IB Anthro 9 Key Terms

Belief and knowledge

A set of convictions, values and viewpoints regarded as “the truth” and shared by members of a social group. These are underpinned and supported by known cultural experience.

Power

Power is an essential part of social relations and can be considered as a person’s or group’s capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and resources. In its broadest sense, power can be understood as involving

distinctions and inequalities between members of a social group.

Culture

Organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. Culture includes the customs by which humans organize their physical world and maintain their social structure.

Society

The way in which humans organize themselves in groups and networks (of cultures). The term “society” can also be used to refer to a human group that exhibits some internal coherence and distinguishes itself from other such groups.

 Society is created and sustained by social relationships among persons and groups.

Social relations

Social relations involve an element of individual agency as well as group expectations and form the basis of social organization and social structure.

Social relations pervade every aspect of human life and are extensive, complex, and diverse.

Symbolism

Symbolism is the study of the significance that people attach to objects, actions, and processes creating networks of symbols through which they construct a culture’s web of meaning.

Materiality

Objects, resources and belongings have cultural meaning and are embedded with all kinds of social relations and practices. Some anthropologists think that human experience can be understood through the study of material objects (the social life of things).

Change

The alteration or modification of cultural or social elements in a society.

Change may be due to internal dynamics within a society, or the result of

contact with another culture, or a consequence of globalization.

Identity

Identity can refer either to the individual’s private and personal view of the self—this is sometimes referred to as the “moi”—or the view of an individual in the eyes of the social group. Identity also refers to group identity, which may take the form of religious identity, ethnic identity, or national identity for example.

Self

The individual’s social self is the product of social interaction and not the biological preconditions of that interaction.

Personhood

Culturally constructed concept of the individual human being, the “self”.