Anthropology key terms and concepts

Comparative

Comparative

A perspective or research method that looks for similarities and differences within and between cultures and societies.

Culture

______ refers to organised systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. ______ includes the customs by which humans organise their physical world and maintain their social structure.

Empathy

To some compassion to others. To put yourself in someone else’s shoes. To try to see the world from another person’s perspective.

Empirical

Factual data acquired through fieldwork.

Ethics

Concerns for what is right or wrong. ______ guide individual and group behaviour. Anthropologists must adhere to ______ guidelines in their fieldwork and professional behaviour.

Ethnography

Detailed, descriptive accounts of a group, place or activity, written by anthropologists after they have conducted fieldwork.

Fieldwork

The practice of conducting anthropological research. ______ typically entails travelling to a new place - a fieldsite - and immersing yourself within a community for a long period of time.

Gender

Culturally constructed distinctions between male and female.

Genealogy

A family tree. ______ are widely used in anthropology to study family histories and relationships.

Holism

An anthropological perspective that considers every part of a culture and a society to be interconnected.

Hypothesis

An informed prediction made by a scientist during a research project.

Informed consent

Obtaining full permission from an individual to participate in a research project.

Intersectionality

Ways in which different aspects of a person or group’s identities - such as their race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality or class - come together to shape their life experiences.

Monograph

A book-length ethnography on a single topic.

Objectivity

Without bias or prejudice.

Participant observation

A research method used within anthropology, in which an anthropologist immerses themselves in the life of the group they are studying for an extended period of time and takes part in everyday activities.

Quantitative data

Data that can be expressed in numerical form.

Qualitative data

Data that cannot be expressed in numerical form, such as textual, visual, oral or aural data.

Reflexivity

The process through which anthropologists acknowledge and reflect on the ways their own identity, beliefs, values and experiences influence their research and thinking.

Society

______ refers to the way in which humans organise themselves in groups and networks. ______ is created and sustained by social relationships among persons and groups. The term “______” can also be used to refer to a human group that exhibits some internal coherence and distinguishes itself from other such groups.

Agency

The capacity of individuals to act freely and independently. A person’s ______ is often constrained by structural, social and cultural factors, such as age, race, class or gender.

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.

Change

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

Class

Hierarchical divisions of people within a society based on their social and economic status.

Community

A group of people who share a common interest or locality. Traditionally, this term referred to a geographically-bounded group of people who engage in face-to-face contact. Today, the term includes groups beyond bounded spaces, such as ‘virtual ________’ or ‘________ of taste’.

Cultural relativism

A principle that emphasises that each society or culture can only be properly understood on its own terms, by its own cultural norms and values. A ________ perspective is the opposite of an ethnocentric perspective.

Enculturation / acculturation

The process of learning the rules and norms of a culture.

Ethnicity

A social group connected by a shared understanding of cultural identity. Attributes of ________ can include a common nation of origin, ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion or social treatment.

Ethnocentrism

Viewing other cultures and societies according to the norms and assumptions of one's own society; making judgments about others based on what is ‘normal’ in your own experience and culture. An ________ perspective is the opposite of a cultural relativist perspective.

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. ________ also refers to group identity, which may take the form of religious ________, ethnic ________, or national ________ for example.

Kinship

A close web of social relationships that connects people. ________ traditionally referred to family relationships based on blood or marriage. Today, other types of relationships, such as friendships or intimate partners, are viewed as parts of people’s ________ (‘fictive kin’).

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.

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, ________ can be understood as involving distinctions and inequalities between members of a social group. Some approaches to ________ focus on structural power or the capacity of power to produce subjectivities.

Reciprocity

A form of exchange that involves giving and receiving objects and things between relative equals.

Ritual

A formalised event, characterised by ceremony, symbolism and performance, the rules of which are determined by the traditions of a social group.

Social relations

Any relationship between two or more individuals in a network of relationships. ________ involve an element of individual agency as well as group expectations and form the basis of social organisation and social structure. They pervade every aspect of human life and are extensive, complex, and diverse.

Socialisation

The process through which a person learns how to become an accepted member of a society.

Status

The position a person has within a social system, which might be ascribed (given at birth) or achieved (earned). Individuals often have multiple statuses within a society and/or at different moments of their life course, each coming with different expectations, obligations and duties.

Structure

The resilient, regulating features of a society that determine and limit the actions of its members; a society’s shape.

Stratification

The hierarchical division of a society into different and unequal groups, for example, on the basis of class, age, status, gender, job type, nationality and ethnicity.

Symbolism

________ is the study of the significance that people attach to objects, actions, and processes creating networks of symbols through which they construct a culture’s web of meaning.

Age

The length of time a person has lived. In many cultures, age also denotes a person’s status within a social hierarchy.

Analytical categories / etic terms

‘Outsider’ terms and categories used to describe, classify and compare a society or culture.

Authority

Power exercised with the consent of others. A person’s ________ typically derives from characteristics such as status, honour or knowledge, or from their holding of a particular occupation, role or office within society.

Capitalism

A profit-driven economic and political system in which people work for wages and in which industry and goods are controlled by wealthy individuals and private companies, rather than by the state.

Caste

An endogamous social group into which an individual is born within a system of stratification characterised religious and cultural norms that prescribe social interactions. Mobility between ________ is not possible.

Commodification

The transformation of objects, goods and services (but increasingly other things too, such as bodies, knowledge and culture) into commodities - for market exchange, with economic value.

Consumption

The meaningful use of resources, services, objects and relationships.

Contextualisation

Examining anthropological data in relation to the situation, time and location (i.e. contexts) in which it was obtained.

Diachronic

A methodological or theoretical perspective that seeks to understand how a society or culture has changed through time.

