Social and Cultural Anthropology Vocab - September Set

Analytical categories

An Outsiders view of a culture sometimes referred to as an etic View: classifying and understanding traits as representing cross-culturally applicable terms and categories rather than culturally specific meanings.

Authority

Power is exercised with the consent of others

Belief and knowledge

A set of convictions values and viewpoints are guarded as the truth and shared by members of a social group. These are underpinned and supported by known cultural experience

Biomedicine

A term used in medical anthropology for conventional Western medicine

Biopsychosocial model

Interactions between biological psychological and some factors determine the cause manifestation and outcome of wellness and disease

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a society's trade and Industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state

Causation

The capacity of one cultural feature to influence another

Acculturation

cultural change related to contact with another culture

Agency

Agency is the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class gender religion and social and cultural factors. This term implies the individuals have the capacity to create change and influence events.

Alterity

Otherness used in anthropology to describe and comment on the construction and experience of cultural difference

Change

The alteration or modification of cultural or social elements in a society. change may be due to internal Dynamics within a society or the result of contact with another culture or a consequence of globalization.

Class

Division of people in a society based on social and economic status

Classification

Assigning common knowledge to describe a large number of people or things as belonging to a recognizable system

Cohesion

The practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country occupying it with settlers and exploiting it economically socially and politically.

Agency centered

Anthropological research that emphasizes agency focuses on humans acting to promote their interests and the interests of the group s to which they belong