Midterm #3

Front 1

religion

Back 1

a social institution characterized by sacred stories, symbols, and symbolism; the proposed existence of immeasurable beings, powers, states, places, and qualities; rituals and means of addressing the supernatural; specific practitioners, and change

Front 2

animism

Back 2

the notion that all objects, living and nonliving, and imbued with spirit

Front 3

cosmology

Back 3

a system of beliefs that deals with fundamental questions in the religious and social order

Front 4

myths (sacred narratives)

Back 4

stories of historical events, heroes, gods, spirits, and creation that members of a religious tradition hold to be holy and true

Front 5

god (deity)

Back 5

a named spirit who is believed to have created or to have control of some aspect of the world

Front 6

polytheism

Back 6

belief in many gods

Front 7

monotheism

Back 7

belief in a single god

Front 8

mana

Back 8

religious power or energy that is concentrated in individuals or objects

Front 9

ritual

Back 9

a ceremonial act of a repeated stylized gesture use for specific occasions involving the use of religious symbols

Front 10

liminal

Back 10

the stage of a ritual, particularly a rite of passage, in which one has passed out of an old status but has not yet entered a new one

Front 11

communitas

Back 11

a state of perceived solidarity, equality, and unity among people sharing a religious ritual, often characterized by intense emotion

Front 12

antistructure

Back 12

the socially sanctioned use of behavior that radically violates social norms; frequently found in religious ritual

Front 13

rote of passage

Back 13

a ritual that moves an individual from one social status to another

Front 14

rite on intensification

Back 14

a ritual structured to reinforce the values and norms of a community and to strengthen group identity

Front 15

totem

Back 15

an object, an animal species, or a feature of the natural world that is associated with a particular descent group

Front 16

prayer

Back 16

any conversation held with spirits and gods in which people petition, invoke, praise, give thanks, dedicate, supplicate, intercede, confess, repent, and bless

Front 17

sacrifice

Back 17

an offering made to increase the efficacy of a prayer or the religious purity of an individual

Front 18

magic

Back 18

a religious ritual believed to produce a mechanical effect by supernatural means. when magic is done correctly, believers think it must have the desired effect

Front 19

imitative magic

Back 19

the belief that imitating an action in a religious ritual will cause the action to happen in the material world

Front 20

contagious magic

Back 20

the belief that things once in contact with a person or object retain an invisible connection with that person or object

Front 21

divination

Back 21

a religious ritual performed to find hidden objects or information

Front 22

shaman

Back 22

an individual socially recognized as being able to mediate between the world of humanity and the world of gods or spirits but who is not a recognized official of any religious organization

Front 23

priest

Back 23

one who is formally elected, appointed, or hired to a full-time religious office

Front 24

withcraft

Back 24

the ability to harm others by harboring malevolent thoughts about them; the practice of sorcery

Front 25

sorcery

Back 25

the conscious and intentional use of magic

Front 26

messianic

Back 26

focusing on the coming of an individual who will usher in a utopian world

Front 27

millenarian

Back 27

belief that a coming catastrophe will signal the beginning of a new age and the eventual establishment of paradise

Front 28

syncretism

Back 28

the merging of elements of two or more religious traditions to produce a new religion

Front 29

fundamentalism

Back 29

a proclamation of reclaimed authority over a sacred tradition that is to be reinstated as an antidote for a society that is believed to have strayed from its cultural moorings

Front 30

monoculture plantation

Back 30

an agricultural plantation specializing in the large-scale production of a single crop to be sold on the market

Front 31

joint stock company

Back 31

a firm that is managed by a centralized board of directors but it owned by shareholders

Front 32

pillage

Back 32

to strip an area of money, goods, or raw materials through the threat or use of physical violence

Front 33

dutch east india company (voc)

Back 33

a joint stock company chartered by the Dutch government to control all Dutch trade in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. also known by its Dutch initials VOC for Verenidge OOstendische Compagnie

Front 34

heeren xvii

Back 34

the lords seventeen, members of the board of directors of the dutch east india company

Front 35

colonialism

Back 35

the active possession of a foreign territory and the maintenance of political domination over that territory

Front 36

colony

Back 36

a territory under the immediate political control of a nation-state

Front 37

corvee labor

Back 37

unpaid labor required by a governing authority

Front 38

tirailleurs senegalais

Back 38

Senegalese riflemen, an army that existed from 1857 to 1960 composed largely of soldiers from french african colonies led by officers from metropolitan france

Front 39

gross national income (gni)

Back 39

the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country

Front 40

modernization theory

Back 40

a model of development holding that some nations are poor because of their traditional cultures. such nations should achieve wealth by attempting to repeat the historical experience of today's wealthy nations

Front 41

neoliberalism

Back 41

political and economic policies promoting free trade, individual initiative, and minimal government regulstion of the economy and opposing state control or subsidies to industrial and all but minimal air to impoverished individuals

Front 42

structural adjustment

Back 42

a development policy promoted by western nations, particularly the united states, that requires poor nations to pursue free market reforms in order to get new loans from the international monetary fundd and the world bank

Front 43

multinational corporation (MNC)

Back 43

a corporation that owns business enterprises in more than one nation, able to seek the most profitable venues to produces and market its goods and services regardless of national boundaries

Front 44

sweatshop

Back 44

generally a pejorative term for a factory with working conditions that may include low wages, long hours, inadequate ventilation, and physical, mental, or sexual abuse of its workers

Front 45

public anthropology

Back 45

anthropology that aims to communicate with non anthropological audiences and to have an impact on critical issues of wide social significance

Front 46

RACE project

Back 46

a traveling museum exhibition and website emphasizing race as a cultural construction and the ways in which race is assigned meanings in american culture

Front 47

african burial ground national monument

Back 47

a site in lower manhattan in new york city where the skeletal remains and artifacts of an african american community were discovered and analyzed by anthropologists, leading to greater understanding of the role of both free and enslaved blacks in the 18th and 19th centuries

Front 48

forensic anthropology

Back 48

the application of physical anthropology to identifying skeletal or badly decomposed human remains to assist int he detection of crime and the prosecution of those responsible

Front 49

environmental justice

Back 49

a movement to expose and address the problems of environmental pollution among the poor, powerless, and minority communities

Front 50

medical anthropology

Back 50

a sub-field of anthropology that draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors that influence health and illness; concerned with the experience, distribution, ,prevention, and treatment of disease