Module 1 Flashcards
What is archaeology?
the study of the material
remains of past and present culture
Holistic
involves looking at the
complete picture rather than individual
parts
Linguistic Anth
the study of the relationship between culture and language
Physical Anth
the study of human
variation, adaptation, and change
what is reflexive thinking
how our personal opinions and beliefs influence the ways in
which we see the people and activities
around us
Social memory
how social life affects the
processes of memory and forgetting,
whether on an individual psychological
level or in terms of how groups think of
their collective history
State of nature
a term used by early social
and political theorists for the imagined
condition of humankind before the rise
of civilization
Globalization
“social, economic, cultural,
and demographic processes that take
place within nations but also transcend
them, such that attention limited to local
processes, identities, and units of analysis
yields incomplete understanding of the
local”
Meaning
a complex concept, difficult to
define. A “culture” can be thought of as
a system of symbolic communication
in which “meaning” emerges out of the
manner in which cultural elements are
related to one another—as in a spoken
language, a ritual, or art form. The
anthropologist’s goal is to “interpret” and
understand such things
interpretation
the process of creating mean-
ing out of experience
social evolutionary scale
the transformation of one
social form into another, as for example
the “evolution” of organized states out of
previously tribal societies. In nineteenth-
century thought this was seen as the
emergence of complexity out of simpler
modes of organization
value
what something is “worth”—either
intrinsically (as with some sacred object),
or in exchange for something else (as
in trade)—often determined by market
interactions
Rutherford on anthropology
Scientific + humanistic, main goal is to understand what it means to be human as a complex diverse spectrum
Historical particularism
Studying cultures as a whole and (try to) study them in context with particular histories which inform them
Cultural anthropology
studied and engaged with via Dynamic, holistic - learned + performed, dynamic and we learn it together and teach it to someone - often by doing - often mundane, regular, day-to-day things we might not consider interesting
Arjun Appadurai
Anthropologist: culture is relational and elements of a cultural system, only make sense about one another. Understanding the relations in it.
‘Dissensus’ is part of culture; people do not always agree, even in the same cultural group. People resist dominant/hegemonic aspects of culture.
Culture is dynamic + leaking - meets changed traded and bleeding into one another
Participant observation
joining and engaging in the culture and customs of the people who are the focus of one’s study
Ethnography
- a theoretically informed description and explanation of a way of life or activity - act of methodology and also the product - often written work + films, soundscape, poetry, photography etc.
What methods do cultural anthropologists use?
Participant observation, ethnography, and participating in the lives of others, observing behaviour and cultural phenomenon, taking fieldnotes and conducting interviews
