ANTH 1120: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Comprehensive Flashcards

Comprehensive practice flashcards defining foundational concepts, theoretical paradigms, key theorists, ethnographic methodologies, and case studies across the anthropology curriculum.

Herbert Spencer

A 19th-century British social philosopher (1820–1903) who contributed to early unilineal social evolutionary frameworks.

Edward B. Tylor

A British anthropologist (1832–1917) recognized as the 'founder of cultural anthropology' who offered the first formal anthropological definition of culture and theorized that religion evolves unilinearly from animism to polytheism to monotheism.

Lewis Henry Morgan

An American anthropologist (1818–1881) who researched social evolution, developed the comparative method by gathering global kinship data by mail, and authored 'Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family' (1870).

Historical Particularism

The theoretical framework established by Franz Boas (1858–1942) asserting that each society is the product of its own unique historical developments rather than a universal stage in a unilineal evolutionary scheme.

Four-Field Approach

The holistic framework established by Franz Boas in American anthropology integrating cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological (physical) anthropology, and archaeology into a single discipline.

Salvage Anthropology

A fieldwork approach championed by Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960) focused on rapidly documenting the languages, lifeways, and customs of indigenous groups facing cultural extinction or severe assimilation.

Functionalism

The theoretical paradigm founded by Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) proposing that cultural institutions and practices function to meet the biological and psychological needs of individuals.

Structural Functionalism

The theoretical approach developed by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) asserting that social practices, customs, and institutions exist to maintain social equilibrium and preserve the overarching social structure.

Culture and Personality School

An anthropological school of thought associated with Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) and Margaret Mead (1901–1978) postulating that societies have distinct, coherent cultural personalities that shape individual psychological development and temperament.

Neo-Evolutionism

A 20th-century evolutionary framework pioneered by Leslie White (1900–1975) that modeled cultural evolution on the capacity of technology to capture energy, formulated as $C = ET$ (Culture, Energy, Technology).

Cultural Materialism

A theoretical paradigm developed by Marvin Harris (1927–2001) stating that material conditions—specifically infrastructure, ecological constraints, and technology—dictate cultural variation, exemplified by his analysis of the sacred cow in India.

Cultural Ecology

A framework developed by Julian Steward (1902–1972) that analyzes how environmental adaptations and natural resources shape cultural practices, technologies, and social systems.

Interpretive Anthropology

A theoretical approach championed by Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) viewing culture as an 'ensemble of texts' and symbolic systems that ethnographers must decipher through thick description to uncover insider meaning.

Thick Description

An ethnographic method conceptualized by Clifford Geertz that explains not only human behaviors and actions but also the complex cultural context and underlying symbolic meanings that make those behaviors intelligible.

Studying Up, Down, and Sideways

A methodological perspective formulated by Laura Nader arguing that anthropologists should examine not only marginalized groups ('studying down') but also political and corporate power structures ('studying up') and their own peers ('studying sideways').

Cultural Appropriation

The adoption, commodification, or depiction of elements, symbols, or practices of a culture—most often an indigenous or marginalized culture—by an outside or dominant group without consent or respect for their original meaning.

Animism

The belief that natural physical objects, animals, plants, and natural phenomena are inhabited by conscious spirits or souls, proposed by Edward B. Tylor as the earliest historical form of religion.

Mana

An impersonal, sacred supernatural power recognized in Polynesian and native Hawaiian traditions that inheres in high-ranking persons, consecrated spaces, and sacred objects.

Sacred and Profane

A fundamental distinction formulated by Emile Durkheim defining religion as a system of beliefs and practices relative to the 'sacred' (things set apart, venerated, and forbidden) that unite a community, as opposed to the everyday 'profane'.

Worldview

A cultural conception of reality that acts simultaneously as a 'model of' how the world operates and a 'model for' how people should live and behave, made to seem intensely factual through symbols.

Totemism

A belief system in which human clans, lineages, or social groups maintain a sacred or genealogical relationship with a specific animal, plant, or natural emblem (totem).

Shamanism

A religious practice involving an individual specialist (shaman) who enters altered, ecstatic states of consciousness or trances to interact with spirits, heal ailments, and perform divinations on behalf of a community.

Law of Similarity

A principle of sympathetic magic identified by Sir James Frazer (imitative magic) asserting that an action performed on an effigy or imitation of a person produces an identical effect on the actual person.

Law of Contagion

A principle of sympathetic magic defined by Sir James Frazer holding that objects or substances once in direct physical contact with a person maintain a permanent supernatural link, enabling magic performed on the item to affect the person.

Stages of a Ritual

The tripartite structural cycle of rites of passage conceptualized by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, consisting of separation from social structure, entering an ambiguous liminal phase characterized by anti-structure and communitas, and returning/reincorporating with a transformed identity.

