UCI Anthropology 2A - Midterm 2 Spring 2026

Flashcard set for James Egan's Anthro 2A course at the University of California (UCI). It is recommended to practice this set with answer with definition since the definitions contain the term.

Module 5

Module 5

Social Organization

How society is organized to get things done.

Social Structure

Descriptions of Social Groups that make up society.

Institution

Social relations around a certain theme. The enduring, organized patterns of behavior, beliefs, and social norms that govern how people live and interact. They provide the foundational structure for society, regulating everyday activities and shaping cultural values.

Mode of Production

A way of organizing production.

• A set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.

• In the capitalist mode of production, money buys labor. In a kin-based mode of production, mutual aid is often utilized.

Means of Production

Land (territory), technology, and the available labor supply.

Relations of Production

The relationship between the worker and the means of production is more intimate in nonindustrial societies than it is in industrial nations.

• In nonindustrial societies, access to both land and labor comes through social links such as kinship, marriage, and descent. Additionally, technology tends to be linked to age and gender. Some tribal societies specialize in their manufacturing, but not because they are the sole accessor to the material, it is often a reflection of the social and political environment, not the natural environment.

• In industrial food producers, rights to the means of production also come from kinship.

Subsistence Strategies/Techniques of Production

How groups obtained their food. These techniques varied, but the techniques are not social types. People often mix techniques, and changes in techniques often do not follow unilinear evolution models.

• Encompasses foraging, pre-industrial agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism.

Foraging

Hunting and gathering.

Pre-industrial Agriculture

Solely reliant on human and animal labor.

• Came in extensive and intensive forms.

• Extensive agriculture was the small use of labor/capital to a relatively large plot of land.

• Intensive Agriculture was typically the high amount of labor/capital on a small amount of land.

Pastoralism

Care of herd animals like cows, reindeer, etc.

Industrialism

A form of production that can harvest materials at a massive scale with lots of energy (i.e. fossil fuels, hydroelectric)

• Tended to be inefficient as it used immense amounts of power.

San Foragers of the Kalahari Desert

A band of people who lived in the Kalahari, which had dry desert weather.

San Foragers: Group Size

They lived in small groups since their lifestyle could not sustain a large number of people.

San Foragers: Mobility

They were nomadic, mobile. This was so that they could move between places based on the season (Transhumence)

• In dry seasons, they lived near a water hole and bands would gather around it.

• In wet seasons, the bands would disperse (Nomadic).

San Foragers: Gathering v. Hunting

Hunting was mainly done by the males, while gathering was mainly done by the females.

San Foragers: Contributions of men and women

• Males had a 23% success on all ventures. Women’s gatherings accounted for 71% of the calories in the San’s diet.

• Thus females contributed to the San the most economically.

San Foragers: Leisure, Health

Spent 2.5 days per week foraging. Less than 40 hours per week were spent on maintenance activities.

• They had low cardiovascular problems and 20% of the population would grow to be over 60 years old.

San Foragers: Sharing and Survival

They mainly had generalized reciprocity.

• You give someone something, then they give you something. With generalized reciprocity, people did not keep track of favors.

• People would go out and hunt/gather, when they come back, everyone gets a share of the hunted/gathered food. They didn’t have careful accounting of food (i.e. didn’t keep track of how many items you took).

Domestication

The deliberate human manipulation of the survivability and reproduction of plants/animals.

Extensive Agriculture (Horticulture)

The small use of labor/capital to a relatively large plot of land. Common features included: Intercropping, Iroquois (Corn, beans, squash), and large amounts of land.

Slash and Burn (Swidden) Agriculture

A form of extensive agriculture where natural processes were sped up by burning the land, which would bypass the slower rotting process.

Intercropping

Planting a mix of different crops in the same garden at the same time

Fallow

Letting the nutrients in the soil replenish. In alternative to constantly using all of your land, depleting the soil of its nutrients and thus killing the crops later on.

Intensive Agriculture

The high amount of labor/capital on a small amount of land.

• Intensification is a process. Intensification begins from extensive agriculture’s shortcomings.

• Added energetic inputs like: Irrigation, Plowing, Terracing, Weeding, and Compost & manure.

Wet-Rice Agriculture

An example of intensive agriculture.

• Involved irrigating rice paddies and the transplanting of seedlings.

Intensification

The idea intensification is a process, going from extensive agriculture to intensive agriculture.

• This process is driven by the shortcomings of extensive agriculture, i.e. using fertilizers to restore soil fertility before nature can.

