Anrthopology 100

Front 1

Affine

Back 1

kin by marriage

Front 2

Agency

Back 2

the ability to make real choices. agency depends on the choices systems make available as well as your position in the power system. more power means more choices.

Front 3

Bilateral

Back 3

involving descent or ascent regardless of sex and side of the family

Front 4

Brideservice

Back 4

the service rendered by the bridegroom to a bride's family as a price price or part of one

Front 5

Bridewealth

Back 5

an amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom

Front 6

Capital

Back 6

an economic and social system in which individuals can maximize profits because they own the means of production

Front 7

Chieftans

Back 7

captain; the leader of a group of people

Front 8

Class(es)

Back 8

groups of people in a political economy defined by their differential access to resources in a stratified system

Front 9

Clifford Geertz

Back 9

an American cultural anthropologist who did ethnographic field work in Indonesia and Morocco, wrote influential essays on central theoretical issues in the social sciences, and advocated a distinctive "interpretive" approach to anthropology.

Front 10

Cline

Back 10

what is created when all points of the same elevation are connected

Front 11

Commodity

Back 11

an economic good; something people can buy or sell in a market

Front 12

Communitas

Back 12

the state associated with the central stage in a pilgrimage journey as defined by anthropologist Victor Turner

Front 13

Comparative

Back 13

noticing and explaining similarities and differences among many different systems

Front 14

Consanguine

Back 14

Related by blood

Front 15

Cross-cousin

Back 15

the children of ego’s parent’s siblings of the opposite sexes: father’s sister’s kids and mother’s brother’s kids.

Front 16

Cultural adaptation

Back 16

the way people solve problems. the solutions don't always work in the long run

Front 17

Cultural codes

Back 17

emic categories and the way people use them

Front 18

Cultural ecology

Back 18

an approach in anthropology that emphasizes that while all of the elements of a culture are interrelated, the parts that have most to do with the way people make their livings, the cultural core, are the most important and determine the rest.

Front 19

Cultural relativity

Back 19

suspending judgments and opinions and being open to understanding other ways of life. We don’t ask whether something is good or bad; we ask how the people understand and use it.

Front 20

Descriptive relatism

Back 20

suspending your natural ethnocentrism so that you can describe another culture from the points of view of the people in it.

Front 21

Egalitarian

Back 21

a political form in which there are as many positions of prestige as people capable of filling them. All have equal access to resources.

Front 22

Emic

Back 22

the differences that make a difference inside the culture or language. Those features of the world or sounds that cultures or language define and recognize.

Front 23

Enculturation

Back 23

the process of learning one's own culture, also called socialization

Front 24

Epistemological relativism

Back 24

how we know things. Different cultures define different ways of knowing things. A set of assumptions that governs what and how we think and how we see the world and act within it. Cultures are epistemologies.

Front 25

Ethnocentrism

Back 25

thinking that your way of doing things is either the only way or the best way. The opposite of cultural relativity

Front 26

Ethnographic method

Back 26

reliance on direct participant observation, key informants, and informal interviews as a data collecting technique.

Front 27

Ethical relativism

Back 27

the principle that ethical judgments cannot be made independently of the culture in which they are made.

Front 28

Etic

Back 28

all the differences that anyone outside the system can see. People inside the system may not see it the same way, but if we only valued the inside views, we could never compare different systems. The etic stance lets us stand outside any culture to understand them all.

Front 29

Exchange value

Back 29

value determined by the amount of labor it takes to produce something. How much you can get for something if you trade it for another thing

Front 30

Federal system

Back 30

a group of groups in which each member group recognizes a central authority. For instance, each state in the US recognizes the authority of the US government. But each state retains certain power and rights.

Front 31

Feudalism

Back 31

Any system that resembles the one used in the middle ages, where the people provided labor and military service to a lord in return for the use of his land. A form of contractual servitude.

Front 32

Fieldwork

Back 32

living with the people

Front 33

Free labor

Back 33

people who are available to work for wages because they have no alternatives, such as household production, or are not caught up in alternative systems of production, such as slavery.

Front 34

Gender

Back 34

The socially constructed concepts of masculinity and femininity; the “appropriate” qualities or characteristics that are expected to accompany each biological sex.

Front 35

Ghost marriage

Back 35

a marriage where a deceased groom is replaced by his brother. The brother serves as a stand in to the bride, and any resulting children are considered children of the deceased spouse

Front 36

Grammar

Back 36

the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology

Front 37

Hegemony

Back 37

when one country rules or controls others. A term often used by anthropologists for when one group has control over another, especially by controlling the way they think. For instance, some say that the rulers have hegemony over the cultural codes of the ruled because the rulers shape the way people think in schools, media, and religious institutions.

Front 38

Holism

Back 38

seeing things as connected. Instead of looking at religion, literature, politics, economics, or history as separate spheres of life, anthropologists see them as connected.

Front 39

Household production

Back 39

production units based on the balance of need and drudgery

Front 40

Ideology

Back 40

almost a synonym for cultural codes when they are used for political ends. When ideologies are political—conservatism, liberalism—the people select parts of their cultural code to support one political position.

