Anthropology

characteristics of culture

characteristics of culture

Culture is learned, it changes over time, humans have agency, culture is symbolic, human culture is unique

four-field approach

Archaeology, Biological, Cultural, Linguistic

Archaeology

Excavation and analysis of material remains, like past culture groups

Biological

biological aspects of humans, our primate relatives and extinct hominin ancestors

Cultural

Studies the learned patterns of behavior, beliefs, and practices shared by a people

Linguistic

Language, communication, and their cultural contexts. Language influences thoughts and thought influences language.

lenses of anthropology

Cultural Relativism, Reflexivity, Holism, Comparison

Cultural Relativism

It is a counter ethnocentrism, don’t judge and focus on a culture on their terms, not yours

Holism

understanding the whole by it’s interconnected parts

Comparison

don’t compare based on what is superior but to focus on patterns and the contexts

enculturation

the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group.

ethnocentrism

thinking that your culture is superior to others and just overall that your people are better.

“The Other”

a term used to describe people whose customs, beliefs or behaviors are seen as different

norms

shared ideas and expectations about how people should act in certain situations certain

values

ideas and standards for behavior, thought, and life style

symbols

an arbitrary, conventional object, image or behavior that serves as a container for a more complicated idea

emic

a description of the studied culture from the perspective of a member of the culture or insider.

etic

description of the studied culture from the perspective of an observer or outsider

ethical guidelines 1

Do no harm

ethical guidelines 2

Be open and honest regarding your work

ethical guidelines 3

Obtain informed consent and necessary information

ethical guidelines 4

Weigh Competing Ethical Obligations Due Collaborators and Affected Parties

ethical guidelines 5

Make Your Results Accessible

ethical guidelines 6

Protect and Preserve Your Records

ethical guidelines 7

Maintain Respectful and Ethical Professional Relationships

ethnography

How the researchers convey what they have learned with an outside audience

ethnographic fieldwork

field notes, interviews, key informants, social and sketch mapping, focus groups

field notes

the record of data that is collected from people

interviews

Questions that culturally relative

key informants

individuals who are more knowledgeable about their culture than others and who are particularly helpful to the anthropologist.

social and sketch mapping

social mapping looks at kinship relationships and sketch looks at particular areas

focus groups

it is a number of people that sit together to discuss a topic or topics. These are for topics that aren’t too personal or sensitive and can also be quanified

indigenous

people who have continually lived in a particular location for a long period of time (prior to the arrival of others) or who have historical ties to a location and who are culturally distinct from the dominant population surrounding them.

participant observation

a type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

polyvocality

which more than one person’s voice is presented, and its use can range from ensuring that informants’ perspectives are presented in the text while still writing in the researcher’s voice to including informants’ actual words rather than paraphrasing them and co-authoring the ethnography with an informant.

qualitative data

anthropological research designed to gain an in-depth, contextualized understanding of human behavior.

quantitative data

anthropological research that uses statistical, mathematical, and/or numerical data to study human behavior.

mixed methods research

this uses both qualitative and quantitative

thick description

a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures to describe a detailed description of the studied group that not only explains the behavior or cultural event in question but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it.

5 Characteristics of Language

arbitrary, discrete, duality of patterning, displacement, productive

arbitrary

the relationship between a symbol and its referent (meaning), in which there is no obvious connection between them.

discrete

a feature of human speech that they can be isolated from others.

duality of patterning

at the first level of patterning, meaningless discrete sounds of speech are combined to form words and parts of words that carry meaning. In the second level of patterning, those units of meaning are recombined to form an infinite possible number of longer messages such as phrases and sentences.

displacement

the ability to communicate about things that are outside of the here and now.

productive

The human language has the infinite capacity to produce and understand messages. We can invent new concepts and respond infinitely to changes

code-switching

using two or more language varieties in a particular interaction.

creole

a language that develops from a pidgin when the pidgin becomes so widely used that children acquire it as one of their first languages.

descriptive linguistics

The study of the structures of language

dialect

a variety of speech. The term is often applied to a subordinate variety of a language. Speakers of two dialects of the same language do not necessarily always understand each other.

kinesics

the study of all forms of human body language.

language

an idealized form of speech, usually referred to as the standard variety.

language and globalization

the spread of people, their cultures and languages, products, money, ideas, and information around the world

language death

the total extinction of a language.

