Culture, Race & Ethnicity Flashcards

Flashcards about Culture, Race, and Ethnicity from Anthropology lecture notes.

What is E.B. Tylor's definition of culture?

The complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society.

What is enculturation?

The process of learning the cultural rules and logic of a society from birth.

How do symbols contribute to cultural stability?

Symbols preserve a culture's conventional meanings and are easily remembered.

Are cultures static entities?

No, cultures are dynamic and constantly changing.

How is culture integrated with daily experience?

Values and beliefs are shaped by integrated elements of life experience.

Is culture shared or exclusive?

Culture is shared; a thought or action must be shared to be cultural.

What is cultural relativism?

Interpreting another culture using their goals, values, and beliefs rather than one's own.

How do societies stabilize cultural processes?

Through symbols, values, norms, and traditions.

How do social institutions express culture?

Social institutions reinforce culture through organized sets of social relationships.

What is Functionalism?

Cultural practices and beliefs perform functions for societies: explaining how the world works, organizing people into efficient roles, and so on

What is Holism?

Methodological tool that helps to show interrelationships among different domains of a society.

Can anyone own culture?

No one can own the collective processes that make the artificial seem natural.

Is race biologically determined?

No, race is not biologically determined. There are no diagnostic genes or genetic traits that belong to only one racial group and no others.

What is the adaptational approach to race?

Links physical traits with environment, for example, the correlation between latitude and skin pigmentation.

What is the primary weakness of the adaptational approach to race?

Skin pigmentation varies along a continuum, and any lines placed on that continuum to designate where one race ends and another begins are completely arbitrary.

Is race biologically meaningless?

Race is biologically meaningless but can still have major cultural consequences.

How is race culturally constructed?

Through cultural processes that make the artificial seem natural; ideas about race are learned.

What spurred the division along color lines in early North American colonies?

A class rebellion in 1676, which led leaders to divide people along color lines to control people and prevent future rebellions.

How does the concept of race differ in Latin America compared to the United States?

Historically, Latin America has had a greater number of "races" that were more fluidly constructed due to different colonization policies.

How are ethnicity, class, and caste naturalized?

To justify social hierarchies in much the same way as race.

How are race and ethnicity different?

Race is culturally constructed, while ethnicity relates to having common descent and shared "blood."

What is primordialism?

Membership in an ethnic group is something one is born into; it is part of one's natural identity

What is instrumentalism?

Ethnic identity is not fixed but rather is more fluid and flexible

How are class hierarchies maintained?

Based on wealth, occupation, and social standing, often naturalizing wealth and the capacity to acquire it.

What is caste?

A system split into varna and jati, based on moral purity and pollution.

Are prejudice and discrimination inevitable?

No, learned behavioral patterns can be unlearned.

What is disguised discrimination?

May live on well beyond the "official" end of its explicit source.

What is unearned privilege?

Aspect of discrimination, where some people may do everyday things without additional attention or judgment directed at them.