Key Terms And Important Phrases To Include In Defn.

Question 0

Survivals

Answer 0

Tylor’s idea of vestiges of previous cultures that are still around today

Original meaning has been lost or is no longer relevant

Examples: hand shake, bless you

Question 1

Unilinear evolution

Answer 1

Tylor’s theory from ‘primitive culture’

All cultures evolve in the same way, same progression

From the most primitive to most civilized which was viewed as the most successful

Question 2

Tylor’s definition of culture

Answer 2

“Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is the complex whole which includes knowledge, morals, art, beliefs, law and customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”

Question 3

Historical materialism

Answer 3

Marx methodological approach to study society

Looked for the causes of developments and changes in human society based on things they made

Looks at the way materialism has shaped history -why did we need to do the things we did to propel us further?

Question 4

Dialectical materialism

Answer 4

Another of Marx’s approach to studying society

Not looking at the material goods but at thesis, antithesis, synthesis pattern through time

Looking at the social capital system of production

Like a spiral through time of innovation, division of labor, class struggles, and leveling out…

Marx felt this eventually led to communism

Question 5

Proletariat

Answer 5

Marx’s idea of the working class group of wage earners

Ruled by the Bourgeoisie class

Their only possession is their labor-power

Question 6

Relations of production

Answer 6

Marx’s view from capital

The sum total of relationships people must enter to sustain their way of life

Question 7

Conscience collective

Answer 7

Difficult concept to define due to language difference

Durkheim developed this idea to discuss normative behavior to one culture but can be applied to other cultures as well

Our modern day interpretation of enculturation and ideology

Question 8

Anomie

Answer 8

Durkheim’s description of societal alienation

Breakdown of social bonds between the individual and community

Strong subject in his analysis on suicide rates

Question 9

Social facts

Answer 9

Durkheim’s description of observable social constraints that function independent of our consciousness

Wats of thinking, acting, feeling that are a manner of “checking” that we don’t migrate outside the normative behavior acceptable for our society

Question 10

Totems

Answer 10

Durkheim studied these in depth

Symbolic representations, often animals that associate you with a clan

Dictate clan’s behavior, worldview, and essentially their entire cosmological outlook

Question 11

Total prestations

Answer 11

Social phenomena discussed by mauss in his theory of reciprocity mentioned in ‘the gift’

In a gift economy, total prestations are events and acts that appear voluntary, but are in fact necessary in order to keep social status

Consequences occur if you don’t adhere to what’s expected of you in terms of reciprocity

Question 12

Total social phenomena

Answer 12

Mauss’s idea of multidimensional phenomena that encompasses juridical economical, political, moral, and religious aspects.

Believed the act of reciprocity in gift giving was an example of this

Mauss’s study of the potlatch in “the gift” was an example of this because of how it entailed multiple avers of culture

Question 13

Cultural hermeneutics

Answer 13

Learning about the world based on the interpretation of text, such as the Bible

Weber believed this was the formula to capitalism in that predestination +the calling + ascetics =capitalism

Question 14

Wertrational/value rational

Answer 14

One of max weber’s four action types

Main point was that sometimes people make illogical decisions based off value rational ways-the world makes us value certain things that makes us act in certain ways

Different from Marx’s idea of instrumental rational where you work only to feed your family

Question 15

Charismatic authority

Answer 15

Leadership depends much more on the perceived legitimacy of the authority versus bloodlines

Revolutionary and temporary

Question 16

Joking relationships

Answer 16

Radcliffe brown as all about keeping equilibrium in society

Understood joking relationships as a cure to a social problem

Diffuses stress and therefore promotes equilibrium in society

Question 17

Participant-observation

Answer 17

Malinowski’s pioneered field method in which the observer lives and acts as the group to which he’s observing so to get an inside and outside perspective of the society

Looks at the imponderabilia of every day life as the trained observers will accurately record the emotions that may dictate an average day in the life

Question 18

Synoptic charts

Answer 18

Malinowski felt strongly about building synoptic charts for thorough ethnography

A synoptic chart is essentially a kinship chart but with complex relations shown schematically to illustrate relationships in other dimensions of culture

Charts represented relationships between ethnographic data, genealogies, maps, palms, and diagrams that served to outline cultural actions

Question 19

Superorganic

Answer 19

Kroeber’s idea that culture is nota development of the individual, but a product of society and history.

Culture doesn’t behave like nature does because it’s superprganic, so you have to look at it as a product of human thought and historic particularism

Question 20

Cultural configurations

Answer 20

Benedict’s idea that culture is not just a random collection of traits but a unique patterning or organization of traits

Question 21

National character study

Answer 21

Culture and personality study

Benedict’s “chrysanthemum and the sword”

Culture and personalities anthropologists wrote to debunk the theory that all personalities in a society are essentially homogeneous

The main contribution of Culture and Personality was to show that, revolutionary at the time, socialization continued beyond infancy and early childhood, and national discourses could have an effect on personal character

Question 22

Culture as thermodynamic systems

Answer 22

White outlined a theory in which the measurement of energy consumption of a society is an indication of a society’s advancement

Question 23

Cultural ecology

Answer 23

Stewards methodology of understanding how humans adapt to such a wife variety of environments

Wats in which culture change is induced by adaptation to the environment

While the environment influences the human character, it does not determine it

Question 24

Culture core

Answer 24

Steward proposed focusing on the part of culture which he called the culture core which basically referred to the subsistence or productive strategies of a group

Largely develop due to environment

The culture core might in turn shape other cultural features

Question 25

Cultural materialism

Answer 25

Harris’s idea that cultural materials area based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence

Question 26

Communitas

Answer 26

Turners description of he intense community spirit of social equality and solidarity when people are experiencing Liminality together.

Transitional state experience during rites of passages or pilgrimages

Question 27

Social drama

Answer 27

Turner’s method of accounting for the symbolism of conflict and crisis resolution in Ndembu society

Claimed that rituals are societal social dramas symbolizing societal resolution to crisis

Question 28

Liminality

Answer 28

Turner’s way of describing mid-ritual disorientation where change can occur during rites of passage or other ritual

Time where things can happen to propel transition