ANTHRCUL 101 Exam 1

5 key primate qualities discussed in lecture

1) dexterity (grasping hands)

^ can manipulate things in a way that paws/claws can't

^ way we gather info (tactile organ)

2) visual acuity (excellent eyesight)

^ stereoscopic vision (3D w/ depth perception)

^ not universal amongst animal kingdom

3) large brains

^ brain-to-body ratio is larger relative to other mammals

4) infant dependency - usually one single offspring

^ "Monkey see, monkey do"

^ more long-term one-on-one attention to learn behaviors

5) social - tend to live with other primates

^ communal effort in raising offspring

^ more behaviors picked up

where do primates live?

Africa, Asia, South/Central America in tropical regions (mostly forests)

Where do apes live?

Africa and Asia

Old world monkeys vs new world monkeys

OWM

- Lack prehensile tails (have patched to sit on)

- usually diurnal

- larger than NWM

- sometimes terrestrial

- Southern/Southeast Asia & Central Africa

NWM

- prehensile tails like a hand/foot

- Americas

- smaller than OWM

- arboreal (tree dwellers)

Strepsirrhines vs. Haplorhines

Strepsirrhines

- smaller body size, smaller brain-to-body ratio

- Lemurs and lorises.

- large portion of brain dedicated to smell

- arboreal

- nocturnal

- Wet noses.

Haplorhines

- all other primates that aren't lemurs/lorises (OWM, NWM, Tarsiers)

- larger body size & brain-to-body ratio

- large portion of brain dedicated to vision

- arboreal & terrestrial

- Dry noses

Nocturnal vs. Diurnal

Nocturnal: active at night

Diurnal: active during the day

what are homologies?

Homologous Trait: similar because of shared ancestry; directly descendant from an ancestor w/ these traits

ex: Opposable thumbs on humans and chimpanzees

What are analogies?

Analogous Trait: similar in appearance or function, but independent of shared ancestry (result of convergent evolution)

ex: Fins on sharks, seals, and puffins

What is convergent evolution?

- when species independently evolve similar traits, structures, or behaviors

- resulting features = analogous traits (same function but different ancestry)

Characteristics of chimpanzees

- territorial and violent, warfare

- males hold power

- possibly even "conquest"!

- omnivores

- most studied out of all primates but ourselves

Characteristics of Bonobos

- females hold power, non-reproductive sex to avoid conflict, peaceful

- much smaller geographical location

- generally helpful to outsiders

- closest living relatives in the animal kingdom

Chimps vs Bonobos

- Big thing to know = they approach conflict differently!

^^ chimps approach it with fighting while bonobos have non-reproductive sex to avoid conflict

- chimps have a more male dominance hierarchy while bonobos have a female dominance

- Chimps & Bonobos = The Genus Pan

What is brachiation

arm swinging, is a form of arboreal locomotion in which primates swing from tree limb to tree limb using only their arms. (Ex: Gibbons)

What is knuckle-walking

quadrupedal terrestrial locomotion on all 4 limbs

(Gorillas, Chimps, Bonobos)

Body proportions like brachiators (long arms and shorter back legs)

Support their bodies on their knuckles

what is bipedalism

Upright locomotion, using rear limbs; RARE; ability to walk on two legs

What greek words make up anthropology? what do they mean?

Anthropos: humankind

Logos: word, study

Anthropology is both _______ and _______

holistic and comparative

^ holistic = entire context of the human experience

^ comparative = primates give us a comparative baseline for understanding ourselves as humans

What is familiarization?

Making the strange familiar; gain knowledge or better understandings of facets of cultural life, customs, and patterns you might not be familiar with

Ex: everytime we learn something new (simply reading a book)

Ex: a campus map

What is Defamiliarization?

making the familiar strange

- Helps us look for fresh perspectives on things we might otherwise take for granted

- Challenges what we think is "normal/everyday"

- What more can I understand about this thing?

Ex: What is the "water" we swim in?

Ex: Defamiliarizing "Michigan"... how did we get here today?

What concept relates to Juan Quick to See Smith's painting?

