Anthropology 3 - Final Exam Vocabulary

Religion (Geertz)

1) A system of symbols that acts to 2) establish, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in humans by 3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and 4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that 5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic

Symbol

Any object, act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a vehicle for a conception—the conception being the symbol’s “meaning”. Symbolic systems create a relationship between a community’s ethos and their worldview.

Ethos

The sentiment, tone, quality, moral & aesthetic style, or mood characteristic of life in a particular community.

Ex. A Silicon Valley start-up culture might have an ethos of speed, innovation, and disruption.

Moods

Emotional tone, collective feelings, or affective state of a group of people within a particular cultural or social setting. They are diffused and context-defining, totalistic and encompassing, and defined by sources (e.g., sadness, joy).

Motivations

Underlying drives that influence the behaviors, actions, and decisions of individuals or groups within a cultural context. They are discrete, goal-directed, focused on ends & consummations (e.g., performing a ritual to get rain).

Worldview

The outlook, orientation, or perspective defining a people’s most comprehensive idea of a “general order of existence”.

Models of Reality

Symbols that represent a non-symbolic aspect of the world (a representation of what is).

Models for Reality

Symbols that shape or constitute reality, transforming how the world appears to us (a blueprint for how to act, feel, and inhabit our world).

Limits of Interpretability

The existential problem of bafflement, confusion, and chaos when the world does not make sense; religion provides categories to interpret these events.

Limits of Endurance

The existential problem of suffering, illness, loss, and mourning; religion helps individuals endure pain.

Limits of Moral Insight

The existential problem of ambivalence, ethical paradox, and the problem of evil (why bad things happen to good people).

Being Between (Stoller)

The anthropologist's state of existing between different worlds, languages, and realities, which Stoller argues is a site of creative power and transformation rather than a deficit.

Rationality vs. "Mentalities"

The anthropological debate (often associated with Lévy-Bruhl) regarding whether some cultures possess distinct, pre-logical "mentalities" (put simply, they are primitive because of a fundamental difference) or share a common rationality with different cultural premises (people think the same, but some societies have different premises, rules, or experiences, which leads to different conclusions).

Law of Participation

The idea that an individual or group becomes part of a social system or culture through direct involvement or engagement

Law of Contradiction

A logical rule stating "X cannot be non-X" (e.g., a human cannot be a bird). Early anthropologists used it to judge other societies’ beliefs as illogical, but modern anthropology argues that people everywhere reason logically within their own cultural categories and ontologies.

Malinowski's Functionalist Account of Magic

Using the principle of functionalism, Malinowski stated that magic is a rational cultura system, serving as a psychological function to bridge the gap between knowledge and the unknown, giving confidence in uncontrollable situations (like ocean sailing).

Evans-Pritchard's Account of the Granary

An explanation of Azande witchcraft (from the Azande people of Central Africa): if a granary collapses on people, they understand the natural cause (termites), but use witchcraft to explain the social cause (why it fell at that specific moment on those specific people). Considered a key example in anthropology for understanding how different cultures explain cause and effect and connect events that might seem coincidental to Western thinking

Multiple Realities (Schutz/Geertz)

Schutz’s idea of multiple realities explains how people live between different experiential worlds, each with its own logic. Geertz then uses this to show how religious symbols and rituals can shift people into a distinct “religious reality” where different moods and motivations become real.

Commonsense Perspective

Accepting the world "as it is" or "given" with pragmatic motives. Focuses on doing tasks and not questioning assumptions.

Scientific Perspective

Driven by doubt, inquiry, and experimentation; immediate "givenness" withdraws.

Aesthetic Perspective

Dwelling in appearances and surfaces; absorption in things-in-themselves, suspension of practical interest.

Religious Perspective

A way of seeing beyond everyday life. It is not about doubt but about faith, not about staying detached but about committed involvement, and not about mere analysis but about encountering a deeper reality. This reality is expressed and made accessible through the texts, stories, and myths of a religion.

Action vs. Reflection

Action is the everyday, practical mode of life where you are doing things and not questioning fundamental assumptions (commonsense perspective). Reflection is the thinking, interpreting, and conceptualizing mode where you step out of the flow of activity to make meaning. Geertz uses this to explain how ritual suspends everyday practical concerns and moves people into a reflective religious reality where symbols, moods, and motivations become experientially real.

Instilling Religious Perspectives

Achieved through ritual practice, which tunes human action to an envisioned cosmic order and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience.

Ritual

Behavior that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as a social act.

Rites of Passage

Rituals marking the transition from one social status to another, consisting of separation, liminality, and aggregation (re-aggregation).

Separation

When a person is separated from their previous social role, identity, or place in the world.

