Ch. 3

Question 1

Define: Bands

Answer 1

a term used by anthropologists to refer to egalitarian units of social organization, found mostly among foragers; these units usually consist of fewer than 100 people

Question 2

Define: Sedentary

Answer 2

a mode of livelihood characterized by permanent or semi-permanent settlements

Question 3

Define: Progress

Answer 3

the idea that human history is the story of a steady advance from a life dependant on the whims of nature to a life of control and domination over natural forces

Question 4

Define: Culture Change

Answer 4

the changes in meanings that a people ascribe to experience and changes in their way of life

Question 5

Define: Slash-and-burn, or Swidden agriculture

Answer 5

a mode of livelihood which forests are cleared by bringing trees and brush, and crops are planted among the ashes of the cleared ground

Question 6

Define: Clans

Answer 6

unilinear descent groups whose members claim descent from a common ancestor

Question 7

Define: States

Answer 7

forms of society characterized by a hierarchical ranking of people and centralized political control

Question 8

Define: Irrigation Agriculture

Answer 8

a form of cultivation in which water is used to deliver nutrients to growing plants

Question 9

Define: Natural Selection

Answer 9

refers to Darwin’s ideas that the survival of different species of organisms is partly contingent upon how well adapted they are to their physical environments. Those with favourable physical traits are more likely to survive to reproduce

Question 10

Define: Unilineal Evolution

Answer 10

a late-19th-century theory of social evolution which posited that all societies go through a series of standardized stages of change. It ethnocentrically positioned western societies at the apex of a “ladder of civilization”

Question 11

Define: Industrial Revolution

Answer 11

a period of European history, generally identified as occurring in the late 18th century, marked by a shift in production from agriculture to industrial goods, urbanization and the factory system

Question 12

Define: Population Density

Answer 12

the number of people in a given geographic area

Question 13

Define: Colonialism

Answer 13

refers to the acquisition of new territories throughout the world by European powers from 1492 until approximately 1945. Colonizers often imposed new forms of politics, economics, and religion upon colonized Indigenous or other cultures, and frequently exploited local populations for their labour

Question 14

Define: “Putting out” system

Answer 14

A means of production, common in the 16th and 17th centuries and surviving today, in which a manufacturer or merchant supplies the materials and sometime the tools to workers, who produce the goods in their own homes

Question 15

Define: Factory System

Answer 15

a system of production characterized by the concentration of labour and machines in specific places. It is associated with the Industrial Revolution

Question 16

Define: Economic Development

Answer 16

the term used to identify an increase in level of technology, and by some, standard of living of a population. Others view it as an ideology based on 3 key assumptions:

1. that economic growth and development is the solution to national as well as global problems
2. That global economic integration will contribute to solving global ecological and social problems
3. That foreign assistance to undeveloped countries will make things better

Question 17

Define: World Bank

Answer 17

one of the institutions created at the 1944 Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, meeting of Allied nations. The World Bank functions as a lending institution to nations largely for projects related to economic development

Question 18

Define: International Monetary Fund

Answer 18

created as an outcome of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference to regulate currency transactions among countries. The IMF now makes loans and regulates the economies of lending countries

Question 19

Define: Biomedical Model

Answer 19

also known as Western Medicine, scientific medicine or modern medicine, the model combines biology with the diagnosis and treatment of illness and views the body as a machine, independent of social context, that must be repaired periodically

Question 20

Define: Pathogen

Answer 20

an infectious agent such as bacteria or a virus that can cause disease

Question 21

Define: Vector

Answer 21

an organism, such as a bacteria or a virus that can cause disease

Question 22

Define: Interpersonal theory of disease

Answer 22

a view of disease in which it is assumed that illness is caused by tensions or conflicts in social relations

Question 23

Define: Factory Model

Answer 23

an energy-intensive, ecologically damaging form of agriculture intended to grow or raise as many crops or livestock as possible in the shortest time

Question 24

Define: Agroecological approach

Answer 24

an agricultural method that incorporates indigenous practices of food production along with contemporary agriculture research yet preserves the environment