- Uses defamiliarization and juxtaposition

- How did those borders of the US get here... who drew those lines?

- the destruction of the environment, governmental oppression of Indigenous cultures

What is juxtaposition?

Putting things side by side, especially if they are normally unrelated, to emphasize a feature; for the purpose of comparison and analysis

What are the 4 subfields of anthropology?

Sociocultural: the study of the social lives of living communities; figure out structures like institutions, beliefs, social identities

Linguistic: the study of how people communicate through language and how it shapes groups

Archaeological: studying and interpreting human behavior through artifacts

Biological: the study of biological aspects of the human species past and present

What makes humans unique? (culture produces 3 features) HOW are each of these 3 unique qualities unique to humans?

Language - varies around the world; evolving, dying out, linguistic systems (we understand some but don't others)

Abstract thought and representation - can think abstractly and understand the image even if we aren't familiar with it

Technological innovation - industrial revolution (nonhuman primates can use tools but have not had an industrial revolution); modifications of our materials over centuries

What is cosmopolitan distribution?

A species within a range that extends across most or all of the Earth's surface; adapted to wide variety of habitats/environmental conditions

(The occurrence of an organism throughout the world or in many, widely separated places.)

Ex) humans

Significance of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's airplane example

Hrdy argues that humans are eager to understand, be understood, cooperate with, and empathize with one another, even strangers. (Intersubjectivity: "the capacity and eagerness to share in the emotional states and experiences of other individuals"... innate, not just culturally learned)

On a plane full of humans, we all cooperate together and would consider ourselves fortunate to have the flight land successfully and without injury. She argues that humans alone have concepts of normative social codes, such as giving and justice, which have developed through many generations and across space and time.

She asks... what would it look like if it was a plane full of nonhuman primates? Hrdy posits a plane crowded with passengers who are all chimpanzees. They would likely rip each other apart (humans are capable of terrible things, but we can be in close spaces like this together and still empathize). Though chimps are very close, genetically, to homo sapiens, their brains are not equipped for the same regulating, pro-social behavior that governs humans in anomalous social arrangements like enclosed airplane fuselages.

Why is ultra social behavior important?

- it allows humans to create culture (contributes to a uniquely human capacity for culture)

- eagerness to cooperate even w/ non kin and strangers

Ex) basketball game... ritual before the free throw = join thousands of strangers towards the same goal (this is learned and engaged in by cooperation)

Ex) Shrek Rave

Zhang Qian

- 2nd c BCE

- Diplomat on behalf of the Han dynasty who traveled extensively through Asia, contributing to the development of the Silk Road

^ gather information on trade routes

- Extensive travel reports

^ described geography and the people he encountered

Herodotus

- 484-425 BCE

- Greek traveler who wrote about "gold digging ants"

- in addition to recording history, he also made a point to describe the cultural backgrounds of the places he visited, especially the different peoples under the control of the Persian Empire

^ talks about Persian history and customs, how they are sectioned

^ particularly focusing on religion

- noted as the "Father of History"

Ibn Battuta

- 1304-1369 CE

- Berber scholar and traveler

- Extensively traveled North Africa, the Middle East, and central and Eastern Asia

^ far more extensively than the others

- Memoir and account of his journeys

What do Zhang Qian, Herodotus, and Ibn Battuta have in common?

- all three of them were 'anthropologists' (never actually coined as anthropoligists) who traveled and made reports, creating the idea of ethnography

- (none of these authors asked systemic questions about humanity, but produced early examples of ethnography)

What is ethnography?

- a type of writing about people based on prolonged and intense fieldwork in a particular cultural setting

- writing down details, making comparisons, teaching people the place/customs who didn't go there

When and where does anthropology start as a discipline?

- Anthropology as a discipline starts in the Age of Enlightenment in Europe

- Developed in Europe and North America in the 19th century

What is the relationship between colonialism and early anthropology?

- Colonialism - development of anthropology corresponds to industrialization, evolutionary theories, and spread of European colonialism (one power dominates territory and people).

- Most early anthropological studies (19th century) often took place in areas under European colonial domination.

