Week 2

Question 1

What does the anthropological perspective offer?

Answer 1

It draws on an interdisciplinary approach (sociology, political science, geography, economics, etc. ) attempts to fit them together with its own findings in order to understand different forces collectively shape human life

Question 2

What are the four main characteristics of anthropology?

Answer 2

Holistic – that all aspects of human life interact with one another
Comparative – challenges assumptions of what is ‘normal’ or ‘traditional’
Evolutionary – biological or cultural
Fieldwork – immersive and away from one’s own ‘home’ to practice anthropology, collect ‘data’

Question 3

What is culture?

Answer 3

Culture is a shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behaviour
Culture as a shared and negotiated systems of
meaning
Culture as informed by knowledge
Culture as learned behaviour
Culture as a practice

Question 4

How do we interact with culture?

Answer 4

A system of interacting people who share, within certain limits, a common experience, often in very diverse, diverging/converging ways (how we are cared for, what we eat, how we spend our leisure time, our perceptions of society, how we celebrate
Understanding gained through experience
Through reading, education, our relationships, media, entertainment, etc.
Shared knowledge contribute to our collective meanings

Question 5

What are the components of culture as a learned behaviour?

Answer 5

Morals, traditions, varying form of knowledge

Question 6

What are the components of culture as a practice?

Answer 6

Placing learned knowledge into practice – our relationship to our built and natural environment
How we live our everyday lives, our relationship to rights, responsibilities, freedom, to our self – identity of the self…

Question 7

What is enculturation?

Answer 7

Process of learning to be part of a group

Question 8

What do all cultures involve?

Answer 8

They all involve classification systems and symbols.

Question 9

What are cultures?

Answer 9

Cultures are patterned and integrated. Thus, changes in one aspect of culture affect other aspects. However, elements of culture do not necessarily work smoothly with one another

Question 10

How are cultures shared?

Answer 10

They are shared in various different forms depending on the society in which the culture is found such as multicultural societies, mosaic, melting pot, and nationalism

Question 11

Can cultures change?

Answer 11

Cultures are subject to change.Whether propelled by their internal dynamics or acted upon by outside forces, cultures are always in flux
- systematically, slowly over time, or by disruption, disasters, wars, etc.

Question 12

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 12

The tendency to view the world, sometimes exclusively, from the basis of one’s own experience
A belief that one’s own culture is better than others used to justify the subjugation of the non-European societies on the attended basis that these groups were socially and even biologically inferior
Can also be situated in non-European contexts – religious differences, ethnic identities, historical relations to the land… but is hierarchical in its meaning and use

Question 13

What is the age of enlightenment?

Answer 13

Social and philosophical movement that privileged science, rationality and experience while critiquing religious authority
Using rational thought to discover things about the natural and social world

Question 14

What is biological evolution?

Answer 14

It is a field of study that investigates the ways that natural processes have shaped the development of life on Earth, producing measurable changes in populations over time

Question 15

What is natural selection?

Answer 15

It the process through which population of living organisms adapt and change. Individuals in a population are naturally, meaning they are all different in some ways. Some have traits that are better suited to the environment than others
Proposed that evolution is a slow and natural process, yet scientists observed the process in only a few years in insects and birds and as result, helped to show biological changes as a response to

Question 16

What does the idea of the Origin of Species denote?

Answer 16

The idea that change was non-directional, that it was not necessarily going anywhere in particular

Question 17

What is social evolution?

Answer 17

Held that human ways of life passed through similar sequences of stages of development

Question 18

What is social darwinism?

Answer 18

A form of social evolution holding that certain people were not just technologically or materially inferior but mentally and biologically inferior
That these hierarchies were naturally occurring
Formed the basis for Eugenics - a movement that focused on selective
breeding of the ‘fittest’ and the week out of the ‘unfit’ people
Belief that successful war exploits, colonial encounters, imperialism were a factor of nature – from the more ‘fit’

Question 19

How did Franz Boas change modern anthropology?

Answer 19

He suggested that society or culture was a complex of meaning, not things or technology, and that any one culture or society could not be understood solely in comparison to European or American society
Expoused the idea of Cultural Relativism– the idea that each society or culture must be understood on its own terms, and not from the perspectives of ‘outsiders’

Question 20

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 20

The anthropological practice of attempting to understand cultures within their context, including environment and history
Applies a holistic perspective in that it combines the study of human biology, history, and the learned and shared patterns of human behaviour and thought we call culture to analyze human groups.

Question 21

What is historical particularism?

Answer 21

Each society or culture was the outgrowth of its past. If you want to get to know someone, understand their past

Question 22

What is the ethnographic process?

Answer 22

A systematic approach involving long term participation, observing, taking field notes, and interviewing of people experiencing a particular society – shifted research from the ‘armchair;’ to the field

Question 23

What is the central method of the ethnographic process?

Answer 23

The main focus is the anthropological process

Question 24

What is the ‘field’?

Answer 24

That as a method, requires an outsider’s perspective
Disregards materials that are not culturally symbolic of a particular society from the researcher’s perspective
What do you associate with ‘the field’
Is now considered in broader more interlinked worlds, perspectives and settings (online, offline, mobility in everyday life)

Question 25

What is culture?

Answer 25

It is a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds groups of people together and shapes their worldview and lifestyles

Question 26

What are the 6 other perspectives of culture?

Answer 26

Humans are born with the capacity to learn the culture of any social group.We learn culture both directly and indirectly
Culture changes in response to both internal and external factors
Humans are not bound by culture; they have the capacity to conform to it or not, and sometimes change it
Culture is symbolic; individuals create and share the meanings of symbols within their group or society
The degree to which humans rely on culture distinguishes us from other animals and shaped our evolution
Human culture and biology are interrelated: Our biology, growth, and development are impacted by culture

Question 27

What are the current approaches to anthropology?

Answer 27

Revert back to broader understandings of evolutionary change as constant and complex
Associated with historical, environmental, biological, processes and are always fluid in nature