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.
Progress
The idea that human history is the story of a steady advance from a life dependent on the whims of nature to a life of control and domination over natural forces.
“Putting out” system
A means of production, common in the 16th and 17th centuries and surviving today in which a manufacturers or merchant supplies the materials and sometimes the tools to workers who produce the gooders in their own homes.
Sendentary
A mode of livelihood characterized by permanent or semi-permanent settlements.
Slash and burn (or swidden) agriculture
A mode of livelihood in which forests are cleared by burning tress and brush and crops are planted among the ashes of the cleared ground.
State
A form of society characterized by a hierarchical ranking of people and centralized political control.
Vector
An organism such as a mosquito, tick, flea or snail that can transmit disease to another animal.
World Bank
One of the institutions created at the Bretton Woods, New Hampshire meeting in 1944 of Allied nations. The World Bank (or the Bank for Reconstruction and Development0 functions as a lending institution to nations largely for projects related to economic development.
Creole
Formation of slave societies in the Caribbean in which elements of African and European cultues were merged, blended or combined into something uniquely Caribbean.
Domain of Experience
An area of human experience (eg business, war, science,family life) from which people borrow meaning to apply to other areas.
Key Metaphors
A term to identify metaphors that dominate the meanings that people in a specific culture attribute to their experience.
Key Scenarios
Dominant stories or myths that portray the values and beliefs of a specific society.
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which linguistic expressions are taken from one area of experience and applied to another.
Myth
A story or narrative that portrays the meanings people give to their experience.
Revitalization Movements
The term suggested by Anthony F.C. Wallace for attempts by a people to construct a more satisfying culture.
Ritual
A dramatic rendering or social portrayal of meanings shared by a specific body in a way that makes them seem correct and proper (see also symbolic actions)
Symbolic Actions
The activities including ritual, myth, art dance and music that dramatically depict the meanings shared by a specific body of people.
Syncretization
The term given to the combination of old beliefs or religions and new ones that are often introduced during colonization.
Totemism
The use of a symbol, generally an animal or a plant as a physical representation for a group, generally a clan.
World View
An encompassing picture of reality based on shared cultural assumptions about how the world works.
Achieved Status
An identity that is believed to be in flux and that is dependent upon the actions and achievements of an individual.
Ascribed Status
An identity that is perceived as fixed and unchanging because a person is believed to be born with it. In Canadian society, race is often assumed to be ascribed at birth.
Balanced Reciprocity
A form of exchange in which items of equal or near-equal value are exchanged on the spot.
Caste
A form of social stratification and identity in India where individuals are assigned at birth to the ranked social and occupational groups of their parents.
Class
A form of identify informed by perceptions of an individual’s economic worth or status. It is also a form of social hierarchy.
Culture of Poverty
A term coined by anthropologist Oscar Lewis to describe the lifestyle and worldview of people who inhabit urban and rural slums.
Gender
Culturally constructed ideals of behaviour, dress, occupations, roles and comportment (behaviour) for particular sexes.
Generalized Reciprocity
A form of exchange in which people share what they have with others but expect them to reciprocate later.
Hegemonic Masculinity
Refers to ideals and norm of masculinity in a society which are often privileged over others.
Negative Reciprocity
A form of exchange in which the object is to get something for nothing or to make a profit.
Race
A culturally constructed form of identity and social hierarchy , race refers to the presumed hereditary, phenotypic characteristics of a group of people. These physical or phenotypic differences are often erroneously correlated with behavioural attributes.
Racism
Referes to the discrimination and mistreatment of particular “racial” groups.
Sex
Hormonal, chronosomonal or physical differences between men and women.
Social Stratification/ Hierarchy
The ordering and ranking of individuals within society. Those at the top of hierarchy are generally afforded more power, wealth, prestige or privileges in a society.Hierarchies can be based on race, gender, class, caste ethnicity, national affiliation or other factors.
Structural Violence
Actions of remote government or international agencies that result in denial to the poor of basic rights of food, shelter or livelihood.
Third Gender
A gender role given to someone who does not fit within strictly masculine or feminine gender roles in a given society.
White Privilege
Refers to the fact that in many societies “white” people have access to greater power, authority and privileges than non-white people.
Rites of Passage
- Rites of Separation;
- Liminal
- Rites of Reaggregation
Cultural Hegemony
acc/ Gramsci: Ability of small social group to dominate society through disseminating and naturalizing a consensus worldview through mass media and other practices
Foucault
Institutional Power
Fieldwork Methodology
- Deep Hanging Out (Geertz), with purpose and attention.
- Attention to Cultural Norms
- Conduct Interviews
- Conduct Archival Research
- Visual Anthro- Films/photos
- Build Relationships
- Genealogy
- Ask for drawings
- Interpretive practices - how to ask questions
Consanguinal
Kinship relations by blood
Affinal
Kinship relations by marriage
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Strong Form: language determines thought linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories
Weak Form: linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain non- linguistics behaviour
The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes.
Saussure
Langue: system of language
Meaning is function of environment of signs - concept + sound image = signifier + signified
Parole: individual speaking acts
Kinship Studies Categories
Founder: Lewis Henry Morgan
- Classificactory: same level have same kinship terms eg. Iroquois
- Descriptive: everyone has different name
