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.
Who is Julian Steward
Father of ecological anthropology
Note
Dont forget Eskimo=Inuit
Who wrote the Argonauts?
Malinowski
What was the purpose of Malinowski writing Argonauts?
To stress importance of being amongst the actual ppl.+not just a visitor. To criticize the ideology of colonialism+colonial expansion, shows that we should see people as equals.
Who wrote the Article “Subject, method, and scope” and what is it about?
Malinowski. Argues that the anthropologist is not just the common white guy that goes off to far away places to study people. His subject was the Kula. His method was asking specific questions, writing field notes, a scientific one. Scope is to not think of the societies as savage. Wants to define how community works
Who is Alfred Cort Haddson and what was he known for?
Zoologist, for the first time info. was collected directly from the natives. Ideas about culture were no longer theoretical. Collected knowledge on kinship+family.
Who is James Frazer and what did he believe in?
Claimed that man progressed from magic to religion to science. “The Golden Bough.” Studied religious beliefs.
Define rapoor
Gaining the respect/friendship of the natives- helps to gain a key native informant.
Radcliffe Brown
All parts of a local culture plays a role in the working of all the other parts
Malinowski
The function of culture is to meet individual needs
Forms of exchange are
Generalized reciprocity: redistribution, having rituals of giving
Negative reciprocity: Bartering
Balanced reciprocity: Gift, prestige
What is Hau
When you give something there is a part of the spirit tat wants something in return
The Kula system
a system of recirculating resources and gifts, prestige and competition is associated with the giving of good gifts. no punishment for giving a lousy gift
Why do ppl. have religion? Answer from the intellectual cognitive approaach
Bc ppl want explanations
Why do ppl have religion? Answer from the psychological approach
Peeps get a psychological satisfaction from religion, helps cope with morality, like therapy
Why do ppl have religion? Answer from the sociological approach
Religion is a social institution that disciplines un in the values we are supposed to hold
Define ritual
Organized stereotyped, symbolic behaviors intended to influence supernatural powers
Define symbol
Something that represents, connotes, or calls to mind something else- not universal, somewhat arbitrary Ex: degrees+awards
What is the Rhodes Livingstone Institution
The first institution established in Africa- The turners resided here
Cognatic descent
You get to choose where you live, based on land resources
Unilinear lineage
Patrilineal+Matrilineal
Nonunilinear lineage
Choose which side to trace lineage
Cohabitation
Having kids later in life
Myerhoff
Number our days, aging, the urban ghetto, diaspora, community. Learning how kinship is made through circumstance and not blood relation. Community is a means of establishing continuity
Weston
Families we choose, exiles from kinship. kinship+exclusiion, nuclear family (gay),
Max Weber
What drives individuals to do what they do? interested in the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their actions
Clifford Geertz
Semiotic analysis, the wink, culture is a system of signs
Define Norm
rules about how people ought to act in certain situations, or about how particular ppl should act towards other ppl
Define Value
Shared ideas/standards about the worthiness of goals and lifestyles
Sexual Dimorphism
The physical differences b/w men and women
What are the five sexes and who wrote the five sexes are not enough
Male, female, merm, ferm, hermaphrodite, Fausto sterling
Define Biopower-Foucalt
A mode of social discipline established through the power over our bodies Ex: cutting heads off in public
Gender Stratification
The degree to which humans groups allocate material and social rewards to women and men based on their gender
Performative Utterances
Gender is created by doing a specific set pf actions Ex: the way we talk, dress, etc
Horatio Alger myth
Rags to riches story
The book Capital argued…
That making policies like redistributing wealth is crucial t helping alleviate the natural tendency of capitalism to make inequality
Examples of ranked (prestige) societies
How much you give holds your rank, instead of how much you have
Examples of Stratified societies (class vs caste)
Colonial India, there are rules about marriage, physical boundaries, etc.
Pierre Bourdieu belief
Education was a system that reproduced the same social standing
Define meritocracy
Success is based on your merit/personal qualifications
Define social reproduction
The process in which the same class position is passed on from generation to generation in a family
Define Habitus
Conditions of possibility - “The dispositions, self-perceptions, sensibilities, and tastes developed in response to external influence over a lifetime that shape one’s conception of the world and where one fits into it”
Define Cultural capital
The knowledge, habits, and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources in society
Embodied
Manners, accents
Objectified
Clothing, prestige, make up,
Institutionalized
Diploma, degree
Paul Willis
Foot soldiers of modernity. Learning to labor. The lads, how class is formed. Three waves of modernity: cultural response to the state, loss of manufacturing and a crisis of identity, common culture-new forms of social identities
Yan Hairong
New Masters new servants. Shift from agriculture to manufacturing, formation of new middle class
Define Suzhi
Quality, sense and sensibility of the self in a market of economy, human value
Who wrote the The Forest of Symbols and what was it about
Turner, the Ndembu people milk tree, life crisis, affliction
Who wrote the Egg and the Sperm
Emily Martin, it was about how language is used to give the sperm a more elevated position than the egg in reproduction
Who wrote the Five Sexes are not enough
Fausto-Sterling, there are more sexes than the binormative two
Who wrote Waiting and watching
Rapp, the anxiety of pregnancy, liminality
Who wrote the Anti politics machine
Ferguson, about Lesotho and the World Bank
Who wrote Displaced in the DR?
Nolan, citizenship in DR
Who wrote Insurgent citizenship?
Holsten, about citizenship in Brazil
Who wrote Red Tape?
Gupta, About how the state has many different definitions
Who wrote foot soldiers of modernity?
Paul Willis, about the lads
Who wrote New Masters New servants: women workers in China?
Yan Hairong
