Midterm Help Flashcards
Who is Franz Boas?
The father of anthropology.
What did Franz boas want to do?
Preserve cultures that are dying out
What article did Franz Boas write and about who?
The potlatch and the Kwakiutl people
What is the potlatch?
Potlatch means distribution of property. It is a custom mostly concerned with “the interest-bearing investment of property”
What is culture?
Something that is learned/taught, something shared among members of a social group, and something that is central to individuals and always changing
Name three practices and beliefs exemplified in the Potlatch.
- Acquiring debt
- Trading blankets
- Rivalry and status
- Destroying valuable items
- Grease feasts (Feed of destruction)
- Enforced generosity
What is the main idea of having a potlatch?
Demonstrating wealth by giving great festivals, being able to destroy a lot of valuable items, defeating enemies, etc.
*Wealth is honorable because it allows you to give away wealth
Who are the Nacirema?
American backwards
Who wrote the article on the Nacirema and what was the point of writing this article?
Horace Miner, to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar
Name five types of culture systems
- Family/Kinship
- Gender+sexuality
- Religion
- Nationalism/Race/Ethnicity
- Economic life
Define cultural universalism
Things that every society + culture posesses
What theory did Charles Darwin claim about the evolution of a species?
There is a linear evolution of species from simple to complex
Define Biological Determinism and note what theory this defends
Genetically inherited difference b/w populations are important influences on cultural differences. This defends racism
Define Unilinear Evolutionism
Claims that all human ways of life pass through a similar sequence of stages in their development. Defining the progress of a culture is arbitrary
Who was E.B. Taylor and what did he want to prove?
A cultural evolutionist that wanted to explain creation w/o god
Define Animism
Ppl who believed in natural spirits- trees, water, heavenly beings
Who is Lewis Henry Morgan?
Believed in 3 stages to human progress : Savagery, barbarism, civilization. Worked w/t Iroquois + focused on kinship
Define Cultural Relativism and who came up with it
Cultures are all societies that exist on their own terms. Franz Boas
Define Salvage Ethnography
Trying to collect as much info as possible before a society goes extinct
Who wrote Seasonal Variation of the Eskimo?
Marcel Mauss
What is the summer habit of the Eskimos?
Families live in tents
What is the winter habit of the Eskimos?
Eskimos build houses instead of tents called a long-house. Long houses were inhabited by many families.
Define Kashim
An enlarged winter house, the communal house of the entire settlement. Only has seats. Religious ceremonies take place here.
What is the use of both summer and winter dwellings called?
Dual morphology
Define geographical volume
The space actually occupied by a particular society
Define mental volume
The geographical area that the society succeeds in encompassing in its thought
Name the main causes of Eskimo seasonal variation
- They have no interest in changing their ways/updating their tech. (shows an intrinsic desire to maintain traditionI
- Live a nomadic life bc their food sources move
Don’t forget about the film Nanook of the north and the staged portrayal of the Eskimos
Cool
Define environmental anthropology
The relationship b/w the env. and society
What are the 4 types of env. relationships?
- Hunting and gathering
- Agriculture
- Herding/Pastoralism
- Industrialism
Define reciprocal sharing
Used in hunting and gathering bc nature is unpredictable. aka moral economy. Everybody is sharing food, tools, etc.
Define pastoralism and name a group that practiced this
Herders that acquire food by raising and subsisting on domesticated animals. The Nuer
What are some negative effects of using agriculture
Sedentary, permanent settlements are formed, power is concentrated in the gov. and the gov./states start to collects taxes to pay the gov. to provide services
Define horticulture and give an exmaple
Man is the main source of labor
Ex: Slash and burn agriculture, swidden agriculture
Define Industrialized agriculture
Requires irrigation +fertilization, surplus food can be traded, machine is the main source of labor
What does industrialism shield us from?
The environment
Define Environmental Determinism
The idea that human and cultural differences can be directly attributed to physical differences in their env.
Does the Nuer live in accordance with env. deter. or nah?
No, they are influenced by pastoralism, tribes live independently of the env.