Class 1 - Culture and Ethnography Flashcards
Who founded social anthropology and created one of the earliest deifnitions of culture?
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
What is Culture?
Culture is the acquired (learned) knowledge that people use to generate behaviour and interpret experience.
Name five aspects of culture
Aspects of Culture • Knowledge, behaviour, artifacts • Learned, shared • Instrumental, adaptive, maladaptive • Micro cultures, national cultures, transnational cultures • Contested, dynamic
What is tacit culture?
Tacit culture is culture that is not coded in language by a people, such as speaking distances.
What is explicit culture?
Explicit culture is culture that people are consciously aware of and can talk about.
Define microculture
A microculture is a system of cultural knowledge characteristic of a subgroup within a larger society.
Define ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the belief and feeling that one’s own culture is best.
Define cultural relativism
Cultural Relativism is the belief that each culture is unique and must be understood in its own context.
Name one of the founders of American cultural anthropology who was also one of the earliest proponents of cultural relativism.
Franz Boas was one of the founders of American cultural anthropology and one of the earliest proponents of cultural relativism
What is ethnography?
Ethnography is the process of discovering and describing a particular culture.
What is ethnology?
Ethnology is the comparison of cross-cultural data from secondary sources.
Who was Bronislaw Malinowski?
Bronislaw Malinowski is regarded as one of the founders of European social anthropology and the method of ethnographic fieldwork.
What is a respondent?
A respondent is an individual who responds to survey questions normally associated with survey research.
What is a subject?
A subject is a person who is observed by social scientists conducting experimental social or psychological research.
What is an informant?
An informant is an individual from whom anthropologists learn a culture.
What is a gatekeeper?
A gatekeeper is an individual, group or organization that can permit or deny access to particular social situations/field sites.
Identify the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.
Qualitative data is descriptive, while quantitative data is statistical.
Define naive realism.
Naive realism is the belief (often unconscious) that people everywhere see the world in the same way.
What is culture shock?
Culture shock is a state of anxiety that results from cross-cultural misunderstanding.
What is detached observation?
Detached observation is a research approach in which investigators observe human behavior and create their own categories and theories to describe and explain it.
What is participant observation?
Participant observation is a research approach in which investigators directly engage in the activities of their informants in order to gain an insider perspective.
