Class 1 - Culture and Ethnography

Question 0

Who founded social anthropology and created one of the earliest deifnitions of culture?

Answer 0

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor

Question 1

What is Culture?

Answer 1

Culture is the acquired (learned) knowledge that people use to generate behaviour and interpret experience.

Question 2

Name five aspects of culture

Answer 2

Aspects of Culture
• Knowledge, behaviour, artifacts
• Learned, shared
• Instrumental, adaptive, maladaptive
• Micro cultures, national cultures, transnational cultures
• Contested, dynamic

Question 3

What is tacit culture?

Answer 3

Tacit culture is culture that is not coded in language by a people, such as speaking distances.

Question 4

What is explicit culture?

Answer 4

Explicit culture is culture that people are consciously aware of and can talk about.

Question 5

Define microculture

Answer 5

A microculture is a system of cultural knowledge characteristic of a subgroup within a larger society.

Question 6

Define ethnocentrism

Answer 6

Ethnocentrism is the belief and feeling that one’s own culture is best.

Question 7

Define cultural relativism

Answer 7

Cultural Relativism is the belief that each culture is unique and must be understood in its own context.

Question 8

Name one of the founders of American cultural anthropology who was also one of the earliest proponents of cultural relativism.

Answer 8

Franz Boas was one of the founders of American cultural anthropology and one of the earliest proponents of cultural relativism

Question 9

What is ethnography?

Answer 9

Ethnography is the process of discovering and describing a particular culture.

Question 10

What is ethnology?

Answer 10

Ethnology is the comparison of cross-cultural data from secondary sources.

Question 11

Who was Bronislaw Malinowski?

Answer 11

Bronislaw Malinowski is regarded as one of the founders of European social anthropology and the method of ethnographic fieldwork.

Question 12

What is a respondent?

Answer 12

A respondent is an individual who responds to survey questions normally associated with survey research.

Question 13

What is a subject?

Answer 13

A subject is a person who is observed by social scientists conducting experimental social or psychological research.

Question 14

What is an informant?

Answer 14

An informant is an individual from whom anthropologists learn a culture.

Question 15

What is a gatekeeper?

Answer 15

A gatekeeper is an individual, group or organization that can permit or deny access to particular social situations/field sites.

Question 16

Identify the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.

Answer 16

Qualitative data is descriptive, while quantitative data is statistical.

Question 17

Define naive realism.

Answer 17

Naive realism is the belief (often unconscious) that people everywhere see the world in the same way.

Question 18

What is culture shock?

Answer 18

Culture shock is a state of anxiety that results from cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Question 19

What is detached observation?

Answer 19

Detached observation is a research approach in which investigators observe human behavior and create their own categories and theories to describe and explain it.

Question 20

What is participant observation?

Answer 20

Participant observation is a research approach in which investigators directly engage in the activities of their informants in order to gain an insider perspective.