midterm 1 Flashcards
What are the characteristics of culture?
1) Learned - enculturation and rites of passage.
2) Shared
3) Integrated
4) Adaptive
5) Symbolic - summarizing symbol
6) Cultures are organized in a way people think about the world.
Four subfields of anthropology
1) Biological anthropology (discover human origins biologically)
2) Archaeology (fossilized remains are examined)
3) Cultural anthropology (culture)
4) Linguistic anthropology (language)
What are the characteristics of anthropology?
1) Evolutionary
2) Comparative
3) Holistic
Which anthropologist proposed the three “ethical stages” during the 19th century?
Morgan (1818-1881) proposed the typology that there are three ethical stages that all societies must go through: Savagery, barbarism, civilization.
What is the fifth subfield of anthropology?
Applied Anthropology
Name three models of cultural changes that were mentioned during class
1) Diffusion - the spread of culture through direct or indirect contact.
2) Assimilation - the abandonment of their own culture in exchange of adapting the dominant culture.
3) Acculturation - adapting some elements of the dominant culture, while also maintaining their own culture.
How have anthropologists explained human cultural diversity?
1) Evolutionism - based on Darwin’s theories about survival of the fittest.
2) Historical Particularism
3) Functionalism
4) Culture and personality
5) Cultural materialism
6) interpretive (symbolic) anthropology
Who is Herbert Spencer?
A 19th century thinker who argued that an examination of the evolution of social structures over time was central to the study of the human condition
name three cultural changes that are considered contemporary/historical changed:
1) Colonialism
2) Migration
3) Globalization
Biological (physical) anthropology:
the specialty of anthropology that looks at humans as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics make us different from and/or similar to other living things.
(This group consists of: paleoanthropology, Human and biology variation, and primatology)
Archaeology
One of the four subfields of anthropology that is interested in what we can learn from material remains left behind by earlier human societies.
“the study of the human past”
(this group contains: prehistoric archaeology and historical archaeology)
Linguistic Anthropology
One of the four subfields of anthropology that is concerned with the study of human languages.
(this group contains: descriptive linguistics, comparative linguistics, and historical linguistics)
Cultural Anthropology
Sometimes referred to as “sociocultural anthropology”, “ethnology,” and “social anthropology.”
One of the four subfields of anthropology that studies how variation on beliefs and behaviours is shared by culture and learned by different members of human groups.
Applied anthropology
The fifth subfield of anthropology.
The use of information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical problems within and between cultures.
This consists of medical anthropology, developmental anthropology, and urban anthropology. It also has forensic anthropology, applied medical anthropology, and corporate and consumer anthropology.
Culture:
It is learned, adaptive, integrated, shared, symbolic, and a negotiated/contested system of meaning.
sets of learned behaviours and ideas that humans acquire as members of a society. We use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which we live.
Critique of “Culture”
Lila Abu-Lughod:
1) Culture is not an airtight container
2) Cultures are not impediments to change
3) Cultures are not as coherent as we think
4) Cultures are not internally homogenous
Evolutionism:
a theory that claims that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution.
“Social Darwinism” - (survival of the fittest) the belief that the strongest and the fittest should survive in society, and the weak should die out.
Herbert Spencer: took Darwin’s theory of evolution and applied it to how societies change and evolve over time.
Early anthropologists:
1) Lewis Henry Morgan - “three ethical stages (savagery, barbarian, civilization)
2) Edward Burnett Tylor - proposed unilineal cultural evolutionism; a series of stages through which all societies must go (or had gone) in order to reach civilization.
Problems?
- this creates ethnocentrism.
Historical Particularism:
the study of cultures in their own historical contexts.
Franz Boas: founder of historical particularism; also the father of cultural relativism.
Ethnocentrism:
to judge other ways of life according to one’s own standards.
1) Superiority
2) Normality
3) Universality - the idea that the beliefs within a cultural system are superior and also ought to be shared to everyone in the world.
“the opinion that one’s own way of life (culture) is the most natural, correct, or fully human way of life.”
Cultural relativism:
to judge people’s way of life relative to its own standards.
1) No universal yardstick
2) Look at it sympathetically
3) “alternate common sense”
Language has an impact on our:
1) thought processes and perception
2) Worldview/culture
3) Behaviors
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
also known as “linguistic relativity principle.”
The assertion that language has the power to shape the way people see the world.
What are the components of language?
1) Syntax - the study of sentence structure
2) Morphology - the study of how words are put together
3) Phonology - the study of sound
4) Semantics - the study of meaning
What are the characteristics of language?
