Anthropology Key Concepts Flashcards
Acculturation
Cultural change related to contact with another culture.
Agency
the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that
affect their own lives and those of others.
Authority
Power is exercised with the consent of others.
Belief and knowledge
A set of convictions, values and viewpoints regarded as “the truth” and shared by members of a social group.
Capitalism
An economic and political system in which a society’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Change
The alteration or modification of cultural or social elements in a society.
Causation
The capacity of one cultural feature to influence another.
Class
Division of people in a society based on social and economic status.
Classification
Assigning common knowledge to describe a large number of people or things as belonging to a recognizable system.
Colonization
Acquiring full or partial political control over another country.
Commodification
The transformation of goods and services, as well as concepts that normally may not be considered goods, into a commodity, something of value.
Community
A group of people who share a common interest, ecology, locality, or a common social system/structure.
Conflict
Conflict theory presents a lense, or framework, which can give anthropologists insight into the social impact of disharmony.
Consumption
The meaningful use that people make of the objects that are associated with them.
Contextualization
Making sense of anthropological data in terms of the situation or location in which it was obtained.
Cosmology
Social groups perceive the universe and describe their relationship with it in different ways.
Cosmopolitanism
Communities include individuals who live together with cultural difference.
Culture
Culture refers to organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs
and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives.
Diachronic
A diachronic perspective in anthropology seeks to understand society
and culture as the product of development through time, shaped by many
different forces, both internal and external.
Diaspora
The dispersal of peoples from homelands to establish new, migrated communities in other places.
Discourse
Written or spoken intellectual communication or debate in a discipline such as anthropology.
Embodiment
The process by which people incorporate biologically the social and material world in which they live.
Empirical
Anthropological data is acquired through first-hand participant observation, rather than secondary research.
Enculturation
The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group.
Ethics
The principles of conduct governing an individual or group; concerns for what is right or wrong, good or bad.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to view the world only from the perspective of one’s own culture; the inability to understand cultures different from one’s own.
Ethnicity
A social group is connected by a shared understanding of cultural identity.
Ethnography
Writing culture; articles and books written by anthropologists following
fieldwork research; the process of participant observation or fieldwork.
Ethnozoology
The study of how human cultures interact with and use animals.
Family
A term covering a range of meanings in terms of the relatedness and connection of people. It may refer to a domestic group or household, or a wider kinship network.
Gender
The culturally constructed distinctions between males and females.
Globalization
The tendency towards increasing global interconnections in the culture, economy and social life.
Hegemony
The cultural or political dominance of one social group over others; cultural processes through which the ruling classes maintain their power.
Habitus
Pierre Bourdieu holds that socialized norms guide people’s behaviour and thinking.
Holism
The whole of a social system is identified as being more than just the individuals who participate in it.
Health
Anthropologists examine how human beings’ efforts to secure health and treat illness are impacted by cultural processes.
Identity
Identity can refer either to the individual’s private and personal view of the self or the view of an individual in the eyes of the social group.
Ideology
The system of social and moral ideas of a group of people; a commitment to central values.
Localization
A social group’s specific adaptation of the influences of globalization.
Marginality
Human dimensions used as a basis for social exclusion
Materiality
Objects, resources and belongings have cultural meaning and are embedded within all kinds of social relations and practices.
Mechanized body
The body may be perceived as a machine consisting of organic parts.
Modified body
The human body is deliberately altered for cultural reasons or aesthetic reasons
Morality
Adherence to the rules or norms of a social group.
Participant observation
During fieldwork an anthropologist immerses himself or herself in the life
of the social group he or she is studying, actively observing, interviewing and writing detailed field notes.
Personhood
Culturally constructed concept of the individual human being, the “self”.
Post-colonialism
Study of the legacy of the colonial era and the residual political, cultural, socio-economic, and psychological effects.
Positionality
The effect an anthropologist’s own subjectivity might have on how he or she interprets observations and experience.
Power
A person’s or group’s capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and
resources.
Race
A socially constructed category of identification of people based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture.
Religion
A system of symbols that acts to establish understandings of existence is such a way that it is realistic to its followers.
Ritualized body
The body may be the focus of ritual practice.
Self
The individual’s social self is the product of social interaction and not the biological preconditions of that interaction.
Social relations
Any relationship between two or more individuals in a network of
relationships.
Society
Society refers to the way in which humans organize themselves in groups
and networks.
Subaltern
Refers to social groups that are socially and politically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the society. This term particularly relates to colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Symbolism
Symbolism is the study of the significance that people attach to objects, actions, and processes creating networks of symbols through which they
construct a culture’s web of meaning.
The other
Anthropologists use the term “the Other” to describe the way people who are members of a particular social group perceive other people who are not members.
bourgiouse
upper class in marxist theory
proloteriat
lower class in marxist theory