- Anthropology and colonialism were mutually-defined by processes of extraction (whether that be resources or data).

- (Anthropology began as a colonial science, the product of a settler colonialism uniquely focused on the study of the languages, history, culture, and biology of non-European peoples seen as 'primitive,' or 'ancient' all around the world.)

Major differences between 19th century anthropology and contemporary anthropology

Hints - immutable laws, firsthand fieldwork, extraction

19th century -

- Extraction: defined by processes of extraction

- Immutable laws: belief in immutable laws; sought universal, fixed law; more of an ethnocentrism perspective

- Fieldwork: fieldwork was more second hand as they relied more on reports (very rarely based on direct research or engagement with members of a particular society)

Contemporary -

- Extraction: does NOT use if for the purposes of extraction

- Immutable laws: more of a contextual understanding; more driven by cultural relativism and understanding societies on their own terms

Fieldwork: firsthand fieldwork!; long-term, immersive ethnographic research; actively engaged in societies/research

- anthropology gives us a unique opportunity to examine and appreciate the diversity of human experience

7 basic elements of culture

1) learned (enculturation; reliant on others directly and indirectly)

2) shared (no "culture of one"; can only "break" cultural rules and expectations because they are held in common)

3) uses symbols (culture is about associating things with other things, sometimes arbitrarily)

4) dynamic (always within dynamic processes of change, although it might appear stable)

5) shapes everyone's lives (no one exists without culture)

6) gives people a way of doing things they may consider "right" ("It makes us feel that the ways we do things are correct"; --> ethnocentrism)

7) integrated with daily experience (interrelated set of structures; If one aspect of culture changes, other aspects change too)

Vampire Example and Senora de Cao Example relating to culture

Vampire

- What is a vampire? There is not one answer. Some characteristics may be shared or similar, but there is no one "natural" type...why?... because culture!

- Beliefs concerning vampirism are something many cultures have in common around the world and across time, but the particulars differ greatly

- different cultural backgrounds may disagree on vampirism

- Culture = "the taken for granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group"; Enables and constrains the ways we understand and assign meanings to things in the world

Senora de Cao

- Culture is integrated: weapons and adornment in the burial can tell us not only about gender but also about power in a Moche context

- Culture shapes everybody's life: "The dead don't bury themselves." Every aspect of this burial (materials, burial techniques) can tell us something about Moche culture and burial practices

- Culture uses symbols: What do the nose rings, weapons, or headdresses symbolize? What symbolizes royalty or holding power?

What is enculturation?

the process of learning the social rules and cultural logic of a society; constantly being encultured (explicitly and implicitly)

How do you break shared cultural rules?

going against cultural laws is only possible because they are held in common; easiest way to learn cultural rules is to break them!

What is a symbol? Are symbols arbitrary?

- A symbol is an object, idea, figure, or character that represents something else.

- Symbols can be arbitrary (there is no obvious connection between the symbol and what it represents)

- Their meanings may vary by context

Do symbols need a connection to what they symbolize?

No they don't, as symbols vary and are interpreted by context (they are sometimes arbitrary)

Is culture law or law-like?

Culture is law-like; it typically is not set up in to real laws, it is more of a code that people follow because they believe it is the right thing to do.

(It is "law-like" but it is NOT immutable law)

Examples of cultural laws changing:

US census changing to become more inclusive

Spider web example relating to culture being integrated in people's lives:

an interrelated set of structures; many different aspects of culture are weaved together and support each person's life; if one aspect of culture changes, other aspects change too

(one's cultural context can set expectations about seemingly unrelated beliefs or practices)

what are cultural universals, generalizations, and particularities?

