Cultural Anthropology Final Flashcards
Types of political systems:
Elman Service (1962)
- bands (small kin-based groups among foragers)
- tribes (kin groups based on common descent)
- chiefdoms (based on kinship, descent, marriage, age…)
- state (based on formal government structure and socioeconomic stratification)
Characteristics of bands and tribes:
- diversity in time and space
- tendency to stereotype foragers
- foraging bands formed seasonally when nuclear families got together
- lacking formal law in the sense of a legal code with trial and enforcement
- village head - limited power
What is an age set?
- all men born within a certain time span
Types of Age Grades (mostly in Africa)
- Initiated youths
- warriors
- mature men (ruling class)
- elders (ritual responsibilities)
Age sets (mostly in North America)
- people still in the same set who typically experience strong allegiance toward each other
Characteristics of a chiefdom:
- idealized political type;; in reality - continuous
- permanent political regulation of the territory
- chief- office - permanent position - refilled
- regulation of distribution and consumption -
Characteristics of states:
- large and populous
- containing systems, sub-systems with specialized functions (population control, judiciary, enforcement, fiscal, etc. )
What is hegemony?
The concept was developed by Antonio Gramsci (1971) for a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing their rulers’ values and accepting the “naturalness” of domination. All hegemonic ideologies offer explanations about why the existing order is in everyone’s interest.
What are “weapons of the weak”?
They are what James Scott (1985) calls small-scale acts of resistance against oppression (as opposed to active protests).
List generally male activities:
- hunting
- metalworking
- trapping
- mining
List generally female activities
- gathering
- cooking
- knitting
Domestic-public dishotomy
Work at home vs. more valued work outside
Gender among agriculturalists:
- women were cut off from production
- closer to home to take care for children
- nuclear families more common
- gender stratification associated with plow cultivation
Characteristics of a patriarchy:
- a political system ruled by men
- women have an inferior position
- greater tendency toward warfare and intervillage raids
- domestic violence worldwide
Family related terms:
- nuclear
- extended
- family of orientation (nuclear family within one is born and grows up)
- family of procreation (nuclear family established when one marries and has children)
- neolocality (couple establishes new residence
Unilineal descent:
either matrilineal or patrilineal descent
What is a clan?
- a unilineal descent group based on stipulated descent
What is a lineage?
- a unilineal descent group based on demonstrated descent
What is an ambilineal descent rule?
- a flexible descent rule, neither patrilineal, nor matrilineal
What is kinship calculation?
- how people in a particular society reckon kin relations
What is ego?
- Position from which one views an egocentric genealogy
What is bilateral kinship calculation?
Kin ties calculated equally through men and women
What is a genitor?
A child’s biological father
What is a pater?
One’s socially recognized father, not necessarily the genitor
Marriage within one’s social group versus marriage outside it:
endogamy vs. exogamy
What is a bridewealth?
Marital gift by husband’s group to wife’s group.
What is a progeny price?
A marital gift by husband’s group to wife’s group; legitimizes their children.
What is a dowry?
Substantial gifts to husband’s family from wife’s group.
What is a sororate?
A marriage system wherein a widower marries the sister of his deceased wife.
What is primogeniture?
A system wherein the eldest child (usually the son) of the reigning monarch can succeed.
Rights typically allocated by marriage:
According to Edmund Leach(1955), marriage may often accomplish the following:
- establish the legal father of a woman’s children and vice versa
- giver monopoly on the sexuality of the other spouse
- give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other
- give rights over other’s property
- establish a joint fund or property for the benefit of the children
- establish a socially significant “relationship of affinity” between spouses and their relatives
Usage of masks:
- in ceremonies dedicated to ancestor
- in historical plays - a celebration of heroes
- in initiation rituals
What is ethnomusicology?
the comparative study of music as an aspect of culture and society…
Earliest art in Europe:
…more than 30 000 years ago
World-system theory
idea that a discernible social system, based on wealth and power differentials, transcends individual countries
Three positions in the world system:
… according to Wallerstein:
- core
- semiperiphery
- periphery
Functions of the positions in the world system:
- core supplies semiperiphery and periphery with high profit consumption goods
- periphery supplies semiperiphery and core with cheap labor and raw materials
Industrial stratification (as per Marx and Engels):
- bourgeoisie
- working class
Causes of the Industrial revolution (1750 -)
- overpopulation
- reserves of natural resources (coal, iron ore)
- navigatable waterways at the crossroads of international traderoutes
- emerging class were Protestant nonconformists - encouraged industry, thrift, new knowledge, inventiveness, etc..
Weber’s view of social stratification
Max Weber faulted Marx for an overly simplistic and exclusively economic view of stratification. He defined three dimensions of social stratification:
- wealth, power, and prestige
What is imperialism?
- Policy aimed at seizing and ruling foreign territory and peoples
What is colonialism?
- Long-term foreign control of a territory and its people
What is an intervention philosophy?
- An ideological justification for outsiders to guide or rule native peoples.
Neoliberalism
Governments shouldn’t regulate private enterprise; free market forces should rule
What is acculturation?
- the changes which occur when societies first come into continuous contact
What is ethnoecology?
A culture’s set of environmental practices and perceptions
What is cultural imperialism
The spread of one (dominant) culture at the expense of others
What is a diaspora?
Offspring of an area who have spread to many lands
What is the meaning of postmodernity (1), postmodern (2), and postmodernism (3)?
(1) - time of questioning established canons, identities, and standards
(2) - breakdown of established canons, categories, distinctions, and boundaries
(3) - movement after modernism in architectuer; now much wider
What is essentialism in anthropology
Essentialism describes the process of viewing an identity as established, real, and frozen, to hide the historical processes and politic within which that identity developed. (e.g. Hutu, Tutsi)
