Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age

These flashcards provide vocabulary terms and definitions related to the essentials of cultural anthropology, drawing from key concepts discussed in the lecture.

Anthropology

The study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people understand one another.

Globalization

The worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture is normal, natural, and superior to the beliefs and practices of others.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology involving living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives.

Holism

The anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life-culture, biology, history, and language-across space and time.

Physical Anthropology

The study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly how they have evolved over time and adapted to their environments.

Paleoanthropology

The study of the history of human evolution through the fossil record.

Primatology

The study of living nonhuman primates as well as primate fossils to better understand human evolution and early human behavior.

Archaeology

The investigation of the human past by means of excavating and analyzing artifacts.

Linguistic Anthropology

The study of human language in the past and the present.

Participant Observation

A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied.

Time-Space Compression

The rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space (distances) and time.

Flexible Accumulation

The increasingly flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an era of globalization, enabled by innovative communication and transportation technologies.

Increasing Migration

The accelerated movement of people within and between countries.

Uneven Development

The unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization.

Anthropocene

The current historical era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways.

Climate Change

Changes to Earth's climate, including global warming produced primarily by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases created by the burning of fossil fuels.