UCI Anthropology 2A - Midterm 1 Spring 2026

Flashcards for John Egan's Anthropology 2A course at UCI in preparation for Midterm 1.

Module 1

Module 1

Anthropology

The study of human biological and cultural differences across space and time.

• There are biological differences between groups of humans.

• There are cultural differences as culture is learned from one’s environment.

The Four Subfields of Anthropology

Sociocultural Anthropology:
Linguistic Anthropology:
Archeology:
Biological Anthropology:

Culture

Learned and shared meanings (Signs, symbols, knowledge) that mediate our relations with our broader social and material world.

• Structures how we see, interpret, and want things.

• Culture is not an instinct, it is learned. We get it from a particular cultural context.
       - Ex. Language is not inherited, it is taught by your environment.

• Encompasses our beliefs, our assumptions, and our world views.
       - These assumptions often operate invisibly. We do not consciously think of them. They are almost seen as a "common sense” or a “natural way”.

• Culture has the power to naturalize, or at least make things appear to be natural.

The Power to Naturalize

Culture has the power to make things be seen as a “common sense” or a “natural way”, this creates assumptions that are operated invisibly and unconsciously.
Ex: Male/Female. Stereotypically, there are things associated with certain genders. Differences in stereotypes map to social positions and opportunities. These stereotypical differences are not “natural”, they are cultural. It stems from cultural diversity.

Module 2

Module 2

A Priori

Everything that comes ahead of time. Such as the unconscious beliefs that culture gives us, since we learned those assumptions, common sense, and ways of thinking beforehand.

Scientific Racism

Claims of Scientific Racism:

1. We are divided into discrete biological types

2. Sociocultural attributes are expressions of racial type
   However, culture is socially transmitted, not biologically transmitted, as culture is learned, not inherited.

• Additionally, all people can learn culture.

Race and Colonialism

Science & Culture

Believed different customs, beliefs, forms of organization, etc. were expressions of racial types.

• This led to a “suspiciously easy” answer to why sociocultural diversity existed, as it explained away diversity,

Linnaeus

Invented systems of classification that biology still uses to classify all living things.

- He wrote "Variants of Homo Sapiens” (1758) which described four variants of homo sapiens:

     - Homo sapiens Europaeus albescens (White)

     - Homo sapiens Asiaticus fucus (Dark)

     - Homo sapiens Africanus negreus (Black)

     - Homo sapiens Americanus rubescens (Red)

Blumenbach

Created the first explicit scientific delineation of “races.” Previously, race originated as meaning national origins, but Blumenbach changed it to talking about subvariations in human beings:

• Caucasian (White)

• Mongolian (Yellow)

• Malay (Brown)

• Ethiopian (Black)

• American (Red)

Hooton

In 1926 he published his beliefs on the existence of the “Big Three”

1. Caucasoid (Europe, India)

2. Mongoloid (Eastern Asia, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders)

3. Negroid (Arica, Mediterranean Coast)

Monogenesis

The idea that all humans, regardless of race have a common origin. After which, subsequent variance would occur later on.

• This idea did not necessarily believe in equality of races however.

Polygenesis

THe idea that each race has its own independent origin.

• This was the most extreme form of racial inequality.

• Ex. David Hume, a philosopher who believed that non-white races were not really humans.

Race, Typologyzing, and Rank

Typologizing: The process of classifying, organizing, or interpreting entities into groups based on shared characteristics.

• Typologizing is a universal human activity, it is not inherently bad, but it is not only applied to objects, this can end up being applied to people.

• This has substantial impacts since scientists are humans too, so they also have internalized beliefs that can cause them to believe one group of people is superior to another.

Craniometry

The study of the shape of the skull.

Robert Bennett Bean

His research focused on how much of the brain was genu vs splenium. He compared white vs black brains and men vs women brains.

• He found 100% complete divergence, or that there was a 100% consistent racial difference between the groups, finding that white brains had more genu than black brains and that men generally had more than women.

• Suspicious of Bean’s perfect 100% divergence, Franklin Mall repeated Bean’s experiment, but without knowing the identity of the brains before measurement.
       - He found that there was no statistically significant differences between the brains.
       - Bean’s results were likely due to a priori.

• Genu: The front part of the brain that was responsible for problem solving.

• Splenium: The back part of the brain that was responsible for motor function.

Paul Brocca

A leading scientist of his time known for his great academic rigor.