Pastoralism and Ecology

Care of herd animals, such as cattle, reindeer, sheep

Pastoralism: livestock and environment

Animals consume food that humans can’t (i.e. rock lichens).

• The animals then produce resources that humans can use (i.e. milk, cheese, yogurt)

Pastoralism: livestock as food

Meat is rarely eaten, only on special occasions.

• Pastoralists must mix pastoral activities with other economic activities to get by. That may include growing crops (agriculture), fishing, and industrial labor.

Transhumence

The idea that people switch techniques during different times of the year.

• People use techniques, the techniques are not social types.

Features of Industrialism

Production at a large scale, which used an immense amount of energy (i.e. fossil fuels, hydroelectric)

Industrialism: production and efficiency

Industrialism brought about unprecedented energy usage via the use of machinery. It was the most productive of all techniques of production in terms of output, but at the same time it also expended the most energy.

• Energy usage was seen in machinery used to produce, like tractors for farming or fertilizer made of natural gas.

Industrialism: Energetic Comparisons with other techniques of production

Industrialism is the most inefficient of all forms of production.

• San foragers got 9 calories of output per 1 calorie of input.

• Meanwhile, industrial agriculture got a calorie of output per 10 calories of input.

• Additionally, industrial agriculture relied heavily on the limited supply of fossil fuels.

Distribution & Exchange

There are three principles that guide exchanges: the market principle, redistribution, and reciprocity. In any society, one of them usually dominates. The principle that dominates in a given society is the one that determines how the means of production are exchanged.

Market Principle

Items are bought and sold, using money, with an eye to maximizing profit, and value is determined by the law of supply and demand.

• Bargaining is characteristic of market principle exchanges. The buyer and the seller strive to maximize—to get their “money’s worth.”

• In today’s world capitalist economy, this principle dominates.

Redistribution

Occurs when products, such as a portion of the annual harvest, move from the local level to a center, from which they eventually flow back out.

• This typically occurs in societies that have chiefs.

• This is a way of moving a variety of goods from different areas to a central point, where they are stored and eventually redistributed to the public.

Law of Supply and Demand

The idea that things cost more the scarce they are and the more people want them.

Reciprocity

Refers to exchanges between social equals, people who are related by some kind of personal tie, such as kinship or marriage.

• This is the main principle used in egalitarian societies since it occurs between social equals. There are three forms of reciprocity: generalized, balanced, and negative. They can be imaged as being on a scale of these questions:

• How closely related are the individuals who are doing the exchanging?

• How quickly and unselfishly are the gifts reciprocated?

Generalized Reciprocity

Unselfish giving with no immediate expectation of return

• Someone gives to another person and expects nothing immediate in return. Such exchanges are not primarily economic transactions but expressions of personal relationships.

Balanced Reciprocity

Characterizes exchanges between people who are more distantly related than are members of the same band or household.

• The giver expects something in return. This may not come immediately, but the social relationship will be strained if there is no eventual and more or less equivalent return gift.

Negative Reciprocity

Exchange is one way of establishing friendly relations, but when trade begins, the relationship is still tentative. Initially, people want something back immediately.

• Just as in market economies, but without using money, they try to get the best possible immediate return for their investment.

Potlatch

A festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the North Pacific Coast of North America.

• The sponsoring community gave away food and wealth items, such as blankets and pieces of copper, to visitors from other villages. The sponsoring community received prestige in return. That prestige increased with the lavishness of the potlatch.

Module 6

Module 6

Kinship

Matters of family, relatives.

• It encompasses a set of people in which we have enduring diffuse solidarity. People who we look to for support, who we support. This support is enduring, it lasts.

Diversity in Kinship Terms and the Underlying Logic of Kinship Ties

Different regions use different kinship terms. For example, Mother != Madre != Chitnag (Yapese).

• Additionally, the meanings of these terms do not need to match. For example, Chitnag can refer to a mother or an aunt. In English, we do not have a word that encompasses both of those groups as one.

Enduring Diffuse Solidarity

People who we look to for support, who we support. This support should be enduring, a support that lasts.

Kin Terms

Categories of relatives. Ex. Brother, father, uncle, etc.

Biological Kin Types

Description of genealogical relations between two relatives. These include:

• M = mother

• F = father

• S = son

• D = daughter

• C = child

• B = brother

• Z = sister

• H = husband

• W = wife

Nuclear Family & Extended Family

It is composed of a father, a mother, and their children living together.

