cultural anthropology exam 1

Anthropology

is the study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another

Holism

anthropology’s commitment to look at the whole picture of human life—-culture, biology, history, and language—-across space and time.

ethnography

primary research strategy in cultural anthropology, involving living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period the better understand their lives

participant observation

a key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied

four subfields of anthropology

biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology

biological anthropology

the study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly how they have evolved over time and adapted to their environments

linguistic anthropology

the study of human language in the past and the present

cultural anthropology

the study of people’s communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together

archaeology

the investigation of the human past by means of excavating and analyzing artifacts

ethnocentricism

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

seeking to understand another culture on its own merits

globalization

the worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders

time-space compression

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

flexible accumulation

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

culture

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

norms

ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people

values

fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful

symbols

anything that represents something else

mental maps of reality

cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications

Montaigne

beginning to recognize ethnocentrism, critique of power, inspiration for later, inspiration for later cultural relativism

The Enlightenment

reason outweighs revelation, natural laws can be discovered, science will foster progress

Herder

language guides thought, historically and spatially distinct volk kultures; each volk, nation, or people has its own unique spirit

Monogenists

argued for the humanity of mankind

Morgan

unilineal evolution, environment

Malinowski

established our modern concept of ethnographic fieldwork

Mead

instrumental in bringing anthropology home to a public audience

Steward

directed the People of Puerto Rico Project, an early study of a culture already well known to the Western world

hegemony

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

agency

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

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

mapping

polyvocality

the use of many voices in ethnographic writing, including

reflexivity

self-reflection on the experience of doing fieldwork

language

a system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information

phonemes

the smallest units of sound that can make a difference in meaning

morphemes

the smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own

grammar

the combined set of of observations about the rules governing the formation of phonemes, morphemes, and syntax that guide language use

conventionality

rules shared by a community of speakers on how to create meaning from sounds/symbols

displacement

the ability to communicate about things that are not immediately present

productivity

the ability to create completely new utterances (and still be understood)

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

different languages produce different ways of thinking

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

the study of the ways culture shapes language and language shapes culture, particularly the intersection of language with cultural categories and systems of power such as age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class

power and language

words used to express power, language standardization program

code switching

switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another, or one language and another, depending on the cultural context

prestige language

a particular language variation or way of speaking that is associated with wealth, success, education, and power

language loss

the extinction of languages that have very few speakers

AAE

African American English Vernacular

prestige dialects

a variant of language that enjoys higher status and is associated with higher social status

exogamy

marriage to someone outside the kinship group

endogamy

marriage to someone within the kinship group

Boas

found anthropology department at Columbia

Chagnon

focused on finding out relationships between creations of these villages (village phishioning)

substinence strategies

foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture, industrialism

foraging

reliance on wild food resources

horticulture

simple farming with hand tools and fallow

pastorialism

reliance on meat/dairy from domestic livestock

agriculture

intensive farming (plows tractors, fertilizer)

industrialism

food production by minority; majority in other production (heavy manufactoring)

generalized foragers

wide range of food, no food species predominates (Ju’hoansi, Mbuti)

specialized foragers

one/ a few staple food resources (North American Plains- bison)

consanguineal kin

blood relatives

affinial kin

in-laws

bilateral

any individual is equally related to kin on mother and father’s side (lumps affinial and consanguineal kin)

matrilineal

membership reckoned through mother (Crow)

patrilineal

membership reckoned through father

kinship

relationships understood in a society as connected through blood/ marriage or treated as such

unilineal descent groups

groups based on descent from a common ancestor beyond 2 generations