Chapter 8 Political Anthropology

Question 1

What is social organization?

Answer 1

The architecture of society reinforced/contested by culture

Question 2

What is orientalism?

Answer 2

• A western style of thought that creates a false opposition between the Orient (east) and the Occident (west)
• easy naturalized as inferior to west

Question 3

What is academic orientalism

Answer 3

• knowledge produced by academics, government experts

- anyone writing and producing information on the orient

Question 4

What is imaginative orientalism

Answer 4

Representations including art, novels, poems, images, that makes a distinction between the Orient and the Occedent

Question 5

What is institutional orientalism

Answer 5

Institutions created by Europeans such that they could gain authority over, alter and rule the Orient

Question 6

What are political organizations

Answer 6

-public groups that provide decision making and leadership to maintain : social cohesion and order; group rights, safety from external threats

Question 7

What are political organizations characterized by?

Answer 7

• recruitment principles
• perpetuity
• identity markers
• internal organization
• procedures
• autonomy

Question 8

What are some forms of political institutions?

Answer 8

• band
• tribe
• chiefdom
• state
• nation

Question 9

What is a band? (Not music)

Answer 9

Foraging groups comprised of a small group of house holds, connected by kinship

• 20-100 members
• leader is first among equals and has no power just authority and influence
• oldest form of political organization

Question 10

What is a tribe?

Answer 10

• Horticulture and Parsifal group comprised of several bands, each with similar lifestyle, language and territory
• leadership combine both achieved and ascribed status
• leader resolved conflict
• leader relies on authority and influence or persuasion but had some degree of power

Question 11

What a chiefdom

Answer 11

• permanently allied tribes and villages under on leader
• a leader who possesses power
• more centralized and complex
• heritable systems of rank and social stratification
• chiefship is an office and so can be removed, so power is transient
• achievement is a measure of success

Question 12

Religious beliefs and symbols are often closely tied to what?

Answer 12

Power of the state leadership

Question 13

Define nation

Answer 13

A group of people who share a language, culture, territorial base, political organization and history

Question 14

What is trans nationalism

Answer 14

Swinging between home and host nations

Question 15

What is imagined communities

Answer 15

The idea that it is important to build a sense of belonging and commitment in order to make a nation

Question 16

What is hegemony?

Answer 16

Ideological control and manipulation

Question 17

What is normalization?

Answer 17

A social process by which some practices and ways of living are deemed normal and other abnormal

Question 18

What is authority?

Answer 18

“The right to take carts in forms of action” based on a persons achieved or ascribed status or reputation

Question 19

What is influence

Answer 19

The ability to achieve a desire end by exerting social or moral pressure

Question 20

What is critical legal anthropology?

Answer 20

Examines how law and judicial institutions serve to maintain and expand dominant power interests rather than protect marginal and less powerful people

Question 21

What is caste

Answer 21

A ranked group, determined by birth, often linked to particular occupation?

Question 22

What is social control?

Answer 22

The processes which help produce and maintain orderly social life

Question 23

What is social justice

Answer 23

Rights to seek justice for disadvantaged members of a society