Week 4 Lavenda and Schultz

Key Terms and Concepts

• Agency: The ability for individuals to make choices.

• Dependence Training: Socialization strategies that encourage reliance on others.

• Training Cognition: Ways of shaping thought processes.

• Cultural Configurations: Integrated patterns of culture influencing personality.

• Ethnoscience: Study of how different cultures categorize the world.

• Personality: The unique patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving.

• Culture-and-Personality: Study of the interaction between culture and personality development.

• Schemas: Cognitive structures that help organize social experiences.

• Research Prototypes: Standardized models that represent typical cases.

• Basic Personality Structure: Common personality traits formed by cultural adaptation.

• Modal Personality: Typical traits associated with specific cultures.

• Cognitive Capacities: Innate capabilities for reasoning and problem-solving.

• Projective Test: Psychological assessment technique used to reveal personality.

• Cognitive Styles: The consistent ways individuals approach problems.

• Enculturation: Processes by which individuals learn their culture.

• Field-dependent vs. Field-independent styles: Ways individuals perceive context in relation to information.

• Ethnic Psychoses: Cultural-specific mental health issues.

• Self and Self-Awareness: The understanding of oneself in relation to others.

• Subjectivity: Personal perceptions and interpretations shaped by culture.

• Self-Actualization: The realization of individual potential.

• Structural Violence: Harm caused by institutional structures.

Individualism vs. Cultural Influence

• Individualism: Belief in personal freedom and self-interest; social obligations viewed as unnatural.

• Clyde Kluckhohn's Perspectives: Individual attributes are shaped by society and culture.

• Agency vs. Determinism: Modern anthropology recognizes individual reflection within cultural contexts.

Cultural Explanations of Personality

• Basic vs. Modal Personalities: Discussion around the prevalence of personality traits influenced by cultural institutions.

• Studies by Ruth Benedict: Examination of cultures as personality constructs and understanding stress during adolescence.

Cognitive Anthropology**

• Cognitive Styles: Differences in how cultures interpret tasks; includes global (context-focused) vs articulated (detail-focused).

• Emotion and Culture: Emotions are culturally defined categories influenced by social structures.

Conclusion**

• Individual Subjectivity: Analysis of how individuals navigate through socio-political contexts while also reflecting on their own agency.

• Impact of Trauma: Recognition of psychological effects resulting from violence and structural inequalities.