• Researched brain sizes using women's brains from an insane asylum and men’s brains from young hanged felons. Despite knowing that there were issues with craniology (Head size is proportional to body size, not correlated to intelligence), he didn’t factor in these issues (a priori).
       - He later became skeptical of using brain size when he found that Asian brains tended to be larger than white brains.

Brocca’s Hypotheses & Research

After his research on brain sizes, he shifted to studying the Foramen Magnum (The hole through which the spinal cord exits the skull)

• The further back, the more it would represent chimpanzees who would walk on four legs. The more front, reflected how humans walk (Two legs).

• Brocca hypothesized that black foramen magnums would be more posterior. However, he found that white foramen magnums were actually more posterior.
       - Brocca could not accept this (a priori), so he looked for an alternative framework after the fact (Which is cheating since the data from the tested group already existed), so he connected it back to genu and splenium, saying the foramen magnum was the dividing line between them, giving whites more genu than blacks.

“Facts” of Human Biological Variation

1. There is human biological variation
   Important because certain populations are more susceptible to certain diseases (Sickle Cell), as well as importance in fields like forensics.

2. Geologically localized variation
   Two people with ancestry from the same part of the world will be more similar than people from much further away.

3. Continuous Variation
   There are slow, subtle variations in people as you go across places. Traits blend as you go from one area to another.

4. Variation is Discordant in its Distribution
   Different traits do not vary together. Just because some people may share a similar trait (ex. skin color), they do not necessarily share another (ex. blood type).
   implications for Racial Typologies

Social Races

Ethnic groups that are assumed to have a biological basis.

• A conflation of perceptions of biology and culture, people think that they must match.

• Racial categories are not biologically based, but are artificial, socially constructed classifications used to organize, rank, and marginalize human groups.

Hypodescent

THe child of parents of two different races is the “lower” race of the two.

• Ex. Barack Obama, labeled the first African American president, despite being mixed.

Race in Brazil

Brazil has a very flexible way of constructing race. Brazil has less exclusionary categories, which permit individuals to change their racial classification.

• Brazil also has many more racial labels, with more than 500 being reported at some point.

• Unlike the American classification system for race, Brazil’s system focuses on phenotype, with the term one identifies themself or others often changing.

Race in Japan

Japan presents itself and is often viewed as a nation that is homogenous in race, ethnicity, language, and culture.

• Racial attitudes in Japan can be seen as intrinsic racism, the belief that a (perceived) racial difference is a sufficient reason to value one person less than another. In Japan, the valued group is majority (“pure”) Japanese, who are believed to share “the same blood.”

• In Japan’s construction of race, certain ethnic groups have a biological basis such as the Burakumin, who are a stigmatised group who are physically and genetically indistinguishable from other Japanese people.

Osage Indians

Osage Indians had higher iq scores compared to other native americans since the oil on their lands allowed them to invest more into education.

• IQ scores are cultural, not biological (As the education introduced the culture needed for the IQ tests).

IQ scores black & white WWI military recruits

African Americans in the North had higher IQ scores than White people in the South, despite Whites in the South having higher IQ scores than African Americans in the South.

• IQ Scores are cultural, not biological, or else African Americans would have consistently scored lower/higher, not having a difference based on location.

Steele and Aronson

Researchers who studied GRE scores in “Black” and “White Students”. They found that African American students did better when they were not told they would be compared with White students.

Genes

Traits are not distributed by race. Parents do not pass racial types genetically to children (Instead, we pass genes).

• Ex. Sickle Cell is associated with places with high incidence of Malaria, not race.

Clines

A gradation in character over geographic distance.

Breeding Populations

A group of regularly interbreeding populations.

• This is a flexible unit of analysis as it can be specified for specific research questions.

Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups

Common identity based on cultural similarities.

• Make up an ethnic group

Ethnicity as situational

People express certain parts of their ethnicity in different situations (At school vs at home vs visiting family etc).

Minority Groups and Majority Groups

Minority groups are groups that occupy subordinate (lower) positions within a social hierarchy.

• Minority groups have less power and wealth than majority groups.

Assimilation

Describes the process of change that members of an ethnic group may experience when they move to a country where another culture dominates.

• Ethnic group members adopt the patterns and norms of the host culture. They are incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that their ethnic group no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.

Multiculturalism

The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable

• Unlike the assimilationist model, multiculturalism encourages the practice of cultural-ethnic traditions.

