group. The transmission of culture from one generation to the next.

Environment

Communities or societies may have a complex relationship with the physical setting in which they live.

Essentialism

Reducing description of a social group or culture to a limited set of characteristics, ignoring individual differences and agency.

Ethics

The principles of conduct governing an individual or group; concerns for what is right or wrong, good or bad.

Ethnicity

A social group is connected by a shared understanding of cultural identity.

Ethnobiology

The study of how human cultures interact with and use plants and animals.

Ethnobotany

The study of a people's knowledge of plants and their agricultural customs.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to view the world only from the perspective of one's own culture; the inability to understand cultures different from one's own.

Ethnography

Writing culture; articles and books written by anthropologists following fieldwork research; the process of participant observation or fieldwork.

Ethnopsychology

Refers to cultural or "folk" models of subjectivity, particularly as applied to the interpretation of social action. Cultures vary in the conceptual explanation and sociocultural importance of concepts such as anger or love.

Ethnozoology

The study of how human cultures interact with and use animals.

Exchange

The transfer of things between social actors. The things can be human or animal, material or immaterial. Exchange is central to all people's lives, but its consequences and elaborations are more marked in some cultures.

Exclusion

The failure of society to provide certain individuals and groups with those rights and benefits normally available to its members.

Family

A term covering a range of meanings in terms of the relatedness and connection of people. It may refer to a domestic group or household, or a wider kinship network.

Fieldwork

When an anthropologist becomes immersed in the local life of a group of people for the purpose of learning about their culture.

Gender

The culturally constructed distinctions between males and females.

Globalization

The tendency towards increasing global interconnections in culture, economy and social life. The transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations.

Governmentality

Term coined by Michel Foucault referring to the way in which the state exercises control over the population.

Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu holds that socialized norms guide people's behavior and thinking. These become lasting tendencies to think, feel and act in certain ways in particular social situations.

Healing practices

Culturally specific ways of treating illnesses.

Health

Anthropologists examine how human beings' efforts to secure health and treat illness are impacted by cultural processes.

Hegemony

The cultural or political dominance of one social group over others; cultural processes through which the ruling classes maintain their power.

Holism

The whole of a social system is identified as being more than just the individuals who participate in it.

Hybridity

Multiple cultures mix, bringing together traditions as they negotiate their shared and unshared identities.

Idealist

Idealist perspectives focus primarily on the activities and categories of the human mind (for example, beliefs, symbols and rationality), and seek explanations for the human condition in terms of them.

Identity

Identity can refer either to the individual's private and personal view of the self—this is sometimes referred to as the "moi"—or the view of an individual in the eyes of the social group. Identity also refers to group identity, which may take the form of religious identity, ethnic identity, or national identity for example.

Ideology

The system of social and moral ideas of a group of people; a commitment to central values.

Imagined community

The idea that a community is to some extent constructed in the minds of the people who consider themselves to belong to it.

Inclusion

A person or group is welcomed, represented and provided for by the community or wider society.

Insider/outsider

In field research, different viewpoints may be apparent: from within the social group (the perspective of the subject) and from outside (the perspective of the observer).

Interpretation

Cultural symbols are decoded and analysed by anthropologists to determine their meaning.

Kinship

The web or pattern of social relationships, which connects people through descent or marriage, although other forms of social connection may be included.

Knowledge system

Culture is socially learned and provides people with what they need to know to act appropriately. Cognitive anthropology investigates and seeks to explain cultural knowledge.

Labour

The efforts of individuals as workers in a capitalist context is considered afactor of production, along with land and capital, and is ascribed a value. Theprocess of division of labour into specified tasks may be driven by gender.

Liminality

Participants in a rite of passage or ritual are temporarily literally and symbolically marginalized from their community. Status becomes ambiguous until they re-join their community and adopt their new status. This term may be more broadly used in the context of cultural change.

Lived body

In medical anthropology the body may be considered as an aesthetic object, containing the accumulated cultural experiences of each individual.

Local categories

An insider's (indigenous) view of a culture, sometimes referred to as an 'emic' view: the meaning that subjects assign to objects and events in a cultural context.

Localization

A social group's specific adaptation of the influences of globalization.

Marginalization

Relegating specific groups of people to the edge of society, economically, politically, culturally and socially; limiting their access to productive resources and avenues for the realization of their productive human potential.

Marginality

Human dimensions used as a basis for social exclusion (for example, class, ethnicity, gender).

Materialist

Materialist perspectives in anthropology and other social sciences explain aspects of human existence in terms of their most tangible features (for example, technology, adaptation to the environment, and the production and management of resources).

Materiality

Objects, resources and belongings have cultural meaning, described by Arjun Appadurai as "the social life of things", and are embedded with all kinds of social relations and practices. Some anthropologists think that human experience can be understood through the study of material objects. For example, contemporary approaches focus on the materiality of the body.

Mechanized body

The body may be perceived as a machine consisting of organic parts. Surgical implants of mechanical parts means re-thinking the concept of 'the body'.

Medical anthropology

The study of the social and cultural dimensions of health, illness and medicine.

Medical system

Culturally specific medical practices.

Modernization

The adoption of characteristics of more developed societies by less developed societies, generally including the abandonment of some traditional practices.

Modified body

The human body is deliberately altered for cultural reasons (for example, rites of passage, group membership) or aesthetic reasons (for example, body art, self-expression).

Monograph

A full-length ethnography on a single culture.

Morality

Adherence to the rules or norms of a social group. Also relates to thinking and behaviour that pursues or acts in the interest of general human excellence.

Movement

A loosely organized but sustained campaign in support of a social goal, typically either the implementation or the prevention of a change in society's structure or values.

Nation state

A politically legitimate, bounded geographical area. A state is a political and geopolitical entity, while a nation may be considered as a cultural one. The term "nation state" implies that the two coincide, but colonization created many instances where this notion may be disputed.

Nature/culture

The meaning of nature is continuously negotiated in relation to its supposed counterpart, human culture and society.

Neo-colonialism

Relations between former colonial powers and former colonies, which perpetuate to some degree the domination and exploitation that existed under colonialism.

Ngoization

The professionalization and institutionalization of social action through the growth and spread of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at local and global levels.

Ontology

The study of the nature of 'being', existence, reality. Anthropologists may seek to explore other kinds of realities outside those that have been socially constructed.

Participant observation

During fieldwork an anthropologist immerses himself or herself in the life of the social group he or she is studying, actively observing, interviewing and writing detailed field notes.

Particularistic

Anthropologists taking a particularistic perspective stress that aspects of society and culture must be understood in terms of their specific social and historical context.

Personhood

Culturally constructed concept of the individual human being, the "self".

Politicized body

The body becomes the topic of political debate, for example, in gender related discourse.

Positionality

The effect an anthropologist's own subjectivity might have on how he or she interprets observations and experience.

Post-colonialism

Study of the legacy of the colonial era and the residual political, cultural, socio-economic, and psychological effects.

Power

Power is an essential part of social relations and can be considered as a person's or group's capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and resources. In its broadest sense, power can be understood as involving distinctions and inequalities between members of a social group. Some approaches to power focus on structural power or the capacity of power to produce subjectivities

Power relations

The positive or negative exercise of power between social groups or individuals.