Social Cultural Anthropology Flashcards
Dictionary of Social Cultural Anthropology Terms
Armchair Anthropologist
Approach to study of anthro in 1880’s. Collection, study and analysis of writings from missionaries, explorers and colonists who had sustained contact of non-western people. Using these documents armchair anthros made comparisons and generalizations of the way of life of various groups
Cultural Relativism
Using the culture being researched on its own terms, relative to itself
Cultural Text
A way of thinking about a culture as a text of significant symbols - words, gestures, natural objects that carry meaning
Culture
The system of meanings about the nature of experience that are shared by a people and passed on from one generation to another, including the meanings that people give to things, events activities and people.
Ethnographic Method
The immersion of researchers in the lives and cultures of the peoples they are trying to understand in order to comprehend the meanings these people ascribe to their existence.
Participant Observation
An element of fieldwork that can involve participating in daily tasks and observing daily interactions among a particular group.
Fieldwork
Anthropologists engage in long term interactions (usually a year or more) with various groups of people. This often involves living with people, observing and contributing to daily chores and tasks and conducting interviews. Most fieldwork in anthro has historically been qualitative in nature.
Ethnography
A written description and analysis of a particular group of people, usually based upon anthropological fieldwork.
Salvage Anthropology
An approach that arose in the 1800s when anthropologists witnessed the extinction and/or assimilation of indigenous groups throughout the world. In response some anthropologists such as Franz Boas suggested that anthropologists rapidly document the oral stories, songs, histories and other traditions of indigenous groups before they disappear.
Multi-sited Fieldwork
Coined by George Marcus in 1995 refers to the process of connecting localized experiences of fieldwork with broader global processes. It necessitates understanding various issues from multiple “sites’ or perspectives
Representation
The way in which a group of people is depicted in writing or through images Anthropologists are increasingly conscious of the fact that when they write about a group of people they are constructing particular representations that may have positive or negative long-term effects for a group of people.
Essentialism
The act of creating generalization or stereotypes about the behaviour of culture of a group of people.
Ethnocentric Fallacy
The mistaken notion that the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures can be judged from the perspective of one’s own culture.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency to judge the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures from the perspective of one’s own culture
Relativistic Fallacy
The idea the it is impossible to make moral judgements about the beliefs and behaviours of members of other cultures.
Sociocultural Anthropology
An anthro approach that retains the British focus on social anthro at the same time as it adds the American focus on culture to produce something slightly different from either one.
Agroecological Approaches
Agricultural methods that incorporate practices of food production along with contemporary agricultural research yet preserve the environment.
Bands
A term used by anthropologists to refer to egalitarian units of social organization found mostly among foragers, that usually consist of less than 100 people
Biomedical Model
A term, also knows as Western medicine, scientific medicine or modern medicine that combines biology with the diagnosis and treatment of illness and that views the body as a machine, independent of social context, that must be repaired periodically.
Clans
A unilineal descent group whose members claim descent from a common ancestor
Culture Change
The changes in meanings the people ascribe to experience and changes in their way of life.
Economic development
The term used to identify an increase in level of technology and by some, standard of living of a population. Others view it as an ideology based on three key assumptions:
- that economic growth and development is the solution to national as well as global problems.
- that global economic integration will contribute to solving global ecological and social problems.
- that foreign assistance to undeveloped countries will make things better.
Factory Model
An energy-intensive ecologically damaging form of agriculture intended to grow or raise as many crops or livestock as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Factory System
A system of production characterized by the concentration of labour and machines in specific places. It is associated with the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution
A period of European history, generally identified as occurring in the late 18th century, marked by a shift in production from agriculture to industrial goods, urbanization and the factory system.
International Monetary Fund
Formed in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference to regulate currency transactions among countries. The IMF now makes loans and regulates economies of lending countries.
Interpersonal Theory of Disease
A view of disease in which it is assumed that illness is caused by tensions or conflicts in social relations.
Irrigation Agriculture
A form of cultivation in which water is used to deliver nutrients to growing plants.
Pathogen
An infectious agent such as bacteria or a virus that can cause disease.
Population Density
The number of people in a geographic area.
