Cultural Anthropology Lecture Notes

Flashcards on Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology

the social scientific study of people as members of social groups using ethnographic field methods (interviews, social immersion, notes)

Ethnocentrism

the impulse to use our own cultural norms to judge the beliefs and practices of others

Ethnographic fieldwork

a primary research strategy, typically involving living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period of time to better understand their lives

Cross-cultural and comparative approach

comparing practices across cultures to explore human similarities, differences, and the potential for human cultural expression

Time-space compression

rapid innovation of communication & transportation technology associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space and time

Flexible accumulation

strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an era of globalization, enabled by innovative communication and transportation technology

Offshoring

moving factories to export-processing zones in the developing world

Outsourcing

shifting aspects of work to employees in disparate parts of the world

Uneven development

unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization

Culture

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

Norms

ideas or rules about how people should behave in certain situations

Values

fundamental beliefs about what is important, what is true, right, and beautiful

Unilinear cultural evolution

theory proposed by 19th century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex

Historical particularism

the idea that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories

Power

the ability or potential to bring about change through action or influence

Hegemony

the ability of dominant groups to influence people to hold beliefs that disadvantage them

Structure

patterned forces and circumstances that are beyond an individual’s or group’s control, but which constrain their lives in a significant way

Agency

the ability of individuals or groups to shape their own lives & lives of others, including to make their own choices and think their own thoughts

Representations

the role models, ideologies, symbols, and images that circulate in our society regarding racial categories

Ethnographic Fieldwork

primary research strategy that typically involves living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period of time to understand their lives

Quantitative Data

statistical information about a community

Qualitative Data

descriptive data drawn from non-statistical sources

Stratification

the uneven distribution of resources and privileges among members of a community

Class

system of power based on wealth, income, and status

Means of production

factories, machines, tools, raw materials, land, and financial capital needed to make things

Capital

any asset employed to be deployed to produce wealth

Prestige

reputation/influence bestowed on people because of their membership in certain groups

Life chances

an individual's opportunity to improve their quality of life

Social mobility

movement of one’s class position upward or downward in stratified societies

Social reproduction

social and class relations of prestige are passed down generationally

Service class

people at the low end of the service sector (jobs that provide services for you)

Habitus

socially conditioned ways you behave and think based on norms, values, and symbols

Culture capital

knowledge, habits, and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to valuable resources in society

Income

what people earn from work and dividends + interest on investments, along with earnings from rents and royalties

Wealth

the total value of what someone owns, minus any debt

Individualism

belief or theoretical framework that assumes that each individual is the master of his or her fate and that most problems and successes that people encounter are of their own making

Sex

Culturally agreed upon physical differences between male and female, especially related to reproduction

Gender

expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes

Gender stratification

an unequal distribution of power in which gender shapes who has access to a group’s resources, opportunities, rights, and privileges

Race

a flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the population into groups

Racism

individual’s thoughts and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities

Intersectionality

framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances

Phenotype

the way genes are expressed in an organism’s physical form as a result of genotype interaction with environmental factors

Colonialism

practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and military power beyond its own borders over time to get raw materials, cheap labor, and markets

Miscegenation

demeaning historical term for an inter-racial couple

White Supremacy

the belief that white people are biologically different from and superior to people of other races

Whiteness

culturally constructed concept in 1691 Virginia, designed to establish clear boundaries of who is and isn’t white

Hypodescendent

“one drop of blood rule”; the assignment of racially “mixed” unions to the subordinate group

Nativism

the favoring of certain long-term inhabitants, namely white people, over new immigrants

Racialization

the process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a person/group

Individual racism

personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race

Institutional Racism

patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems

Racial ideology

set of popular ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals/institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal

FHA loan expansion

allowed more people to quality for loans

Levittown

the first mass-produced suburban housing after WWII

Redlining

Banks and governments denied loans to people in certain areas, mostly black neighborhoods, making it hard to buy a home

GI Bill

Helped WWII vets paying for college, job training, home loans

Suburbanization

the movement of historically white populations from urban to suburban areas

Blockbusting

real estate agents sold homes to white people for cheap by saying black people moving in would lower property values, then they sold the homes to black people at higher prices

