MT #1 Flashcards
What is Anthropology?
The study of people through their origins, material belongings, contemporary variations and their changes over history
What is Biological anthropology?
Subfield that studies human biological evolution, primates, and contemporary variations among peoples of the world.
What is Archaeology?
The study of human past through the excavation and analysis of material remans (ancient garbage)
What are the three examples of “ancient human garbage”
- Artifacts: objects made or modified by humans (Lithics - stone tools + byproducts of making them)
- Ecofacts: Recovered from archaeological context that are remains of organisms (ex. Dino bones)
- Features: Non-portable portions of site (ex. Fire pit)
What is linguistic anthropology?
the study of human communications within its sociocultural context.
What are the four branches of linguistic anthropology?
- historical linguistics: language change
- descriptive linguistics: language structure - Sociolinguistics: language use
- Ethnolinguistics: language culture relationship
What is cultural anthropology?
studies specific contemporary cultures and the more general underlying patterns of human culture derived through cultural comparisons
What is ethnography?
Description of a culture by means of direct fieldwork
What is ethnology?
Comparative study of cultural differences between two or more cultures.
What is holism?
The study of cultures as wholes, not simply as a collection of parts
What is comparative approach?
Use of cross cultural comparisons to understand issues facing many cultures worldwide (ex. Globalization impacts, inequality)
What is ethnocentrism?
the practice of viewing the cultural features of other societies in terms of ones own. Operates under the assumption that there are absolute standards. (Ex. Upside down global map)
What is Cultural relativism?
Any part of a culture must be viewed in its proper cultural context rather than from the viewpoint of the observer. Rejects absolute standards (ex. Upside down map)
What is an emic perspective?
The insider view. Describes a culture from the perspective of the people being studied.
What is an Etic perspective?
The outsider view. Describes a culture based on the perspectives of the anthropologists.
What is culture?
Everything that people have, think, and do as members in society.
What are values?
What is important to people and that which they act to acquire or maintain.
What are norms?
Ideas about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behaviour (ex. Canadians saying sorry)
What are the Characteristics of culture?
- Culture influences biological processes
- Culture is based on symbols
- Culture is learned
- Culture is unconscious
- Cultures are generally integrated
- Culture is shared
How does culture influence biological processes?
Humans all meet the same biological needs, but culture shapes how these needs are met
- Eating: what, how, and when we eat as well as cultural significance of specific foods
- Drinking: What is served and who consumes it
- Bathroom: where, when, and how we clean
- Sleeping: who sleeps where, how much sleep one should have
How is culture based on symbols?
Symbol is something tangible, such as a material object or behaviour, that represents something intangible, such as value, attitude, belief, or organization (ex. Rings for marriage)
How is culture learned?
Through - observation, Participation, being taught
- Enculturation: The process by which humans learn their culture
How is culture unconscious?
Our own culture is so ingrained (a part of us) that it is often taken for granted. We view our values and behaviour as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’
How are cultures integrated?
Must look at the whole and how different aspects of culture are integrated and work together.
How is culture shared?
Members of a culture share the same material possessions; similar attitudes, beliefs, and values; and they act in similar ways and participate in the same rituals and ceremonies.
- Culture and identity: We derive a large part of our sense of identity or who we are from our culture
- Culture is relative: What we have, think and do are relative to a particular group of people and are thus culturally relative.
How does culture change?
brought about by internal and external factors
Internal (within culture) - inventions/innovations, new cultural features or a combo of existing features
External (Greatest change) - Cultural diffusion, spreading of a trait
What is cultural diffusion?
Process is a selective (not everything is exchanged), two way, reciprocal process where cultures merge.
What is acculturation, cultural hegemony,and cultural genocide?
Acculturation: Where subordinate culture adopts many of the cultural traits of a more powerful culture
Cultural Hegemony: Forced assimilation by a dominant culture
Cultural genocide: Complete loss of culture (residential schools)
What is the difference between society and culture?
- Society: Organized group of interdependent people who share a common territory, language and culture who act together for the common survival and well being.
Barrel model of culture: - Every culture is an integrated system
- There are functional relationships among the economic base (infrastructure), the social organization (social structure), and the ideology (superstructure)
What are the 6 cultural universals?
- Economic system
- Systems of marriage and family
- Educational system
- Social control system
- System of supernatural belief
- Systems of communication
What is a theory?
A general statement that suggest a relationship among phenomena. Theories allow us to predict and postulate about the way things are
What is a hypothesis?
A proposed explanation to a theory
What is an inductive approach?
Proceeds without a hypothesis: Data is collected through unstructured, informal observation, conversation etc.
- Uses qualitative (no numbers), emic data
What is emic data?
Insiders perceptions and categories, and their explanations for why they do what they do
What is a deductive approach?
Starts from a research question or hypothesis, collects relevant data
- Qualitative (numbers) and etic data
What is Etic data?
Analytical framework used by outside analysts in studying culture.
What is armchair anthropology?
never encountering a culture and instead going off of colonial encounters
What is colonialism?
Cultural domination of a people by a larger, wealthier powers
What is evolutionism?
The idea that the cultures fit into one of three stages: Savagery, Barbarism, Civilization (IS ethnocentric, and has since been abandoned)
What is unilateral evolution?
the idea that all societies pass through the same development states in the same order, from simple to complex.
What is diffusionism?
Societies change as a result of a cultural borrowing from one another.
- Deductive approach
- Fieldwork: At first they didn’t live with the people they were studying (changed with Bronislaw Malinowski - Trobriand islands)
What is functionalism?
Social Institutions are integrated and function to maintain or satisfy the biological needs of the individual. Bronislaw Malinowski
- Humans have culture instead of inborn instincts. And culture is what makes fulfillment possible
- criticized for not being able to account for change and free will
What is Historical particularism?
Goal was to uncover the past influences on a given culture that shaped its present form. Used an inductive approach
- the idea that each culture had its own unique history.
- culture should be studied individually with the use of ethnographic data
- Franz Boas: strong advocate for fieldwork, tried to understand emic perspective