MIDTERM Flashcards
Anthropology
not the science of culture, but the social science that studied dominated coloured people and their ancestors living outside the boundaries of modern white societies
Unilineal evolutionism
Savagery - Barbarism - Civilization
Cultural relativism
scientific anti-racism (We are all humans, share same DNA) - All men are created equal
Who was responsible for the decolonization of anthropology?
William S Willis Jr
What is anthropology?
The study of humanity, including its prehistoric origins and contemporary human diversity
What are the four fields of anthropology?
- Biological or physical anthropology
- Archaeology or prehistory
- Linguistic anthropology
- Cultural anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Study of the life ways of the world’s living people, for example:
- Making a living
- Health
- Life Cycle
- Marriage and family
- Social groups, politics
- Language
Who is Franz Boas?
Cultural relativism
Who is Margaret mead?
Public anthropology
Who is Cluade Levi-Strauss
French structuralism
Who is Karl Marx?
Marxism and cultural materialism - industrialism
Three Debates in Cultural Anthropology
- Biological determinism vs Cultural Constructionism (Nature vs Nurture)
- Interpretive Anthropology vs Cultural Materialism (What people believe, their ideas)
- Individual Agency vs Structuralism
Agency
Free will vs institutional barriers
Cultural materialism
Behaviour
Cultural Interpretivism
Belief/thought
Four Models of Cultural Interaction (Figure 1.3)
- Clash of civilizations, a conflict model
- Westernization (less powerful forced into the more powerful culture)
- Hybridization (a blending model)
- Localization ( a model in which a local culture remakes and transforms global culture)
Ethnocentrism
Judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture rather that by the standards of that particular culture - CONTEXT
Cultural Relativism
The perspective that each culture must be understood in terms of the values and ideas of that culture and not judged by the standards of another culture
Absolute Cultural Relativism
whatever goes on within a particular culture cannot be questioned or changed by outsiders, as that would be ethnocentric
Critical Cultural Relativism
anyone can pose questions about what goes on in various cultures, including their own culture, in terms of how particular practices or beliefs Amy harm certain members
What is an Economic System?
- Livelihood
- Consumption
- Exchange
What is a Mode of Livelihood?
A mode of livelihood is the dominant way of making a living in a culture
Modes often overlap or are mixed
The Five Modes of Livelihood
- Foraging
- Horticulture
- Pastoralism
- Agriculture
- Industrialism and Information Age
Foraging
- Based on using food available in nature
- gathering, fishing, hunting
- Sustainable if undisturbed by outside forces
- Today only 250,000 people support themselves using foraging primarily
Pastoralism
- Reliance on products of domesticated animal herds
- Animals and their products provide over held of the group’s diet
- Trade with other groups for other food and goods
- Requires movement of animals to fresh pastureland for sustainability
Key Elements of Pastoralism
- Spatial mobility
- Group autonomy
- Animals s private property
- Use right regulate pastureland and migratory routs
Horticulture
- Growing crops in gardens using hand tools
- Variety of foods grown: yams, bananas, manioc
- Crop fields support denser populations than foraging and allow for permanent settlements
Agriculture
- Intensive strategy of production
- More labor, use of fertilizers, control of water supply, use of animals
- Involves indigenous knowledge
- Permanent settlements
- Higher population density
Industrialism/Informatics
Goods produced to satisfy consumer demand - transfer of info through electronic media
Three Transformations Due to the Spread of Capitalism
- displaced millions of people from their land
- recruitment of foragers, horticulturalists etc to work in low levels of the industrial/Information Age sector
- increases in export commodity production and decreases in food production for family use
What is consumption?