1) SYMBOLISM
2) DISPLACEMENT
3) PRODUCTIVITY
4) DUALITY OF PATTERNING: language is patterned in two levels - level of sound (phoneme) and level of meaning (morpheme)
What are the steps that are required for one to do fieldwork?
1) CHOOSING A PROBLEM OR SITE
2) GETTING FUNDING (MONEY) - funding from SSHR or private agencies; getting approval from the Ethics Board.
3) PRELIMINARY RESEARCH - assess feasibility, make local contacts, request permissions, and practice local language.
4) ARRIVAL AND CULTURE SHOCK - the feeling of dislocation when arriving to a new environment; anthropologists may experience pain, illnesses, and discomfort upon arrival to their field.
5) DATA COLLECTION - Surveys, oral accounts (from key informants; collecting data from random samples, judgment samples, and snowball samples), Participant observation, archives & artifacts, and Diary
6) INTERPRETING AND WRITING UP DATA - ethnography as “translation”, Emic vs Etic POV
Culture Shock:
collection of physical and mental symptoms when realization that our dosa does not work.
Lecture example: Peace Corps volunteers in Botswana
Reflexivity:
critically thinking about the way one thinks’ reflecting on one’s own experiences.
Polyphony:
anthropologists try to gather as many voices as they can to be included into their ethnographies; to obtain a common agreement.
Anthropological perspective:
an approach to humanity that is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary.
Anthropology:
the integrated study of human nature, human society, and human history.
Binary Opposition:
a pair of opposites used as an organizing principle (e.g., body/soul; yin/yang; male/female)
Comparative
a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in a wide range of human societies before generalizing about human nature, human society, and human history
Determinism:
the philosophical view that one simple force (or a few simple forces) causes (or determines) complex events.
Dualism:
the philosophical view that reality consists of two equal and irreducible forces.
Ethnography:
An anthropologist’s recorded description of a particular culture.
Evolutionary:
a characteristics of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to place their observations about human nature, human society, or human history in a flexible framework that takes consideration change over time.
Holism:
a perspective on the humanity that assumes that mind and body, individual and society, and individual and environment interpenetrate and even one another.
Human agency:
human beings’ ability to exercise at least some control over their lives.
Idealism:
the philosophical view that pure, incorruptible ideas - or the mind that produces such ideas - constitute the essence of human nature.
Informants:
people in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about local ways of life.
Materialism:
the philosophical view that activities of our physical bodies in the material world constitute the essence of human nature.
Symbol:
something that stands for something else.
Fieldwork:
an extended period of close involvement with the people in whose way of life anthropologists are interested, during which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of their data.
Intersubjective meanings:
Meaning rooted in the symbolic systems of a culture and shared by participants in that culture.
Multi-sited ethnography
Ethnographic research on cultural processes that are not contained by social, ethnic, religious, or national boundaries, in which the ethnographer follows the process from site to site, often doing fieldwork in sites and with persons that were traditionally never subject to ethnographic analysis.
Participant-observation
The method anthropologists use to gather information by living and working with the people whose culture they are studying while participating in their lives as much as possible.
Positivism
The view that there is a single reality “out there” that can be detected through the senses and that there is a single, appropriate scientific method for investigating that reality.
Positionality:
a person’s uniquely situated social position, which reflects his or her gender, nationality, political views, previous experiences, and so on.
Colonialism:
the cultural domination of people by larger, wealthier powers.
neocolonialism:
The persistence of profound social and economic ties linking former colonial territories to their former colonial rulers despite political sovereignty
“the control of less-developed countries by developed countries through indirect means.”.
Social structure
the enduring aspects of the social forms in a society, including its political and kinship systems.
Structural-functional theory
a position that explores how particular social forms function from day-to-day in order to reproduce the traditional structure of the society.
Unilineal cultural evolutionism
a 19th century theory that proposed series of stages through which all societies must go (or had gone) in order to reach civilization.
White man’s burden
Europeans’ sense that it was their duty to colonize, rule, and “civilize” all peoples they viewed as “savage”
Creole
a complex language with native speakers that has developed over one or more past generations from two or more distinct languages. Alternatively, a complex language that has developed from two or more distinct languages and that is used as main language, whether or not it has native speakers.
Morphemes
the shortest meaning-bearing units in any language. The change to plural form has the morpheme for plural added.
Morphology
The study of the smallest units of meaning (morphemes) in a language.
Phonemes
Basic units of distinct sound that are characteristics of a language and that come together to form words. On other own, phonemes carry no referential or lexical meaning.
Phonology
The study of sounds (phones and phonemes) of a language.
Lingua Franca/ Pidgin
a simple language with no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of communities that possess distinct native languages. Alternatively, a shared secondary language in a speech community in which speakers also use some other main language.
