anthro 2a midterm 1

anthropology definition

the study of human diversity (the differences between us, there are different ways of being human but all of those ways are all ways of being human)

four subfields of anthropology

1. sociocultural 2. biological 3. linguistic 4. archaeology

culture

the power to naturalize (taking social inventions and make them appear to us as natural)

what is culture?

not biologically transmitted, but socially transmitted (learned, not inherited)

the power to naturalize

taking a social invention and making them appear to us as natural

a priori

something that is deeply embedded that you just began with it, accept it, and go forward with it (“everything that comes ahead of time”)

scientific racism

the use of race as a subject/unit of analysis (the theory that each race has its own independent origin and the one true human being is white European)

what two things did scientific racism want?

1. discrete biological types (races) 2. sociocultural attributes of people are expressions of racial types

race

cultural categories in the hands of science (a scientific category)

colonialism

where one group (especially of European descent) invades, settles, and exploits another region that controls its land, people, and resources

science and culture

anthropologists argue that science isn’t neutral, it is also based and influenced by culture (how scientists interpret data can be influenced by beliefs about the culture)

linneaus

developed the four variants of the classification of homo sapiens that are still used today

4 variants of homo sapiens

1. homo sapiens europaeus albascens (white) 2. homo sapiens asiaticus fucus (dark) 3. homo sapiens africanus negreus (black) 4. homo sapiens americanus rubescents (red)

blumenbach

created the first explicit scientific delineation of “races”, the five different races that were defined

the five races defined by blumenbach

1. caucasian (white) 2. mongolian (yellow) 3. malay (brown) 4. ethiopian (black), 5. american (red)

hooton

developed the big 3 racial typologies

the big 3 racial typologies

caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid

monogenesis

the theory that all humans are tied back to the same source and ancestor (ex. adam and eve)

polygenesis

the theory that each race has its own separate origin (ex. adam and eve for each separate race)

typological thinking

a form of racism where people have the habit of placing things into categories (a universal human activity)

craniometry

the concept of using statistics to prove the superiority of Western European men by comparing brains of different races

robert bennett bean

conducted research to find out what brain part was responsible for balance, arithmetic, etc. he took white and black brains and measured how much of thei rbrains were genu & splenium, showed complete divergence (all the white male brains had more genu than black male brains meaning superiority)

franklin mall

one of bean’s mentors, conducted bean’s experiment but made it blind, not being able to see the identity of the brain before he measured and he found no differences in the brains whatsoever, proving bias

paul broca

manipulated the craniometric research and ran into mongoloids that had bigger brains than Europeans did, and he grew skeptical of brain size. he hunted for an alternative framework after the results of his experiment, which were not scientifically correct

biological v social transmission in culture

culture is socially transmitted but not biologically transmitted

4 facts of human biological variation

1. there is human bio variation 2. geogrpahically localized variation 3. continuous variation in its geographic makeup 4. variation is discordant in its distribution

social races

ethnic groups that are assumed to have a biological basis (we can’t measure the biological basis)

hypodescent

in a mixed-race child, the child belongs to the lower-ranking racial status of the parent (ex. susie guillory phipps)

race in brazil

has less exclusionary categories which permits the individuals to change their racial classification, uses more racial labels than Americans & Japanese do, racial identity is more flexible, racial classification pays attention to phenotype

race in japan

present it’s nation as homogeneous in race, ethnicity, language, and culture, contains significant minority groups despite the lack of diversity, Japanese defines themselves by opposition to others

race and intelligence

people look at race tied to IQ scores (white people doing well makes sense, asian people doing well makes people look for an excuse to why)

a cline

a gradation in character over geographic distance (some measurable trait for gradation across the population, and looking at patterns)

breeding population

a group of regularly interbreeding individuals (when one member of a group mates, they tend to do something with another member of the group, making the group a breeding population) (flexible unit of analysis)

ethnicity

a common identity based upon cultural similarities (ex. language, cuisine, customs)

minority groups v. majority groups

minority groups: they occupy subordinate (lower) positions within a social hierarchy and have less power and wealth than majority groups

majority groups: have more power and wealth, the typical white family has 8 times the wealth of the typical Black family

assimilation

the process of change that members of an ethnic group may experience when they move to another country where another culture dominates

multiculturalism

the view of cultural diversity in a country as something as good and desirable (the opposite of assimilation model)

discrimination

refers to policies and practices that harms a group and its members

social evolution

the gradual and continuous change in social structures, cultural norms, behaviors, and institutions over time (society is always changing)

social darwinism

“survival of the fittest”, competition is a natural phenomenon, all places compete for scarce resources

what did every social evolution theory have in common?

