Final Exam Flashcards
Anthropology
- The scientific study of humans
- Includes their origins, behaviour, and physical, social, and cultural development
Psychology
- The scientific study of the human mind, mental states, and human behaviour
Sociology
- The scientific study of human social behaviour
- Includes individuals, groups, and societies
Social Science
- The scientific discipline involving the organized study of people and their activities and relationships
- Aims to understand human society, culture, actions, attitudes, and behaviour
- Uses a research inquiry model
Physical Anthropology
- Interested in people as a biological species.
- Primatology - the scientific study of the group of animals that includes human beings, apes and monkeys.
- Paleoanthropology - the study of human evolution through the fossil and archaeological records.
- Human variation - the range of possible values for any characteristic, physical or mental, of human beings
Cultural Anthropology
- Studied cultural variation among humans
- Ethnology - immersion into a culture for months or years and take meticulous notes
- Linguistic Anthropology - study the history and structure of language, and ways humans use language
- Archaeology - study the physical remains of a past culture through excavation and reconstruction
Bipedalism
- The trait of habitually walking on two legs
- Theories:
1. carrying objects
2. wading to forage aquatic foods and to avoid shoreline predators
3. vigilantly standing in tall grass, presenting phallic or other sexual display
4. following migrant herds on the savanna
5. conserving energy (bipedalism expends less energy than quadrupedism)
6. if the early bipeds were regularly exposed to direct midday tropical sunlight, they would benefit from standing upright in two ways: less body surface would be exposed to damaging solar rays, and they would find relief in the cooler air above the ground.
Ethnocentric
- To apply one’s own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures
- Believing that one’s own culture is superior to all others
Ethnography
The written account of a culture
Kinship
The relationship between two or more people through common ancestry, marriage, or adoption
Reflexivity
The practice of reflecting on your own worldview, biases, and impact on the culture you are studying
Linguistics
- The scientific study of language and its structure
Archaeology
The study of the ancient and recent human past through material remains
Ethnology
- The study of the origins and culture of different races and peoples
- Immersion into a culture for months or years, taking meticulous notes
Cultural Relativism
- Cultural relativism is the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by
- All cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values
Cultural Materialism
Materials or conditions within the environment (e.g. climate, food supply, geography) influence how a culture develops, creating the ideas and ideology of a culture.
Postmodernism
- The belief that it is impossible to have any “true” knowledge about the world
- Rejects the idea of objective truth
- Believe that anthropologists can’t objectively study their subjects because of the relationships that form
- Practice reflexivity
Paleoanthropology
The study of human evolution through the fossil and archaeological records
Primatology
The scientific study of the group of animals that includes human beings, apes and monkeys.
Human Variation
The range of possible values for any characteristic, physical or mental, of human beings
Ego
Freud’s term for the rational part of the mind, which operates on the reality principle
Id
Freud’s term for the instinctual part of the mind, which operates on the pleasure principle
Super Ego
Freud’s term for the moral center of the mind
Classical Conditioning
- A type of learning where a once neutral stimulus comes to produce a particular response after pairings with a conditioned stimulus
- Pavlov’s dogs, Little Albert, Dwight + Jim