Anthropology Exam II Study Guide

Barter

The direct exchange of goods or services for other goods or services without the medium of money. Anthropologists argue that a pure barter economy where people trade items has never existed, instead, barter typically occurs between strangers or enemies.

Free Labor

A concept of labor where individuals are seemingly free to choose their employers and enter into contracts. David Graeber notes the “secret scandal” of capitalism is that it has rarely been organized primarily around free labor, instead relying heavily on slaves, serfs, and debt peonage.

Coerced Labor

Labor performed under threat or compulsion, including slavery, serfdom, indentured service, and debt peonage.

Keynes(ian) Economics

Economic era and theory where governments take an active role in managing the economy, often through deficit spending and a casual attitude towards banks creating money “out of thin air” to stimulate demand.

Neoliberalism

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Supply Side Economics

Economic theory, popular during Reagan administration, the emphasizes creating money and providing financial benefits to the rich as the most effective way to bring national prosperity

Austerity

Economic policies, often imposed by institutions like the IMF, that require governments to cur public spending like health care and education and abandon price supports in order to maintain debt repayments

Social Debt

A concept from Auguste Comte suggesting that all individuals are born with unlimited obligations to society—their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—because are are dependent on others for our existence

Primary Core Debt

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Monetary Debt

A specific form of obligation that involves a sum of money and can be precisely quantified. Unlike vague moral obligations, monetary debt is "simple, cold, and impersonal," allowing it to be transferred between parties.

Catalhoyuk

A 9,000-year-old settlement in central Turkey characterized by houses packed together with no streets, where residents moved across roofs and entered via ladders. It is notable for its lack of central government and for burying the dead beneath house floors.

Hunter-Gatherer

• Society that gets its foods by hunting animals and gathering plants rather than raising livestock

• These societies are small and mobile, with shared resources and egalitarian societies

• Primary way of life for 90% of our existence

Simple Horticulture

Non-mechanized cultivation of crops using simple tools like digging sticks or hoes, typically for sustenance rather than surplus.

Advanced Horticulture

A more intensive form of gardening that may include irrigation, metal tools, and higher population densities than simple horticulture.

Capitalism

A system variously defined as one where capital owners command labor, or as the "freedom of the marketplace". Its defining feature is a demand for constant, endless growth (e.g., 5% annual GDP growth).

Primordial Debt Theory

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Stocks and Bonds

Financial instruments; the first stock markets were based on shares of colonial trading companies (like the East India Company). Bonds are state debts that function as a form of international currency.

Mortgage Bond

A financial product created by pooling together a large number of home loans (mortgages) and selling them as an investment to other parties.

Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO)

A complex financial derivative that pools various debts (like mortgages) into different risk levels; Graeber describes them as part of the "elaborate scams" that led to the 2008 crisis.?

Securities

Tradable financial assets; the process of "securitization" involves turning debts (like mortgages) into these tradeable packages.?

Default

The failure to fulfill a legal obligation, such as a country or individual failing to repay a debt.

International Monetary Fund

A global administrative institution that acts as a "debt enforcer" for high finance, typically imposing strict repayment terms and economic restructuring on poor nations.

Gold Standard

A monetary system where the value of a currency is pegged directly to a specific amount of gold. The international gold standard effectively ended in 1971 when Richard Nixon unpegged the U.S. dollar from gold.

Bubbles

Periods of speculative frenzy where prices for assets (like stocks or land) are bid to extreme levels based on rumor and the hope of selling to someone else before a collapse.

Wizard of Oz

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Debt Jubilee

A periodic general amnesty where a ruler or state declares consumer debts null and void, returning land to owners and freeing debt-slaves; historically practiced in ancient Sumer and Babylon.

2008 Financial Crisis

A global economic collapse triggered by reckless speculative bubbles and "elaborate scams" involving subprime mortgages and complex derivatives.

Debt Peonage

A system of permanent debt dependency where a person is forced to work for a creditor to pay off a loan that often never seems to decrease.

“The Market”

Often framed as a self-regulating "force of nature," but historically and practically a system created and maintained by the state through laws, police, and specific monetary policies.

Culture as Hegemony

A concept (associated with Antonio Gramsci) referring to the dominance of one social group over others through the spread of its values and beliefs until they are accepted as "common sense" by the whole society.

Culture as Discourse

Defines culture not as a fixed set of objects and cultures, but as a system of discourse — a web of language, ideas, and institutions that shape what people in a given period see as true, acceptable, and normal.

Culture as Symbols

Defines culture as a shared system of ideas and symbols that people inherit, use to communicate with one another, and pass down to shape how they think about life.