Untitled Flashcards Set

• What are the 4 subfields of Anthropology? - Cultural Anthropology, Archeological ANthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Biological Anthropology

• How is Anthropology different from other social sciences?  - It’s reliance on fieldwork and holistic approach

• What is a holistic approach? - An intersectional examination of culture that emphasizes that culture is made up of many interconnected parts 

• What is our working definition of culture? - sets of LEARNED BEHAVIORS and idea that human beings acquire as members of a society, together with the material artifacts and structures that humans create and use

• How has ethnographic fieldwork changed over time? - First was the armchair approach that was dependent on explorer’s and their personal, male records. Then, there was the verandah approach, where anthropologists would visit a place but watch the culture from a distance. Now, anthropologists use participant observation, and immerse themselves in the culture to learn more about it directly. 

• What does etic mean? - An approach that uses the scientific method informed by western standards, that collects data according to the OUTSIDER researchers’s categories. Emphasized quantitative data. Tests hypothesis

• What does emic mean? - An approach that focuses on INSIDERS perspectives, and how the informants see their own lives . Has no hypothesis, builds research from the ground up. Focuses on qualitative data.

• What is participant observation? Which anthropologist is commonly credited with its invention? - Learning about a culture by living in a culture for an extended period of time. Bronislaw Malinowski was credited with it’s invention

• What is multi-sited research? - fieldwork conducted on a topic in more than one location - helpful for studying migrant populations

• Why was Darwin influential in early anthropology (for better or worse?) - Worse, people took his theory of evolution and introduced social darwinism, which is the racist belief that some races or people are inherently “more evolved”

• Why is Bronislaw Malinowski important? What theoretical viewpoint did he develop? - Malinowski was important because he challenged the racist ideologies of anthropology, challenged the idea of an “underdeveloped” and “developed” culture. Argued that there are CULTURAL UNIVERSALS, where all cultures face the same problems of human survival, have the same basic needs. Also developed FUNCTIONALISM: the view that culture consists of many parts that work to support the whole (AKA keep everyone surviving). The FUNCTION of different customs and beliefs in maintaining the whole.

• Why is Franz Boas important? - Introduced the CULTURAL CONCEPT that said that all differences in beliefs, practices, and behavior was due to differences in SOCIAL LEARNING. Was important because he questioned the concept of races. 

• What is cultural relativism?  - Interpreting beliefs, practices, and behaviors in the context of the culture being studied

• What are the two types of cultural relativism? - 1. Absolute: the idea that whatever goes on in a culture must not be questioned or changed by outsiders

• What are the 5 characteristics of culture?  - class, gender, ethnicity, institutions, age

• What is ethnocentrism?  - viewing ones own culture as “regular” and better than others

• What is communicative competence?  -  the ability to interact and communicate according to cultural norms 

• What is language ideology? - Language ideology refers to the beliefs, values, and assumptions people hold about language use, which often reflect and perpetuate social hierarchies, power dynamics, and cultural norms.

• What are some of the things that language does, related to human cultures? - language reflects, creates, and reinforces social and cultural identities, relationships, norms, and patterns of power and inequity 

• When did verbal language develop? - 50-100k years ago

• When did writing develop, and what is it linked to? - the 4th millennium BCE

• What are two distinctive features of human language? - productivity and displacement

• Linguistically, what is productivity? - the ability to create an infinite range of understandable messages 

• Linguistically, what is displacement? - ability to refer to events in the past and future

• What are some examples of nonverbal/embodied language? - body language, silence, clothing, eye contact, posture, hairstyles

• What is the Sapir Whorf hypothesis? - DEBUNKED hypothesis that believes how we speak shapes what our world is, assuming that language and culture are separate 

• What are the three big debates in cultural anthropology - biological determinism vs cultural constructuralism, interpretive anthropology vs cultural materialism, and individual agency vs structure

• What is symbolic/interpretivist anthropology? - Argues that human culture is a system of symbols and meanings that human beings create themselves and then use to direct, organize, and give coherence to their lives. Introduced by Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Clifford Geertz

• What is cultural materialism? - Behaviors are selected by cultures because they ensure survival int he context of the environment and cultural group. Introduced by Marvin Harris, Marx, and Engels White. Ex: Eating bugs, wearing pants in the cold.

• What is worldview? How does it relate to religion? - An encompassing picture of reality based on a set of shared assumptions about how the world works. Religion gives us a worldview for what is good and bad, what our history is, and how the world should work.

• What are myths? How are they different from doctrine? - Myths are oral stories that tell us how aspects of the world came to be. Doctrine is written and is direct and formalized statements about strictly religious beliefs. 

• What are the 4 kinds of rituals? - Life cycle rituals (transition and reintegration), pilgrimage (visiting a place deemed holy), rituals of inversion (enjoyment while getting ready for sacrifice), and sacrifice (letting go of something)

• What is religious pluralism? - the acceptance and coexistence of multiple religions in a community 

• What is religious conversion? - adopting a new religion 

• What is religious syncretism? - the merging of two religions 

• Make sure to watch Stranger at the Gate

• What is modernism?

• universalism, a hope to find an objective truth, popular mindset in early anthropology

• What is post-moderism?

• The idea that there is not one objective truth when studying other cultures

Eating NAFTA Content

Review Guiding Questions for Chapters 1-4 of Eating NAFTA

• What is NAFTA? - NAFTA included mexico, the US, and canada, with a plan to eliminate barriers of trade like tariffs. 

• What are some of the ways NAFTA has impacted the Mexican food system? - Rural farmers were pushed off their land due to the lack of demand, traditional mexican foods’ prices skyrocketed leading to hunger, western franchises with high processed foods took the place of traditional mexican foods 

• How has tortilla consumption changed over time? - because tortillas in mexico are less accessible, their consumption has gone down in mexico, but up in the US

• How has NAFTA changed the production of corn in Mexico? - first, corn prices fell which made farmers produce more, which led to too much supply and very cheap corn prices that were insufficient for farmers.

• What is milpa-based cuisine? What food does it center around? - Depends on ground corn, fresh vegetables, and a series of distinct steps to prepare the corn for masa and salsas 

• What are food systems? - Complex webs of food production, distribution, and preparation that shape what we eat, where it comes from, and how much it costs

• What is structural violence? - a way of describing social arrangements that put populations at risk for suffering and death

• What is meant by imperialist nostalgia? - when people have nostalgia for a system that they themselves destroyed