Dr. Haley Anthro1000-01 Exam 1 (GUEST&RELATED LECTURES)

Intro to Cultural Anthropology Study Guide/Covers: Guest – Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7, All lectures and videos up to exam day

Anthropology

The study of the full scope of human diversity, past, present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds understand each other

Holism

anthropology’s commitment to look at the whole picture of

human life—culture, biology, history, and language—across space and time.

Ethnography

Customs of individuals and people

Participant Observation

living and working with people on a daily basis, often

for a year or more

Four Subfields of Anthropology

ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, globalization, time/space compression

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using

one’s own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others.

Cultural Relativism

Understanding a group’s beliefs and practices within their own cultural

context, without making judgments

Globalization

the worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movements of money, people, goals, and ideas within and across national borders

Time/Space Compression

Rapid Innovation in communication and transportation have transformed our perception of distances and times —> timelines have gotten faster —> distances seem shorter

Flexible Accumulation

The way advances in transportation and communication allow companies to have more flexibility about the way they accumulate and maximize profits (offshoring, outsourcing, production…)

Guests definition of culture

a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a community of people

Characteristics of Culture

learned, shared, integrated

Norms

What is considered “normal” within a culture

Values

held, shared, and learned beliefs within a culture that define what is desirable, proper, or morally right

Symbols

Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture

Mental Maps of Reality

internalized, subjective frameworks—or "cognitive maps"—that individuals create to perceive, navigate, and interpret their physical and social surroundings, like colors and dog breeds

Contributions of Imperialism

providing the structural, financial, and logistical framework for early research, enabling Western scholars to study non-European societies

Contributions of Montaige

pioneering cultural relativism, questioning European ethnocentrism, and introducing a comparative method for studying human customs

Contributions of the Enlightenment

introducing empirical observation, rational inquiry, and comparative methods to study human diversity

Contributions of Herder

foundational figure in the development of modern anthropology, particularly for shifting the focus from biological, comparative anatomy to the study of culture, language, and history

Monogeists

theory of human origins positing that all humans descend from a single pair or source

Contributions of Morgan

proposed a pioneering theory of unilinear cultural evolution (savagery to civilization

Contributions of Boas

"Father of American Anthropology," revolutionized the field by establishing it as a rigorous, data-driven, and holistic discipline. He pioneered cultural relativism, rejecting evolutionary hierarchies to argue that all cultures are unique, valid, and understandable only within their own context

Contributions of Mead

emphasizing cultural determinism over biological, arguing that culture shapes human behavior, personality, and gender roles.

Contributions of Steward

shifted the discipline's focus toward scientific, materialist, and ecological analyses

Power

the ability to influence, shape, or control the thoughts, actions, and behaviors of others, ranging from overt physical coercion to subtle persuasion

Hegemony

the dominance of one cultural group over others, where the ruling class shapes societal norms, values, and beliefs to make their worldview seem natural, intuitive, and commonsensical

Agency

how culture serves

as a realm in which battles over power take place—where people debate, negotiate,

contest, and enforce what is considered normal, what people can say, do, and even

think.

Enculturation, global/local tension

The process of learning culture.

Contributions of Chagnons Yanamomo Research

collected data that explained the growth and fissioning of a tribe

Lesson of the Nacirema

View others cultures without judgement

People of Puerto Rico Project

studied the island’s cultural-historical development, focusing on how different communities adapted to colonial-capitalist modernization

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data

Quantitative - Countable

Quantitative - Non numerical

Fieldwork strategies

living among the culture, interacting with the people, collecting data

Mapping

The analysis of the physical and/or geographic space where fieldwork is being

conducted.

Emic vs Etic

emic

An approach to gathering data that investigates how local people think and how

they understand the world.

etic

Description of local behavior and beliefs from the anthropologist’s perspective in

ways that can be compared across cultures.

Polyvocality

the use of many voices in ethnographic writing

Reflexivity

self-reflection on the experience

of doing fieldwork

Moral & Ethical Concerns

do no harm, obtain informed consent, ensure anonimity

Language

a system of communication that uses symbols—such as words, sounds,

and gestures—organized according to certain rules to convey information

Phoenomes

words that have no

meaning of their own.

Morphemes

the smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own

Grammar

The rules of a language for combining morphemes.

Conventionality

Rules shared by a community of speakers

on how to create meaning from

sounds/symbols

Productivity

the ability to create completely new

utterances (and still be understood

Displacement

The ability to communicate about things

that are not immediately present.

San-clicks

ingressive consonantal speech sounds produced by sucking air into the mouth, used as consonants in the indigenous languages of the San people of Southern Africa

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Different languages

produce different ways of

thinking (from von

Herder)

Lexicon

All the words for names, ideas, and events that make up a language’s

dictionary.

Focal Vocabulary

A deep and detailed vocabulary on

what is important in a culture

Sociolinguistics

study of language in its social and cultural contexts.

Power % N-Word Use

Some words are used to express “power”, and have been reclaimed by the people it was used against

Gendered Language

words, phrases, and grammatical structures that associate specific genders with roles, behaviors, or objects, often reinforcing traditional stereotypes and biases

Language Loss

the gradual decline and eventual disappearance of a language, occurring when speakers shift to a more dominant language due to social, economic, or political pressures

Prestige + Stigmatized Dialects

A variant of a language that enjoys

higher status and is associated with

higher social strata.

• A prestige dialect has symbolic capital

(from Pierre Bourdieu)

It provides access to things of value

AAVE is a stigmatized dialect as it is considered “lazy’’ and “uneducated”

Symbolic Capital

the resources available to an individual or group based on prestige, reputation, honor, or recognition

AAE

African American English (Dialect)

Code-Switching

The ability to move

seamlessly between

two or more

languages (or

dialects).

• Requires acute

awareness of the

meanings attached

to speech patterns

Symbolism of Table Settings

The “right way” to set a table is

analogous to a prestige dialect.

 It was created to mark elite

status.

 It is only superior in social

contexts where it has

symbolic capital

Sex

chromosomes +

hormones + body parts

Gender

A cultural

construction of

sexual difference.

• Masculine

• Feminine

• Others?

• The resulting

categories reflect

culturally-defined

social roles

Sexual Dimorphism

The phenotypic differences between males and females of the same species.

Masculinity

The ideas and practices associated with manhood.

Femininity

The ideas and practices associated with womanhood.

Intersex

The state of being born with a combination of male and female genitalia, gonads,

and/or chromosomes.

Transgender

People whose gender identity and performance do not correspond with the

biological sex category assigned at birth.

Gender Stratification

An unequal distribution of power in which gender shapes who has

access to a group’s resources, opportunities, rights, and privileges.

Constructing Masculinity

gender studies have focused primarily on women. Recent studies, however, have begun

to explore the gender construction of male identity as well as the broader

construction of masculinity.

Two-Spirits (Hijira)

 people considered them to have both feminine and

masculine spirits. Often they were considered to have supernatural powers and thus

held special privileges in the community.

Gender Roles

gender as a continuum of behavior that

ranges between masculine and feminine.

Public/Private Dichotomy

a framework analyzing the separation of social life into two distinct spheres: the domestic/private (home, family, reproduction, women) and the public/social (politics, commerce, state, men)

Gender Stereotypes

widely held and powerful, preconceived notions about the

attributes of, differences between, and proper roles for women and men in a culture.

Man, the hunter stereotype

invoked to explain contemporary differences in gender roles by

referencing the effects of human evolution. In our deep past, the story goes, human

males—being larger and stronger than females—hunted to sustain themselves, their

sexual partners, and their offsprin