Exam 1 Flashcards
Anthropology’s relationship to other disciplines & fields
Anthropology offers a broader view- a distinctive comparative, cross cultural perspective
It is a comparative science that examins all societies, ancient and modern, simple and complex.
Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural perspective, constantly comparing the customs of one society with those of others.
Derived from ancient Greek, describes the exploration of human diversity in time and space
The 4 fields
In the United States, anthropology’s major sub-disciplines of archaeology, linguistic anthropology, biological and/or physical anthropology and cultural anthropology are part of this collective group.
Sociocultural
Archaeological
Biological
Linguistic
Ethnography
Provides an account of a particular community. (Based on fieldwork)
Requires fieldwork to collect data
Is often descriptive
Is group-and community-specific
Ethnology
Examines, compares, analyzes, and interprets the results of ethnography the data gathered in different societies. (Based on cross-cultural comparison)
Uses data collected by a series of researchers
Is usually synthetic
Is comparative and cross-cultural
Franz Boas
A founder of American anthropology, issues of race, language, and culture that have been central to anthropology.
Applied Anthropology
Sometimes called the discipline’s “5th field” or “2nd dimension” this sub-discipline is concerned with the relationships between anthropological knowledge and the uses of that knowledge outside of academia.
Applications of anthropology outside academia
Anthropologist can/were employed by international organizations, governments, businesses, hospitals, and schools.
This shift in application forced anthropologist to consider the wider social value and implications of their research.
Richard Borshay Lee
A University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology.
His research interest include human rights and indigenous peoples, ecology and history, AIDS, the politics of culture and the anthropology of state societies.
He is internationally known for his studies in the 1960s, of hunting and gathering societies, particularly the Ju/’hoansi-!Kung San of Botswana and Namibia.
What do cultural anthropologists study?
Cultural anthropology is a synonym for sociocultural anthropology.
They study changes in social life and customs.
The study of human society and culture, the subfield that describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.
Holism
Refers to the study of the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture
Anthropology’s unique blend of biological, social cultural, linguistic, historical, and contemporary perspectives
Anthropology’s historical links to colonialism
In Australia in the 1930s, government officials were influenced by the cultural evolutionary models of anthropologists to create policies for this historical phenomenon.
cultures depicted as objects of ethnocentrism and exoticism or acculturation (cultural change and exchange through ongoing contact)
Culture
Conrad Kottak asserts that as distinctive traditions and customs transmitted over the generations through learning
and through language, only humans show fully elaborated expressions of these.
Culture as:
integrated, instrumental, learned, symbolic, adaptive, maladaptive, etc.
Integrated: integrated, patterned systems. If one part of the system (the overall economy for instance) changes, other parts change as well.
Instrumental: to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction
Learned: ability to absorb and internalize particular systems and meanings that help guide their behavior and perception of people’s lives; whether conscious or unconsciously
Symbolic: unique and crucial to humans and cultural learning, whether verbal or non-verbal to express idea or feelings; an example is language or the mcdonalds arches
Adaptive: things done to help individuals cope with environmental stresses; whether those adaptations are biological or technological
Maladaptive: adaptive strategies taken to far, and they may threaten a group’s continued existence
The “uniqueness” of human cultures
The ease with which children absorb any cultural tradition rests on the uniquely elaborated human capacity to learn
Our cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols
Cultural learning is uniquely elaborated among humans and that all humans have culture
“only humans have fully elaborated cultures- distinctive traditions and customs transmitted over the generations through learning and through language”
Enculturation
Demonstrating that culture is learned, this concept describes the process by which children internalize their cultures.
The process why which a child learns his or her culture
Symbols
As something verbal or non-verbal standing for something else, this concept could also be described as arbitrary and
conventional, meaningful, and the foundational basis of cultural life.
Armchair anthropology
When early anthropologist studied people from other civilizations, they relied on the written accounts and opinions of others.
These scholars did not have any direct contact with the people they were studying.
Cultural evolutionism
From anthropology’s formative years
Culture progresses (evolves)
Built on Darwin’s theory of natural
selection
Attempted to trace the development
of culture through time
The idea that human cultural change- that is, changes in socially, transmitted beliefs, knowledge, customs, skills, attitudes, languages, and so on
Edward Tylor
British anthropologist proposed that cultures, systems of human behavior and thought, obey natural laws and therefore can be studied scientifically.
Tylor’s definition focuses on attributes that people acquire not through biological inheritance but by growing up in a particular society in which they are exposed to a specific cultural tradition.
Changing definitions of culture
because of inclusivity and technicallity
Bronislaw Malinowski
This anthropologist is known for his posthumous private diary as well as developing the “classic” elements of anthropological fieldwork.
“Classic” ethnography
single-sited fieldwork in a community for at least one year
Salvage anthropology
attempts to document the rituals, practices, and myths of cultures facing dislocation, removal, or extinction
The ethnographic present
presenting ethnographic research in the present tense
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to apply one’s own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures.
Cultural relativism
The viewpoint that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture.
Acculturation
A second mechanism of cultural change, is the only ongoing exchange of cultural features that results when groups have continuous firsthand contact.
Cultural particularism
A trait or feature of culture that is confined to a single place, culture or society
Contemporary cultural concepts
Culture as a dynamic individualized and multidimensional system of meanings
Continually problematizes “the culture”
Not necessarily tied to a bound territory or nation-state (i.e. national cultures)
Culture is negotiable and intertwined with power relations
Culture as contested
Various groups may strive to promote the correctness and value of their own practices, value, and beliefs, in comparison with those of other groups or the nation as a whole.