Universals: something that exists in every culture; a few, but not many universals (long infant dependency)

Generalizations: cultural patterns that are present in some, but not all societies (remembering/celebrating birthdays)

Particularities: distinctive or unique traits (gender reveal parties... 'that involve explosives and/or cause forest fires')

Ethnocentrism vs Cultural Relativism (burial/tomb examples)

Ethnocentrism- the principle of using one's own culture as a means or standard by which to evaluate another group or individual, leading to the view that cultures other than one's own are abnormal or inferior

^ "The assumption that one's way of doing things is correct, while dismissing other people's practices or views as wrong or ignorant"

Ex) burial practices (we can learn a lot about a culture by what they do with the deceased... ie. the tomb they have)

Cultural relativism- the principle of understanding other cultures on their own terms, rather than judging or evaluating according to one's own culture

^ "The moral and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgement about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices"

Cultural change results from:

trade, war, and independent invention

- even small cultural changes that happen are not always by peaceful processes

- when one thing moves from one cultural context to another, it may not be the same

- the way things move from one cultural context to another might not be direct

Methods: "Finding your Feet"

"Finding our feet, an unnerving business which never more than distantly succeeds, is what ethnographic research consists of as a personal experience..." - Clifford Geertz

Methods: What is culture shock?

- sense of panic and confusion that comes with (often rapid) disorientation

- "Syndrome precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all your familiar cues" - Cora Du Bois

Methods: What does "qualitative" mean?

"A research strategy producing an in-depth and detailed description of social activities and beliefs"

Methods: What is fieldwork? What makes anthropological fieldwork different?

- "Long-term immersion in a community, often involving firsthand research in a specific study community or research setting where people's behavior can be observed and the researcher can have conversations or interviews with members of the community"

- anthropological fieldwork is long-term and immersive!

- Participant Observation and Semi-Structured Interviews = makes it different!!!

Methods: Participant Observation

- "...getting involved in and observing naturally occurring situations, interactions, and everyday activities in a community"

- "...exists along a continuum, from fly-on-the-wall direct observation of others to fully immersive experiential participation in an activity"

- Taking field notes: "any information that the anthropologist writes down or transcribes during fieldwork"

Methods: What is rapport and the best ways to build it?

Rapport is a friendly working relationship based on firsthand contact

- Joining in and taking notes

- Direct interactions

- Not letting your research question cloud your observations too much

- Looking for multiple opportunities to engage

Methods: What are semi-structured interviews?

- More structured than a conversation intended to gather data, but NOT like a survey with a narrow set of answers

- Interviews give an opportunity for a one-on-one conversation with an interviewee

Methods: Emic vs. Etic

Emic: a strategy you use by focusing your research on local explanations and meanings

- The participants own beliefs and descriptions of what is happening. Insiders view!

- How would the people participating in the event give meaning to what is happening?

Etic: a strategy focusing on anthropologists' explanations, categories, and analysis. Attempting more "objectivity" though this is not totally possible

- scholarly description of what is going on. Outsiders view!

- How is this event building social cohesion or solidarity

- How is this event similar or different than other events

Methods: What is thick description and its three components?

Looking for meaning/context and giving as much detail as possible

- Relevant detail (importance: gives the kind of context we can use to assign meaning; so rich that others can understand what happened when it is recounted)

- Scholarly analysis (etic perspective)

- Cultural context (emic perspective)

Methods: What is Geertz/Ryle's wink/twitch example and how does it relate to thick description?

Geertz borrowed the phrase 'thick description' from the philosopher Ryle (1949), who used it to contrast two different ways of describing the same piece of behavior, and applies it to writing ethnography.

Ryle's example was a boy's twitch and his wink. Both could be described as 'rapidly closing his right eyelids. ' That Ryle called 'thin description.' The thickness is deciding what the 'closing' implied.

Why are ethics important in anthropology?

Ethics: moral questions about right and wrong and standards of appropriate behavior

It is important one's engagement as a reachers ensures...

- Doing no harm to one's interlocutors

- Taking responsibility for one's work

- Sharing one's findings

What is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

- Summary: a syphilis investigation that ethically violated African American men who were not offered treatment

- Recruited 600 Black men under false pretenses

- No informed consent or knowledge of the risks

- Intended to observe effects of untreated syphilis. Even though penicillin began to be used for syphilis treatment in 1947, and the effects of untreated syphilis are extremely damaging, none of the men were treated

What is the Stanford Prison Experiment?

- 2 week psychology experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971

- Simulations of a prison environment. 24 test subjects were chosen to be "prisoners" or "guards". The experiment was to last 14 days and it lasted only 6 because of safety concerns.