Front 41

Import substitution

Back 41

substituting your own products for imports

Front 42

Incest prohibition

Back 42

a prohibition on having sex with certain relatives

Front 43

Initiation

Back 43

a formal entry into an organization or position or office

Front 44

Kindred

Back 44

the group of all relatives within a certain genealogical distance who are related by any link at all—for instance, all first cousins.

Front 45

Kinship

Back 45

a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. In anthropology the kinship system includes people related both by descent and marriage

Front 46

Life crisis rituals (a.k.a. rites of passage):

Back 46

the transition from one mode of life to another. . Rites of passage have often been described as rituals that mark a crisis in individual or communal life. These rituals often define the life of an individual. They include rituals of birth, puberty (entrance into the full social life of a community), marriage, conception, and death.

Front 47

Lineages

Back 47

a group of people all related to a common ancestor through either the link with women or the link with men

Front 48

Marginal utility

Back 48

the usefulness of the next thing compared with the one before.

Front 49

Market exchange

Back 49

exchanging things in terms of exchange value. Usually involves money

Front 50

Markets

Back 50

places where things are exchanged; the exchange of things according to exchange values

Front 51

Martilineal

Back 51

a group of people descended from the same ancestor through women

Front 52

Matrilocal

Back 52

residing with the wife's people

Front 53

Meaning

Back 53

the idea that is intended

Front 54

Meritocratic individualism

Back 54

the belief that we are separate individuals who think for ourselves and that we get rewarded according to our individual merit.

Front 55

Metaphor

Back 55

a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity

Front 56

Nationalism

Back 56

when a nation claims to be the best one

Front 57

Necessary labor

Back 57

the amount of labor to produce necessary value, the value necessary to reproduce the same amount of labor

Front 58

Necessary value

Back 58

the amount of value that necessary labor produces. Capitalist firms pay this amount as wages so that workers can continue to work and reproduce labor.

Front 59

Negative utility

Back 59

a metaphor based on the idea of utility as usefulness. Negative usefulness would be something damaging.

Front 60

Neolocal

Back 60

residence in which the married couple's household has no connection with either the husband's or wife's family.

Front 61

Parallel cousin

Back 61

the children of the parent’s siblings of the same sex—father’s brothers and mother’s sister’s kids

Front 62

Participant observation

Back 62

living in a culture that is not your own while also keeping a detailed record of your observations and interviews.

Front 63

Patrilineal

Back 63

a group of people of the same ancestor linked through the men

Front 64

Patrilocal

Back 64

residing with the husband's people

Front 65

Phonemic

Back 65

as of or pertaining to phonemes. A phonemic system is the set of sounds the native speakers actually hear and distinguish as distinct.

Front 66

Phonetic

Back 66

all the sounds people can actually make. People put different phonetic sounds together to make single phonemes, like ts and th and p and ph in English.

Front 67

Political economy

Back 67

the interacting economic and political systems

Front 68

Positivism

Back 68

the philosophy that the only authentic knowledge is knowledge that is based on actual sense experience

Front 69

Profit

Back 69

surplus value that the owners of capital appropriate and may put back into production or into political action or consumption

Front 70

Racism

Back 70

Prejudice or discrimination based on an individual's race; can be expressed individually or through institutional policies or practices

Front 71

Racism

Back 71

Prejudice or discrimination based on an individual's race; can be expressed individually or through institutional policies or practices

Front 72

Rank

Back 72

a political form in which there is equal access to resources but fewer positions of prestige than people capable of filling them. Associated with redistributive change.

Front 73

Reciprocity

Back 73

giving as much as you get, at least in the long run. There’s usually a time delay between the giving and the getting.

Front 74

Redistribution

Back 74

based on reciprocity, but instead of people giving things directly to each other, giving things to some central person who then redistributes them to the people who need them

Front 75

Social contract

Back 75

the idea that people support their governments when the governments actually help the people.

Front 76

States

Back 76

the institutional structures in stratified political economies that enforces and ensures unequal access to resources. Based on force or thought control or both.

Front 77

Stratification

Back 77

a political economy in which there is unequal access to resources

Front 78

Structures

Back 78

how things are put together with other similar things. Grammatical structure is how elements of language relate to each other so we can connect sounds to meanings. Kinship structure is how different kinds of kin-based groups are organized. Political structure is how different aspects of political systems are organized. Economic structure is how parts of economic systems are put together. As a general term, it means how things are organized. It is outside our immediate control, though we can change it with concerted effort.

Front 79

Surplus labor

Back 79

the amounts of labor people do after they’ve produced the value necessary for them to work another day and reproduce. To get people to do it, you have to have a system that doesn’t allow them any other alternatives, often based on force.

Front 80

Surplus value

Back 80

the extra value that surplus labor produces, the source of profit in capitalist systems

Front 81

Swidden

Back 81

slash-and-burn fields

Front 82

Syntax

Back 82

the way deep structure and surface structure fit together as two parts of grammar

Front 83

Universal grammar

Back 83

the grammar that all human languages have in common

Front 84

Use value

Back 84

the qualitative value of something based on its use; what people use something for

Front 85

Welfare state

Back 85

a government in which businesses, labor, professionals with technical knowledge and experience, and government officials all negotiate together to make policies that benefit everyone. For instance, farmers, agribusinesses, the department of agriculture, and the people elected officials appoint in a ministry of agriculture would all negotiate together to make agricultural policy. Everyone has a voice through such organizations. The usual examples are Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.