language variation

geographically distributed across populations in much the same way that human physical variation is, with the degree of difference between any two varieties increasing across increasing distances

one variety of a language is considered the “standard,” but this choice is based on the social and political prestige of the group that speaks that variety; it has no inherent superiority over the other variants called its “dialects

linguistic relativity (“Whorf Hypothesis”)

the idea that the structures and words of a language influence how its speakers think, how they behave, and ultimately the culture itself

morphemes (bound and free/unbound)

a unit of meaning that cannot stand alone; it must be attached to another morpheme.

a morpheme that can stand alone as a separate word.

paralanguage

those characteristics of speech beyond the actual words spoken, such as pitch, loudness, tempo.

phonemes

the basic meaningless sounds of a language.

prestige language

the variant of any language that has been given special prestige in the community.

proxemics

the study of the social use of space, including the amount of space an individual tries to maintain around himself in his interactions with others.

register

more than one style of speech

semantics

how meaning is conveyed at the word and phrase level.

sociolinguistics

investigates the relationship of cultural knowledge and behavior to proxemics, semantics, speech register, and paralanguage.

speech act / event

Any time we speak we are performing an act, but what we are actually trying to accomplish with that utterance may not be interpretable through the dictionary meanings of the words themselves.

standard languages

the variant of any language that has been given special prestige in the community.

syntax

the rules by which a language combines morphemes into larger units.

broad spectrum diet

a diet based on a wide range of food resources.

carrying capacity

a measurement of the number of calories that can be extracted from a particular unit of land in order to support a human population.

delayed return system

techniques for obtaining food that require an investment of work over a period of time before the food becomes available for consumption

immediate return systems

which the food acquired can be immediately consumed. Foraging is an immediate return system.

domestic economy

the work associated with obtaining food for a family or household.

domestication

Dogs and tomatoes are good examples of humans interfering with the breeding process to get the results they wnat

foodways

the cultural norms and attitudes surrounding food and eating

modes of subsistence

foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, intensive agriculture, industrial agriculture

foraging

subsistence system that relies on wild plant and animal food resources. This system is sometimes called “hunting and gathering.”

horticulture

a subsistence system based on the small-scale cultivation of crops intended primarily for the direct consumption of the household or immediate community.

pastoralism

a subsistence system in which people raise herds of domesticated livestock.

intensive agriculture

a type of agriculture, both of crop plants and of animals, with higher levels of input and output per unit of agricultural land area.

industrial agriculture

food production is done with gas powered machinery, extensive land modification, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and commercially owned

mono-cropping

the reliance on a single plant species as a food source

Neolithic revolution

a period of rapid innovation in subsistence technologies that began 10,000 years ago and led to the emergence of agriculture

plant and animal domestication

Animals were domesticated before plants and were domesticated at different times. For plants some of them didn’t exist in some areas until they were brought over.

private property in foraging and pastoralism

Foraging societies tend to move their camps frequently to exploit various resources, so holding on to a lot of personal possessions or “wealth” is impractical.

Pastoralists, in contrast, have a great deal of personal property: most of it in the form of animals, a kind of “money on legs,” but also in the form of household objects and personal items like clothing or jewelry that pastoralists can keep more easily than foragers because they do not move as frequently.

rule-breaking foragers

The Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw of the Pacific Northwest: Because there was a surplus of food, some members of society were able to pursue other full-time occupations or specializations such as working as artisans or even becoming “chiefs.”

a tradition of potlatch, a kind of “extreme gift-giving” to neutralize some of these tensions.

Typically they have many resources and near coastal areas

Reflexivity

Keep in mind the researchers are also human and will make mistakes

Ethical guideline 8

Maintain Anonymity and Privacy

general purpose money

a medium of exchange that can be used in all economic transactions.

means of production

the resources used to produce goods in a society such as land for farming or factories.

modes of exchange

generalized and balanced reciprocity, redistribution, market exchange

generalized and balanced

giving without expecting a specific thing in return.

the exchange of something with the expectation that something of equal value will be returned within a specific time period.

reciprocity

involves the exchange of goods and services and is rooted in a mutual sense of obligation and identity.

redistribution

the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person or institution for the purpose of dispersal at a later date.

market exchange

a form of trade that today most commonly involves general purpose money, bargaining, and supply and demand price mechanisms.

modes of production

domestic, tributary, capitalist

negative reciprocity

an attempt to get something for nothing; exchange in which both parties try to take advantage of the other.

potlatch

served a livelihood function by ensuring the redistribution of goods between groups with surpluses and those with deficits

structural violence

form of violence in which a social structure or institution harms people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

authority

the ability to induce behavior of others by persuasion

“Big man”

a form of temporary or situational leadership; influence results from acquiring followers.

class and caste systems

You can move up social status

the division of society into hierarchical levels; one’s position is determined by birth and remains fixed for life.