Anthropology Chapter 10 - 14 Final Exam

Economy

A cultural adaptation to the environment that enables a group of humans to use the available land, resources, and labor to satisfy their needs and to thrive

Carrying Capacity

The maximum number of individuals (of a species, or humans in a society) that an environment can sustainably support without degrading the environment.

Agriculture

An intensive farming strategy for food production involving permanently cultivated land to create a surplus.

Reciprocity

The exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status to create and reinforce social ties.

Redistribution

A form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different patterns

Colonialism

The practice by which states extend political, economic, and military power beyond their borders over an extended period to secure access to raw materials, cheap labor, and marketing in other countries or regions.

Development

Post-World War II strategy of wealthy nations to spur global economic growth, through strategic investment in national economies of former colonies.

Dependency Theory

A critique of modernization theory arguing that despite the end of colonialism, the underlying economic relations of the modern world economic relations of the modern world economic system had not changed.

Underdevelopment

The term used to suggest that poor countries are poor as a result of their relationship to an unbalanced global economic system.

Core Countries

Industrialized former colonial states that dominate the world economic system.

Periphery Countries

The least development and least powerful nations; often exploited by the core countries as sources of raw materials, cheap labor, and markets.

Flexible Accumulation

The increasingly flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an era of globalization, enabled by innovation communication and transportation technologies.

Commodity Chains

The hands an item passes through between producer and consumer.

Internal Migration

The movement of people within the same country - from one region, city, or area to another - without crossing international borders

Labor Immigrants

Persons who move in search of low-skill and low-wage jobs, often filling an economic niche that native-born workers will not fill.

Refuges

Persons who have been forced to move beyond their national borders because of political or religious persecution, armed conflicts, or disasters.

Environmental Anthropology

The study of relations between humans and the environment.

Anthropocene

The current geological era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways.

Multispecies Ethnography

Ethnographic research that considers the interactions of all species living on the planet in order to provide a more-than-human perspective on the world.

Ecotourism

Tours of remote natural environments designed to support local communities and their conservation efforts.

Settler Colonialism

Displacement and pacification of Indigenous people and expropriation of their lands and resources.

State

An autonomous regional structure of political, economic, and military rule with a central government authorized to make laws and use force to maintain order and defend its territory.

Hegemony

The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force.

Civil Society Organization

A local nongovernmental organization that challenges state policies and uneven development and advocates for resources and opportunities for its local community.

Militarization

The contested social process through which a civil society organizes for the production of military violences

Agency

The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.

Social Movement

Collective group actions that seek to build institutional networks to transform cultural patterns and government polices.

Religion

A set of beliefs and rituals based on vision of how the world ought to be and how life ought to be lived, often, though not always, focused on a supernatural power and lived out in community.

Sacred

Anything that is considered holy.

Profane

Anything that is considered unholy.

Ritual

An act or series of acts regularly repeated over years or generations that embodies the belief of a group of people and creates a sense of continuity and belonging.

Rite of Passage

A category of ritual that enacts a change of status from one life stage to another, either for an individual or for a group.

Liminality

One stage in a rite of passage during which a ritual participant experiences a period of outsiderhood, set apart from normal society, that is key to achieving a new perspective on the past, present, and future community.

Communitas

A sense of camaraderie, a common vision of what constitutes the good life, and a commitment to take social action toward achieving this vision that is shaped by the common experiences of rites of passage.

Pilgrimage

A religious journey to a sacred place as a sign of devotion and in search of transformation and enlightenment.

Cultural Materialism

A theory that argues material conditions, including technology and the environmental, determine patterns of social organization, such as religious principles.

Symbol

Anything that represents something else.

Authorizing Process

The complex historical and social development through which symbols are given power and meaning.

Health

The absence of disease and infirmity as well as the presence of physical, mental, and social well-being.

Disease

A discrete natural entity that can be clinically identified and treated by a health professional.

Illness

An individual patient’s experience of being unwell.

Sickness

An individual’s public experiences of illness and disease, including social expectations about how one should respond.

Ethnomedicine

Local systems of health and healing rooted in culturally specific norms and values.

Biomedicine

A practice, often associated with Western medicine, that seeks to apply the principles of biology and the natural sciences to the practice of diagnosing diseases and promoting healing.

Health Transition

The significant improvements in human health made over the course of the twentieth century; they were not, however, distributed evenly across the world’s population.

Medical Migration

When people move to another place for healthcare or healthcare jobs.

Illness Narrative

A personal story that someone tells about their experience of being sick.