De Jure Discrimination

Discrimination may be legally sanctioned, part of the law.

De Facto Discrimination

Discrimination may be practiced, but not legally sanctioned.

Imagination and Identity

The Imagination: The ability to creatively think about things not there

• These imaginations change across history.

• The sociocultural reality is historically produced, affecting education levels, income, achievements, etc.
  Nationalities & Imagined Communities

Module 3

Module 3

Social Evolution

Change in sociocultural orders over time. There were three assumptions of evolution:

1. Social forms change over time.

2. Societies can be ranked from high to low.

3. Rank order is a historical progression (A higher rank as time went on).

• The first of the three is still accepted, with the last two being seen as half truths at most.

Social Darwinism (Survival of the Fittest)

The idea that different societies on Earth were in competition for scarce resources.

Herbert Spencer

Coined social darwinism, he believed that the competition was a “natural” thing and that people should not fight it (Which was easy for him as a British person to say during colonialism).

Unilinear Evolution

The idea that there is one universal evolutionary process.

• Aka, that people evolved in stages. Ex. One must get pottery before they can achieve agriculture.

• Believed that there were “Laws” that governed cultural change.

Lewis Henry Morgan

A founding father of Anthropology. He argued that there was a unity/commonality for all humans because they all came from the same place, but that people had differences because of different social evolutions.

• This idea was an alternative to Scientific Racism.

Evolutionary Stages

Unilinear social evolution believed that cultural attributes evolved in sequence. It consisted of three stages;

1. Savagery

2. Barbarism

3. Civilization

Savagery

Technology: Fishing, then fire, then bows and arrows.
Relationships: Promiscuous Hordes, group marriages.

Barbarism

Technology: Pottery, then agriculture, then metallurgy.
Relationships: Polygamy

Civilization

Technology: Phonetic Alphabet (Symbols represent sounds)

• Placed Europeans as civilized while the rest were not. For example, the Chinese writing system represents meaning rather than sounds.
  Relationships: Monogamy

Diversity and Evolutionary Stages

However, unilinear evolution on its own did not immediately explain why sociocultural differences existed. Lewis Henry Morgan came up with the idea of primitives, or people stuck in early stages of evolution.

• He argued that this occurred because of material conditions where people lived. Ex. Eskimos (Innuit) never developed agriculture because of the snow and the cold, not because of biological conditions (This social evolutionism was an alternative to scientific racism).

Franz Boas & Critique of Unilinear Evolution

Another founding parent of Anthropology. He pointed out that there were many empirical problems with Unilinear Social Evolutionism.

• Franz Boas went to actual societies and found that some skipped the steps suggested by social evolution, yet they were still complex societies.
       - Ex. Hawaii had advanced naval technology, and yet had no bow and arrow (Because of lack of need via fishing).

Empirical Problems with Social Evolution

They had awful data, they mainly relied on secondhand accounts. And if they did not have data they would use speculation (Ex. promiscuous hordes).

Multilinear Evolution

The idea that there are many different ways that societies can change, that there is not one fixed path.

• All people change, but not in the same ways

• Additionally, all peoples have equally long histories (This is the problem with the term primitive).

Cultural Diffusion

Histories are not independent from each other. If you were in contact with people who had bows and arrows, that culture would get it too.

"Progress" is a problematic term

Denotes better or worse. And it always involves culturally specific criteria.

• It introduces the problem of perspective. Whose point of view should we use to define progress?

• There is an inherent ranking w/ “Progress”.

• It misrepresents and ignores diversity as it lumps together societies and treats them the same based on the absence of something.

Ethnocentrism

The idea that one’s own cultural order is the “correct” or “natural” way.

• In regards to unilinear social evolution, it brings up a problem of whose perspective is the right one to use.

Dominance is ephemeral

It does not last, it is there one moment and gone the next. Therefore it is bad to make an assessment on something that does not last.

• Thus, no matter whose perspective is chosen for unilinear social evolution, it will eventually be flawed.

Module 4

Module 4

Nature v Nurture

What derives from one’s biology versus what derives from one’s environment.

• The Common View: The idea that human biology was established, then we developed culture which drives change. This idea held that culture is a veneer over a raw human animal.

Thomas Hobbes

Held the view that by nature, humans are nasty, selfish, and greedy beings deep inside, but society and culture constrains this nature.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Believed that our underlying nature is good, sharing, communal, etc., but our society reaches us greed and evil, it corrupts us.