The dominant way, in a culture of using up goods and services
Minimalism
a mode of consumption that emphasizes simplicity, is characterized by few and finite consumer demands, and involves an adequate and sustainable means to achieve them
Consumerism
A mode of consumption in which people’s demands are many and infinite and the means of satisfying them are insufficient and become depleted in the effort to satisfy these demands
Leveling Mechanism
an unwritten, culturally embedded rule that prevents an individual from becoming wealthier or more powerful than anyone else
Consumption Microcultures
Microcultures have distinct entitlement patterns . Social inequality may play an important role and affect human welfare. Examples are class, gender, race/ethnicity
Balanced Exchange: Generalized Reciprocity
- Involves the least conscious sense of interest in material gain or of what might be received in return
- Main form of exchange in foraging societies
Balanced Exchange: Expected Reciprocity
- Exchange of approximately equally valued goods or services between people of roughly equal social status
- If a party fails to complete the exchange, the relationship will break down
Balanced Exchange: Redistribution
- One person collects goods or money from many members of a group and provides social return at a later time
- Possible inequality because what is returned is not always equal in a material sense
Unbalanced Exchange
The buying and selling of commodities under competitive conditions in which the forces of supply and demand determine value and the seller seems to man a profit
- Market exchange is a prominent form
Foraging Mode of Reproduction: Characteristics
- moderate death and birth rates
- value of children: moderate
Agricultural Mode of Reproduction
- High birth rates, declining death rates
- high value of children
- increased reliance on direct means of birth control
Industrial/Informatics Mode of Reproduction
- following the demographic transition
- Negative population growth in industrial/informatics countries: below-replacement-level-fertility
- Value of children is mixed
Personality and the Life Cycle
- Birth, infancy, and childhood
- Socialization during childhood
- Adolescence and identity
- Adulthood
Major finding of difference between horticultural and industrial/informatics sites
Horticulture: Nurturant-responsible children
Industrial/informatics: Dependent-dominant children
Gender pluralism
The existence within a culture of multiple categories of femininity, masculinity and androgyny that are tolerated and legitimate
Third Genders
Some cultures permit the expression of married forms of sexual orientation for example the berdache
Asexuality
when a person does not experience sexual attraction or have interest in sexual activity
The Subfield of Medical Anthropology
- the cross-cultural study of health and health problems
Community healing
Mobilization of community ‘energy’ as key to cure
All-right healing dances
Open, everyone has access
Humoral Healing
Based on balance among elements within the body
Different foods/drugs have ‘heating’ or ‘cooling’ effects
Inculturation
- to teach a culture to the next generation (compare to medschool)
- Hazing
- Cognitive Retrogression
- Dehumanization (technology)
Three Theoretical Approaches in Medical Anthropology
- Ecological/Epidemiological Approach
- Interpretivist Approach
- Critical Medial Anthropology
Ecological/Epidemiological Approach
Position that the environment interacts with culture to influence the cause and spread of health problems
Interpretivist Approach
- Focus on understanding illness and healing a symbolic and enacted as meaningful performance
- Healing as providing symbolic meaning through the placebo effect, or meaning effect
Critical Medical Anthropology
Focus on how economic and political power structures and inequality (structural suffering, “structural violence”) affect health access to healing
Globalization and Change
- All aspects of health systems are changing
- Afflictions are on the move
- Healing techniques are on the move
Three Ways of Being Kin
- Descent
- Sharing
- Marriage
Unkin
not family
Consanguineal
blood affiance, marriage
Kinship Through Descent: Two major types:
Unilineal
Bilineal
Unilineal Descent
Basis of kinship in 60 percent of the world’s cultures
Patrilineal, Matrilineal
Bilineal Descent
- Descent is traced equally from both parents
- Married couples live away from their parents
Criteria for Defining Marriage
- Numbers of people involved
- Gender/sexual orientation of people involved
- Functions of the relationship - Sexual intercourse, legitimacy of children, shared property, co-residence
A working definition of Marriage
more or less a stable union, usually between two people who may or may not be co-residential, sexually involved with each other, and procreative with each other
Fraternal Polyandry
One woman would marry two brothers
Endogamous
unity
Exogamous
alliance
Nuclear Family
mother, father, children living in a house together
Extended Family
mother, father, children, and other family as well in one household
Biological Anthropology
the study of humans as biological organisms, including evolution and contemporary variation
Archaeology
the study of past human cultures through their material remains
Linguistic Anthropology
the study of human communication, including its origins, history, and contemporary variation and change
Cultural Anthropology
the study of living peoples and their cultures, including variation and change. Culture refers to people’s learned and shared behaviours and beliefs
Applied Anthropology
the use of anthropological knowledge to prevent or solve problems or to shape and achieve policy goals
Three subfields of biological anthropology
Primatology
Paleoanthropology
Contemporary human biological variation
Agency