• Family of orientation: A nuclear family you are born into.

• Family of procreation: A nuclear family you create.

Industrialism & Family Organization: General differences by class

There is a correlation between extended households and Americans who are less well-off financially.

Industrialism & Family Organization: age of marriage

The age of marriage increased from 21 to 28 from 1970 to 2019.

• This is in part due to women entering the workforce, which made it feasible to delay marriage.

Industrialism & Family Organization: size & composition of households

The number of nuclear families decreased from 50% to 28% from 1970 to 2019.

• This is in part due to women entering the workforce.

Industrialism & Family Organization: divorce rates

• Divorce tends to be more common in matrilineal than patrilineal societies. In matrilineal societies, women were more socially and economically secure. In patrilineal societies, the children would be expected to stay with the father, the member of the patrilineage.

Bilateral Descent

Tracing descent equally through males and females.

Unilineal Descent

Descent is traced exclusively though one gender.

• Includes patrilineal and matrilineal descent.

Patrilineal Descent

Tracing descent solely through the males of the relations.

Matrilineal Descent

Tracing descent solely through the females of the relations.

Kindred

Ego-centered NETWORK of bilateral, affinal, and fictive kin.

• Affinal: Relatives by marriage.

• Fictive: Someone who does not have a genetic connection, but is so close that one counts them as a relative.

Lineage

A group of people who can trace descent in a unilinear manner from a single common ancestor.

• This group is able to DEMONSTRATE their descent by actively tracing it throughout the generations

• This encompasses patrilineage and matrilineage.

Patrilineage

Traces descent patrilineally, and is able to demonstrate this relation.

• If no sons are born, the lineage dies.

Matrilineage

Traces descent matrilineally, and is able to demonstrate this relation.

• If no daughters are born, the lineage dies.

Clan

A group of related lineages. This encompasses a group of people who BELIEVE themselves to be descended from a single common ancestor in a unilineal manner, but are unable to demonstrate these links.

• This encompasses patriclans and matriclans.

Patriclan

A group of people who believe that they are descended from a common ancestor patrilineally, but are unable to prove this relation.

Matriclan

A group of people who believe that they are descended from a common ancestor matrilineally, but are unable to prove this relation.

Corporate Groups (Corporate Functions)

Groups with corporate functions. This is a group who collectively controls resources/assets.

• Lineages/clans can own land, or maybe a herd of cattle for their group’s exclusive use.

• Unlineal descent groups are GROUPS.

• Kindreds are ego-centric NETWORKS, so they cannot be GROUPS, thus they cannot have corporate functions. However, this does not mean that there cannot be groups within kindreds. There are other factors that lead to GROUPNESS such as the nuclear family, where a member may call it their house even if they do not pay the mortgage for it.

Genitor

Biological parent.

Pater

Socially recognized parent.

Functions of Marriage - Descent & Alliance

• Establish legal parenthood of a spouse’s child.

• Give either/both spouses monopoly in the sexuality of the other.

• Give either/both spouses the right to the labor of the other.

• Give either/both the rights over the other’s property.

• Establish a joint fund of property for children.

• Establish relationships of affinity between the spouses and relatives (New group of relatives added.) Only some of these rights need to be allocated to be a marriage.

Incest Taboo

Why do societies discourage incest? Is it because incestuous unions tend to produce abnormal offspring.

• Despite the potentially harmful biological results of systematic inbreeding, human marriage patterns are based on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal concerns about a decline in fertility several generations in the future.

Monogamy

The practice of being married to one spouse (At a time).

Polygamy

The practice of having multiple spouses at the same time.

• Comes in two forms: Polygyny and polyandry.

• Demographic problems plygamy brings: If there are equal men and women in a society, the presence of polygamy means that there is a shortage of spouses.

Polygyny

Man has multiple wives at the same time.

Polyandry

Woman has multiple husbands at the same time.

Social Organization and Material Conditions

Material Conditions: The interface between humans and the environment; What resources they had. The routines and lives that enabled their everyday life. Social Organization can be useful to keep in mind when analyzing the material conditions of groups.

• Ex. Himalayan Agriculturists.

Himalayan Agriculturists & Polyandry

In the preindustrial-intensive agriculture in the Himalayas, there were many problems to be solved in relation to their material conditions: Limited farmable land: Population size needed to be in balance with limited resources. Social organization of labor: Needed to establish social groups that would organize labor to get tasks of production accomplished year after year, Land tenure: Needed to make sure that land would not fracture or split up across generations. Solutions to this problem are seen through their social organization: Corporate form of land tenure (Ex. Sons running land as a company). Fraternal polyandry (Women married a set of brothers.)

