Anthropology, Diversity & Inequality

Affinity

• Kinship link through marriage (contract that turns strangers into relatives) → wife, husband, in-laws

Monogamy

• Pure Monogamy - One partner for whole life 

• Serial Monogamy - 1 partner at a time

Polyandry

• Woman has multiple husbands

Polygyny

• Man has multiple wives

Ascribed

• A social position someone is born into or given without their own control

Achived

A social position that someone can earn after training or studying. Must be given status by another person in a higher position

Consanguinity

• Parent, child, grandparent

• Hard to get rid of

• Born into

Kinship

 linked through who cares for who → parent, child, grandparent (adoption counts)

Bilateral

• Tracing lineage through mother and father

  • Both mom’s brother and dad’s brother are called uncle

• Not always perfectly even, might be closer to one parent’s side

• Generally our western standard

Matrilineal

• Lineage/inheritance passed down through mother/daughter

• Husband leaves kinship to join wife’s

Patrilineal

• Lineage/inheritance passed down through father/son

• Wife leaves her kinship to join husband’s

Egalitarian Societies

• Small community where people are relatively equal

• Distribution of labor is fairly equal → everyone can take care of themselves

  • Still gender roles & special roles (spiritual leaders & doctors)

• Early days most societies lived in egalitarian societies

Embodiment

• The effects of racism manifests in our bodies and gets passed to the next generation

  • “We literally incorporate, biologically, the material, and social world in which we live”

Endogamy

• In-group marriage rules; Marrying someone in the same group

  • Religion

  • Wealth

  • Education

  • Race

Exogamy

• Out-group marriage; marrying someone in a different group

  • Gender

  • family

Ethnicity

• A group of people within a stratified system that tend to share:

  • Homeland/Territory

  • Language

  • Religion

  • Kinship; family of families

  • History & Experiences

• A socially constructed & embodied identity

• A form of “imagined community” across stratified societies

• A powerful sense of solidarity

• Not all ethnicities are equal 

• Multiple races can share the same ethnicity → hispanic

Gender

• Social differences

• Differently constructed in different societies

• Gender roles - tasks, roles, and rules someone should be good at based on gender → social consequences for breaking

• Different societies have different number of genders

• More than 2, not just male and female

Identity

• Not freely chosen → you don’t get to choose definition

  • You as an individual don’t get to decide what it means to be a woman

• Internal and external → both women and non-women define what it means to be a woman

• Can be ascribed/achieved

• Created through inclusion/ exclusion from a group

• Situational 

Intersectionality

• Multiple identities that are not independent → they influence and complicate each other

Kinship

• System of Social Relationships that

  • Organizes how were related

  • Who cares for who

  • Assigns long term roles/statuses

• Socially + Culturally constructed stages of lifestyle

  • Birth, maturing, mating, reproducing, and death

• Sets rules about

  • membership/legitimacy

  • Residency

  • inheritance

• Emotional

• Not elective → Born into and hard to change

Magic

• Personal Ritual

• Individual & not authorized by an outside power

  • You want an outcome and doing something without logical connection to get desired outcome

• Baseball Magic

Marked

• Special/different category

  • Deviation from expected

  • Usually seen as inferior, sometimes superior

  • Woman - specifically a female human, never all humans

Unmarked

•  Seemingly natural category

  • Standard

  • Has both a general and specific meaning

  • Man - All humans and just mal

N.I.M.B.Y

• Not In My Back Yard

  • Activist organization

  • Basically saying they don’t want a sacrifice zone in their area

    • It ends up in an area that doesn’t have the resources to organize a NIMBY response

Race

• Based on observable physical traits

• Changes overtime → who is white changes throughout years

• NOT BIOLOGICAL, but can becomes (Embodiment)

• Not fully an illusion; Real social impact

Racism

• No race without racism

• Always a hierarchy/ranking

• 2 kinds

  • De Jure - In law, legal racism (Jim Crow)

  • De Facto - In practice; enforcement

• Implicit Racism - Racism without racists → built into the system

• Environmental Racism

  • An environmental policy or set of practices that disadvantages groups or communities

Ritual

• Doing religion

• Separates the sacred from the profane

• Core aspects

  • Authoritized - not just anybody can lead, a higher power (god, ancestors, tradition, etc.)

  • Symbolic - Every detail of the ritual is a symbol

  • Formal - Preset standard to practices, clothes, order, style & steps → if not done right outcome doesn’t happen

Sacrifice Zones

• A place where the environment is purposely destroyed by capitalism/industry

  • Powerplants, dumps, data centers, oil refineries, factories, etc.

• Place where extreme contamination make is uninhibitable → people still live there but get ignored

  • Deemed “unworthy” of environmental protection

Sex

• Biological differences between men and women

• Also socially constructed; not always obvious

  • Hormones

  • External characteristics

  • How long does a tail need to be for a Y to be an X

Social Class

• Ranked division amongst society, usually based on wealth

Society

• A group of people who interact in patterned ways

• Gives each person multiple:

  • Statuses - Ranked social positions

  • Roles - rights and responsibilities belonging to each role

• Small scale societies tend to be egalitarian; large scale societies tend to be stratified

Social Stratification

• When people have different access to wealth, power, and prestige

Symbol & Symbolism

• Simple things with complex meanings

  • Smoke → represents purifying in some cultures

Whiteness

• Unmarked

• Changes throughout history → italians and irish catholics