Liminality

The intermediate, ambiguous 'in-between' phase of a rite of passage where individuals are stripped of their prior status, dwell outside normal social structure, and undergo profound personal transformation.

Communitas

An intense, egalitarian comradeship and feeling of radical social equality experienced by participants sharing a liminal state during a ritual, breaking through normal hierarchical social structures.

John Frum Movement

A revitalization movement and cargo cult on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, where adherents conduct ceremonial military drills and craft replica airplanes from bamboo to invite supernatural intervention and the return of ancestral wealth and cargo.

Rite of Revitalization

A ritual movement emerging under conditions of severe catastrophe, colonization, or cultural disruption designed to resolve social distress by seeking divine or supernatural intervention.

Rite of Intensification

A communal ritual carried out during collective crises, seasonal shifts, harvests, or funerals to reaffirm a society's values, restore social solidarity, and unite its members.

Fundamentalism

A conservative religious movement reacting against secularization and modernism by demanding a return to fundamental scriptures, rigid moral codes, and traditional gender roles.

Emic View

The insider's perspective, representing the categories, cultural logic, concepts, and meanings understood and experienced by members of a local community.

Etic View

The outsider's perspective, relying on analytical frameworks, categories, and explanatory theories established by external scientific and academic observers.

Cultural Tunnel Vision

Unquestioned, tacit assumptions and biases drawn from an anthropologist's own cultural background that prevent them from understanding another culture on its own terms.

Participant Observation

The foundational anthropological research method characterized as 'disciplined hanging out,' in which the ethnographer establishes rapport as a 'professional stranger' by living among people and engaging in their daily activities.

Headnotes

The unwritten, mental impressions, personal frustrations, and reflections an anthropologist retains internally from field experiences that provide subjective context for written fieldnotes.

Genealogical Method

A kinship documentation technique devised by W. H. R. Rivers in 1898 in the Torres Strait to chart familial relationships and understand inheritance, marriage systems, and social organization.

Ethnohistory

A research method that combines ethnographic fieldwork with documentary and archival research to analyze long-term cultural change, especially within historically nonliterate communities.

Rapid Appraisal

A short-term, highly focused ethnographic investigation—also termed 'parachute ethnography'—conducted when research funding is limited or urgent practical questions require fast answers.

Action Anthropology

An applied research approach pioneered by Sol Tax in the 1950s in which anthropologists actively collaborate with informant communities to advocate for social change and solve local problems.

Anthropology at a Distance

An ethnographic methodology employed when physical access to a region is barred by warfare or political repression, relying on interviews with expatriates and analysis of media, as utilized by Ruth Benedict in 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword' (1946).

Globalization

The intensification of worldwide social, economic, and political relationships that link distant localities such that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away, and vice versa.

Transnational

A term preferred by some anthropologists over 'globalization' to describe social, political, and economic linkages that cross nation-state borders without assuming they encompass the entire globe.

World Systems Theory

An analytical model that divides the global economic order into a dominant, capital-rich 'core' that exploits a dependent 'periphery' for raw materials and cheap labor, leading to underdevelopment in the periphery.

Arjun Appadurai's Five 'Scapes'

A theoretical framework outlining the cultural flows of global interconnection: ethnoscapes (migrants/tourists), technoscapes (technology), financescapes (capital), mediascapes (images/narratives), and ideoscapes (political ideologies).

Sapeurs

Young Bakongo men from the Democratic Republic of Congo who practice a form of localization by dressing in European haute couture to accumulate social prestige and contest marginalization.

Syncretism

The blending of beliefs and rituals from two or more distinct religious or cultural traditions into a new synthesis, as seen in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and Umbanda.

Cultural Convergence

The theory that globalization is eroding distinct local traditions and replacing them with a standardized, homogenous Western culture, as described by concepts like 'McDonaldization' and 'Coca-Colonization'.

Cultural Hybridization

The process of cultural mixing and border crossing that results in persistent, dynamic cultural diversity and unique local reinventions rather than complete homogenization.

Multi-Sited Ethnography

A fieldwork methodology that tracks people, ideas, commodities, or policies across multiple geographic locations to study transnational processes and global interconnections.

Domestic Mode of Production

A kin-ordered mode of production in which labor is organized around family units to produce goods primarily for household subsistence and survival, such as in subsistence farming.

Tributary Mode of Production

A mode of production where primary producers retain access to their own means of production through kinship relations, but a ruling class politically appropriates their surplus through tribute or taxation.

Capitalist Mode of Production

An economic system wherein the means of production are privately owned by capitalists, and workers survive by selling their labor for wages because they do not own productive property.

Cofradía System

A politico-religious hierarchy among Maya communities in which men expend labor, money, and resources to sponsor religious festivals, converting wealth into community prestige and social status.