- People took on the role seriously and forgot they were in the experiment in the first place.

- Even Zimbardo forgot that he took on the role.

- They all INTERNALIZED their roles.

- The psychologically damaging and brutal nature of the study led to more widespread ethical guidelines for work with human subjects

What is informed consent?

- "An agreement to take part in research - after having been informed about its purpose, nature, procedure, and possible impacts"

- Do your interlocutors know why you are asking them questions, working with them, or conducting archaeological excavations?

- Do they know the potential risks and benefits?

- Do they consent to be part of the research?

What is evaluating risk and harm?

- Thinking through the kinds of risk interlocutors might experience through participating in the project. This can range from reputational risk to threat of bodily harm

- Working with experts in research ethics to adopt methods that minimize those risks

What is collaborative partnership?

- Making sure interlocutor can give feedback and input on the process

- Making sure what has been observed/disclosed is accurately represented

- Making sure the anthropologist doesn't just "extract" something and leave. This can include making sure interlocutors have access to results

- A forum for dialogue with a special focus on the complex collaborations between and among researchers and research participants/interlocutors.

Species (What do members of the same species need to be able to do?)

Group of individuals that can interbreed and produce offspring which can both live and reproduce

What is a population?

a cluster of individuals of the same species whose members share a common geographical area and find their mates more in one cluster than in others

(1) What is the great chain of being? (2) How does it connect to fixity of species? (3) How did this concept support ideas of difference? (4) How does evolution dispute the concept?

(1) God → Angels → Humans → Animals → Plants → Minerals

^ All forms of life exist in a ranked and hierarchical order (hierarchy = unchanging)

(2) Individual organisms only deviate slightly from a true, ideal, essential form (there is fixity)

(3) the Great Chain helped to naturalize and legitimize discrimination, inequality, and oppression by presenting them as part of the cosmic order

(4) evolution replaces the static, hierarchical, and divinely ordered view of life with a dynamic, interconnected, and naturalistic one

How does the idea of the great chain of being connect to ideas of race?

the Great Chain of Being connects to ideas of race by providing a hierarchical framework that was used—especially in the early modern and Enlightenment periods—to justify racial inequality and colonial domination

What is evolution?

The adaptive changes in populations of organisms across generations

Phenotype vs. Genotype

- Phenotype: "The observable and measurable traits and an organism"; expressed physical traits

- Genotype: "An organism's genetic component"; Genetic make-up; Genes and Alleles

Who are Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and how did they contribute to the study of evolution?

- Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both posit that natural selection is the means by which evolution occurs

- Darwin originally rejected the term evolution because what he proposes is non-directional, not leading to the improvement of a species

- Individual organisms with traits better suited to their environment will have more offspring

- Change is not something that an organism can will into being, the traits are already present, and are inherited across generations

What is adaptation?

- the development of a trait that plays a functional role in the ability of a lifeform to survive and reproduce

What is modern synthesis?

- "The view of evolution that accepts the existence of four genetically based processes of evolution: mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift"

- Evolution can only be observed over generations in a population, individual organisms do not evolve through their lifetimes

Genes vs Alleles

Genes = A segment of DNA that codes for a specific trait

Alleles = variants of a given gene (2 alleles per gene; dominant/recessive relationship)

4 genetic mechanisms of evolution (know how they differ from one another and what they do to variety within a population)

Mutation - "Change at the level of the DNA"

- When changes are not "repaired by cellular machinery, they can create variation

- The most important source of variety for natural selection to operate on

- Ex: Balanced Polymorphism... sickle cell disease provides immunity to malaria (not all mutations are harmful)

Natural Selection - "The process through which certain heritable traits become more or less common in a population related to the reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environments"

- Occurs when life forms that are best suited to survive and reproduce in a particular environment (favored forms) do so in greater numbers than other members of the same population

- Ex: Romanov example

^ The phenotype is what interacts directly with the environment. Hemophilia is a recessive trait associated with the sex-linked X chromosome. She carried a recessive gene of hemophilia.

