Anthro Terms

Ethnicity/Race

A social group is connected by a shared understanding of cultural identity. Race is a socially constructed category of identification of people based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture.

Belonging

Belonging as an area of inquiry relates to the ways in which individuals come together to form groups. It can relate to the concepts personhood, kinship, ethnicity, and/or community.

Belief and knowledge

A set of judgements, values, and viewpoints regarded as ‘the truth’ and shared by members of a social group, being underpinned and supported by known experience.

Classifying the world

Classifying the World as an area of inquiry relates to the ways in which people organize and divide up the world into meaningful systems

Family

A term covering a range of meanings in terms of the relatedness and connection of people. It may refer to a domestic group or household, or a wider kinship network.

Globalisation

The tendency towards increasing global interconnections in culture, economy, and social life. The transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations.

Ideology

The system of social and moral ideas of a group of people; a commitment to central values.

Kinship

The web or pattern of social relationships, which connects people through descent or marriage, although other forms of social connection may be included.

Nation-state

A politically legitimate, bounded geographical area. A state is a political and geopolitical entity, while a nation may be considered a cultural one. The term "nation-state" implies that the two coincide, but colonization created many instances where this notion may be disputed.

Reproduction (social and biological)

The transmission of existing cultural values and norms and other aspects of society from generation to generation.

Personhood

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

Socializaiton

The process through which a person learns to become an accepted member of society via agents such as family, peers, and media.

Enculturation

The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group. The transmission of culture from one generation to the next.

Acculturation

A cultural change related to contact with another culture.

Commodification

The transformation of goods and services, as well as concepts that normally may not be considered goods, into a commodity, something of value.

Embodiment

The process by which people incorporate biologically the social and material world in which they live. A person knows, feels, and thinks about the social world through the body.

Habitus

Socialized norms guide people's behavior and thinking. These become lasting tendencies to think, feel and act in certain ways in particular social situations.

Personhood

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

Subjectivity

An anthropologist's perspective in writing and cultural interpretation of others is guided by his or her own background and experience.

The body

The Body as an area of inquiry relates to the culturally significant ways in which we use and perceive the human body.

The other

Describes the way people who are members of a particular social group perceive other people who are not members. For example, non-Muslims may perceive Muslims as “the Other”. “Othering” may be negative.

The self

The socially constructed understanding of individual and cultural identity that, in people's thinking, distinguishes them from “the Other”.

Authority

Power is exercised with the consent of others.

Conflict

Conflict as an area of inquiry relates to the intersection of structure and agency, specifically in terms of how power and authority influence identity and create violence and/or resistance Disagreements between individuals, groups, cultures, or societies may result from differences in interests, values, or actions.

Social stratification

Refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political).

Consensus

Assume that cultural values and beliefs are learned and shared to a significant extent across society and that there is a general level of agreement about these values and beliefs.

Governmentality

The way in which the state exercises control over the population.

Ideology

The system of social and moral ideas of a group of people; a commitment to central values.

Resistance

Social groups may not accept change in its apparent form, either refusing it outright or moving to accommodate it in a modified form.

Social control

Any means used to maintain behavioral norms and regulate conflict.

State

An organized political community living under a single system of government.

Bondaries

Indicate a separation between places or entities. These include gender, age, levels of education or wealth, and class or ancestry. While some of these boundaries may be seen as impermeable by people in that society, others are meant to be crossed.

Classification

Assigning common knowledge to describe a large number of people or things as belonging to a recognizable system.

Commodification

The transformation of goods and services, as well as concepts that normally may not be considered goods, into a commodity, something of value.

Cosmology

ways in which people understand, conceptualise, and relate to the universe, their place within it, and the underlying principles or forces that govern existence. It encompasses cultural systems of beliefs, knowledge, and practices that explain the origin, structure, and workings of the world and beyond.

Hegemony

The cultural or political dominance of one social group over others; cultural processes through which the ruling classes maintain their power.

Morality

Adherence to the rules or norms of a social group. Also relates to thinking and behavior that pursues or acts in the interest of general human excellence.

Nature/culture

Nature is continuously negotiated in relation to its supposed counterpart, human culture, and society. It is a conceptual dichotomy that examines the relationship and distinction between what is considered "natural" (innate, biological, universal) and "cultural" (learned, constructed, variable) in human life. It interrogates how different societies define, interpret, and interact with the natural world.

Sacred/profane

Sacred is things that are special, important, or set apart from everyday life. They are often connected to rituals, beliefs, or symbols and treated with respect or awe. Profane is ordinary, everyday things that are part of daily life and not treated as special or sacred. These are personal or practical concerns.

Enculturation/acculturation

Enculturation is the gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group. The transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Acculturation is cultural change related to contact with another culture.

Agency

The capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class, gender, religion and social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events.

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.

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 globalisation.

Community

A group of people who share a common interest, or a common ecology and locality, or a common social system or structure.

Culture

Organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to view the world only from the perspective of one’s own culture; the inability to understand cultures different from one’s own.

Cultural relativism

Not making value judgments about cultural differences; understanding a different culture in its context.

Gender

The culturally constructed distinctions between males and females.

Identity

Can refer either to the individual’s private and personal view of the self, 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.

Marginalisation

Relegating specific groups of people to the edge of society, economically, politically, culturally and socially; limiting their access to productive resources and avenues for the realisation of their productive human potential.

Materiality

Objects, resources and belongings have cultural meaning, described as “the social life of things”, and are embedded with all kinds of social relations and practices.

Power

A person’s or group’s capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and resources, involving distinctions and inequalities between members of a social group.

Social relations

Any relationship between two or more individuals in a network of relationships, involving an element of individual agency as well as group expectations and form the basis of social organisation and social structure.

Society

Refers to the way in which humans organise themselves in groups and networks. Society is created and sustained by social relationships among persons and groups. 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.

Status

The position a person has within a social system. This may be ascribed or achieved. They come with sets of rights, obligations, behaviours and duties that individuals of certain positions are expected to perform.

Symbolism

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