World Cultures Test Ii

Front 1

City States

Back 1

Politically organized societies based on intensive eploitation of landless workers in the local area

Front 2

Bureaucracy

Back 2

A centralized command and control structure with officials arranged in an administrative hierarchy.

Front 3

Great Tradition

Back 3

The culture of the elite in a state-organized society with a written tradition that is not fully shared by nonliterate, village-level commoners.

Front 4

Village-States

Back 4

Politically centralized societies based on an urban administrative and ceremonial center drawing their support from self-sufficient peasant villagers scattered over a vast region

Front 5

Little Tradition

Back 5

Ritual beliefs and practices followed by nonliterate commoners, especially rural villagers who are part of a larger state-level society.

Front 6

Multilineat Evolution

Back 6

Steward’s theory that, given similar conditions, cultures can develop independently along similar lines. For example, he argued that irrigation agriculture led to state organization several times.

Front 7

Social Product

Back 7

The value of the aggregate annual production of a society, measured either as production or consumption

Front 8

Scale Subsidy

Back 8

Social support in the form of taxes or tribute for activities that promote growth in scale, or that maintain a larger scale society when benefits are inequitably distributed

Front 9

Superstructure

Back 9

The mental, ideological, or belief systems, as expressed in the religion, myth, and rituals of a culture. According to Harris’ cultural materialist theory, superstructure is shaped by the structure.

Front 10

Structure

Back 10

The social, economic, and political organization of a culture, which is shaped by the technological base, or infrastructure, according to Harris’ cultural materialist theory

Front 11

Staple Economy

Back 11

The state-controlled production, storage, and distribution of subsistence staples, such as potatoes and maize in the Inca case, to support nonfood-producing specialist groups and to provide emergency aid

Front 12

Wealth Economy

Back 12

The state-controlled production, storage, and distribution of wealth objects that support the status hierarchy

Front 13

cognatic line

Back 13

A descent line that is traced to a common ancestor and that need not rely on exclusively male or female links

Front 14

peasantry

Back 14

Village farmers who provide most of their own subsistence but who must pay taxes and are politically and often, to some extent, economically dependent on the central state government.

Front 15

Fuedalism

Back 15

A political system in which village farmers occupy lands owned by local lords to whom they owe loyalty, rent, and service

Front 16

Ancestor Worship

Back 16

A religious system based on reverence for specific ancestors and sometimes involving shrines, rituals, and sacrifice

Front 17

Filial Piety

Back 17

Hsiao, the ritual obligation of children to respect their ancestors, and especially the duty of sons to care for shrines of their partrilineal ancestors

Front 18

Theocracy

Back 18

State government based on religious authority or divine guidance. The Chinese emperor was the highest civil and religious leader

Front 19

Ethnic Group

Back 19

A dependent, culturally distinct population that forms part of a larger state or empire and that was formally autonomous

Front 20

Scapulimancy

Back 20

Divination by interpreting the pattern of cracks formed in heated animals’ scapula or turtle shells

Front 21

Liturgical Government

Back 21

The use of ritually prescribed interpersonal relations and religious, moral authority as a primary means of social control in a state-level society

Front 22

Immiseration

Back 22

Malthusian impoverishment, a declining standard of living attributed to continuous population growth on a limited-resource base

Front 23

Folk-Urban Continuum

Back 23

Robert Redfield’s concept of a gradual distinction between the Little Tradition culture of rural commoners and the Great Tradition culture of the urban elites in a political-scale culture.

Front 24

Patron

Back 24

A Spanish term for someone who extends credits or goods to a client who is kept in a debt relationship

Front 25

Caste

Back 25

An endogamous, ranked, occupationally defined group, known as jati in India, and based on differences in ritual purity and impurity

Front 26

Purity

Back 26

Ritually superior status; a category in logical opposition to impurity.

Front 27

Cultural Hegemony

Back 27

Preponderant influence, or authority, by an elite in the production and reproduction of a society’s moral order and associated cultural beliefs, symbols, and practices

Front 28

Hypergamy

Back 28

Marriage to someone of higher rank. For example, Hindu women may marry men of a higher subcaste

Front 29

Hypogamy

Back 29

Marriage to someone of lower rank

Front 30

Impurity

Back 30

Low ritual status attributed to association or contact with polluting biological events or products.