the ability of humans to make choices and exercise free will even within dominating structures
Biological Determinism
a theory that explains human behaviour and ideas as shaped mainly by biological features such as genes and hormones
Structurism
a theoretical position concerning human behaviour and ideas that says large forces such as the economy, social and political organization, and the media shape what people do and think
Holism
the view that one must study all aspects of a culture to understand it
Globalization
increased and intensified international ties related to the movement of goods, information, and people
Localization
the transformation of global culture by local cultures into something new
Particiant observation
basic fieldwork method in cultural anthropology that invloves living in a culture for a long time while gathering data
Multisited research
fieldwork conducted in more than one location to understand the culture of dispersed members of the culture or relationships among different levels of culture
Informed consent
an aspect of field work ethics requiring that the researcher inform the reserach participants of the intent scope, and possible effects of the proposed study and seel theor consent to be in the study
Rapport
a trusting relationship between the reseacher and the study population
Deductive approach to research
a research method that involves posing a research question or hypothesis, gathering data related to the question, and then assessing the findings in reltion to the original hypothesis
Inductive approach to research
a reseach approach that avoids hypothesis formation in advance of the research and instead takes its lead from the culture being studied
Emic
indsiders’ perceptions and categories, and their explanations for why they do what they do
Computational anthropology
a research approach that uses large quantitative datasets available through Google, telephone use, and other computer-based sources to provide large-scale information about human preferences, values, and behaviour
Mode of livelihood
the dominant way of making a living in a culture
Mode of consumption
the dominant pattern, in a culture, of using things up or specnding resourches to satisfy demands
Mode of exchange
the dominant patter, in a culture, of transferring goods, services, and other items between and among people and groups
Subjective well-being
how people experience the quality of their lovces based on their perception of what is a good life
Industrial capital agriculture
a form of agriculture that is capital-intensive, substituting machinery and purchased inputs for human and animal labor
Industrialism/digital economy
a mode of livelihood in which goods are produced through mass employment in business and commercial operations and through the creation aand movement of information through electronic media
Potlatch
a grand feast in which guests are invited to eat and to receive gifts from the hosts
Pronatalism
an attitude or policy that encourages childbearing
Infanticide
the killing of an infant or child
Cultural competence
among Western-trained health professionals, awareness of and respesct for beliefs and practices that differ from thse of Western medicine
Female genital cutting
a range of practices involving partial or total removal of the clitoris and labia
Hijra
in India, a blurred gender role in which a person, usually biologically male, takes on femle dress and behaviour
Gender pluralism
the existence within a culture of multiple categories of femininity, masuculinity, and blurred genders that are tolerated and legitimate
Hereronormativity
the belief that all people fall into two distinct genders, male and female, with corrresponding distinct social roles and adering to heterosexual relations
Couvade
customs applying to the behaviour of fathers during and shorrtly after the birth of their children
Culture-specific syndrome
a collection of signs and symptoms that is restriced to a particular culture or a mimited number of cultures
somatization
the process through which the body absorbs social stress and manifests symptoms of suffering
Susto
fright/shock disease, a culture-specific illness found in Spain and Portugal and among Latino people wherever they live; symptoms include back pain, fatigue, weakness, and lack of appetite
Structural suffering
human health problems caused by such economic and political factors as war, famine, terrorism, forced migration, and poverty
Phytotherapy
healing throguh the use of plants
Medicalization
the labeling of a particular issue or problem as medical and requiring medical treatment when, in fact, that issue or problem is economic or political
Medical pluralism
the existance of more than one health system in a culture; also, a government policy to promote the integration of local healing systems into biomedical practice
Intercultural health
an approach in health that seeks to reduce the gaps between local and Western health systems in promoting more effective prevention and treatment of health problems
Kinship system
the predominant form of kin relationships in a culture and the kinds of behaviour involved
Incest taboo
a strongly held prohibition against marrying or having sex with particular kin
Endogamy
marriage within a particular group or locality
Parallel cousin
offspring of either one’s father’s brother or one’s mother’s sister
Cross-cousin
offspring of either one’s father’s sister or one’s mothers brother
Exogamy
marriage outside a particular group or locality
Dowry
the transfer of cash and goods from the bride’s family to the newly married couple
Brideprice
the transfer of cash and goods from the groom’s family to the bride’s family and to the bride
Brideservice
a form of marriage exchange in which the groom works for his father-in law for a certain lengths of time before retiring home with the bride
