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