1. social forms change over time 2. societies can be ranked from high to low on some criterion 3. rank order is a historical progression

unilinear evolution theory

developed by Lewis Henry Morgan, claimed that all societies developed and evolved on the same path (simple to complex)

evolutionary model of unilinear evolution

1. savagery (tech-fishing, fire, bow.arrow) & (marriage-running around in promiscuous hordes) 2. barbarism (tech-pottery/agriculture) & (marriage-polygamy) 3. civilization (tech-phonetic alphabet) & (marriage-monogamy)

sociocultural diversity

different rates of change during evolution

primitives

people who are stuck in an early stage of evolution and frozen in time

material conditions of evolutionary stages

determines whether people get stuck or go on, represents the nuts and bolts about the routines that enable you to survive

alternative to scientific racism

people’s engagement with their environment in different places of the world can affect evolution

franz boas

critiqued unilinear evolution, said that there were empirical problems and had bad data because they relied on secondhand data, claiming that sociocultural evolution is multilinear because there are more than one way to change and evolve throughout time

multilinear evolution

people develop in different ways, there is more than one way to change/evolve

cultural diffusion

we borrow things from other cultures and traditions get spread from one person to another person because histories are not independent of each other

“progress” is problematic because…

it involves culturally specific criteria because we select criteria that makes us look good (ethnocentric bias)

why is dominance ephemeral?

dominance doesn’t last, something can be there one moment but gone the next (ex. economic, military, political dominance/power)

“the common view” of nature v. nurture debate

human biology of nature is established through an evolutionary process, and once it did, we developed culture, and culture takes over in our adjustment and adaptation to these environments

hobbes

claimed that humans are selfish but culture forces us to be cooperative and work together, if you remove society humans would kill everyone

rosseau

claimed that humans are inherently good but society corrupts us and teaches us greed

chimpanzees and humans

chimpanzees are 98% genetically similar to humans, their common ancestor lives 7-10 million years ago

fossil evidence of humans

bipedalism (moving on 2 rear limbs) differentiates chimps and humans, first stone tools 2.5+ million years ago, modern anatomy happened 200k years ago, we evolved biologically as cultural creatures

culture and society

humans share society (organized life and groups) and have distinctive traditions and customs transmitted over the generations through learning and language

culture and biology

culture forces shape human biology, the biocultural perspective recognizes that cultural forces constantly mold human biology (biocultural - using and combining both biological and cultural perspectives and approaches to analyze and understand a particular issue or problem)

supra-organic

the concept of culture operating at a level beyond the individual

subjectivity

one individual point of view/perspective/sense of self

agency

we plan, lie, manipulate, and strategize (we all have agency as individuals)

culture & world view

the way we see the world is shaped by culture, culture refers to meanings (signs enable communication, when someone says dog you think of dog)

rules

norms for how to behave, what to do, and what not to do

values

our beliefs about what is desirable and good

cultural constructions

something that we make as a society, it isn’t something that happens in nature (ex. rocking chairs are made with wood by humans)

ethnocentrism

the idea that our culture and traditions is the proper and natural way to do things, everything else is wrong (we don’t understand people who are different than us)

cultural relativism

culturally ordered practices need to be understood in terms of their own cultural context (the opposite of ethnocentrism)

verbal and non-verbal communication

verbal communication involves culturally learned words to convey abstract ideas, nonverbal communication uses subconscious cues like facial expressions to convey ideas

phoneme

the sound contrast that makes a difference that differentiates it’s meaning (we discover these by comparing words that resemble each other but have different meanings)

morpheme

words and their meaningful parts (the word cats would be analyzed by -cat and -s)

syntax

refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences

lexicon

a dictation containing all the morphemes and their meanings

language and thought

language, culture, and thought are closely interrelated

sociolinguistics

investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation

dialects (BEV)

Black English Vernacular, a distinct complex language system with a structured dialect with its own phonological, grammatical, and syntactic rules

gender speech contrasts

men and women talk differently, men are more likely to speak ungrammatically than women are and make more distinctions among them

stratification and symbolic domination

we use and evaluate speech in the context of extralinguistic forces (political, economic), many Americans evaluate the speech of lower status groups calling them uneducated

advertising diversity

book created by shalini shankar, talking about how racial and ethnic differences arec reated through advertising and marketing, agents know they need to appeal to ethnically and racially diverse America

biopolitics

power relations of society are pre-inscribed on the body (girls like pink, guys like robots)

imagined community

imagining others in a similar space/time, not a matter of social networks or what fellow members share

assemblage

a set of meanings that are assembled for some particular end (ex. ad agencies assembling an ad)

ethnorace

not just a reflection of the group, but also defining the group and what that group is (you must convince your clients to hire you)

asian american in advertising

producing creative affect (targeting 1st and 1.5 generation migrants), builds identification to a client’s brand, using qualisigns

turning model citizens into model consumers

racialization, the whole idea is to turn model minorities to model consumers but is multicultural advertising altering our sense of normal?

marked vs unmarked categories

marked categories are seen as the not normal (ex. female ceo) & unmarked categories are seen as the normal (ex. CEO is white male middle class)

general market advertising

large established corporations with big budgets targeting the broad base of potential consumers (America), so they use commercials, ads, billboards, wanting to appeal to the broad America by presenting "normal” Americans as perceived by corporate America

20-30% mix

the average 20-30% of the people are a mix of minority and are casted minority actors but make them as “normal” as possible

multicultural advertising

smaller companies with small budgets targeting specific ethnic and racial minorities, tries to build brand identification by the use of target language (in-language, in-culture) uses qualisigns

qualisigns

a sign that refers to a quality of a greater social and cultural whole (a quality of a broader set of values and meanings)

transcreation

clients have ads or want similar ads to general market advertisements to reach bigger audiences, adds an extra act of creativity for the client to understand

multicultural ad agencies

they hire diverse creatives from the communities they target

multicultural ad agencies and client relations

influenced by the intercultural affect and its implications,plays a role to appeal and be loyal to the company

racialization of space

the process by which physical locations are assigned racial identities, leading to inclusion for some and exclusion for others