• However, it is important to keep in mind that material conditions do not necessarily cause forms of social organization, there are many ways to solve a problem. Ex. it could have been solved with primogeniture.

Land Tenure

The idea of preventing land from splitting up across generations.

Primogeniture

The idea of the eldest son inheriting everything from the parents.

Exogamy

The prohibition of marriage within a group.

• Nonlinear descent groups are exogamist. They must marry someone from a different lineage/clan.

• Exogamy != incest, as mariage != sex, but they are often related.

• How one defines a close relative varies by culture.

Endogamy

THe practice of marrying within one’s own group/social category.

• Ex. Class endogamy, race endogamy, etc. Used to maintain status hierarchy.

• Ex. Hindu India’s 4 Varna caste system.

Caste System of India

Hindu India’s 4 Varna caste system: Priests, soldiers, merchants, laborers.

Post-Marital Residence

Where a couple lives after marrying.

• Includes: Matrilocal, patrilocal, and neolocal residence.

Matrilocal Residence

Newlywed couple goes to live with the wife’s people.

• Keeps mothers with daughters and moves sons.

Patrilocal Residence

Newlywed couple goes to live with husband’s people.

• Keeps fathers with sons and moves daughters.

Neolocal Residence

Newlywed couple goes to live in some new community.

Bridewealth

Payment from groom’s family to bride’s family.

• Does not go to the bride, goes to the bride's family.

• Does not represent the purchase of the wife, it is a symbolic payment representing new obligations and ties.

Dowry

Payment from the bride’s kingroup to the groom’s kingroup.

• The wife does not control dowry, the husband does.

• Can be thought of as an inheritance for daughters.

• Does not represent the purchase of the groom, it is a symbolic payment.

Bride Service

The practice where newlywed couples live with the wife’s family where the husband works for the wife’s family for a set time,

Marriage Exchanges

Groom’s family goes to the wife’s family and the wife’s family goes to the groom’s family.

• Gendered wealth, some forms of wealth are symbolically male/feamle.

• In this process, male wealth and female wealth are transferred.

• These exchanges are often competitive in nature. Whoever gives more earns more prestige.

“Nature” and Kinship

Are these cultural constructions or ties of “blood”? What about adopted children, are they not part of the kinship? They don’t have any genealogical connection, but are still parts of kin.

Nuer Marriage & “Descent”

The Nuer paid bridewealth in cattle. One was not considered the father if the bridewealth was not paid.

Nuer Kinship and Sociopolitical Relations

• The Nuer believed that descendants gave a man immortality (Honored in a shrine). Those who died without descendants were believed to have died the final death. However, in Nuer culture this can be solved with cattle! A ghost marriage can occur by giving bridewealth in the dead person’s place, if the wife has a boyfriend, and then has a child, then the dead man would be the father since he paid the bridewealth.

• A woman could become a father. For example, if a woman was unable to bear children, then nobody would pay her bridewealth since they would not get descendants from her. With her agency, she could become a healer, who would be paid in cattle, and thus be able to pay bridewealth.

• There were power relations within Nuer social structures. Cattle were corporate resources, held corporally by lineage. The father was the “ceo” and head leverage over their sons since he decided how the cattle would be used. Additionally, women were not part of the negotiation of bridewealth and marriage, locking them out of this part of the political world.

Matrilateral Biological Kin Types

Kin types that all start with the letter M.

• Do not confuse with matrilineages.

Patrilateral Biological Kin Types

Kin types that all start with the letter F.

• Do not confuse with patrilineages.

Parallel Cousins

Children of same gendered siblings.

• Ex. FBD or MZS

• One pair of parallel cousins will definitely be in your lineage/clan, while the other pair may not be (Another member of the ascended generation on the matrilateral and the patrilateral slides will need to marry for this pair to be in one’s lineage/clan.) due to how unilinear kinships work.

Cross Cousins

Children of opposite gendered siblings.

• Ex. FZS or MBD.

• These will never be in one’s lineage/clan due to the ascended generation’s members being the opposite genders.

Ascending Generation (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc)

x generations above ego’s.

Descending Generation (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc)

x generations below ego’s

Ego's Own Generation

Members who are in the same generation as ego.

Module 7

Module 7