Cross-cultural Psychology Flashcards
Cultural anthropology
the study of human soci- ety and culture, is the subfield that describes, ana- lyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.
To study and interpret cultural diversity, cultural anthropologists engage in two kinds of activity:
Ethnography and ethnology
provides an account of a particular group, community, society, or culture. During e fieldwork, the e gathers data that he or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and inter- prets to build and present that account, which may be in the form of a book, an article, or a film.
Ethnography
examines, interprets, and analyzes the results of ethnography
Ethnology
reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains.
Anthropological archeology
is the study of human biological diversity through time and as it exists in the world today. There are five specialties:
Biological anthropology
Five specialities of biological anthropology
Human biological evolution as revealed by the fossil record (paleoanthropology).
2. Human genetics.
3. Human growth and development.
4. Human biological plasticity (the living body’s ability to change as it copes with en- vironmental conditions, such as heat, cold, and altitude).
5. Primatology (the study of monkeys, apes, and other nonhuman primates).
Culture
Total way of life of people
Adaptation (biological, example)
Gene that controls lactase production in cultures with high animal milk consumption
Adaptation (cultural, example)
Farming for food, domestication of animals
Comparative education (example)
Exploring differences between Italian and American education
Applied Anthropology (example)
Investigating the work of sanitation workers
Universitality
Lenguage
Particularity
unsalted bread in
Umbria, Italy
Generality
Nuclear family
Ethnocentrism
my cultures approach to education is more advanced
Cultural relativism
evaluating a culture from the hosts’ perspective
Acculturation
children learn English and their parents language
Assimilation
immigrant giving up their religion for the religion of the host culture
Diffusion
availability of pizza throughout the US
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
I
Determinism - strong
Rather than a universal language-seeking universal
ARRIVAL
structures and processes - different languages produce different ways of thinking
Language we are born to has a direct effect upon how we conceptualize, think, interact, and express-a direct relationship between human language and human thinking
Sapir - Whorf (p. 88)
•Examples -
•Past present Future
•Solomon Island - Coconut - 9 words (different stages)
•Rainbow
•Spatial orientation
•Time
•Formal and Informal
X studies language in its social and cultural context, through- out the world and over time. Some x also make inferences about univer- sal features of language, linked perhaps to unifor- mities in the human brain. Others reconstruct ancient languages by comparing their contempo- rary descendants and in so doing make discoveries about history. Still others study linguistic differences to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.
Linguistic Anthropology
Erve Chambers (1987, p. 309)
as stated, applied anthropology is “concerned with the relationships between anthropological knowl- edge and the uses of that knowledge in the world beyond anthropology.” More and more anthro- pologists from the four subfields now work in “applied” areas such as public health, family plan- ning, business, market research, economic devel- opment, and cultural resource management