Aggregation

The idea that the individual is reintegrated into society with a new identity and status (final stage of the rite of passage).

Embodiment (Stoller/Merleau-Ponty)

Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is the basis of consciousness and culture; we learn and understand the world through bodily senses, not just abstract thought. Stoller shows that anthropologists must also attend to bodily experience, such as fear, sensation, and emotion, in order to understand how cultural realities like sorcery become meaningful.

Deutero-Learning

"Learning to learn"; the tacit acquisition of apperceptive habits or orientations within which learning occurs.

Ex. A child who notices that teachers respond better when they raise their hand and applies this understanding to future classroom situations is learning how to learn.

Social Scientific Perspective on Ritual

Etic view; sees ritual as a "model of" reality (a analytical representation).

Religious Adherents’ Perspective on Ritual

Emic view; sees ritual as a "model for" reality (constituting truth).

Sex

Features of human biology and characteristics of physical bodies (e.g., genitalia, chromosomes).

Sexuality

An individual's experiences, meanings, and practices in relation to sexual activity.

Gender

Culturally assigned behaviors and meanings attributed to the distinction societies make between male and female.

Configurationalism

An idea (associated with Mead/Benedict) that culture selects and organizes certain human potentials into distinctive patterns of personality and temperament. Culture emphasizes some traits, suppresses others, and produces characteristic ways of feeling and behaving. Favors individuals with dispositions it values and discriminates against those with “alien” tendencies.

Mead on Sex and Temperament

A study arguing that "masculine" and "feminine" temperaments are culturally determined, not biologically fixed; found different patterns in different New Guinea societies.

The "Paradox" of Women's Power in Yap

Women have significant power through the matrilineal descent system (controlling names and land), yet operate within a system often described as patriarchal with "inferior" political status.

Power

The capacity to transform the social and physical world, including people’s activities, ideas, and desires.

Coercive Power

Use of physical force and violence to enact transformations.

Persuasive Power

Forms of influence that do not rely on physical force (e.g., speech, charisma).

Politics

Spheres of power relations (particularly unequal ones) that affect human affairs.

Stratification

The arrangement of society into groupings that are different and unequal. Every human society is stratified.

Hierarchy

Culturally recognized differentiations between individuals that emphasize inequality; there are people who have less power and resources and opportunities.

Class

Ranked subgroups in a stratified society, differentiated in economic terms.

Hegemony (Gramsci)

A stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing its values and accepting its "naturalness".

Liberalism

Philosophical idea that moral goods and prosperity are tied to individual autonomy, self-reliance, and rights.

Neoliberalism

Philosophical idea that governments should not regulate private enterprise and that free-market forces should rule.

Liberal Feminism

Defines freedom as individual autonomy, rights, and equality under the law for all genders. The core assumption is that gender inequality can be solved by extending individual rights and freedoms to women, through political/legal reform and individual choice.

Critiques of Nonliberal Traditions

States that nonliberal traditions, from a liberal feminist perspective, appear to restrict women’s autonomy and naturalize gender hierarchy. The critique often assumes that freedom is universal and defined by individual choice, which may overlook cultural forms of agency.

Postcolonial Feminism (Third Wave Feminism)

Critiques universalizing tendencies in mainstream feminism, where all women are assumed to face oppression in some way. It argues that gender inequality cannot be understood without considering racism, class, religion, and cultural difference. Notes that Western ideals of autonomy can reproduce colonial attitudes.

Abu-Lughod's Critique of “Saving Muslim Women”

Western attempts to “save Muslim women” are based on the false assumption that Muslim women are universally oppressed and need saving. Warns that such rescue discourses can be used to justify military intervention or political domination, turning compassion into a tool of power.

Agency (Mahmood's Version)

A capacity to act and make meaningful choices is realized within historically situated power relations. Rejects the idea that agency must mean individual autonomy or rebellion. It can include the capacity to inhabit norms (like piety) rather than escape them (if done with intention and purpose).

Freedom (Sartre)

The human ability to step back from all the forces that have socially conditioned us—our upbringing, habits, personality, social roles, and circumstances—and to choose how we will respond rather than merely react. In other words, you are always responsible for how you take up and live out your situation.

Secularity

The separation of religious and political structures; viewing religion as just "one option among others".

Nonliberal Tradition

Tradition where individual autonomy and independence are not core values; emphasizes social duty and religious regulation of life.

Egyptian Mosque Movement

A movement where women return to Islamic practice to cultivate virtues like shyness and humility, countering secular trends.

Gendered Piety

Values of feminine passivity and submissiveness, characterized by shyness, modesty, & humility. An example of this was how women cultivated Islamic virtues like modesty and humility through practices like wearing the hijab and studying scripture. Many participants were educated and financially independent, so it was not submission.

