ANTH 201 Chapter 1: Anthropology

Question 1

Anthropology

Answer 1

can be formally defined as the study of human nature, human society, and the human past.

Question 2

Holistic

Answer 2

means trying to fit together all that is known about human beings.

Question 3

Comparative

Answer 3

anthropologists must consider similarities and differences in as wide a range of human societies as possible before generalizing about what it means to be human.

Question 4

Evolutionary

Answer 4

How did we get to be what we are today?
biological: evolutionary study of human origins and genetic variety and inheritance in living human populations.
Cultural: evolutionary study of cultural evolution. looking for patterns of orderly change over time in socially acquired behavior that is not carried in the genes.

Question 5

Biological Anthropology

Answer 5

subfield of anthropology. looks at human beings as biological organisms.

Question 6

Medical Anthropology

Answer 6

relatively new field. study the factors that contribute to human disease or illness as well as the ways in which human groups respond to them.

Question 7

Cultural Anthropology

Answer 7

aka social anthropology. investigates how variations in the ways of life of different human groups is shaped by culture.

Question 8

Culture

Answer 8

sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society, together with the material artifacts and structures that human beings create and use.

Question 9

Fieldwork

Answer 9

Anthropologists long-term experience with a specific group of people

Question 10

Informants

Answer 10

people who share information about their way of life with anthropologists

Question 11

participant-observation

Answer 11

fieldworkers gain insight into another way of life by taking part as fully as they can in a groups social activities as well as by observing activities as outsiders.

Question 12

ethnography

Answer 12

the comparative study of two or more ways of life.

Question 13

anthropological linguistics

Answer 13

Also referred to as linguistic anthropology. Is the branch of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages. Work to show the ways in which a peoples language serve as the main carrier for cultural information.

Question 14

linguistic anthropology

Answer 14

Also referred to as anthropological linguistics. Is the branch of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages. Work to show the ways in which a peoples language serve as the main carrier for cultural information.

Question 15

archaeology

Answer 15

a cultural anthropology of the human past involving the analysis of material remains of earlier human societies. Discover much about human history. Interested in seeking answers to cultural questions.

Question 16

applied anthropology

Answer 16

anthropologists draw on methods and findings from the other subfields to address practical challenges people face in todays world.

Question 17

engaged anthropology

Answer 17

anthropologists working for what Kirsch calls ‘constructive political change’; a focus on research and action. Includes participation in social movements, collaborating with activists and nongovernmental org., advising lawyers, writing affidavits, and producing expert reports.

Question 18

objective knowledge

Answer 18

undistorted, and thus universally valid, knowledge about the world. belief that anthropology was a science, whose truth about the world was accessible through the five senses; a single scientific method can be applied to any dimension of reality.

Question 19

positivism

Answer 19

the ideas and practices of scientists applying scientific method in any area of anthropological interest.

Question 20

modernism

Answer 20

complex western cultural ideology. viewed in terms of liberation from outdated traditions that prevent people from building better lives for themselves/children. Modernist idea have been used by powerful western states to dominate and undermine traditional beliefs and practices of a people(s).

Question 21

postmodernism

Answer 21

the criticism of modernism, accompanied by an active questioning of all the boundaries and categories that modernists set up as objectively true. To be postmodern is to question the universalizing tendencies of modernism.

Question 22

reflexive activity

Answer 22

fieldwork has become this… anthropologists carefully scrutinize both their own contributions to fieldwork interactions and the responses these interactions elicited from subjects of their research.

Question 23

multisited fieldwork

Answer 23

the goal is to follow people, or objects, or cultural processes that are not contained by social, national, ethnic, or religious boundaries. working in more than one place and with persons or institutions that have not traditionally been the focus of ethnographic analysis.

Question 24

moral anthropology

Answer 24

the role of moral anthropology is neither to support nor condemn moral judgements- nor to take a particular side when such judgements conflict. Goal is to take these moral tensions and debates as object of study and considers seriously the moral position of all sides.

Question 25

material culture

Question 26

anthropocene

Answer 26

term used by scientists of many disciplines to describe the current geological epoch in which major transformations in climate and all life processes on earth are driven by the activities of human beings. Its beginning is debated.

Question 27

Ontological Turn

Answer 27

ontology is the field of inquiry concerned with determining what does and does not exist in reality. philosophers have relied on Western forms of reason and logic to make such determinations. idea to keep open the question of what phenomena might comprise an ethnographic field. Ex; Runakuna (page 11).