Cultural Anthropology Exam 1

Anthropos

man

Logos

study of

Steps to Humanness

1. bipedality

2. non-honing teeth

3. material culture

4. speech

5. hunting

6. domesticated food

Evidence for bipedalism

1. bipedal gait

2. lumber lordosis

the reduction in the size of canine teeth over time indicates ________

a behavioral tendency towards cooperation

Changes in human teeth overtime

1. Reduction of canines

2. enamel becomes thinner

3. increased incidence of cavities

4. reduction in size of molars

Humans share 99.8% of DNA with ______

Chimpanzees

Can the development of culture be seen from an evolutionary perspective?

yes

How is culture learned and taught

through enculturation

Enculturation

the process of learning one’s culture including acceptable behaviors and taboos

anthropology

the study of humans

the discipline of anthropology consists of 5 subfields:

1. archaeology

2. biological/physical anthropology

3. cultural anthropology

4. linguistics

5. applied anthropology

?what is the goal of archaeology?

to present a snapshot of the past based off the material remains left behind by past people

physical anthropology

studies human origins and comparative anatomy

biological anthropologists will study

1. bipedality in humans

2. behavioral comparisons with other living primates

3. changes in the human skeleton over time

4. forensics

5. how DNA affects skeletal structures across species

Linguistics

the study of the construction, use, and form of language in human populations

Linguists study what?

1. composition of language

2. language borrowing

3. how languages interact and change over time

4. classifying languages based on similarities

cultural anthropology

the study of people’s communities, behaviors, beliefs and institutions

definition of culture

the complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of society

Who defined culture?

Edward Burnett Tylor

Holism

anthropology’s commitment to consider the full scope of human life including culture, biology, history, and language across time and space

ethnocentrism

the strong human tendency to believe that their own culture or way of life is natural, normal, and superior to the beliefs and practices of other cultures

ethnography

the systematic study and description of people and cultures

ethnology

a comparison of cultural features presented in multiple ethnographies usually covering the cultures of a specific geographic region

what spurred the development of anthropological theory?

the age of discovery in the 15th through the 19th century

the age of discovery was what

a period of time in which European nations vied for economic and political power by conquering foreign lands and expanding trade

the age of discovery was started by the

Portuguese traders trying to find a more efficient way to the indian subcontinent

Franz Boas

founded the first American School of Anthropology at the university of Chicago in 1896

Cultural Relativism

understanding a group’s beliefs, living structure, and traditions within their own cultural context, without making judgement or placing value

Biological determinism

the notion that all attributes of a person are innate including intelligence and brain size (not real)

historical particularism

rejects cultural evolution instead arguing that each society/culture is a collective representation of its own unique historical past

Boasian research: Ellis Island

wanted to test Darwinian evolution, studied 18,000 immigrants, looked at skull sizes and limb proportions

Earnest Hooton

used Morton’s craniometry, racial traits as a matter on inheiritance

who debunked biological determinism by conducting various IQ tests and bodily measurements on incoming immigrants on ellis island in the late 19th century (intelligence is not correlated with ethnicity, race, or nationality

Franz Boas

Bronislaw Malinowski

popularized participate observation and ethnographic study

Kula Ring

a system of aboriginal exchange that was practiced by the trobriand islanders

Alfred Radcliffe Brown

brought the ideas about function from french sociologists Emile Durkheim to British Anthropology

structural functionalism

a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability through the use of cultural practices and institutions

culture contains 3 essential elements

1. norms

2. values

3. symbols

norms

ideas or rules of how an individual should act in a particular situation or towards another person

values

fundamental beliefs about what is important, how to live life, and what is considered truth

symbols

something that means something else (like words are symbols which convey abstract meaning)

what are the two fundamental research strategies

1. participant observation

2. armchair anthropology

ethnocentrism was coined by

Ludwig Gumplowicz

why is ethnocentrism important?

recognizing the bias associated with enthocentlrism is key to how anthropologists approach studying culture

cultural lense

how each culture interprets the world differently

cultural relativism

defined as understanding a group’s beliefs, living structure, and traditions within their own cultural context, without making judgement or placing value

cultural relativism contradicts the ________

the notion of cultural universals

Noam Chomsky

developed theory of universal grammar

the theory of universal grammar

that each human is born with the ability to learn and the ability to learn and understand any spoken language, language is cultural universal

Lewis Henry Morgan

thought that cultures evolved along a “unilinear” path

Elman Service

developed a fluid trajectory for the evolution of culture

according to Elman Service, cultures evolve from _____ to _____ to _______ to ________

Bands; Tribes; Chiefdoms; States

Marvin Harris

studied human rationale for religious practices in India and South America, coined the term hypodescent

Hypodescent: Race in the United States

in U.S. culture, racial identity is acquired at birth

Rule of descent

assigns social identity on the basis of ancestry

hypodescent

automatically places children of mixed marriages in the group of their minority parent

race is arbitrary (T/F)

true

two major theorists of functionalism

Bronislaw Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown

theory of funcitonalism

that every behavior and institution within culture has a specific function that supports the overall structure of the culture

functionalism rejects _________

conjectural history

structuralism was developed by

Jean Claude Levi Strauss

all culture can be interpreted based on its structure

symbolic anthropology

developed by Clifford Geertz, sought to illuminate the connection between ordinary everyday activities and the deep cultural meanings behind those activities

Clifford Geertz

known for the cockfighting