Culture in Evolutionary Perspective

Chimpanzees and Humans had a common ancestor 7-10 million years ago.

• Humans are similar to chimpanzees since we are 98% genetically similar, which is because they had a common ancestor.

Field Studies of Chimpanzees

Do chimpanzees have a system of learned meaning? Yes. They learn the making and using of tools, ex. termite fishing.

• Thus, culture predates humans, as our common ancestor likely had culture as well since both humans and chimpanzees have it.

Fossil record

Modern human anatomy was first seen around 200,000 years ago. However, the first stone tools were seen 2.5 million years ago. This means that culture (Meaning that is learned, such as creation and usage of stone tools), existed for millions of years before modern human anatomy.

• Thus, we evolve biologically as cultural creatures.

Culture & Society

Culture is distinguished from society.

• The order of learned meaning to guide social life.

Culture & Biology

Culture is distinguished from biology.

• Cultural differences are never because of biological differences.

Supra-Organic

Culture is supra-organic.

• Culture operates at a level above the individual. Ex. The English language lives on after the individual passes. Thus, you cannot reduce culture to an individual level.

• Culture is contested. We do not all agree on its meaning.

Subjectivity

Individual points of view, perspective, sense of self.

Agency

An individual’s capacity for creative action.

Culture & World View

The way we see the world is shaped by culture. Culture refers to meanings, which creates signs enabling communication like rules, values, and norms.

Cultural Constructions

Meanings of culture.

Ethnocentrism

Taking the order we grew up with as the correct, natural, order.

• This creates problems for comparative analysis of culture due to a priori, as we could see other cultures as “incorrect” just because it is not ours.

Cultural Relativism

The opposite of ethnocentrism. It is the idea of viewing cultural practices in their own cultural context, like looking through another cultural lens.

• This leads to a methodology issue, that we cannot assess other cultures because they are not our own.

• Additionally, this leads to an ethical issue. Were the German concentration camps okay since it’s “just another culture”?
       - Assessments of right and wrong should be provisional. While having a point of view, be open to other perspectives.

Language

A communication system based on meaningful signs, sounds, gestures, or marks. Like culture in general, language is transmitted through learning. Language is based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things they stand for.

Verbal Communication and Non-verbal communication

Our expressions, stances, gestures, and movements, even if unconscious, convey information and are part of our communication styles. Culture teaches us that certain manners and styles should accompany certain kinds of speech. Much of what we communicate is nonverbal and reflects our emotional states and
intentions.

Phoneme

A sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning. Ex. ‘r’ and ‘l’ are phonemes in English and French, but not in Japanese.

Morpheme

Words and their meaningful parts.

Lexicon

A dictionary containing all of a language’s morphemes.

Syntax

Refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.

Language and thought

• Some believe that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.

• Others believe that different languages produce different ways of thinking, which is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Sociolinguistics

Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation

Gender speech contrasts

Women typically use language and the body movements that accompany it to build rapport, social connections with others. Men, on the other hand, tend to make reports, reciting information to establish a place for themselves in a hierarchy, as they also attempt to determine the relative ranks of their conversation mates.

• Men and women speak differently. Men typically tend to know more sports vocabulary, while women tend to know more color terms, both try to use their respective terms more specifically and precisely than the other group does.

• Men are also more likely to speak more ungramatically than women are.

Stratification & Symbolic domination

How we speak is determined by many factors, with certain ways of speaking being associated with prestige.

• In New York, the r pronunciation is associated with prestige

• Linguistic practices can be seen as symbolic capital that properly trained people may convert into economic, social, and political capital.
       - The linguistic insecurity often felt by lower-class and minority speakers is a result of this symbolic domination.

Biopolitics

What is natural to a body.

• Power relations of society inscribed on the body. These power relations get naturalized.
       - After subtly being told this hundreds of times, one internalizes it.
       - Ex. Expectations of ability/preferences associated with gender.

• Power relations are socially produced, but made to appear as though they emanate from the very structure of bodies.

Imagined Community

It is the imagining of others in similar space/time. It encompasses who belongs, but also who does not.

• It is not a matter of social networks, nor a matter of what fellow members share.

• Ex. Shift from saying United States are _ to saying United States is _.
       - Something changed. The individual states shifted to see themselves as one united body.