Sunny Day/nuisance floods

tides, sea level rise, ground changes

Environmental Justice

the idea that everyone has the right to a decent environment and a fair share of the Earth’s resources

Climate Justice

recognizes climate change is happening and is human-caused, and people are experiencing harm (most economically and socially marginalized people are impacted)

Climate resilience/climate adaption

local ways of preventing/dealing with climate change

Water vapor cycle

water evaporates into gas, moves around in the atmosphere, and condenses into clouds

Thermohaline circulation/brine flow

Salty, cold water drops down from the Antarctic and flows into the tropics, cold water goes into hot water and warms up, warmed up water goes back up to warm the land

Earth’s interconnected systems (The Earth from Space)

Earth is connected through water vapor processes

Albedo

Degree of reflectivity of the sun on the Earth’s surface, especially water, ice, and snow

Greenhouse effect

Layer of gases keeps getting thicker and thicker, CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere trap in heat, keeping Earth warm

Keeling Curve

measures carbon dioxide concentration away from town/industry

Sakha

group of people in Siberia who live on permafrost, but the ground is getting softer and bumpier due to climate change

Permafrost

the soil and everything grown on it freezes before it dies – after frozen for 3 or more years = considered permafrost. Releases greenhouse gases when it decomposes

Kiribati, South Pacific

only a few feet above sea level. Priest tried to stop awareness of issue for fear of scaring people on the island

1.5 degree Celsius

global warming threshold

Legacy polluters

industrialized nations (US, UK, Japan, etc), oil/mining/manufacturing industries, and colonialism contribute to climate change, which are harming Indigenous and communities of color

The Story of Stuff

how our consumer culture harms the environment and people by exposing the hidden costs of the production, consumption, and disposal of goods

Golden arrow of consumption

mass consumerism = economic strategy of the U.S., and defining identity with consumption

Planned obsolescence

designed to break after a certain amount of time

Perceived obsolescence

trend cycles influence us to stop using perfectly good products

Trade liberalization

eliminates tariffs and subsidies

Supply and Demand

culturally constructed by capitalism; ex- fast fashion, bottled water

Tariffs

tax on imports from other countries

Subsidies

money from a government to companies that produce a particular item

Sunrise Movement

youth-led climate justice organization from 2017

Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

largest “clean energy” investment in US history. Goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Park Avenue film

Looking at how wealthy people try to benefit themselves through the structures – how they are allowed to, what do they do

Paul Ryan

congressman

John Thain and Steve Schwarzman

hedge fund men who wanted the least possible taxes.

Charles and David Koch

businessmen who owned fossil fuel companies and wanted to pay low taxes. Lobbied against environmental regulations

Hedge fund

Partnership of private investors whose money is pooled and managed by professional fund managers. Risky and requires a high minimum investment or net worth

“Carried interest provision” of the US tax code

wealthy people funded politicians careers so they have a say in the carried interest provisions in relation to hedge funds and private equity managers so they can pay very low taxes on investments

Environmental regulations

laws put in place to lower environmental harm (pollution control, mining, emissions) but can often hurt minorities (displace indigenous communities and Flint, Michigan)

Economy

a cultural adaption to the environment that lets a group of humans use the available land, resources, and labor to satisfy needs and thrive

Colonialism

practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and military power beyond its own borders over time to get raw materials, cheap labor, and markets

Modernization theory/Rostow’s Stages of Development

Post WWII theories that predict that with the end of colonialism, less-developed countries would follow the same path to modernization as the industrialized countries

Dependency theory

a critique of modernization theory, argues that the poor countries rely on big countries for resources

Luckiest Nut In The World

Senegal groundnuts – focus on exports to keep up the economy, but then other countries started producing groundnuts too, so the price went down. Senegal took out loans and went into debt, and could not pay for schools or hospitals

Neocolonialism

continued pattern of unequal economic relations between former colonial states and former colonies despite the end of colonial political and military control

Core countries

industrialized former colonial states that dominate the world economic system

Periphery countries

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

Fordism

dominant model of industrial production for much of the 20th century, based on a social compact between labor, corporations, and government