eerste versie Anthropology mbv Chatgpt

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Anthropology

The holistic and comparative study of humans as cultural and social beings across time and space, shaped by postcolonial thinking.

Ethnography

Both a method and a product in anthropology, involving immersive, long-term observation and participation in the daily lives of people being studied.

Participant observation

A core ethnographic method where researchers take part in the everyday life of their subjects to understand their world from inside out.

Fieldwork

The proces of collecting data in the field through observation, participation and interaction.

The field

A socially and temporally constructed site of research that may be fixed or multi-sited. It can be physical, symbolic, or both.

Imponderabilia of everyday life

Subtle, often overlooked aspects of daily life that are hard to quantify but crucial to understanding culture (Malinowski).

Emic perspective

Understanding the world from the point of view of the people being studied (insider perspective).

Etic perspective

The analyst’s or outsider’s perspective on a cultural phenomenon.

Holism

The idea that one must understand the full context of a phenomenon, including cultural, social, political, and historical dimensions.

Multi-sited ethnography

A method involving research across multiple interconnected locations to understand a phenomenon more comprehensively.

Narrative ethnography

Etnographic work presented in narrative form, highlighting the complexity and lived experience of cultural practices.

Tales of the field

Van Maanen’s classification of ethnographic writing styles: realist, confessional, and impressionist.

Colonial legacy in anthropology

The discipline’s origins are closely tied to colonial projects and power structures. A critical stance today involves reflexifity and decolonisation.

Postcolonial anthropology

An approach that critiques the colonial foundations of anthropology and emphasizes the voices and perspectives of formerly colonized peoples.

Reflexivity

The practice of reflecting on the researcher’s own role, biases, and impact on the research process and data.

Visual anthropology (voorlopig)

A subfield using visual methods (photo’s, film, drawings) to study and represent cultures.

Digital anthropology (voorlopig)

A subfield examining the role of digital technologies in shaping social life.

Epistemology

The study of knowledge: how we know what we know. In anthropology, it challenges objectivity and embraces positionality, partiality, and subjectivity.

Positionality

The researcher’s social and cultural background and how that shapes the research process and findings (gender, ethnicity, class, etc.).

Participant Observation

A method in ethnography where researchers immerse themselves in a community to observe and participate in daily life.

Field / Fieldwork

The site of ethnographic study; no longer always remote or “exotic”, it can be multi-sited, urban, or even digital.

Constitutive causality

Explains phenomena by understanding how social actions are meaningful for the people performing them, rather than seeking mechanical cause-effect.

Thick description

A detailed account of field observations that includes context, emotions, and meanings (Geertz).

Bias

In anthropology, bias is not a flaw to eliminate but a reality to reflect upon. Research is co-constructed and inherently subjective.

Militant anthropology

Advocacy for an anthropology that takes ethical and political positions (Scheper-Hughes), rejecting “neutral” detachment.

Experience-near vs. Experience-distant concepts

Logical, emic ideas vs. abstract, theoretical ones. Etnographers often translate between the two.

Logical (causal) inference

Drawing conclusions about social mechanisms and meaning rather than statistical generalization.

Reflexivity

Critical reflection by researchers on how their own role, presence, and indentity influence the research process.

The ‘Other’

A concept in postcolonial and critical anthropology referring to how anthropologists have historically constructed non-Western peoples as fundamentally different.

Cultural relativism

The priciple that cultures should be understood in their own context, without ethnocentric judgement (Franz Boas).

Founding fathers (and mothers) of anthropology

Includes Malinowski (participant observation), Boas (cultural relativism), Mead, Benedict, Radcliffe-Brown, Mauss, and others.

Decolonizing anthropology

A movement that critiques and seeks to move beyond the colonial origins of the discipline, emphasizing non-Western epistemologies and voices.

Ethnographic spectacle

A critique (e.g. by Fatimah Tobing Rony) on how ethnography and cinema historically turned the Other into a spectacle.

Other anthropologies

A recognition of non-Western intellectual traditions and trevelogues (e.g., Ibn Battuta, Akbar’s Navaratnas) as legitimate forms of anthropological knowledge.

Anthropology

The study of humans and cultures across time and space.

Etnography

A qualitative research method involving immersive observation and participation to understand cultural practices.

Participant observation

Being actively involved in the daily lives of research subjects while observing them.

Culture (E.B. Tylor)

“The complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals and customs aquired by humans as members of society.”

Cultural relativism

Understanding beliefs and practices within their own cultural context without judging them using external standards.

Ethnocentrism

Believing one’s own culture is superior and judging others by those standards.

Habitus (Bourdieu)

Internalized patterns of perception, thought, and action shaped by social structures; “socialized subjectivity.”

Webs of significance (Geertz)

Culture as symbolic systems; humans interpret the world through shared symbols and meanings.

Interpretive anthropology

A method of understanding cultures by interpreting their symbols and meanings (Geertz).

Emic perspective

Insider’s view - understanding culture from the persepective of its members.

Etic perspective

Outsider’s analytical view - using external categories to describe a culture.

Positionality

Awareness of how a researcher’s identity (gender, race, class, etc.) affects research relationships and interpretations.

Reflexivity

Critical self-reflextion on how one’s own position and assumptions influence research.

Partial truths (Clifford)

Ethnographic accounts are always incomplete and influenced by the researcher’s position.

Orientalism (Edward Said)

A western style dominating and essentializing “the Orient” through literature and academia.

