Exam 1 Flashcards
Anthropology
• The study of humankind in all times and places.
Culture
• A society’s shared and socially transmitted ideas, values, and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and generate behavior and are reflected in that behavior.
Cultural Anthropology
• The study of patterns in human behavior, thought, and emotions, focusing on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures. Also known as social or sociocultural anthropology.
Four-Field Approach
• An approach in anthropology sees the discipline as composed of the four subfields of Archaeology, Linguistics, Physical Anthropology and Cultural anthropology (known jocularly to students as “stones”, “tones”, “bones” and “thrones”)
Holistic Approach
• An approach that means thinking about the big picture. … In a medical setting, holistic refers to addressing the whole person, including their physical, mental, and emotional health, while taking social factors into consideration.
Holistic Perspective
• A fundamental principle of anthropology: The various parts of human culture and biology must be viewed in the broadest possible context in order to understand their interconnections and interdependence.
Enculturation
• The process by which a society’s culture is passed on from one generation to the next and individuals become members of their society.
Gender
• The cultural elaborations and meanings assigned to the biological differentiation between the sexes.
Society
• An organized group or groups of interdependent people who generally share a common territory, language, and culture and who act together for collective survival and well-being.
Ethnicity
• The expression for the set of cultural ideas held by an ethnic group.
Ethnic Group
• People who collectively and publicly identify themselves as a distinct group based on shared cultural features such as common origin, language, customs, and traditional beliefs.
Subculture
• A distinctive set of ideas, values, and behavior patterns by which a group within a larger society operates, while still sharing common standards with that larger society.
Symbol
• A sound, gesture, mark, or other sign that is arbitrarily linked to something else and represents it in a meaningful way.
Superstructure
• A society’s shared sense of identity and worldview. The collective body of ideas, beliefs, and values by which members of a society make sense of the world—its shape, challenges, and opportunities—and understand their place in it. This includes religion and national ideology.
Infrastructure
• The economic foundation of a society, including its subsistence practices and the tools and other material equipment used to make a living.
Social Structure
• The rule-governed relationships—with all their rights and obligations—that hold members of a society together. This includes households, families, associations, and power relations, including politics.
Ethnocentrism
• The belief that the ways of one’s own culture are the only proper ones.
Culture Relativism
• is the idea that a person’s beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person’s own culture, rather than be judged against the criteria of another.