Globalization
Encompasses a series of processes that work transnationally to promote change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent
Human agency
Refers to the actions that individuals take, both alone, and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities.
Local appropriation
the adoption of local cultural elements in terms of religion, traditions, dance, music, fashion, language and symbols
it becomes a part of the local system
Cultural globalization
The process through which the culture of one country or society is spread to other countries
Methods for studying cultural globalization
Studying local practices in global processes
Creating historically-based research on structural inequalities and human agency
Multi-sited ethnography and its methods
Proposed by George Marcus and popularized in Ethnography through Thick and Thin, this method describes following ethnographic themes beyond a single geographic area or field location.
Ethnographic techniques
Observation and Participant Observation
Conversations, Interviewing, and Interview Schedules
The Genealogical Methods
Key Cultural Consultants
Life Histories
Local Beliefs and Perceptions, and the Ethnographer’s
Problem-oriented research of many sorts
Longitudinal research- the continuous, long-term study of an area or a site
Team research- coordinated research by multiple ethnographers
Multisited research that studies the various sites and systems in which people participate.
Observation and participant observation
Direct first hand observation of behavior, including participant observation
Prolonged immersion in a social world while collecting as many kinds of information as possible (from etic and emic sources)
Locating fieldwork
“the field” is everywhere
Key elements to fieldwork (access, rapport, etc.)
Gaining access
Building relationships and rapport
Learning the languages(s)
Negotiating culture shock
Talking to people and “deep hanging out”
Using multiple methods of data collection
Anthropology’s multiple methods
Observation
Participant observation
Interviewing
Biography and life histories
Personal experience methods
Archival research
Media analysis
Emic
approach investigates how local people think. How do they perceive and categorize the world? What are their rules for behavior? What has meaning for them? How do they imagine and explain things?
ethnographer relies on local people to explain things and to say whether something is significant or not
Etic
(scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations, to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their culture impartially.
Operating ethically, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she (the observer) notices and considers important
Ethnographic interviews and their limitations
Interviews tend to not be reciprocal
Over-reliance on interviewing techniques
Power relations are usually not balanced: “studying down” or “studying up”
Studying up, down, and sideways
Laura Nader’s concept of this is used to describe studying people and institutions in positions of authority (in addition to researching disenfranchised or marginal groups).
Types of interviews (structured, semistructured, etc.)
Structured:
use prepared questions
survey interviews
Semi-structured:
based on pre-determined guides
life-history interviews
Unstructured:
informal or conversational interviews
“Virtual”:
social networking, online chat, e-mail
Descriptive Questions
specific questions based on their research
Informed consent
(agreement to take part in research-after having been informed about its nature, procedures, and possible impacts) should be obtained from anyone who provides information or who might be affected by research
The ethnographer as research instrument
our/their set of experiences from being in the field, whether its their observations, or their personal set of experiences
we are part of the technique
Kinship
the web of social relationships that form an important part of lives of all humans in all societies
a socia-cultural construction, one that creates a network of social and biological relationships between individuals
much of kinship is culturally constructed
Lewis Henry Morgan
Pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist, best known for his work on kinship and social structure
the importance of kinship to the foundation of anthropology
Kinship charts
“family tree”
outlines family structure
family creates culture/culture creates family
Kinship symbols
Kinship and biology
“kinship” typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or the coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species
some people think kinship should equal biology and vise versa
Family
A group of people related in some way- not necessarily by common ancestry or residence, but through some degree of blood or marriage
Fictive kin
“learning to live with strangers”
more of a social tie
People sharing dorm halls, sports teams, and military service could be described with this socially creative term.
Nuclear family vs. Extended family
Nuclear Family: a kinship group consisting of parents and children
Extended Family: families consisting of three or more generations and decent groups, lineages, and clans
Family of orientation vs. procreation
Family of orientation: the family in which one is born and grows up
Procreation: formed when one marries and has children
Descent patterns (bi-, uni-, matri-, patriliniality)
patriliniality: people automatically have lifetime membership in their father’s group
Matrilineal: people join their mother’s group automatically
Unilineal: the descent rule uses one line only, either the male or female line
Bilateral descent: traced through both parents
Patterns of locality (neo-, matri-, patrilocality)
patrilocality: the rule that when a couple marries, it moves to the husband’s community, so their children will grow up in their father’s village
matrilocality: when a couple marries, it moves to the wife’s community, so their children will grow up in their mother’s village
neolocality- living or located away from both the husband’s and the wife’s relatives
Ongoing changed in American kinship
American family types are diverse
Cross-cousin marriage
when children of siblings of the opposite sex marry the opposite of a parallel cousin
Lineages and clans
A group that clan descent from a common ancestor through stipulation
Marriage across cultures
a relationship between two groups
Incest and “instinctive horror”
Incest: refers to sexual contact with a relative, but cultures define their kin, and thus incest differently
“instinctive horror”: subconscious knowing that you are related to someone, and that stops you from mating with close relatives
Fraternal polyandry
a women weds a group of brothers
Ghost marriages
similar to levirate marriage, but new husband acts as surrogate and new children are considered children of the deceased brother
Ju/’Hoansi kinship and social organization
Subsistence and foraging
The Ju/’hoan people who Richard Lee works with are
associated with this adaptive strategy and economic practice.
Horticulture
This economic strategy involves shifting, non-permanent cultivation and is also known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
Agriculture
intensive, continuous cultivation
Industrial alienation
the process where the worker is made to feel foregin to the products of their labor
Reciprocity
This concept describes a system of exchange for mutual benefit.
Potlatch
a festive excahnge system among tribes
increased the prestige of individuals
redistributes wealth and resources
