Anthropology Exam 1

Front 1

Cultural Relativism

Back 1

Every culture is equally meaningful. It is the idea that one culture cannot be judged or evaluated by the criteria of another culture.

Front 2

Edward Burnett Tylor

Back 2

He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion, which he determined to be universal.

Front 3

Margaret Mead

Back 3

Popularized anthropology into modern America. "Learn the culture without embodying it"

Front 4

Ethical Relativism

Back 4

Justifications for moral judgements are not universal but are instead relative to the traditions, convictions or practices of an individual or group of people.

Front 5

Ethnocentrism

Back 5

Viewing ones culture as superior and applying those values to other cultures.

Front 6

Universalism

Back 6

all peoples are full and equally human.

Front 7

Historical Particularism

Back 7

founded by Fraz Boas, argued that each society is a collective representation of its unique historical past.

Front 8

How does cultural relativism help us prevent ethnocentrism?

Back 8

instead of viewing ONE culture as more meaningful or more superior, it helps us see all cultures as equally meaningful.

Front 9

Holism

Back 9

Means we understand that a culture is a system but also that we analyze something, we know we aren't and even cant look at the whole picture at once, we take one part at a time.

Front 10

Etic

Back 10

Explanations and descriptions of a culture by the researcher. (Example) If someone is studying a kinship system, we have to understand that what we think of as a kinship system isnt what another culture may think about as kinship.

Front 11

Emic (Native Point of View)

Back 11

Life as experience and described by members of a society themselves.

Front 12

Context

Back 12

Things only have meaning in context. (Example) A wink.

Front 13

Sapir-Whof Theory

Back 13

Language shapes our perception of the world and contexts vary over time and space.

Front 14

Cross-Cultural Comparison

Back 14

Anthropologists compare: Geographic area and historic era, theoretical area, and thematic area.

Front 15

Participant Observation

Back 15

Observe and interact with culture

Front 16

Malinowski

Back 16

3 main ideas to understand a culture. The Structure (census, geneology, kinship terms), Practice (everything is "dead material" until you get the "hang" of daily life), and Native Point of View (Get the feeling for good and bad manners)

Front 17

Native Anthropology

Back 17

The way around the challenges of being a Full Participant and an Objective Observer was to be a Full Participant in their own context and societies because they were natives.

Front 18

Deductive Reasoning

Back 18

Having a hypothesis and working your way down.

Front 19

Inductive Reasoning

Back 19

Starting at the bottom and from that up to your theory

Front 20

Evolutionary Theory (Tylor, Morgan)

Back 20

Societies can be classified and ranked as more "primitive" or more "civilized" and progress through these stages in the same sequences but at different rates.

Front 21

Functionalism

Back 21

Societies are orderly systems. Societies are "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole.

Front 22

Structuralism

Back 22

Cultures reflect deep, underlying patterns. All structures are universal.

Front 23

Interpretivism (Meaning)

Back 23

Culture is a text that is interpreted

Front 24

Geertz

Back 24

Culture is a system of conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which people communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about attitudes toward life.