ANTH 111 - Cultural Anthropology - Topic 8 - Social Inequality : The Meaning of Difference

What is the anthropological perspective?

The way anthropologists look at and understand people and cultures.

What does the anthropological perspective look at in terms of people, problems and cultures?

1. Holistically — the bigger picture and how the parts interconnect

2. Relativistically — understanding the culture from within the culture

3. Naturalistically — studying people in their natural setting

4. Comparatively — how behaviors and attitudes vary from one society to another (general patterns & differences)

5. Globally — how global forces impact local cultures

6. Bioculturally — realizing that cultural practices may affect biology

7. Reflexively — recognizing how ones own position may impact data gathered

What is ethnicity?

A sense of historical, cultural and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group.

Does race have biological and cultural consequences?

Yes. For example, there are significant differences in rates of disease and average life span between different racial groupings in the U.S.

What is discrimination?

The practice of treating individuals differently simply based on the group they belong to.

• Gender

• Sex

• Age

• Ethnic group

• Differently abled

What is racism?

Individuals’ thoughts and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups.

What is individual racism?

Personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race.

What are microaggressions?

Common, everyday verbal or behavioral indignities (embarrassment) and slights (insults) that communicate hostile, derogatory and negative messages about someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.

What is institutional racism?

Patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies and systems.

What is racial ideology?

A set of popular ideas about race that allows discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational and normal.

What is racial profiling?

The discriminatory practice of targeting a person for reasons of safety, security or public protection based on a stereotype of their race, ethnicity, religion or place of origin.

What does fighting discrimination mean?

It means that fighting discrimination requires recognition and efforts of both those who are discriminated against and those who aren’t.

What is prejudice?

Preformed, usually unfavorable opinions about people who are different. Most forms of prejudice are acquired as a part of our enculturation (conforming to norms) from trusted elders, authority figures, media and peers. We need to realize that learned behavioral patterns can be unlearned.

What is unearned privilege?

An unnoticed and underappreciated lack of discrimination against certain groups.

“Invisible package of unearned assets”

• White people don’t get as much attention when they make mistakes, but colored people do

What is ethnic cleansing?

Removing a certain ethnicity of a group from a geographical area.

What is cultural genocide/ethnocide?

Taking the ethnicity away from the people.

For example: residential schools (“killing the Indian in the child”)

What is genocide?

Systematic murder of an entire group of people

Examples:

• Holocaust — Jews in WWII

• Murder of Armenians during WWI

• Massacre of Tutsis by Hutus in 1994

• Small pox infested blankets distributed in 1793 in Canada by the British

What caused the genocide in Rwanda 1994?

It was caused by Belgian colonial policies in 1919-1962 —> favored the Hutus over the Tutsis.

What is multiculturalism?

View that cultural diversity as valuable and worth maintaining. Its seeking ways to understand an interact with others in respect for their differences. Many people migrate as they desire to move to a nation with better lifestyle & rapid population growth and insufficient job opportunities in less- developed countries.

What is ethno-nationalism?

The idea of an association between ethnicity and the right to rule the U.S. it prioritizes one ethnic group over another, leading to exclusion of those not a part of the dominant ethnic group.