🏛️ DAY 1 — Culture, Ethnography, and Foundations of Anthropology

What is culture?

Culture is a learned and shared system of beliefs, meanings, and practices that orients human life; transmitted socially, not genetically.

How is culture learned?

Through enculturation—the process of acquiring norms and values via interaction and observation.

Key elements of culture

Learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, adaptive, variable, dynamic, reflexive.

Material culture

Physical objects and technologies that embody cultural meaning.

Technology in culture

Tools and methods that express human adaptation and social organization.

Cultural practices

Routine patterned behaviors that express shared norms (e.g., greetings, meals).

Social constructs

Human-made categories that feel natural but are culturally produced (e.g., race, gender).

Ideology

Shared belief system that justifies social arrangements and power hierarchies.

Worldview

Collective lens through which a culture interprets reality and morality.

Cultural capital

Non-economic assets like education, manners, and taste that give social advantage.

Symbolic capital

Prestige or recognition that grants social power.

Habitus

Internalized habits and dispositions learned through culture.

Agency vs Structure

Agency = individual capacity to act; Structure = social systems shaping action.

Diversity in anthropology

Study of human difference and similarity; variety in culture, practice, and worldview.

Cultural evolutionism

19th-century belief that societies evolve from “primitive” to “civilized”; rejected as ethnocentric.

Ethnocentrism

Judging other cultures by one’s own cultural standards.

Cultural relativism

Understanding a culture within its own context, without moral judgment.

Defamiliarization

Making the familiar strange to reveal hidden cultural structures (e.g., Nacirema).

Reflexivity

Recognizing how a researcher’s background influences interpretation and representation.

Informed consent

Participants must voluntarily understand and agree to research involvement.

Why misrepresentation harms

It fuels stereotypes, discrimination, and racism through false portrayals.

Core ethical principles

Informed consent, anonymity, accuracy, reciprocity, transparency.

Scientific & Industrial Revolutions’ role

Introduced empiricism, social reform, and attention to inequality—foundations for anthropology.

Logical fallacies

Zero-sum, Manichean logic, ad populum, hasty generalization, false analogy.

Cultural frames

Shared interpretive structures that organize perception (e.g., professionalism).

Status vs Role

Status = position (student); Role = expected behavior (studying).

Ethnography

Detailed written account of a culture from immersive fieldwork.

Participant observation

Observing and participating in daily life to understand cultural meanings.

Triangulation

Using multiple data sources to verify findings.

Jottings vs Field notes

Jottings = quick raw notes; Field notes = expanded analytical reflections.