Week 2 - Culture Flashcards
What is Culture?
patterns of learned behavior, shared perceptions and worldviews, shared values
What is enculturation ?
The social process (conscious and unconscious) by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations.
What is subculture?
identifiable subgroup within a society or group of people
What is global culture?
What is multi-culture?
The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable; a multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture.
What is a symbol?
Something, verbal or nonverbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no necessary or natural connection.
What is diffusion?
borrowing of traits between cultures
What is acculturation?
ongoing exchange of cultural features.
What is invention?
humans creative innovation
What is human agency?
the actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities.
What is ethnocentrism?
The tendency to view one’s own culture as best and to judge the behavior and beliefs of culturally different people by one’s own standards.
What is cultural relativism?
viewpoint that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture
What is absolute dating?
Dating techniques that establish dates in numbers or ranges of numbers; examples include the radiometric methods of 14C, K/A, 238U, TL, and ESR dating.
What is relative dating?
A dating technique (e.g., stratigraphy) that establish a time frame in relation to other strata or materials, rather than absolute dates in numbers.
What is a systematic survey?
Information gathered on patterns of settlement over a large area; provides a regional perspective on the archaeological record.
What is excavation?
Digging through the layers of deposits that make up an archaeological site.
What is anthropometry?
The measurement of human body parts and dimensions, including skeletal parts (osteometry).
What is participant observation?
A characteristic ethnographic technique; taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing.
Explain how cultural changes happen with diffusion.
(be able to explain) Borrowing between cultures either directly or through intermediaries.
Explain how cultural changes happen with acculturation
(be able to explain) the ongoing exchange of cultural features.
Explain how cultural changes happen with invention.
(be able to explain) humans creative innovation
Explain how culture changes human agency.
(be able to explain) the actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities.
What are two types of archaeology?
Experimental and colonial
What are research methods in cultural and linguistic anthropology?
participant observation, interviews/life histories/genealogy
What is the quest for understanding others?
between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism (know these)
What are the similarities and differences of the research methods in archaeology and biological anthropology?
Similarities are: A common interest in materiality (present and past).
Absolute and relative dating of materials remains
Differences:
Archaeology - Systematic survey and excavation
Biological anthropology - anthropometry and primatology
What is the human capacity for symbol, and its implication for the development of complex patterns of learned and shared behavior?
