Intimate Relations Midterm

These are all the terms but there's still questions from the readings + the films

Cultural Anthropology

our species unique ability to create ideas, behaviors, and technologies that we can share with each other

Archeology/archeological anthropology

examining human remains in order to observe human lives over time 

Linguistic Anthropology

study of how sounds and gestures become language + relationship between language and culture

Physical anthropology

how history has shaped the human body, inside and outside

Ethnocentrism

the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture, judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture

Cultural Relativism

when anthropologists study other cultures they must seek to understand it in terms of the local cultural view 

Ethnography

description of a people and their way of life, rooted in culture

Emic

focuses on the intrinsic cultural values that are meaningful to members of a given society

Etic

outsider perspective

Feminism

social movement whose goal is to eliminate the oppression of women in all of its forms (social, economic, political, and cultural changes)

First Wave Feminism

women’s suffrage, 1920s

Second Wave feminism

equal rights, 1960s and 1970s

Equal Rights Movement

feminist movement focused on achieving legal, political, economic, and social equality between men and women 

Women’s Liberation

feminist movement focused on the devolution of women in everyday life; sexual objectivation, violence against women, socialization of women to meet needs of men

Approx. age of homo sapiens

Homo sapiens have been around for roughly around 300,000 years ago 

Africa

Where Genus Homo originated (continent)

Importance of foraging for our species

 Basic characteristics, cultural abilities, cultural practices arose in the context of foraging, foraging as the “human condition” 

hunting and gathering

examples of food collecting and producing

cultural traits of food collectors

Foragers are generally nomadic and move around plants and animals they rely on. No labor specialization, no ownership of resources or land. Some divisions of labor are based on sex but not everywhere. 

!Kung San

hunter gatherers of Southern Africa. Live in small bands of around 30 people. Egalitarianism (gender roles are looser)

Yanomamo

Horticulturalists, less egalitarian and slightly more patriarchal

Horticulturalists

Primarily gathers food through farming, using human labor and simple tools. Men have multiple wives and there is a concept of territory. 

Cultural traits of agricultural societies

Agricultural societies can support larger populations and are more tied to the land they depend on (no need for wandering). Food surplus introduces the idea of social stratification, the wealthy (has more land, food, etc) vs the poor

Freidrich Engels

Made important contributions to understanding family economics. Co-authored the Communist Manifesto

Karen Sacks, women’s subordination

Argued that women’s status is lower when private property gained strength as an organizing principle. Domestic power (considered women’s work) is not valued as much because it is not compensated as much, therefore resulting in women’s subordination

Public and Private domains in relation to women’s status

Gender status becomes more equalized when domestic and public spheres aren’t sharply separated. Strong differentiation results in private-public contrast. (Public being politics, work,etc and domestic being home and children) 

Kinship calculation

Kinship calculation varies based on culture. For example, American kinship reflects social behaviors of the traditional, nuclear family 

Eskimo and Hawaiian kinship

Eskimo kinship is bilateral, being traced equally through males and females. Hawaiian kinship is only distinguished by generation, for example: what the Eskimos would consider cousins, Hawaiian's would consider siblings. 

Parallel Cousins

children of same sex siblings (mother’s sister’s children)

Cross cousins

children of the opposite sex siblings (mother’s brother’s children)

Matrilineal and Patrilineal descent

Tracing family based on mother or father. For example, Omaha is patrilineal meaning ego’s descent is traced solely through father’s side. 

Nuclear family

 “traditional” family dynamic in American society. Widespread but not universal, in some cultures nuclear family does not play a special role in social life 

Nayars of Southern India

Kinship is matrilineal, girls live in their own kin group and women have many sexual partners

Nuer of Sudan marriages

Nuer women can marry another woman if father has only daughters but no male heirs who are necessary for patrilineage to survive, marriage is a symbolic and social relationship rather than a sexual one

exogamy

practices of seeking a mate outside of one’s own group, adaptive bc it links people into wider social network

incest taboo

incest is having sexual relations with a close relative, incest taboo is universal, however people define kin and thus incest differently

Polygamy, polygyny, polyandry, monogamy

Monogamy- all members of society only allowed one spouse at a time

Polygamy- plural marriages

Polygyny - more common, male allowed more than one wife

Polyandry- females allowed more than one husband less common

Companionate marriage

Marriage being based on a prior romantic relationship

bride wealth, bride service, dowry

Bride wealth- man and his relatives transfer wealth to the relatives of the bride– most common of all marital exchanges

Bride service- requires a husband to spend a period of time working for the family of his bride

Dowry- requires woman’s family to give portion of their own wealth or property to daughter & her husband’s family

Sex

biological attributes, for ex: XX and XY

Gender

cultural construction of male and female characteristics

Gender roles

tasks activities culture assigns to sexes

Gender stereotypes

oversimplified but strongly held ideas about characteristics of males and females

Gender stratification

unequal distribution of rewards between men and women reflecting different positions in social hierarchy

What factors influence gender stratification?

Socially constructed idea of what makes a “man” and a “woman”, therefore influencing the socially constructed idea that men are superior than women. Often influenced by the gender binary

Gender binary

Idea that there are only 2 genders: men and women

Gender identity

Someone’s own sense of where they fall on the gender spectrum

Sexual orientation

described who you are attracted to, who you have sex with, who you love

Margaret Mead’s contributions to gender studies

Studied Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli, of Papua New Guinea and established that what society defines as masculine and feminine is socially constructed. If these differences were genetic, it would be universal around all societies

Hua of Papua New Guinea

Village contains one or more large men’s houses occupied by initiated people of patrilineage, mainly adult men but some older women who are “like men”

Zuni of American southwest

Considered a man-woman in the American southwest. Viewed positively bc they could stay in the household of birth rather than leave upon marriage

Hijra of India

alternate or “third” gender. Men who present womanly, considered sacred

Gender crossing

individual assumes the gender role of the other sex

Two spirits

Native Americans who adopt multiple gender identities

Intersex

variations in genital anatomy

Transgender

umbrella term for people who have significant cross gender identification from the sex assigned at birth

Transsexual

living 24/7 in a cross gender identity that is different from sex assigned at birth

Gender policing

the imposition or enforcement of normative gender expressions on individuals, particularly for those who are perceived as not adequately performing (through appearance or behavior) their gender or sex assigned to them at birth.

Gender ideology

We learn from very early on, without formal construction, of what gender is, the categories of gender in our culture, beliefs, behaviors, and meanings that we assign to gender

Gender identity disorder vs gender dysphoria

gender identity disorder- disorders in which an individual exhibits marked and persistent identification with the opposite sex and persistent discomfort

gender dysphoria- refers to psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity

Sambia of Papua New Guinea

Perceive no natural attributes of sex and gender for boys. Girls possess this because they menstruate, boys must obtain this by drinking semen

Estrus

Physical indicator in female bonobos when they are most fertile

sex is conscious, not just for reproduction

What do bonobos reveal about human sexuality?

Sudaneze Azande

Prospective warriors would have sex with other men, when they retire they would have sex with women. Shows that sexuality is more complex than heterosexual, homosexual, etc labels. Proves that sexuality and how we view it is culturally constructed 

Kinsey Scale

0-6 + X, 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual, X being asexual

Homosexuality in the DSM

Homosexuality was introduced in the DSM in 1952 as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” It was later removed in 1973 after activists advocated for its removal 

Obergefell v Hodges

2015 SCOTUS case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide