What is Cultural Anthropology? Flashcards
What is anthropology?
It is the study of humanity from a holistic perspective.
What does it mean to say that anthropology is holistic?
In terms of scope, ANT studies the entire range of humans’ biological, social, political, economic, and religious behavior as well as the relationships among the different aspects of human behavior in the past and present.
In terms of approach, ANT can use different methods and theories.
What is Physical Anthropology?
It’s the study of people from a biological perspective, primarily on aspects of humankind that are genetically inherited.
Sub fields include: analysis of skeletons; human nutrition, statistical study of human populations, study of pattern of disease; study of primates
What is Linguistic Anthropology?
It’s the study of language and its relation to culture or from the anthropological perspective.
What is Archaeology?
It studies past cultures based primarily on their material remains or artifact, using detective techniques (slowly sifting through and interpreting evidence)
Subfields include urban archaeology; cultural resource management (CRM);…
What is Cultural Anthropology?
It is the study of everything about human behaviour
What is Sociocultural Anthropology / Ethnology?
_____
Subfields: political and legal anthropology; humanistic anthropology; visual anthropology
What is Ethnography?
The study of a specific culture ____
Emic Ethnography
examination of societies using concepts, categories, and distinctions that are meaningful to members of those societies
Etic Ethnography
examination of societies using concepts, categories, and rules derived from science; an outsider’s perspective
What is Applied Anthropology?
The application of anthropological knowledge to the solution of human problems (for practical purposes)
What is Culture?
a set of traits that is shared, learned, passed on in a symbolic and systematic way
What are Norms? Explain different kinds of norms
is the normal behavior.
- Ideal behavior: the most intense and motivate one’s behavior
- Expected behavior
- Accepted/ Acceptable behavior: sometime it is ok, sometimes it is not ok, helps define the edge of a culture
How to tell if a norm is important or not to a culture?
Many of our norms are unconscious, but we can tell how important a norm is by judging the reaction when it is violated
What is Ethnocentrism?
is the idea that one’s own culture is better than other’s culture. It’s the anthropologist’s bias.
