Anthropology exam terms

Anthropology

The study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using one's own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others.

Ethnographic fieldwork

A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology, typically involving living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives.

Cross-cultural and comparative approach

The approach by which anthropologists compare practices across cultures to explore human similarities, differences, and the potential for human cultural expression.

Four-field approach

The use of four interrelated disciplines to study humanity: biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.

Holism

The anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life— culture, biology, history, and language—across space and time.

Biological anthropology

The study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly how they have evolved over time and adapted to their environments.

Paleoanthropology

The study of the history of human evolution through the fossil record.

Primatology

The study of living nonhuman primates as well as primate fossils to better understand human evolution and early human behavior.

Archaeology

The investigation of the human past by means of excavating and analyzing artifacts.

Prehistoric archaeology

The reconstruction of human behavior in the distant past (before written records) through the examination of artifacts.

Historic archaeology

The exploration of the more recent past through an examination of physical remains and artifacts as well as written or oral records.

Linguistic anthropology

The study of human language in the past and the present.

Descriptive linguists

Those who describe and analyze languages and their component parts.

Historic linguists

Those who study how language changes over time within a culture and how languages travel across cultures.

Sociolinguists

Those who study language in its social and cultural contexts.

Cultural anthropology

The study of people's communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together.

Participant observation

A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied.

Ethnology

The analysis and comparison of ethnographic data across cultures.

Globalization

The worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders.

Time-space compression

The rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space (distances) and time.

Flexible accumulation

The flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an era of globalization, enabled by innovative communication and transportation technologies.

Increasing migration

The accelerated movement of people within and between countries.

Uneven development

The unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization.

Anthropocene

The current historical era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways.

Climate change

Changes to Earth's climate, including global warming produced primarily by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases created by the burning of fossil fuels.

Culture

A system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people.

Enculturation

The process of learning culture.

Norms

Ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people.

Values

Fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful.

Symbol

Anything that represents something else.

Mental maps of reality

Cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications.

Cultural relativism

Understanding a group's beliefs and practices within their own cultural context, without making judgments.

Cultural appropriation

The unwanted taking of cultural practices or knowledge from one group by another, more dominant group.

Unilineal cultural evolution

The theory proposed by nineteenth-century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex.

Historical particularism

The idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories.

Society

The focus of early British anthropological research whose structure and function could be isolated and studied scientifically.

Structural functionalism

A conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium.

Interpretivist approach

A conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning.

Thick description

A research strategy that combines detailed description of cultural activity with an analysis of the layers of deep cultural meaning in which those activities are embedded.

Power

The ability or potential to bring about change through action or influence.

Stratification

The uneven distribution of resources and privileges among members of a group or culture.

Hegemony

The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force.

Agency

The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.

Epigenetics

An area of study in the field of genetics exploring how environmental factors directly affect the expression of genes during one's lifetime.

Human microbiome

The complete collection of microorganisms in the human body's ecosystem.

Ethnographic fieldwork

A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology that typically involves living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives.

Salvage ethnography

Fieldwork strategy developed by Franz Boas to collect cultural, material, linguistic, and biological information about Native American populations being devastated by the westward expansion of European settlers.

Participant observation

A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied.

Reflexivity

A critical self-examination of the role the anthropologist plays and an awareness that one's identity affects one's fieldwork and theoretical analyses.

Engaged anthropology

Application of the research strategies and analytical perspectives of anthropology to address concrete challenges facing local communities and the world at large.

Anthropologist's toolkit

The tools needed to conduct fieldwork, including information, perspectives, strategies, and even equipment.

Quantitative data

Statistical information about a community that can be measured and compared.

Qualitative data

Descriptive data drawn from nonstatistical sources, including personal stories, interviews, life histories, and participant observation.

Rapport

Relationships of trust and familiarity that an anthropologist develops with members of the community under study.

Key informant

A community member who advises the anthropologist on community issues, provides feedback, and warns against cultural miscues. Also called cultural consultant.

Life history

A form of interview that traces the biography of a person over time, examining changes in the person's life and illuminating the interlocking network of relationships in the community.

Survey

An information-gathering tool for quantitative data analysis.

Kinship analysis

A fieldwork strategy of examining interlocking relationships of power built on marriage and family ties.

Social network analysis

A method for examining relationships in a community, often conducted by identifying whom people turn to in times of need.

Field notes

The anthropologist's written observations and reflections on places, practices, events, and interviews.

Mapping

The analysis of the physical and/or geographic space where fieldwork is being conducted.

Built environment

The intentionally designed features of human settlement, including buildings, transportation and public service infrastructure, and public spaces.

Zeros

Elements of a story or a picture that are not told or seen and yet offer key insights into issues that might be too sensitive to discuss or display publicly.

Mutual transformation

The potential for both the anthropologist and the members of the community being studied to be transformed by the interactions of fieldwork.

Emic

An approach to gathering data that investigates how local people think and how they understand the world.

Etic

Description of local behavior and beliefs from the anthropologist's perspective in ways that can be compared across cultures.

Polyvocality

The practice of using many different voices in ethnographic writing and research question development, allowing the reader to hear more directly from the people in the study.

Informed consent

A key strategy for protecting those being studied by ensuring that they are fully informed of the goals of the project and have clearly indicated their consent to participate.

Anonymity

Protecting the identities of the people involved in a study by changing or omitting their names or other identifying characteristics.

Language

A system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information.

Historical linguistics

The study of the development of language over time, including its changes and variations.

Language continuum

The idea that variation in languages appears gradually over distance so that groups of people who live near one another speak in a way that is mutually intelligible.

Speech community

A group of people who come to share certain norms of language use through living and communicating together.

Descriptive linguistics

The study of the sounds, symbols, and gestures of a language and their combination into forms that communicate meaning.

Phonemes

The smallest units of sound that can make a difference in meaning.

Phonology

The study of what sounds exist and how they are used in a particular language.

Morphemes

The smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own.

Morphology

The study of patterns and rules of how sounds combine to make morphemes.

Syntax

The specific patterns and rules for combining morphemes to construct phrases and sentences.

Grammar

The combined set of observations about the rules governing the formation of phonemes, morphemes, and syntax that guide language use.

Kinesics

The study of the relationship between body movements and communication.

Paralanguage

An extensive set of noises (such as laughs, cries, sighs, and yells) and tones of voice that convey significant information about the speaker.

Linguistic relativity

The notion that all languages will develop the distinctive categories necessary for those who speak them to deal with the realities around them.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The idea that different languages create different ways of thinking.

Lexicon

All the words for names, ideas, and events that make up a language's dictionary.

Sociolinguistics

The study of the ways culture shapes language and language shapes culture, particularly the intersection of language with cultural categories and systems of power such as age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class.

Dialect

A nonstandard variation of a language.

Prestige language

A particular language variation or way of speaking that is associated with wealth, success, education, and power.

Code switching

Switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another, or one language and another, depending on the cultural context.

Language ideology

Beliefs and conceptions about language that often serve to rationalize and justify patterns of stratification and inequality.

Language loss

The extinction of languages that have very few speakers.

Digital natives

The generations of people born after 1980 who have been raised in the digital age.

Race

A flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups.

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.

Intersectionality

An analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification.

Genotype

The inherited genetic factors that provide the framework for an organism's physical form.

Phenotype

The way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form as a result of genotype interaction with environmental factors.

Colonialism

The practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and military power beyond its own borders over an extended period of time to secure access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets in other countries or regions.

Miscegenation

A demeaning historical term for interracial marriage.