Cultural Anthropology Flashcards
To complete the test tmr
Culture
- Origin: Roman thinker “cultra animi” then in Europe from the 18th and 19th centuries for the process of cultivation as in agriculture then to the betterment of the individual, then in the mid-19th century, as the universal human capacity.
- Current Definition: the range of human phenomena that cannot be linked to genetic inheritance. Example: ideas, values, behaviors, and attitudes.
Cultural Anthropology
- Anthropologists study past and present human cultures to understand what elements made/make them function
- Types: ethnology and linguistic anthropology
Informant
- A reliable individual that provides specific anthropologist studying their community. aka, an expert
- Informed consent: Usually written approval to allow an individual to act as an informant
Unstructured Interview
Advantages:
- Flexibility (start with initial idea, leads to more topics through conversation)
- Generates deeper responses
Disadvantages:
- Harder to stay on track for both parties
- Hard to come up with questions on the fly
- Difficult to redirect interviewee
Semi-Structured Interview
Advantages:
- Prepare questions
- End up with great qualitative results
Disadvantages:
- Easy to stray off topic
- Skilled interviews needed (costs big money)
- Time consuming
Structured Interview
Advantages:
- Easy analyzation
- Easy for non-experts to conduct
Disadvantages:
- No flexibility: Hard to ask open-ended questions to provide deep answers
Ethnology
- Study of origins and cultures of different human races and people
- The goal: to combine the view of the outsider to the view of the insider who understands the social setting
Ethnography
- Recording/analysis of a culture/society resulting in a written account of a person, place or institution
- Participant observer immerses themselves in the culture
- Focus on: a definable group of people like a north Indian village, or specific aspects of social life like a Man city fan club
Ethnocentrism
- Evaluations of others cultures with the preconceived notions of your own
Participant Observation
- Immersing yourself in a culture
- Be ethical; always ask for the observed persons consent and don’t be like jake sully
Kinship
Relationship between two or more people based on:
1. Common ancestry
2. Marriage
3. Adoption
Family of Orientation
The family you were born into without choice (biologically/adoption)
Family of Procreation
The family you chose to make (biologicall/adoption)
Ethics within Participant Observation
Ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting activity
- Must never cross ethical boundaries
- Clearly established ethical boundaries before experiment begins and procedure in place in case rules are crossed
- Most give informed consent
- Researcher must not place individuals in a state of suffering from the experiment or by the experiment after it has concluded
Ethical Factors
Subjective: Conclusions shaped by a persons preconceived notions and personal perspectives molded by their culture.
Objective: Conclusions relying on facts idea, not influenced by personal perspective
Reflexivity: The practice of reflecting on your worldview, bias, and impact on culture you are studying
Culture and Identity
Cultural norms have shaped you; culture and identity are 100% linked
Ritual
Habitual events or behaviors shaped by the culture of a person
Cultural Relativism
There is no universal standard for right and wrong, so no one has the right to judge another society’s customs
Feminist Anthropology
A critique of male as well as Euro-centered and biased anthropology
Eric Wolf
Born: February 1st, 1923 in Vienna, Austria
Achievements: concept of Peasants, development on Immanuel Wallerstein’s worlds system theory
Maria Czaplicka
Born: October 25, 1884 Warsaw, Poland
Achievements: Promoted cultural relativism, contributions to folklore and mythology, studied indigenous people in siberia
Franz Boas
Born: 1858 Germany
Achievements: Founding member of the American anthropology association, trained other famous anthropologists (Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead), Rejected biological determinism, founded theory of cultural relativism
Clifford Geertz
Born: 1926, California
Achievement: thick description (not just looking at what people do, but at how they act)
Bronislaw Malinowski
Born: Krakow, Poland, 1884
Achievements: Functionalism (the theory that society as a complex system that is built with several parts that are made to sustain its stability), invented participant observation
Claude Levi-Strauss
Born: 1908 Belgium
Achievements: Structuralism (theory that conceives of all cultural phenomena as sign systems, operating according to the rules of a deep structure), changed view of kinship, linguistics, and symbolism
Margret Mead
Born: December 16th 1901
Achievements: Brought attention to woman’s rights by researching different cultures and how they diverged from Caucasian gender roles, savage anthropology: study of a non-literate population
Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown
Born: 1881 in Birmingham
Achievement: (the theory that society as a complex system that is built with several parts that are made to sustain its stability)
Ruth Benedict
Born: 1887 New York
Achievements: Patterns of culture, all cultures have a specific personality
Zora Neale Hurston
Born: January 7, 1891 in Alabama
Achievements: Wrote stories like Mules and Men (A collection and analysis of African American Stories) to bring more attention to African American Culture, Key player in the Harlem Renaissance