Assemblage

A set of meanings assembled for particular ends.

• Ex. Ad agencies reaching into broader ideologies and markers of race & ethnicity, pulling out certain elements to assemble them into an ad.

Ethnorace

A social category that combines both elements of ethnicity and race.

Asian American As a census category

It described ancestry from the continent of Asia.

• However, there is a lot of diversity in this group, so how can it be a category?
       - How do we imagine a category Asian American? Are they really “American”? Are they part of the reimagined community of America? Do people in this group identify themselves this way?

Asian Americans As ethnorace in advertising

Lumps all Asians into one giant ethnorace, depicting them as having a natural interest and expertise in technology or being fiscally responsible.

• This depiction showed that Asian Americans had a special role to play in America since them being “fiscally responsible” made them seem recession proof, thus giving them a special role to play in America as the model consumer.

• Assemblages of Ethnoraces are not just a reflection of the group, but also define them, changing how people see that group,a s well as how members of that group see themselves.

Advertising: turning model citizens into model consumers

Corporations and Advertising agencies recognize that America is racially and racially diverse. Thus, they turn minorities (Even 1st and 2nd generation migrants) into consumers while at the same time appealing to all Americans.

Marked and unmarked categories

Some words invoke things in our minds. Ex. Doctor alone is often pictured as a male, to invoke a female doctor, we mark it with “female”.

• It is an advantage to be unmarked, as this is the perceived "normal categories.” Nothing needs to be said to identify it.

• “Culture” and “Diversity” are marked and racialized as they index “Non-white”, not “normal” Americans.

General Market Advertising

Large established corporations with big budgets who want to target a broad base of potential consumers, but are aware of diversity in the market.

• Uses commercials, ads, billboards, online ads, etc.

General Market Advertising’s View of normal

Appeals to a broad base of Americans by presenting “normal” Americans as perceived by corporate America. However, the corporate office is overwhelmingly ethnoracially white Americans, with the corporate office ordered as a white space.

• The “normal” American is portrayed as racially white middle class Americans who are English accented.
       - Normal is racially white, making it unmarked, yet the corporation still wants to showcase diversity, but this leads to a contrast from normal, causing “Diversity” and “Culture” to be marked as not normal.

General Market Advertising’s Approach to diversity

To create an assemblage of diversity, corporations cast minority actors, but make them as “normal” as possible.

• This has minority groups with American accented English and a white style of dressing, mannerisms, and activities in ads.

• The presence of a minority body indexes diversity without using qualisigns that refer to specific cultural or life-context details.

• The problem with this is that it furthers 3 racial ideologies:

1. It champions white middle class values

2. It reinforces whiteness as an aspirational norm in the U.S.

3. It suggests that racial differences are naturalized to the point of being normal and no longer matter.

“20-30% Mix”

20-30% of people in ads should be a minority group in order to include diversity, without making it look “fake.” The presence of a minority body indexes diversity without using qualisigns that refer to a specific cultural detail.

Multicultural Advertising

Smaller companies with smaller budgets who target specific ethnic and racial minorities, trying to build brand identification by using target language and target culture.

Multicultural Advertising Producing creative affect

They target 1, 1.5 (Born in another country, but migrated young), and 2 (Born in migrated country) generation migrants. They try to build identification to a client’s brand by linking the brand to ethnoracial groups, which is done by producing creatives.

• A Creative is the imaginative body of creation of the ad itself (Ex. advertisement, someone created it).

Multicultural Advertising’s Use of signs, qualisigns to index diversity

They add qualisigns in ads that refer to qualities of the culture and values of migrants. They use in-language and in-culture ads, appealing to experiences, hope, and values.

• To create a creative, they select and creatively assemble markers indexing the ethnoracial group into an ad, this representing that group as an assemblage of race and ethnicity.
       - This essentially says “This is what is important to you. You are part of this group.”

In-language and in-culture

The usage of a target ethnoracial group’s language and culture. This is done to try and build brand identification for smaller companies.

Transcreation

Clients have/want similar ads to General Market Advertisements to reach bigger audiences. Thus, ad agency staff must now transcreate.

• Since the smaller companies use in-language and in-culture techniques, it is often hard to translate, which leads to the meaning/tone being lost.

• Assumptions and expectations of white corporate world tend to seep into these multi-cultural ads, since the clients want similar ads to general market advertisements, so agencies change to appeal to them.