Cultural Anthropology Final

Qualitative research

Is exploratory research in which a thesis evolves from the ground up.

Gives preference to narratives, stories, lived experience, participation

Seeks to gain understanding of underlying motivations, reasons, opinions

Diffusionalism

Cultural artifacts or activities spread from more advanced ro less advanced societies.

Historical Particularism

Each Culture is a unique representation of its history and context. Attributed to Franz Boas.

Functionalism

Culture develops in response to human needs

Structural functionalism

culture supports a social need for order and cohesion, rather than meeting individual needs.

Symbolic Anthropology

Culture is a system of symbols that people create, alter, and share with each other. Attributed to Clifford Geertz

Sex

the term that refers to an individuals biological inheritance and reproductive physiology.

Latino

refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American Spanish-speaking origin. Often thought to connote more of the cultural characteristics. Adopted in the 2000 census.

Hispanic

a category created for the 1970 census to refer to "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race."

Gender

a term that refers to the culturally specific way that individuals are identified as masculine and feminine.

Race

Claimed to be differences genetically, but is really at the social level how we interact/label others

Thick Description

can serve as a validation strategy providing rich details that describes not only the phenomenon itself, but also its context, symbolism, meaning, social understanding, and significance.

Agency

the human capacity to exert some control over the conditions of one's existence

Social Structure

refers to the ways people coordinate their lives in relation to one another at the level of society.

Reciprocity

If you receive a gift, you are obliged to repay it with another gift.

Balanced reciprocity

A form of exchange in which roughly equivalent goods or services are exchanged.

Inequality

refers to the differential access to economic resources, political power, or social prestige that results from social stratification.

Racism

Assumes there is a power differential between dominant and subordinate groups, a system of advantage based on race

prejudice

preconceived judgment or opinion, often based on limited information

Bridewealth (Brideprice)

money, possessions, or property given by the groom's family to the bride's family

ETIC Understanding

Looking AT people

EMIC Understanding

looking/living WITH people

Foraging

People gather plants that grow wild in the environment and hunt available animals, rely on specially adapted technology and deep knowledge of the environment for livelihood, do not attempt to increase the resources found in their environments by growing crops or intentionally breeding livestock.

Cultural Consequences of Foraging

Relatively egalitarian

Flexibility in gender-division of labor

Groups (bands) work and live together closely

Harmony and cooperation are essential to survival

Generally nomadic, as the food supply begins to diminish

Horticulture

People cultivate varieties of wild or domesticated crops using relatively little technology

Involves subsistence farming

Everyone is usually involved in production

May involve swidden farming (slash and burn)

Labor must be mobilized, especially at key times (planting and harvest)

Cultural Consequences of Horticulture

Usually a larger community (village) size due to a more settled lifestyle

Requires property rights (a cultural understanding that a family has rights to certain land)

Settled populations and large families are advantageous

Energy is spent in one place, which may need to be aggressively defended.

Cultural Consequences of Pastoralism

Often have stronger loyalty to their tribe than to the state

Families must be large enough to take care of the cattle, but not so large as to deplete all the resources the cattle provides

Anthropology

the description, interpretation, and analysis of similarities and differences in human cultures, the study of humans, past and present.

The 4 subfields of Anthropology

Archaeology, Physical/Biological, Linguistics, & Cultural

Physical/Biological Anthropology

Study of human anatomy and human origins

Forensics—the interpretation of human remains, usually for legal purposes

Linguistics

Focus is on the relationship between language and human behavior and thought

How language is used in various social contexts

Cultural Anthropology

Primary focus is culture—the customs and beliefs of some human group

Study cultures firsthand and report about their ways of living

Compare diverse cultures to search for general principles to explain human ways of living

Qualitative research

surveys, polls, experiments

Ethnicity

how one claims to relate with the culture/tradition/heritage of a certain race.

class

A persons status according to where they are economically.

Hegemony

1. leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation.

2. leadership; predominance.

3. aggression or expansionism by large nations (especially toward smaller nations) in an effort to achieve world domination.

Generalized reciprocity

Gift exchanges with no precise accounting of value and no precise expectation for type or time of return

Negative reciprocity

Profit - One or more parties seek to gain more than they give

Dowery

the bride's family provides resources, wealth, or gifts to the groom's family

Bride price

groom must work for bride's kin

Sapir-Wharf Hypotheses

Language does not keep you from thinking outside the box, but it shapes the box in which you think, Different societies live in distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

Agriculture

People cultivate permanent fields using intensive techniques, such as plowing, irrigation, fertilization, mechanization, and so on.

Cultural consequences of Agriculture

Permanent settlements form that may last for generations

Food supply is provided by relatively few producers; the rest is surplus

High potential for income inequality

Centralized market and political systems

Groups became more sedentary, settled in villages, towns, cities

Market relationships are de-personalized, not face-to-face.

Pastoralism

People domesticate and herd animals

Nomadic—moving animals in response to food and water supply

Transhumant—moving herds seasonally

Most herders live in regions that are not well-suited to cultivation

Livestock convert inedibles into edibles

Archeology

The study of material artifacts to understand a people's culture or society

Qualitative research methods

Interviews, focus groups, participant-observation

Quantitative research

Starts with a hypothesis to be proved

Favors experiments, variables, and measurements

Seeks to quantify numerical data and transform it into usable statistics