Writing against culture (Abu-Lughod)

Advocates for individual-focused, non-homogenized representations of culture.

Digital anthropology

The study of digital technologies and how they affect cultural practices and social life.

Visual anthropology

Uses and analyses visual media (film, photos, etc.) as both research method and topic.

Sensory ethnography

Ethnographic approach that includes mulitsensory perception (sound, touch, etc.)

Anthropology of migration

Studies human mobility, migration patterns, and associated cultural, political, and social implications.

Anthropology of religion

Examines religious beliefs, rituals, and symbols as cultural and social phenomena.

Anthropology of nonreligion

Studies secularism, atheism, and spiritual disaffiliation as lived cultural experiences.

Lived religion/nonreligion

Focus on how religion or nonreligion is experienced in everyday life.

Intersectionality (Crenshaw)

Framework analyzing how overlapping identities (e.g., race, gender, class) create unique modes of discrimination or privilege.

Identity politics

Political engagement based on the interests and perspectives of specific identity groups.

Insider vs. outsider status

A researcher’s closeness to the group they study affects trust, access, and interpretation.

Methodological relativism (Malinowski)

Anthropologists should temporarily suspend judgement and understand practices from within a culture.

Harmful cultural practices

Practices seen as damaging (e.g., to bodily integrity), raising tensions between cultural relativism and universal human rights.

Anthropology

The holistic, comparative study of humans, their cultures, and societies across space and time.

Ethnography

A qualitative research method involving long-term immersion in a community to study their daily life and practices.

Participant Observation

A core ethnographic method where researchers take part in the daily life of participants while observing them.

Cultural relativism

Understanding and interpreting a culture based on its own values and norms, not judging through the lens of another culture.

Holism

The principle that societies and cultures must be understood in their full complexity and interconnectedness.

Interpretive Research

Research that focuses on meaning, symbols, and human understanding, rather that causal explanation.

The field

Not a fixed place, but a socially and politically constructed site of research (Gupta & Ferguson).

Writing against culture

Critique of the idea that cultures are bounded, homogeneous entities (Abu-Lughod).

Positivism

A scientific approach based on measurable, observeable facts, often critiqued in anthropology for ignoring meaning and context.

Digital anthropology

The study of how digital technologies affect social life, culture, and identity using ethnographic methods.

Affordances-in-practice

A concept that analyzes how technological possibilities (affordances are interpreted and enacted in specific cultural contexts (Costa, 2018)

Domestication Theory

The process by which technologies become embedded into everyday life and moral norms (Silverstone et al., 1992).

Digital ethnography

Ethnographic research that studies digital phenomena (e.g. social media), digital environments, or through digital tools.

Multi-sited ethnography

A method that follows people, objects, or media across different places, especially relevant in digital research.

Scrolling relationship

A method where informants reflect on their digital interactions by reviewing their top contacts and content on their devices.

The Field (digital)

A constructed and often networked site that emerges during research process, especially in online or hybrid contexts.

Informed consent (digital)

An ongoing and dynamic process of gaining voluntary, informed participation in digital research settings.

Anonymity (digital)

Ensuring participants’ identities are protected, especially in online environments where traceability is high.

Ethics of care

A principle in digital ethnography focused on minimizing harm and maximizing mutual benefit for both researcher and participants.

Visual anthropology

A subfield that explores how visual media (film, photography, drawing) are used to study, represent, and communicate cultural life.

Sensory ethnography

An approach that uses full range of human senses (sight, sound, touch, etc.) in ethnographic research and representation.

Visual culture

The ways in which visual forms shape and are shaped by cultural perceptions, power, and identity (Foster, 1988).

The camera as epistemology

Recognizing the camera not just as a recording tool, but as a means of producing and shaping knowledge.

Participatory filmmaking

A collaborative visual method where participants co-create ethnographic films or images with the researcher.

Polysemy of images

The idea that images have multiple meanings, which depend on cultural context and interpretation (Barthes).

Representation and power

Visual representations can reinforce hierarchies or challenge them; seeing is never neutral.

Thick description

Detailed, contextrual description that aims to convey the meaning behind actions, in contrast to mere surface-level observations (“this description”).

Embodied knowledge

Understanding that knowing the world involves bodily experience and sensory engagement, not just intellectual analysis.

Anthropology of migration

The ethnographic study of human mobility, border regimes, diasporas, and transnationalism.

Sedentarism

The assumption that people are naturally rooted in one place; often challenged by migration scholars (Malkki, 1992).

Nomadic paradigm

A framework emphasizing mobility, fluidity, and resistance to fixed identities and territorial boundaries (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988).

Transnationalism

The maintenance of social, cultural, and political ties across national borders by migrants.B

Borders / Bordering

The physical, legal, and symbolic processes that define who belongs and who doesn’t in a given nation-state.

Border spectacle

The portrayal of borders as dramatic sites of danger, invasion, or control, often used to justify exclusionary policies.

Family Reunification

Migration policies that govern how and whether family members can live together across borders; often shaped by race, class, and gender norms.

Civic stratification

The unequal access to rights and protections depending on one’s legal status (citizen, refugee, undocumented, etc.).

White colonial paranoia

A concept by G. Hage describing the fear in settler societies of losing dominance to non-white or migrant populations.

Culturalization of policy

Framing migration in terms of cultural incompatibility or failure to integrate, rather than socio-political factors (Bonjour & De Hart, 2013)