Cultural Anthropology Final Exam - Terms

Compilation of all terms from chapters 1-16

Anthropology

the study of humanity, from its evolutionary origins millions of years ago to its current worldwide diversity.

Societies

populations of people living in organized groups with social institutions and expectations of behavior.

Culture

the learned values, beliefs, and rules of conduct that are shared to some extent by the members of a society, and that govern their behavior with one another.

Symbolic culture

the ideas people have about themselves, others, and the world, and the ways that people express these ideas.

Material culture

the tools people make and use, the clothing and ornaments they wear, the buildings they live in, and the household utensils they use.

Holistic perspective

a perspective in anthropology that views culture as an integrated whole, no part of which can be completely understood without considering the whole.

Comparative perspective

an approach in anthropology that uses data about the behaviors and beliefs in many societies to document both cultural universals and cultural diversity.

Culture change

changes in people’s ways of life over time through both internal and external forces.

Globalization

the spread of economic, political, and cultural influences throughout a very large geographic area or through a great number of different societies.

Cultural anthropology

the study of cultural behavior, especially the comparative study of living and recent human cultures.

Ethnology

aspect of cultural anthropology involved with building theories about cultural behaviors and forms.

Ethnography

aspects of cultural anthropology involved with observing and documenting peoples’ ways of life.

Indigenous societies

peoples who are now minority groups in state societies who were formerly independent and have occupied their territories for a long time.

Ethnocentrism

the widespread human tendency to perceive the ways of doing things in one’s own culture as normal and natural and that of others as strange, inferior, and possibly even unnatural or inhuman.

Cultural relativism

an approach in anthropology that stresses the importance of analyzing cultures in each culture’s own terms rather than in terms of the culture of the anthropologist.

Ethical relativism

the belief that all rights and wrongs are relative to time, place, and culture, such that no moral judgements of behavior can be made.

Linguistic anthropology

the study of language and communications, and the relationship between language and other aspects culture and society.

Historical linguistics

the study of changes in language and communications over time and between peoples in contact.

Archaeology

the study of past cultures, both historic cultures with written records and prehistoric cultures that predate the invention of writing.

Biological anthropology

the study of human origins and contemporary biological diversity.

Paleoanthropology

the study of the fossil record, especially skeletal remains, to understand the process and products of human evolution.

Medical anthropology

a discipline that bridges cultural and biological anthropology, focusing on health and disease in human populations.

Applied anthropology

an area of anthropology that applies the techniques and theories of the field to problem solving outside of traditional academic settings.

Forensic anthropologists

biological anthropologists who analyze human remains in the service of criminal justice and families of disaster victims.

Cultural resource management (CRM)

the application of archaeology to preserve and protect historic structures and prehistoric sites.

Contract archaeology

the application of archaeology to assess the potential impact of construction on archaeological sites and to salvage archaeological evidence.

Cultural knowledge

information that enables people to function in their society and contributes to the survival of the society as a whole.

Cultural models

shared assumptions that people have about the world and about the ideal culture.

Norms

sets of expectations and attitudes that people have about appropriate behavior.

Subculture

a group whose members and others think of their way of life as different in some significant way form that of other people in the larger society.

Enculturation

process of learning one’s culture through information observation and formation instruction.

Taboos

norms specifying behaviors that are prohibited in a culture.

Cultural core

practices by which people organize their work and produce food and other goods necessary for their survival.

Cultural integration

tendency for people’s practices and beliefs to form a relatively coherent and consistent system.

Symbol

a word, image, or object that stands for cultural ideas or sentiments

Naturalized concepts

ideas and behaviors so deeply embedded in a culture that they are regarded as universally normal or natural.

Counterculture

an alternative cultural model within a society that expresses different views about the way that society should be organized.

Worldview

a culture-based way that people understand the world and their relations among themselves and with other peoples.

Culture contact

direct interaction between peoples of different cultures through migration, trade, invasion, or conquest.

Syncretism

process by which a cultural product is created when people adapt a cultural item selectively borrowed from another culture to fit their existing culture.

Assimilation

process by which a less numerous and less powerful cultural group changes its ways and cultural identity to blend in with the dominant culture.

Acculturation

process by which a group adjusts to living within a dominant culture while at the same time maintaining its original cultural identity.

Cultural pluralism

conditions in a stratified society in which many diverse cultural groups ideally live together equally and harmoniously wihtout losing their cultural identities and diversity.

Modernization

complex culture change, both internal and external, based on industrialization and a transnational market economy.

Cultural evolution

belief of a early anthropologists that cultures evolve through various stages from a simpler and more primitive state to a complex and more culturally advanced state.

Social Darwinism

early belief that cultures compete for survival of the fittest, as in the process of natural selection in biological evolution.

Culture history

ongoing culture change in which people respond and adapt to their environment.

Ethnogenesis

ongoing process in which people develop, define, and direct their own cultural and ethnic identities.

Inventions

new technologies and systems of knowledge.

Innovation

process by which new technologies and systems of knowledge are based on or built from previous tools, knowledge, and skills.

Revolution

process by which people try to change their culture or overturn the social order and replace it with a new, ideal society and culture.

Diffusion

spread of ideas, material objects, and cultural practices from one society to another through direct and indirect culture contact.

Reactive adaptation

coping response to loss and deprivation of captive, conquered, or oppressed peoples.

Revitalization movement

type of nonviolent reactive adaptation in which people try to resurrect their culture heroes and restore their traditional way of life.

Global culture

a constellation of technologies, practices, attitudes, values, and symbols that spread internationally and enmesh nations and communities throughout the world in networks of power and influence.

Narratives

stories and myths that dramatize actual memories or events in symbolic forms consistent with cultural practices of storytelling.

Oral traditions

cultural narratives that have validity as artifacts of culture and experience.

Evolutionism

the view held by early social philosophers that human differences can be accounted for by different rates of progress, leading to different levels of cultural achievement.

Empiricism

the practice of conducting studies through direct observation and object description.

Functionalism

the view that cultural traits have social functions that contribute to the smooth operation of the whole society.

Materialist perspectives

explanations of cultural differences that emphasize environmental adaptation, technologies, and methods of acquiring or producing food.

Cultural ecology

field that studies cultures as dynamic wholes based on the satisfaction of human needs through cultural behaviors.

Cultural materialism

explanations of cultural differences as the results of cultural adaptations through economic production.

Emic

subjective, based on insiders’ views, as in explanations people have for their own cultural behavior.

Etic

objective, based on outsiders’ views, as in explanations of people’s behavior by anthropologist or other observers.

Structuralism

view that cultural differences can be explained by differences in forms or conceptual categories rather than in meanings.

Interpretive anthropology

view that cultural differences can be understood as complex webs of meaning rather than through forms.