Midterm Exam #1 Terms/Concepts

Question 1

Kindred

Answer 1

one’s family and relations

Question 2

Kinship chart/diagram

Answer 2

allows cultural anthropologists to quickly sketch out relationships between people during the interview process ; visually presents a culture’s kinship pattern

Question 3

patrilineal descent groups

Answer 3

lineage is traced through the male/paternal link (the dad’s side of the family when looking at a kinship chart) - never the kids of a circle (female)

Question 4

matrilineal descent groups

Answer 4

lineage is traced through the maternal/female link (mom’s side of the family; traced up through the circle never the triangle

Question 5

Meyer Fortes’s main argument in his article and its impact

Answer 5

that social organization or social structure should be the focus of any ethnographic work ; it was very influential and would be hard to find any ethnography of his generation that did not include some discussion of social organization

Question 6

Synchronic study

Answer 6

synchronic analysis is highly useful for studying correlations between traits, diachronic analysis is better for analyzing processes of change ; it is absolute necessary in functional research; synchronic isn’t the best for studying cultural change - it is best suited for the study of function within a culture (ex. considers a language at the moment in time without taking its history into account)
(another example: we can say that parliamentary government is a more vital institution that slavery because it has outlived the latter using a criterion of viability, BUT that isn’t synchronic study bc it looks at a process overtime)

Question 7

functional research

Answer 7

the research done by ethnographers - research of observation, participant observation and interviews

Question 8

culture

Answer 8

“culture is a unity in so far as it is tied to a bounded social structure”
“it is in the real events of social life that he saw the interconnection of all aspects of culture…and this has proved to be of the greatest value for the empirical task of field observation”
Fortes believes that all the customs and institutions of a society are NOT of equal weight
“culture as the global concept subsuming everything that goes on in social life” - limitation to this view: is that it treats everything in social life of equal weight and equal significance”

Question 9

society

Answer 9

social structure is the foundation of the whole social life of any continuing society
social structure is the feature of a people’s social life which is most resistant to change

Question 10

corporate group

Answer 10

corporate group as a general type of social formation

Question 11

corporation sole

Answer 11

this is a title carrying political office backed by ritual sanctions and symbols to which subjects, lands, jurisdiction and representative status belong ; a jural institution of the same generality as corporate groups and it is significant at all levels of social structure

Question 12

lineage

Answer 12

• stresses the significance of descent in their structure and distinguish them from wider often dispersed divisions of society ordered to the notion of common ancestry for which we find it useful to reserve the label clan
  all legal and political relations in the society take place in the context of the lineage system
  lineage systems describe relations between groups of people and between peoplecicicor

Question 13

unilineal descent groups

Answer 13

the most important feature of unilineal descent groups in africa is brought into focus by research on corporate organization

Question 14

patrilineal descent groups

Answer 14

follows paternal side/male side

Question 15

matrilineal descent groups

Answer 15

follows maternal/female side and descent

Question 16

family (as different from lineage)

Answer 16

it is through the family that the lineage is replenished by successive generations and through the family that growth and segmentation take place in the lineage; family institutions display remarkable persistence in the face of big changes

Question 17

patrilateral and matrilateral relations

Answer 17

rights over a woman’s child-bearing powers are held by her husband’s patrilineal lineage, the conflict occurs between the wives of a lineage segment - ex. it can leaf to witchcraft accusations between co-wives

Question 18

complementary filiation

Answer 18

the principal mechanism by which segmentation of the lineage is brought about; “no merely a constant element in the pattern of family relationships”; segmensegmit provides the essential link between a sibling group and the kin of a parent who does not determine descent; filiation is universally bilateral and is always complementary; it can build double unilineal systems; on an individual level - function of selecting individuals for social positions and roles

Question 19

fission and accretion

Answer 19

processes inherent in lineage systems

Question 20

segmentation

Answer 20

lineage is never undifferentiated - it is always segmented and is in the process of continuous further segmentation at any given time;
- every segment is in form a replica of every other segment and of the whole lineage - they are hierarchically organized by inclusiveness - the greater the time depth of a lineage system, the more elaborate the segmentation
- segment by paternal sibling group in patrilinieal and by maternal sibling group in matrilineal acc
lineage segmentation as a process in time links the lineage with the parental family; seen as the equivalent of division between siblings in the parental family

Question 21

segmentary society

Answer 21

lineage organization is most developed in segmentary societies ; lineage is not only a corporate unit in the legal or jural sense, but it is also the primary political association ; the individual has no legal or political status except as a member of a lineage; all legal and political relations in the society take place in the context of the lineage system

Question 22

kinship ideas

Answer 22

“kinship to him is primarily a tissue of culturally conditioned emotional attitudes

Question 23

unilateral descent groups

Answer 23

“unilateral descent is mainly due to the transmission of property right and the mode of residence after marriage”
“not of significance among peoples who live in small groups, depend on rudimentary technology or have little durable property”
“breakdown when modern economic framework with occupation

Question 24

EP and witchcraft

Answer 24

explains coincidences - relations between men and unfortunate events
- unless evidence and oracular confirmation that sorcery or other evil was at play
-or not applicable if attributed to incompetence, breach of taboo
- explains WHY events are harmful to men NOT how; they percieve how things happen just like we do
- anyone can be a witch ; neighbors and friends ; nothing remarkable about being a witch
-“bc he was hated”
-second spear = idea of role that witchcraft plays in someone’s death; they acknowledge the “true” cause and then witchcraft at the second spear
-wc apart of everyday life for Azande - system of vlaues that regulate human conduct
- EP employed these thoughts w out realizing ; explains certain conditions in chain of causation
-their secondary causes = our true causes
- tries to explain with granary example - wc is explaining coincidence
says it is the “socially relevant cause”
-ep trys to understand it. but azande don’t
-trys to take instances and dissect it to present key principles to his audience
– EP says wc explains what cannot be explained by facts
- “foreshorten chain of events by selecting cause that is socially relevant
- azande accept mystical explanation for illness but not for social structure

Question 25

EP - Time and Space in the Nuer

Answer 25

nuer conceptualize time as what events they have going on throughout the day
- oecological time - time of year is measure on season and envornmental factors; they don’t look at a clock or calendar; it is cyclicle bc it comes back around on a yearly basis and directly guides their economic activities
- structural time - the structures never change; they are just enduring structures that keep repeating themselves - this is how it is an illusion ; ex. age grades - men born at same time and go through initiation - refers back to social organization - how far back you have to go to find a common ancestor is another way to think about structural time
oecological distance - how long it takes to get there relative to terrain
strucutral distacne - distance in terms of closeness; perception of spatial relationships that are definied by social relationships
sentiment impact space - how kinship relationships relate to strucutral space
cultural relativism - focus on space anf time are apart of nature and are objective - hes saying that this is not the case and the way we understanf these dimesnions of naure are culturally defined and ther is a logic - it is NOT arbitrart
- poltiical function dependent on social strucutre

Question 26

lele - animals in lele religion

Answer 26

- humans are mannerly 
animals are brute beasts 
fertitlite rites refer to fecundity 
- most animals shi n human contact 
- deviant species or deviant animals  - disregard boundary between humans and themsleves = partly human