Week 3

Question 1

What is the participant observation?

Answer 1

It is a systematic approach involving long-term participation, observing, taking field notes, and interviewing of people experiencing a particular society

Question 2

Why is participant observation a central part of the ethnographic process?

Answer 2

It is a central part of the ethnographic process because it gives the ethnographer to truly immerse themselves in the culture, allowing them to gain a more profound understanding of the peoples they are observing

Question 3

What does the emic perspective refer to?

Answer 3

It refers to the descriptions of behaviours and beliefs in terms that are meaningful to people who belong to a specific culture

Question 4

What does the etic perspective refer to?

Answer 4

It refers to explanations for behaviour made by an outside observer in ways that are meaningful to the obeserver

Question 5

What is kin relation?

Answer 5

It is the set of social relations, gendered norms, etc that shape how members of society interact

Question 6

What factors shape how our social lives are organized?

Answer 6

Historical
Political
Social
Environmental

Question 7

What is social organization?

Answer 7

Social organization refers to the patterning of human interdependence in a given society through the actions and decisions of its members

Question 8

What is politics?

Answer 8

It is the relationship between power, social organization, individual and group action

Question 9

What is the goal of political anthropology?

Answer 9

It is to understand, interpret and transmit the ideologies and circumstances of political structures, political organization and political action

Question 10

What does the formative phase describe?

Answer 10

It describes the assumption that the state was the prototype of civilized power and organization and that the absence of the state must represent anarchy and disorder

Force, exploitation, and injustice was justified for social order

Rigid state/stateless dichotomy

Question 11

What did classical political anthropology study?

Answer 11

It studied the difference between egalitarian and stratified societies where wealth, prestige and power are accessed by only a portion of the population in stratified societies and egalitarian societies shared similar social status and decisions based on consensus

Question 12

What does the post-colonial/political economic perspective offer?

Answer 12

It offers the recognition of the past and ongoing impact of capitalism and colonialism in much of the world

Question 13

What are norms?

Answer 13

They are shared ideas about the way things ought to be done

Question 14

What are values?

Answer 14

They are shared ideas about what is true, right, and beautiful

Question 15

What is the dominant culture?

Answer 15

It is the culture that reinforces certain values and norms that shape how society functions

Question 16

What do beliefs refer to?

Answer 16

They refer not just to what we “believe” to be right or wrong, true or false. Belief also refers to all the mental aspects of cultures including values, norms, philosophies, worldview, knowledge, and so forth

Question 17

What do practices refer to?

Answer 17

They refer to behaviours and actions that may be motivated by belief or performed without reflection as part of everyday routines

Question 18

What is colonialism?

Answer 18

It is the pattern of exploration and ‘discovery’, of settlement, of dominance over geographically separate ‘others’, which resulted in the uneven development of forms of capitalism across the world and the destruction and/or transformation of other forms of social organization and life

Question 19

What did Eurocentric knowledge change?

Answer 19

It shifted the conceptions of body and non-body (subject, spirit or reason) which then established hierarchical forms of knowledge around primitive/civilized, etc. This then justified processes of modernization or Europeanization

Question 20

What is nationalized society?

Answer 20

It is based on a political organization through modern institutions of citizenship and political democracy, and processes of democratization of control of productive resources

Question 21

What is social power?

Answer 21

It is the ability to transform a situation that affects an entire social group through norms, customs, laws, etc.

Question 22

What is political power?

Answer 22

It is social power held by a group who are in a position to affect the lives of many people

Question 23

What is interpersonal power?

Answer 23

It is the ability to hold someone’s will over another

Question 24

What is organization power?

Answer 24

It is when individuals place limits on the actions of others in particular social settings

Question 25

What is structural power?

Answer 25

It is the control of the allocation of social labour and organization of social settings

Question 26

What is visible political power?

Answer 26

It is the definable aspects of political power

Question 27

What is hidden political power?

Answer 27

It is the aspects of political power that are exerted when a group with a great deal of social power directly influences the decisions that are made on the visible level, often with negative consequences for groups with less social power

Question 28

What is invisible political power?

Answer 28

This is power that is embedded in social norms and makes certain issues, interests and problems invisible by shaping people’s belief, sense of self, and acceptable for their own superiority or inferiority

Question 29

What does power as an independent entity suggest?

Answer 29

It suggests that power exists for humans to gain access to but not control or own

Question 30

What is biopower?

Answer 30

Having power over people by having power over individual bodies at the scale of populations

Question 31

What is biopolotics?

Answer 31

It is the governing systems that ensure the flow of biopower across the population

Question 32

What is coercion?

Answer 32

It is the persuasion over someone to act a certain way (through force) and based on the idea that cooperative living is not natural and rather self-interest is more instinctual that challenges one another for dominance

Question 33

What is hegemony?

Answer 33

It is persuasive rule that includes rewards/material benefits to their subjects through the use of educational and cultural institutions to disseminate their ideology

Question 34

What is counter-hegemony?

Answer 34

It defines the way people develop ideas and discourses to challenge dominant assumptions, beliefs and established patterns of behaviour