Limited-Purpose Money

A currency that can only be exchanged for specific items or within a designated social sphere of exchange, such as the brass rods and cattle traditionally used by the Tiv of Nigeria for bride price.

Kula Ring

A ceremonial inter-island exchange network in the Trobriand Islands studied by Bronislaw Malinowski, where men circulate red shell necklaces clockwise and white shell armbands counterclockwise to cement lifelong partnerships.

Marcel Mauss's Three Obligations

The core moral principles governing gift exchange identified in 'The Gift' (1924): the obligation to give, the obligation to receive, and the obligation to reciprocate, which together generate social cohesion.

Generalized Reciprocity

An exchange practice identified by Marshall Sahlins where goods or services are given without an explicit calculation of value or expectation of an immediate return, common among close kin and foragers.

Balanced Reciprocity

A form of exchange identified by Marshall Sahlins characterized by the expectation of an equivalent return of goods or favors within a specified time frame between social peers.

Negative Reciprocity

An exchange strategy identified by Marshall Sahlins in which one party attempts to maximize personal gain and obtain something for as little as possible, often involving hard bargaining, deception, or theft.

Emotional Labour

A form of workplace labor requiring employees to regulate, induce, or suppress their emotional expressions and feelings to display a prescribed demeanor during customer interactions.

Foodways

The culturally constructed rules, etiquette, social meanings, rituals, and practices surrounding the procurement, preparation, sharing, and consumption of food within a society.

Core–Legume–Fringe Pattern

A cross-cultural dietary structure consisting of a starchy core staple, a protein-dense legume, and a flavorful fringe element that satisfies both nutritional requirements and cultural desires.

Lactase Persistence

The biological capacity of adult humans from pastoralist and dairying ancestries to produce the enzyme lactase and digest lactose, which is species-wide considered an atypical biocultural adaptation.

Culinary Triangle

A structuralist semiotic model formulated by Claude Lévi-Strauss illustrating how all human cultures categorize cooking through three primary states—raw, cooked, and rotten—symbolizing the cultural transformation of nature into culture.

Foraging

A mode of subsistence relying on gathering wild plant foods and hunting or scavenging wild animals, requiring high geographic mobility and low population density.

Original Affluent Society

A term coined by Marshall Sahlins based on Richard Lee's study of the !Kung San, positing that hunter-gatherers are affluent because their material wants are easily satisfied with fewer than 20 hours of subsistence work per week.

Swidden Agriculture

A horticultural subsistence practice—also called slash-and-burn—in which small plots of forest are cleared and burned to enrich soil with nutrients, farmed until fertility declines, and then left fallow to regenerate.

Transhumance

A pattern of pastoral mobility in which herders move their livestock seasonally between fixed, regular geographic locations, such as moving between dry-season permanent water sources and rainy-season pastures.

Horizontal Migration

A nomadic pastoral practice, found among groups such as Arabian Bedouins, that involves moving herds irregularly across vast arid regions in pursuit of sporadic rainfall and pasture.

Intensive Agriculture

A high-input mode of subsistence designed to generate large food surpluses for a broad population through continuous soil preparation, mechanization, draught animals, and irrigation.

Green Revolution

The mid-20th-century modernization of agriculture in developing nations through technological transfer, chemical fertilizers, irrigation development, and high-yielding hybrid crop varieties.

Food Desert

A geographic area where residents lack access to affordable, fresh, and nutritious foods, frequently leading to health issues and a reliance on low-cost processed foods.

Acephalous Society

A society lacking centralized political authority, formal governmental institutions, or permanent headmen, relying instead on consensus, kinship obligations, and informal social controls.

Primus Inter Pares

A Latin phrase meaning 'first among equals,' used to describe informal, non-coercive leadership in egalitarian bands where leaders govern by personal influence, example, and consensus.

Big Man

An achieved, non-hereditary leadership status in tribal societies, especially in Melanesia, where an ambitious individual gains political influence through charisma, persuasion, and the generous redistribution of wealth.

Chiefdom

A centralized political society characterized by hereditary political offices, social ranking, and a paramount chief who oversees the redistribution of agricultural surpluses.

State

The most formal and centralized political organization, distinguished by codified statutory laws, bureaucratic hierarchies, sovereign borders, and a recognized monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.

Action Theory (Politics)

An anthropological approach developed in the 1960s analyzing politics as an ongoing game governed by normative rules (ethical standards) and pragmatic rules (creative manipulations and strategies used to attain power).

Structural Power

A form of power that operates through institutional frameworks, political arrangements, and economic systems (such as global capitalism) to control, constrain, and structure social choices.

Ho'oponopono

A traditional Native Hawaiian system of formal dispute management and interpersonal mediation meaning 'setting to right,' aimed at restoring spiritual and social harmony among community members.