Subjectivation (Foucault)

The process by which individuals become subjects—capable of acting, and governed by power—through the norms, practices, and discourses of their society.

Ex. Someone comes to see themselves as “a healthy person” by adopting medical and fitness norms about diet, exercise, and risk. They monitor their body, track their habits, and regulate themselves in line with those standards—becoming a subject formed through health discourse.

Gender as Performance (Butler)

The idea that gender is not an internal truth but a "script" or practice played out over generations. Because you repeat those associated acts again and again, they start to look like they are natural and real, even though they’re only learned.

Paradox of Subjectivation

The process that secures a subject’s subordination is also the means by which they become a self-conscious agent with power. You can gain agency (ability to do things) by first submitting to norms and not by escaping them, similar to how you must learn the rules of a game before mastering it.

Habitus (Bourdieu)

Deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions formed through social experience that shape how we perceive and act.

Ex:

A person who grew up in a middle-class academic family may naturally feel comfortable in museums, universities, or classical music concerts. They might instinctively value long-term planning, formal speech, and reading—not because they consciously choose to, but because these dispositions were shaped by their early environment.

Bodily Hexis

The physical embodiment of habitus; a socially learned way you hold and carry your body, such as posture and tone.

Ex:

A military officer’s has upright posture, firm handshake, direct gaze, and a disciplined walking style. These physical dispositions are learned through training until they become embodied and automatic—expressing authority, discipline, and hierarchy through the body itself.

Malaka (Mahmood)

An inner quality developed through outer practice until that quality regulates behavior without conscious deliberation (this is intentional, whereas habitus is unintentional).

Ex.

For many Middle Eastern women, wearing a hijab starts out as a habit that they build on purpose, and eventually becomes a natural action with many emotions tied to it.

Liminality (Turner/Ghannam)

An "interstructural" or transitional state ("betwixt and between") where ordinary social norms may be suspended.

Turner originally used this to describe the middle phase of the rites of passage, but he also saw it as a zone of creativity and temporary role reversal. Ghannam applies it to urban mobility in Cairo, showing that moving through the city itself becomes liminal, a place where identity and power relations may shift depending on who is watching you. Because different people can see you differently depending on where you are, your identity can change momentarily (e.g., student, thug, poor).

Mobility (Ghannam)

Movement of people through a city, from going to malls to visiting cafes. This movement is political because not everyone can move the same way. Mobility then becomes an unequal movement that can both reinforce and reshape identity and power.

Zaki & Zakiya

Siblings in Ghannam's study; Zaki (brother) had mobility when young (less educated and gained early money from work) but became restricted by economic duty.

Zakiya (female) gained mobility and capital through education/work as she grew older. 

Structure of Conjuncture (Sahlins)

The situation where two different cultural systems come into contact, leading to the transformation of both.

Modernity

Cultural formation including secularity, market economy, democratic governance, and the liberal moral subject. The ideal self in modernity is seen as self-reliant, and is the liberal ideal of the autonomous self.

Tradition

Cultural formation including religiosity, gifting, charismatic authority, and nonliberal subjectivity. Religion is embedded in everyday life (not optional), authority is often inherited or as charismatic leaders rather than elected (power can be ritual or magical). The self in tradition is shaped less by individual autonomy and more by obligation.

Antimodernism

The rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, and better way of life.

Fundamentalism

A modern antimodernist religious movement. Uses modern tools such as schools and media to spread or enforce strict religious tradition.

Denial of Coevalness

The erroneous tendency to view other contemporary cultures as existing "in the past" or as "primitive" rather than as contemporaries.

Technological Transformation & Sensory Experience in Egypt (Hirschkind)

Cassette-recorded Islamic sermons transformed how religious messages are experienced by making them replayable and mobile rather than tied to one mosque at a specific moment. This shift reshaped the sensorium of Egyptian listeners, training them to cultivate ethical emotions—like fear, humility, regret—not as separate reactions but as part of the religious message itself. Media and urban life did not erase tradition but instead created conditions for its renewal.

Sensorium

Refers to the visceral capacities (capabilities of heart, lungs, digestive system, etc.) that enable a particular form of Muslim piety for those who undertake practices like cassette-sermon audition

Live vs. Taped Sermons

Live ones generate high emotional intensity, often reaching a peak during supplication where the entire assembly may weep without restraint.

Taped ones are a self-regulated practice used as a technology of ethical self-discipline and considered an extension of the live ceremony, not an alternative. They can occur practically anywhere while engaged in other routine activities (e.g., driving, working, or at home). The emotional intensity is relatively less than the communal live performance.