Gene flow - "The movement of genetic material within and between populations"

- The introduction of new genetic material into a population (through interbreeding with another) provides variety on which natural selection can work

- Prevents speciation, the formation of new species

Genetic drift - "A change in genetic variation across generations due to random factors"

- Random changes that usually occur in small populations, not due to natural selection

- Does not depend on an allele's beneficial or harmful effects, but rather on events that change the makeup of a population and affects which organisms can mate

what does biocultural mean?

- combining biological and cultural approaches to a given problem

- Ex: sleep (It is tempting to think of sleep as a purely biological function, and our bodies all need it. But there are also cultural dimensions to sleep)

Human Genetic Uniformity (AABA)

- All humans share mostly identical genetic material - 100% of the same genes and 99.9% of their variations - and have common physiological processes

- Many species of animals where individuals may "look the same" have significantly more genetic diversity between them than any two humans compared

- When there is genetic variability, it does not follow along racial lines. There is no single genetic marker (genes, alleles) that could be used to sort people into races

- There has been NO Speciation Event!

^ Human populations have NEVER been isolated or static enough from one another to develop into such discrete groups that a speciation event (the production of a new separate species) could occur

^ Further, no human population has ever been "biologically homogenous or 'pure.'" Humans in general, genetically speaking, "show up as one biological race." - AABA

^ Caveat: this is not meant to reflect or endorse a message of colorblindness, which does not reckon with the social consequences of racism

Human phenotypic variation (AABA)

- Variation in human phenotypes are produced by genome/environment interactions and gene flow

- The environment tends to change gradually based on latitude, so phenotypic variation likewise distributed spatially, rather than by population or continent

- This is called clinal variation, "a type of variation in which change is gradual and in which traits shade and blend into each other"

- Racial classifications draw arbitrarily on phenotypic differences to assume genotypic ones

What is the relationship between phenotypic human differences (like skin color) and adaptation? Reasons for variation in skin color.

- Clinal variation = phenotypic differences are adapted over time based on outside factors

Variation in Human Skin Color

- Variations in skin color correspond to the amount of melanin produced in skin cells

- Vitamin D absorption and screening of UV radiation

- "Recent" ancestors' latitude (population's distance from the equator)

- There is NO association between character, aptitude, or habits with variation in human skin color

^ Those meanings are socially constructed, produced in a particular cultural context

Melanin and its relationship to UV radiation and Vitamin D absorption (AABA)

- Melanin: a complex polymer that is the main pigment in human skin

- Variations in skin color correspond to the amount of melanin produced in skin cells

- Vitamin D absorption and screening of UV radiation

- Recent ancestor's latitude

- There is no association between character, aptitude, or habits with variation in human skin color

Hair texture (AABA)

- Like skin pigmentation, there are various advantages to different textures of hair depending on environment

- Ex) Tightly curled hair leaves air pockets between hair strands, minimizing heat gain from the sun and maximizing heat loss from the top of the head. This is advantageous in hotter, sunnier locations

- There is once again continuous, or clinal, variation

Characteristics of Racism

- Systemic - socially constructed worldview, not a biological reality!

- Race as we have described it is a classification system informed by (and in support of) European colonialism

4 Definitions -

- "The belief that races are populations of people whose physical differences are linked to significant cultural and social differences and that those innate hierarchical differences can be measured and judged - goulash-boza

- "Prejudice against someone because of their race and a belief in the inherent superiority and inferiority of different racial groups." - AABA

- "The repressive practices, structures, beliefs, and representations that uphold racial categories and structural inequality" - textbook

- "The practice of subordinate races believed to be inferior." - Golash-Boza

What are micro aggressions?

verbal or behavioral slights that implies a derogatory or prejudicial attitude. Ranges from indirect to overt

How does racism affect human biology?

- While genetic/biological "races" do not exist, racism is very real and affects the bodies of marginalized people, their health and wellbeing

- In the united states and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes-cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others

What is discrimination?

- "negative or unfair treatment of a person because of their membership in a particular social group or category"

- the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

What is prejudice?

