Anthropology Final Flashcards
Culture is shared
people within a culture share ideas and symbols that are meaningful to them
Culture is shared, re: eating, drinking, sleeping, etc
everyone understands how to perform “natural” but culturally specific activities
Culture is learned
one learns how to operate and get by within their culture, learns rules and consequenes
enculturation
learning culture that requires trial and error over time
culture is symbolic
certain patterns or ways of doing things have symbolic meaning ex: length of sleeves on kimono, arrow through heart
culture is integratted
specific things hold it together, ex: beer, roughriders
how are cars an example of how culture is integrated?
traffic signs, parking lots, Canadian Tire –> infrastructure
culture interacts and changes
material changes –> sexuality, foods, smoking permits
hybridication and localization
news ways of doing things and new ways of thinking of things
culture has cultural universals
points of similarities and continuinity between different cultures that help oine learn and share and be flexible in another culture
examples of cultural universals
humour, kin terms, belief system, marital rules, ideas about what is good/bad/ugly
ethnocentricm
belief that one’s culture of thinking is superior to other cultures and their way of thinkgin
cultural relativity
one must suspend judgement on other cultures in order to understand in their own cultural terms
holism
one must look at another culture as complex systems of social, political, and economic activities
functionalism
idea that things/ideas/activities in a culture are useful for it ex: groundhogs are helpful because of feb 1
jane Howell
studies women’s lives in Oaxaca Mexico
Culture
dynamic system of adaption
subculture
a culture within a culture
Pleuralistic society
has multiple ethnic groups
barrel model of culture
superstructure (ideas), social structure (class), infrastructure (economy and subsistence strategies), environment
nature vs nurture
biology vs culture
thinking about vs having
interpretism vs materialism ex: incest taboo b/c of connection to consequences or just random idea people thought up of
agency vs strucutre
how much “autonomy” and “free will” can one exceresise within the larger cultural forces of social order, religion, laws, inequalities, and gender expectations?
fieldwork and its discontents
- too much bias, one finds what they want to find
- not all elelments of culture are functional
- ethics
- can anth really say anything about human nature?
- what belongs to who?
- representation
malinowski introduced…
emic and etic
subsistence
way of getting food or products
modes of reciprocity
generalized, expected, redistribtion
generalized reciproticty
no expectation that exhcange will take place within a speciic time frame
expected reciproticty
time frame is important, as is equivilent value of exchange
redistribution
exchanges are poooled to be redistrubted at a specific time in the future (potlatch)
changing nature of modes of production
1 - many cultures now produce a surplus for commercial purposes
2 - foragers, horts, and pastoralists are encounced in captilist sustem and work for low wages
3 - reliance on money as a mode of exchange results in urban shift, reduced well being, increased dependencies, and family restructuring
relationship from commodity to capitalism
commodity needs capitalism needs belief in capitalism
ethnomedicine
the medical practices a culture uses for healing and curing purposes
ethnoetiologies
how people in another culture explains illness
eitiology
the study of cuase and orgiin
how can human suffering be alleviated?
community healing, humoural (balance), healers and the substances they use
disease
a physical pathology, usually diagnosable
illness
subjective distressing feeling, often culture specific
culture bound ilnness
an illness associated with a specific culture
etic
a prespective taken by someone outside the culture
emic
POV of someone inside the culture
somatization
occurs when stressors are so high the individual racts to the stress through illness
approaches to illness
Ecological/Epidemiological theoretical approach, interpretive, criticial, and medical pluralism
Ecological/Epidemiological theoretical approach
how aspects of the natural env interact with cultural to cause helath problems
ex: colonialism and historical trauma, education, sharing, grief resolution
intereptive approach to theories of healing
how do people in other cultures label, describe, expereience, and amange their own illness and healing?
critical presepctive in explaining illness
looks at the way economic and politcal strucutres shape people’s health, cupports that income is correlated to good health
medical pluralism
refers to the simaltaneous presence of more than one system of healing within a culture
diseases of development
due to deforestation and dams like chagas, dengue, and lyme
kinship
key social organizing prcinple
two different types of kinship linkage
formal and informal
types of formal kinship
cosanguineal and affinal
types of informal kinship
fricitive and friends
bilineal descent
trace relationship of ego through mother and father, mother’s kin is equally important to father’s kin
unilineal descent
ego is traced through either father’s or mother’s side, not both
patrilineal puzzle
woman’s status is presumed as infereioir to men’s in spite of woman’s ability to produce the very children who will perpetuate the male’s lineage
matrilineal puzzle
man must look after his own mother and sisters and aunts, etc, as well as wife, so who does he have allegiance to?
difference between kinship and adoption in western and non-western societies
biology is emphasized more in western, while social components weigh more in many non western societies
endogamy
in marrying
exogamy
out marrying
several explanations of the incest taboo
kin confusion (who to call what), gene theory (genetic weakness), aversion theory (growing up with)
marriage gifts
brideservice, bridewalth/brideprice, dowry
brideservice
groom works for parents of the bride for a specific amount of time
bridewealth/brideprice
goods are transfered from groom’s family to bride’s family
dowry
goods are given to the bride’s family to the groom’s family tand to the newlyweds
functions of kin
political alliances, economic support, religious knowledge, historicity, establishes power, well-being
changes in kinship and households
matrilineal descent is decreasing, age of marraige is rising, number of single parent households/blended families is rising
if people act like kin…
they usually are
social rewards
monetary wealth, power, prestige
characteristics of stratified societies
- obvious ineqalities in access to social rewards, resources
- access to rewards is difficult because of race, ethnicity, class, and gender
- symbolic indicators are clearly visible, some people are not able to access their own nation’s g/s because they hold allegience to their tribe/ethnic group
- few groups enjoy tremendous luxeries at the expence of other group’s labour
- few social groups who do enjoy luxeries fail to distribute them evenly
caste based societies are…
endogamous, assigned membership at birth, heirarchically arranged, socially segregated, little mobility