Rhetorical Orientation to Sermons

A mode of preaching where:

• Emotions are instrumentally manipulated

• The goal is to achieve an oratorical effect (a powerful performance)

• The sermon works like a tool of persuasion, getting the audience emotionally charged

Ethical Orientation

A preaching approach where emotions and discourse are mutually shaping, aiming to form the listener’s moral character by directing emotions toward their proper ethical objects.

The subject is supposed to listen with intention and humility, with the ultimate goal of reshaping oneself to align with religious moral ideals.

Hearing with the Heart

An ethical performance where listening involves emotional responsiveness (fear, humility) to shape character. The “heart” is seen as a trained sensory organ for ethical reception, and listening with it turns sound into moral transformation because the subject is spiritually and emotionally engaged.

Sam

Defined by Muslim cassette listeners in Egypt  as “common hearing”, a form of passive listening with little engagement.

Ansat

Intentionally focusing your senses on what is being said and trying to understand meaning with concentration (active listening).

Asgha

Stopping your own speech so you can fully attend without distraction. Silence here is a part of active listening and not absence.

Intellectual Listening

Focuses on concentration to understand semantic content (information and meanings).

Ethical Listening

Focuses on affective response and moral formation. Feelings like humility and fear are not separate from the message but are part of how the message is absorbed and acted upon.

Sensory, Affective, Gestural, & Expressive Aspects of Ethical Listening to Sermons

The sensory aspect of Ethical Listening is treating hearing itself as trained, meaning the senses are shaped by culture and religion.

The affective aspect is how emotions like fear and regret are not triggered by sermons but belong to the sermon’s function itself. The goal is moral transformation, and one cannot ethically listen unless the heart and emotions are open enough to feel and process the sermon’s moral arc.

Gestural aspects in ethical listening are not always fully acted out, but exist as a bodily hexis someone already knows.

Expressive aspects are how the body becomes capable of showing meaning while absorbing it, like eyes widening at judgment warning or how the chest tightens when imagining grave thoughts.

Bun (Merit)

In Thai Buddhism, this is a positive moral force accumulated through good actions such as temple offerings, prayer or rituals done for others. It is a key way families try to improve end-of-life outcomes.

Karma

Consequences of past moral actions that bind people to others across time, sometimes returning through spirits or suffering to settle an ethical debt. Illnesses are conceptualized as karma masters, beings from past mistreatments fused into one’s body and demanding repayment.

Debt of Life (Chai Ni)

Moral obligation every person carries, owed primarily to their parents for giving them life, raising them, and sustaining them. This debt continues to shape decisions at the end of life, where dying well requires expressing gratitude and transferring merit back to the family. A good death, then, means repaying what can be repaid and releasing what might otherwise remain “sticky” and cause harm across lifetimes.

Ethical Figure

The ideal person one tries to become at the end of life (e.g., the "rights-bearing citizen" or "spiritually ascending patient").

Persons as Multiple Beings

The idea that a person is composed of various elements (body, spirit, heart-mind) that may need different things at death. This challenges mainstream bioethics, which assumes autonomy and a self that belongs only to one person. Illness or death may involve karma masters to the Thais as incorporated beings that partially constitute the sufferer’s body.

New End of Life (Stonington)

Refers to a shift in Thailand where dying and severe illness are increasingly shaped as a stage that should involve open discussion of diagnosis rather than silence until the final moment. Reframes dying as a moment when medical workers can take on a moral role rather than just a technical one.

Palliative Care

A medical approach focused on reducing pain and supporting emotional well-being for people with serious illness. Does not cure the disease, but improves the quality of the patient’s remaining life.

Bioethics

The study of the ethical implications of biological and medical advances, such as life-related sciences and healthcare. It involves examining moral issues and conflicts that arise from new technologies, treatments, and research, helping to establish ethical guidelines and find solutions.

Choreographing Death

The intentional arranging of people and objects around the dying person to create the most morally and experientially peaceful moment of death. Stonington shows this choreography happens through relational ethics where spirits and everyday objects can carry moral force.

Medical Anthropology

The study of human health, disease, and health care systems, viewing health as social and cultural.

Contingent Suffering

Suffering arising in a delimited time or circumstance (e.g., serious and acute illness, injury, assault)

Routinized Suffering

Suffering that persists over time (e.g., chronic illness, deprivation, exploitation, degradation, social inequality, marginalization, oppression)

Extreme Suffering

Suffering associated with atrocities, collective violence, and extensive loss of life (e.g., genocide, warfare, natural disasters)

Social Suffering

Forms of pain, injury, hurt, illness, and violence stemming from the impact of social, economic, political, & institutional forces on human experience

Culture-Bound Syndrome

A combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific culture.