Ch.2 Flashcards
Define culture.
A set of learned behaviours and ideas that humans acquire as members of society, together with artifacts and structures we create and use.
Not reinvented but learned from members of social groups we are a part of.
Identify and briefly describe the five features of human culture.
•Culture is shared
• Learned
• Patterned: Related cultural beleifs and practices show up repeatedly in different areas of social life. Like language. Cultural patterns can be traced though time.
• Adaptive: By learning cultural practices of those around them that human beings come to master appropriate ways of thinking and acting that promote their own survival as biological organisms.
• Symbolic: Everything we do in society is a symbolic dimension. It is our
heavy dependence on symbolic learning that sets human culture apart from the apparently non-symbolic learning on which other species rely.
What is meant by human agency?
It is the human being’s ability to exercise at least some control over their lives. By making interpretations, formulating goals, and setting out in pursuit of goals.
How does anthropology define holism?
Assumes no sharp boundries separate mind from body, body from environemtn, individual from society interpenetrate and even define one another.
Attemps to divide reality into mind and matter are unsuccessful because of the complex nature of reality, which resists isolation and dissection.
Traditionallv understood as a perspective on the human condition in which the whole is understood to be greater than the sum of its parts.
How does coevolution provide a useful way of thinking about the relationships of the parts that make up the whole?
If emphasizes that human organisms, their physical environment, and their symbolic practices codetermine one another; with the passage of time they can even co evolve with one anther.
Produces a human nature connected to a wider world and profoundly shaped by culture.
Distinguish between Culture and cultures.
- Culture has been used to describe an attribute of the human species as a whole- its members abilty, in the absence of high specific genetic programming, to create and imitate patterned, symbolically mediated ideas and activites that promote the survival of our species.
During colonization, what were early Canadian anthropologists charged with documenting?
What were early 20th century anthropologists determined to denounce and demonstrate?
What were the concerns of anthropologists at the end of the 20th century?
Compare and contrast ethnocentrism and cultural relativism
Ethnocentrism is described as where one’s way of life is natural or correct or even superior, indeed the only way of being fully human.
It is one solution to the inevitable tension that arises when people with different cultural backgrounds come into contact. It reduces the other’s way of life to a version one’s own.
Cultural relativism is an understanding another culture in its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be coherent and meaningful design for living This was used to come to terms with the tensions produced by cultural differences. The goal is to promote an understanding of cultural practices, particulart those that an outsider finds puzzling, incoherent, or morally troubling. Practices range from trivial(eating insects) to questionable(female circumcision), but most likely located inbetween.
Identify and briefly describe the two forms of female genital cutting.
Clitoridectomy- Where the clitoris is cut off (or excised)
Pharaonic circumcision or Infibulation- Where the labia and clitoris are excised, and the remaining skin Is fastened together, forming scar tissue that partially closes the vaginal opening.
What form of male genital cutting is common in western societies?
Circumscion- where foreskin is cut off.
Although western feminists have denounced the practice of female genital cutting, women from societies where the practice occurs are not necessarily in agreement. Do this mean these women are in favour of female genital cutting?
Not necessarilv: in fact, many of them are actively working to discourage the practice in their own societies.
Briefly explain how western views of female genital cutting may do more harm than good.
When women from these socities find that outsiders publicly condem traditional African rituals including clitoridectomy and infibulation, it is doing more harm than good. This is because woman anthroplogists who come from these socities point out that Western women who want to help are more likely effective if they pay closer attention to what te African women themselves have to say about the meanings of these customs.
How do efforts to protect women and girls become increasingly complicated when refugee mothers are stigmatized in the media as “mutilators” or “child abusers”?
It is seen as a felony punishable by up to five years of prison. The criminalization of FC is part of Western “climate of fear”, where cultural practices from other nations are often misunderstood.