“a grammatically simplified form of a language, used for communication between people not sharing a common language. Pidgins have a limited vocabulary, some elements of which are taken from local languages, and are not native languages, but arise out of language contact between speakers of other languages.”
Semantics
The study of meaning
Syntax
The study of sentence structure.
Economy
From an institutional perspective, the culturally specific processes used by members of a society to provide themselves with material resources.
Market exchange
a mode of exchange in which the exchange of goods (trade) is calculated in terms of a multi-purpose medium of exchange and standard of value (money) and carried by means of a supply-deman-price mechanism (the market)
means of production
the tools, skills, organization, and knowledge used to extract energy from nature. (as stated by Marx) f
mode of production
“a specific, historically occurring set of social relations through which labour is deployed wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” (Defined by Eric Wolf)
The concept of modes of production is holistic.
modes of exchange
Patterns according to which distribution takes place: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.
production
The transformation of nature’s raw materials into a form suitable for human use.
reciprocity
A mode of exchange in which individuals exchange goods and/or services (1) under the assumption that the exchanges will eventually balance out, (2) with the expectation of immediate balance, or (3) in the hope that at least one party will get something for nothing.
redistribution
a mode of exchange in which a centralized social organization receives contributions from all members of the group and redistributes them in a way that provides for every member.
Design features of language
The characteristics of language that, when taken together, differentiation it from other known animal communication systems.
Language:
the system of symbols we use to encode our experiences of the world and of one another.
Socialization:
the social aspects of learning one’s culture.
the process by which humans learn to become members of a group, both by interacting appropriately with others and by coping with the behavioural rules established by the group.
Enculturation:
the process by which humans living with one another must learn to come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are considered appropriate in their respective culture.
Rite of passage:
a ritual that serves to make the movement and transformation of an individual from one social position to another. (Involves three phases: SEPARATION, LIMINALITY, REINTEGRATION)
structural violence
violence that results form the way that political and economic forces structure risk for various forms of suffering within a population.
Social birth:
a social recognition of the transition to personhood.
for example: Hmong of Laos –> “soul calling”
Deviance:
behaviours that violate cultural norms and expectations.
Gender Identity:
cultural construction of beliefs and behaviors considered appropriate for each sex.
Naive Realism:
the belief that people everywhere see the world in the same way
(passive) Infanticide:
the deliberate killing of a child below one year of age.
Dominant personality type:
set of psychological characteristics with the high incidence in the population.
Name three types of reciprocity:
1) Generalized - doing an exchange without expecting an immediate return and without specifying the value of the return.
2) Balance - an exchange that is expected return of equal value and has a specified time limit.
3) Negative - an exchange of goods and services in which at least one party attempts to get something for nothing without suffering any penalties. These attempts can range from haggling over prices to outright seizure (i.e., stealing things/objects from people)
relations of productions
the social relations linking the people who use a given means of production within a particular mode of production.
Biocultural organisms
organisms whose defining features are co-determined by biological and cultural factors. Anthropologists use this term to describe human beings.
biological evolution
change (through mutation) in genetic makeup (the DNA/RNA) of a population that is passed on through the generations. Mutations can be beneficial, non-beneficial (lethal), or neutral; thus, they can be overtly noticeable or not noticeable.
co-evolution
the relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes in which each makes up an important part of the environment to which the other must adapt
cultural evolution
evolution of the beliefs and behaviours we incorporate into human development through the experiences of teaching and learning.
cultural pattern
a behaviour or idea that members of a specific society repeatedly pass on to one another, across generations, and that is thus recognizable to all members of that society.
essence
an unchanging core of features that is unique to things of the same (whether they are chairs, cows, ideas or people) and makes them what they are
ethnology
the comparative study of two or more cultures
habitus
everyday, routine social activity rooted in habitual behaviour
metanarrative
a grande-scale story or theme that members of a given culture recognize and that often drives ideas and actions within that culture.
paleoanthropology
the study of the fossilized remains of human beings’ earliest ancestors.
primatology
the study of non-human primates, the closest living relatives of human beings.
dialectic of fieldwork
the process of building a bridge of understanding between anthropologist and informant so that each can begin to understand each other.
fact
a widely accepted observation, a taken-for-granted item of common knowledge, that becomes intelligible only when it is interpreted and placed in a context of meaning.
objective knowledge
knowledge about reality that is absolute and true for all people, in all times and places.
situated knowledge
knowledge that is set within or specific to a precise context or situation. For the ethnographer, situating knowledge based on field observations means explicitly stating his or her personal details such as gender, nationality, political views, class/ethnic/educational backgrounds, and so on.
