Chapter 8 Political Anthropology Flashcards
What is social organization?
The architecture of society reinforced/contested by culture
What is orientalism?
- A western style of thought that creates a false opposition between the Orient (east) and the Occident (west)
- easy naturalized as inferior to west
What is academic orientalism
- knowledge produced by academics, government experts
- anyone writing and producing information on the orient
What is imaginative orientalism
Representations including art, novels, poems, images, that makes a distinction between the Orient and the Occedent
What is institutional orientalism
Institutions created by Europeans such that they could gain authority over, alter and rule the Orient
What are political organizations
-public groups that provide decision making and leadership to maintain : social cohesion and order; group rights, safety from external threats
What are political organizations characterized by?
- recruitment principles
- perpetuity
- identity markers
- internal organization
- procedures
- autonomy
What are some forms of political institutions?
- band
- tribe
- chiefdom
- state
- nation
What is a band? (Not music)
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
What is a tribe?
- 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
What a chiefdom
- 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
Religious beliefs and symbols are often closely tied to what?
Power of the state leadership
Define nation
A group of people who share a language, culture, territorial base, political organization and history
What is trans nationalism
Swinging between home and host nations
What is imagined communities
The idea that it is important to build a sense of belonging and commitment in order to make a nation
What is hegemony?
Ideological control and manipulation
What is normalization?
A social process by which some practices and ways of living are deemed normal and other abnormal
What is authority?
“The right to take carts in forms of action” based on a persons achieved or ascribed status or reputation
What is influence
The ability to achieve a desire end by exerting social or moral pressure
What is critical legal anthropology?
Examines how law and judicial institutions serve to maintain and expand dominant power interests rather than protect marginal and less powerful people
What is caste
A ranked group, determined by birth, often linked to particular occupation?
What is social control?
The processes which help produce and maintain orderly social life
What is social justice
Rights to seek justice for disadvantaged members of a society
