Sharing Our Worlds: An Intro to Cultural & Social Anthropology Flashcards
Initiate
A person joining a new stage of life, typically learning in order to be an effective member, sometimes through certain trials and ordeals.
Participant Observation
A method used by anthropologists to learn about a people and their activities by observing at the same time as participating in their lives.
Fieldwork
Carrying out practical investigations necessary to a particular study chosen by an anthropologist.
Indigenous People
A term adopted collectively by those, also called Aboriginal or First Nations, whose territories have become subsumed into nations built around them, and who are seeking various ‘rights’ through international bodies like the United Nations.
Informants
The word used for members of the society under study by anthropologists.
Collaborators
A term used recently in anthropology to describe those with whom we work, who collaborate in our research, to replace the less equal-sounding term “informant.”
Translation
For anthropologists, this practice involves much more than finding an equivalent word in a different language; gaining an understanding behind the meaning of words and phrases, is an important part of anthropological work.
Ethnography
Literally, writings about a particular ‘ethnic’ group of people, the descriptive part of what anthropologists provide in their reports of fieldwork, the term is also used in other disciplines to describe research methods that resemble those of anthropologists.
Applied anthropology
Using knowledge gained through the academic study of anthropology out in the public arena, usually to the benefit of people there.
Polytheism
A belief system that holds that there are multiple gods.
Monotheism
A belief system that holds that there is only one God.
Functionalism
A word used to describe theories that explain social behavior in terms of the way it appears to respond to the needs of members of that society, as advocated by Bronislaw Malinowski and his followers.
Structural Functionalism
A theory of explanation of social behavior which examines the way that components of a particular society functioned to maintain the social structure. It was developed by Radcliffe-Brown and applied for a while by his followers.
Social Structure
A way of describing the make-up of the features of a society in order to devise general theories that could be applied to specific cases, but also allow cross-cultural comparison.
Cultural Relativism
A term devised by Franz Boas to explain that as cultures are based on different idea about the world, they can only be properly understood in terms of their own standards and values. The phrase has been misunderstood to deny human universals, and to suggest that cultures cannot change.
Social Facts
The proper materials, which ‘exist outside the individual and exercise constraint’, to be collected by sociologists and anthropologists, as advocated by Emile Durkheim.
Structuralism
A method, originally developed in linguistics, of analyzing elements of social phenomena for their meaning in displaying the framework of society as a set of structural relations which express a universal human capacity to classify and construct such systems of thought.
Classification
A system of organization of people, places and things shared by all human beings, but in ways that differ in different societies, which therefore forms a subject of interest to anthropologists.
Socialization
The Inculcation into a child of a society’s systems of classification and ways of behaving so that it is converted from a biological being into a social one. The term may also be used for adults acquiring a new set of social rules and mores.
Gender
A term of classification used to refer to conceptions of male and female, or masculinity and femininity in any society, and ‘gender studies’ refers to research and teaching that makes this distinction its primary focus.
Collective Representations
Symbols understood and used for communication between members of a particular social group (after Durkheim).
Pollution/Purity
A pair of terms used by anthropologists to describe institutionalized ideas about dirt and cleanliness in any particular society, especially where these have connotations with notions of spiritual power.
Taboo
Something prohibited, usually for reasons associated with a wider system of classification, perhaps related to ideas of pollution, or with notions of the sacred in any society.
Sacred/Profane
This dichotomy is used by anthropologists to describe a variety of distinctions made between things, people and events that are set apart (sacred) from everyday life (profane), though the deeper meanings vary between societies, some of which have no such distinction, and they always require further study.
Total Phenomenon
A social phenomenon that is found to involve all areas of life in a particular society. The term was chosen by Marcel Mauss in the case of le don - translated as a gift or ‘presentation’ - which he saw involving simulation expressions of a ‘religious, legal. moral and economic’ nature.
Conspicuous Consumption
The ostentatious consuming of food, drink, or other goods interpreted (initially by Veblen) as a way of demonstrating wealth, or laying claim to a wealthy group or society.
Exchange, Direct/indirect, restricted/generalized
Words used to describe types of social interaction between individuals or groups, ranging from gift giving to marriage.
Reciprocity
A return for something given, often part of a continuing arrangement expressing social relations, and analyzed by Marshall Sahlins into three types: generalized, balanced and negative.
Ritual
Behavior prescribed by society in which individuals have little choice about their actions; sometimes having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers.
Rites of Passage
Rites that celebrate and protect the move of an individual or a social group from one ‘class’ or social category to another.
Liminality
A term used by anthropologists to describe those set apart during the period of transition in a rite of passage, or a people marginalized in a particular social situation.
Couvade
A practice in some societies in South America where the father of a baby goes through a series of rites parallel to those undergone by the mother as a way of expressing and confirming his paternity.
Age Set
A term used to describe a group of people who share a social position that cuts across kin ties. It is based on their birth within a particular period and they are therefore approximately the same age. Members of such a group share certain obligations to one another, and usually pass through age grades together.
Symbol
A thing regarded as typifying, representing or recalling something else by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or in thought. Symbols are particularly significant in the interpretation of rituals, but also as the visible features of invisible aspects of social organization.
Public Symbols
Are those shared by members of a particular social group, usually meaningful to all members of that group, though possibly in different ways.
Commodity
This word is used to describe articles designated an economic value, usually for the purpose of trade, and it may be applied to people and inanimate objects as well, if such an economic value is assigned.
Objets d’art
Literally, an object with artistic value, but used here in French to suggest the way that people in the world of very expensive art create a language of their own to make decisions about what (and who) may and may not qualify for inclusion.
Aboriginal
Refers to the first status of Indigenous peoples around the world, used by explorers and travelers who arrive in their lands. Its negative connotations in the English language made it an unacceptable term in many countries for years, though it was still used in Australia. Now it has become a preferred term again by some of the people themselves (e.g. Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada).