structured interviews
a method for gathering information whereby an anthropologist (or another researcher) asks a set of predetermined questions and record participants’ responses. Structured interviews can be used as an opening to move into intersubjective discussions and then into participant observation.
subjective meaning
meaning that seems true to a particular person, based on his or her personal values, beliefs, opinions, and assumptions.
band
a form of social organization that consists of a small group of foragers (usually fewer than fifty people), in which labour is divided according to age and sex, and social relations are highly egalitarian.
capitalism
an economic system dominated by a supply and demand market designed to create capital and profit.
chiefdom
a form of social organization in which the leader (a chief) and the leader’s close relatives are set apart from the rest of society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige.
culture area
a geographical region in which cultural traditions share similar culture traits
culture traits
particular features or parts of a cultural tradition such as dance, ritual, or style of pottery.
decolonization
the withdrawal of a colonial power from a territory that had been under its control
imperialism
a system in which one country controls other, less powerful territories through colonization, often augmented by military force.
politcal economy
a social structure that is organized around material (economic) interests, in which these interests are protected and enhanced through the use of power (politics)
small-scale societies
a community of several dozen to several hundred people usually held together by family (kinship) ties and often engaged in traditional subsistence activities.
social forms
social forms
state
a stratified society that possess a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police. A state, which has a separate set of governmental institutions designed to enforce laws and collect taxes and tribute, is run by an elite that possesses a monopoly on the use of force
tribe
a form of social organization generally larger than a band, in which members usually farm or herd for a living; social relations are relatively egalitarian, although there may be a chief who speaks for the group
typology
a classification system based on systematic organization into types on the basis of shared qualities.
communicative competence
a term coined by anthropological linguist Dell Hymes to refer to the mastery of adult rules for socially and culturally appropriate speech
connotative meaning
additional meaning of a word that derive from the typical concerns in which they are used and rely on personal and cultural associations.
denotative meaning
the formal meaning(s) of a word, as given in the dictionary
discourse
in speech, a meaningful utterance or series of utterances united by a common theme
ethnopragmatics
the study of language use in a specific culture, grounded in an ethnographic approach, with close attention to the relationships among language, communication, and social interaction.
grammar
a set of rules that describes the patterns of linguistic usage observed by members of a particular speech community.
heteroglossia
the co-existence of multiple varieties of a specific language
language ideology
a system of beliefs about how language features relate to social features and what they reveal about the people who use them
linguistic competence
a term coined by linguist Noam Chomsky to refer to the mastery of adult grammar
linguistics
the scientific study of language
metalanguage
language used to talk about language. It often shapes discourse, either directly (e.g., by making language the topic of discussion) or indirectly (e.g., by revealing our awareness of language as a term of symbols that is open to interpretation)
native speaker
a person who has spoken a particular language since early childhood
pragmatics
the study of language in the context of its use
vocabulary
the words used in a particular language or by members of a particular speech community.
affluence
the condition of having more than enough of whatever is required to satisfy consumption needs.
consumption
using up material goods necessary for human survival
cultural ecology
the study of the ways in which human beings relate to one another and to their natural environment
distribution
the allocation of goods and services.
econiche
the sum total of relations between a species and the plants and animals on which it relies for survival; these relations define those places where a species is “at home”
economic anthropology
“the part of the discipline [of anthropology] that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living” (Wilk)
ecotones
a transition area between two different eco zones that displays characteristics of both ecozones.
ecozones
the particular mixture of plant and animal species occupying any particular region of the earth.
food collectors
people who gather wild plant materials, fish, and/or hunt for food
food producers
people who depend on domesticated plants and/or animals for food.
ideology
according to Marx, those products of consciousness - such as morality, religion, and metaphysics - that purport to explain to people who they are and to justify the kinds of lives they lead
institutions
stable and enduring cultural practices that organize social life
intensive agriculture
a form of cultivation that employs plows, draft animals, irrigation, and fertilizer to bring a large amount of land under cultivation at one time.
labour
the activity of linking human social groups to the material world around them. Human labour is always social labour.
mechanized industrial agriculture
large-scale farming that is highly dependent on industrial methods of technology and production. This type of agriculture is often found in conjunction with factory farming of animals.
neoclassical economic theory
a formal attempt to explain the workings of capitalistic enterprise, with particular attention to distribution.
relations of production
the social relations linking the people who use a given means of production within a particular mode of production
scarcity
a condition under which it is assumed that resources (e.g., money) will never be plentiful enough for people to obtain all the goods or services they desire.
subsistence strategies
the patterns of production, distribution, and consumption that members of a society use to meet their basic material survival needs