Embodiment

The process by which social and material worlds are experienced by and incorporated into bodies. The term describes how culture is ‘inscribed’ on the body.

Exchange

The transfer of things between social actors.

Globalisation

A process of change referring to the flow of people, goods and ideas across the borders of nation-states. ________ has made the world more interconnected and interdependent, but also more unequal.

Ideology

Beliefs, attitudes and opinions that coalesce to form a worldview.

Labour

Work in a capitalist economic context.

Liminality

An ‘in-between’ status. During a ritual or a rite of passage, participants are temporarily in-between social statuses, literally and symbolically, until they rejoin their community and adopt a new status.

Local categories / emic terms

Local (‘indigenous’) concepts, words and categories that are meaningful only to members of that society or culture and cannot be easily translated between cultures.

Nation-state

Political communities that have clearly defined territorial borders and a centralised authority. The state is a political unit, while the nation is a cultural entity; the term ‘________’ implies that nations and states coincide, but colonisation created many instances where this is disputed.

Personhood

A culturally constructed concept of an individual human being, the self.

Positionality

The relationship of a researcher to the people, topic and place they study. The term describes how an anthropologist's identity, values and views affect the way they interpret observations and experiences.

Race

A culturally constructed category of identity based on perceived physical differences.

Representation

How the ideas, beliefs, customs, histories and ways of life of different societies and cultures are described and presented by others in written and visual forms.

Reproduction / social reproduction

The perpetuation and maintenance of a society over time. ________ includes not only childbearing and enculturation, but also the transmission of values and norms and the reproduction of social structures and patterns of behaviour from generation to generation.

Resistance

How individuals and groups express or demonstrate opposition to structures or systems of inequality or oppression.

Rite of passage

A ritual that moves an individual from one social status to another. ________ are often associated with the lifecycle and age (e.g. initiation, coming-of-age).

Role

The dynamic aspect of status: a person’s actual behaviour within the context of their status.

Self

An individual human's own person, a product of social interaction.

Sexuality

Human desires, feelings, behaviours and identities related to eroticism and sexual expression.

Social network

A group of interconnected individuals linked by social relationships, such as friends, kin or colleagues.

Synchronic

A methodological or theoretical perspective that seeks to understand a society or culture in a single moment in time.

Theory

A perspective or approach an anthropologist uses in their research to examine social and cultural phenomena. ________ influence the research questions anthropologists ask, the issues they explore, the particular people they work with and the methods they use.

Biomedicine

A term used in medical anthropology to describe conventional, modern Western medicine.

Biopsychosocial model

An approach to health and wellness that considers how biological, psychological and social factors interact; the model helps determine the causes, manifestations and outcomes of disease and illness from a holistic perspective.

Boundaries

________, which may be physical or symbolic, determine who is seen as an insider or an outsider within a social group or place. An essentialist view presumes ________ are fixed for a society or culture. A cultural constructivist view assumes individuals and groups have the capacity to define and redefine ________.

Causation

The capacity of one culture or cultural feature to influence another.

Classification

A system of categorising people or things into groups.

Colonialism

Acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers and exploiting it economically, socially and politically.

Commodity

An economic good that can be bought or sold. An object produced for the market with economic, monetary value.

Consensus vs. conflict

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___ means agreement. ___-centred theories, such as functionalism, believe that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability, and that there is a level of agreement about these values and beliefs that leads to social stability over time. ___-centred theories, such as Marxism and feminism, focus anthropologists’ insights on the core tensions and disharmony within societies.

Cosmology

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

Cosmopolitanism

Communities comprising individuals with cultural differences that live together positively.

Cultural capital

The social assets of a person that promote social mobility, such as a person’s social class, education, style, dress.

Diaspora

Groups of people who have migrated from their historic homelands to other places, where they have established new communities, yet maintain a real or imagined connection to their place of origin.

Discourse

Written or spoken communication. Shared ways of thinking and speaking.

Exclusion vs. inclusion

Ways in which particular individuals and groups are allowed to be part of a society (___) or not (___). ___ captures the ways a person or group is welcomed, represented and provided for by the community or wider society.

Essentialism

Describing a social group or culture by reducing it to a limited, simplistic set of characteristics, ignoring individual differences and agency.

Family

A term covering connections between closely-related people. It may refer to a domestic group or household, or a wider kinship network.

Governmentality

The way the state exercises control over the population.

Habitus

A term developed by Pierre Bourdieu to describe the ways social norms guide individual people’s behaviour and thoughts; the physical embodiment of culture expressed as deeply-ingrained habits.

Healing practice

Culturally specific ways of treating illnesses

Health vs. illness

The experience of sickness by patients (___) vs. the scientific or medical classification and recognition of pathological symptoms (___).

Hegemony

The cultural or political dominance of one group over another through ideological or cultural means.

Hybridity

The ways multiple cultures mix, bringing together traditions as they negotiate their shared and unshared identities.

Imagined community

A concept coined by Benedict Anderson to describe the ways communities are culturally constructed by the people who consider themselves to belong to it.

Localisation

A social group’s specific adaptation of the influences of globalisation.

Marginalisation

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 realisation of their productive human potential.

Marriage

________ is the formation of a socially recognized union. It may be a union between a man and a woman, between any two adults (regardless of their gender), or between multiple spouses in polygamous societies. ________ provide a formal structure in which to raise and nurture children (whether biological or not), but not all ________ involve reproduction, and ________ can serve multiple functions. One function is to create alliances between individuals, families, and sometimes larger social networks. These alliances may provide political and economic advantages. While there are variations of ________, the institution itself, with a few notable exceptions, is universal across cultures.

Modernisation

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

Morality / moral system

A system of principles, rules, ideals, and values which work to form one's overall perspective. ________ links to religion, beliefs, ethics and notions of right and wrong.

Neocolonialism

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