- "Performed, usually unfavorable opinions that people hold about people from groups that are different from their own"

- An adverse or unreasonable opinion about a person or group without all the facts and usually based on deeply held beliefs.

What is scientific racism?

- The use of science or pseudoscience to reproduce and/or justify racial inequalities

- Nevertheless, by using "science" as a justification, the differences/classifications were naturalized, "made part of the natural order of things through the production of scientific theories, schemes, and typologies - textbook

What is Social Darwinism?

The belief that those who are successful got their because they were the "fittest," and that those in poverty were there based on their own failings. A justification for wealth inequality.

What is embodiment?

- how people literally incorporate, biologically, the material and social worlds in which they live, from conception to death

- Ex) Racism is embodied (discrimination has bodily consequences, including a life expectancy gap)

Mothers of Gynecology

- The Mothers of Gynecology Movement sprang out of criticism of 19th century American gynecologist J. Marion Sims' experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women who were unable to consent to their surgeries. Their surgeries were often performed without anesthesia.

- White male doctors feeling like they have the privilege to operate on them

- Tried justifying it by the myth that Black Women felt little pain

Race

- "A social construction to describe a group of people who share physical and cultural traits as well as a common ancestry" - Golash-Boza

- "Implies that the people of the world can be divided into biologically discreet and exclusive groups based on physical and cultural traits." - Golash-Boza

- "A system that organizes people into hierarchical groups based on specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences that are rooted in genetic and biological difference" - Textbook

Ethnicity

- Ethnicity can be best understood in our context as an etic term developed in the early 1900s to denote a shared origin

- Usually more than one uniting feature, and these features intersect together

- Assimilation = When one group adopts the patterns and norms of another group, either voluntarily or forcibly, and no longer exists as a separate unit

- Multiculturalism = Encouraging numerous distinct cultural/ethnic units within a society

Race vs. Ethnicity

- Race declares a hierarchy of people in which physical characteristics are connected to assumed aptitudes and moral attributes

- Race relies on an assumption of biological difference between groups and is discerned based on physical characteristics which are arbitrarily chosen as "markers" of race, usually including skin tone, hair texture, and facial features

- Race is often an externally-imposed term (is ascribed to people, not based on individual agency)

What are sources of solidarity that form ethnic identity?

- Shared language

- Shared beliefs, customs, or norms (religious heritage)

- A collective name

- Belief in common descent

- Shared historical experiences or shared "origin story"

- Connection to a place/territory/location

Origin story of Rome

One tale posited that a Romus, son of Zeus, founded the city. Callias posited that Romulus was descended from Latinus and a woman called Roma who was the daughter of Aeneas and a homonymous mother. Other authors depicted Romulus and Romus, as a son of Aeneas, founding not only Rome but also Capua.

true or false: an origin must be entirely historical fact?

false

Audrey Smedley's core argument about race

- Race wasn't invented because it is a set of beliefs and attitudes about human variation. It has nothing to do with the biological variation itself. You can have many societies with great diversity in physical features without the idea of race. Race represents attitudes and beliefs about human differences, not the differences themselves.

- "What modern scientists are saying is that race as a biological concept cannot be supported by the facts that we have learned about human biophysical variations and their genetic basis... Despite referential discrepancies, the social categories of race are still very real"

what three things is race NOT?

biological, a cultural universal, and ahistorical

Ascribed vs agency-based social identity

Some are agency-based, determined by individuals' capacity to have the power and/or resources to do something

Others are ascribed (externally assigned) and involve limited choice

what is intersectionality?

when you have all these social identities they do not exist in isolation (intersect in meaningful ways)

what is assimilation?

When one group adopts the patterns and norms of another group, either voluntarily or forcibly, and no longer exists as a separate unit. This usually requires an abandonment of cultural traditions in favor of the majority population

what is multiculturalism? (salads vs melting pots)

- Encouraging numerous distinct cultural/ethnic units within a society

- Contrasts the assimilationist model by encouraging the practice of diverse traditions

- Unity not through sameness but through respect of differences

- We could think of this model more as a salad than a melting pot. There are different components present within the unified whole, without attempting to erase those differences