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
