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92 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back

Cultural Anthropology

One of the four fields of Anthro- study of living people and societies

Ethnography

Describing and explaining specific cultures


products are usually in books

Ethnology

Practice of comparing cultures to find patterns

Linguistic

One of the four field of anthro- studies the nature and evolution of language(s)


study of lang itself


-documenting & understanding langs


-explaining how they work & why they are as they r

Historical Linguistics & Sociolinguistics

How languages evolved over time


Language use in social context

Physical or Biological

One of four field of anthro-


study of humans as biological organisms


-human variation & how to explain it


-adaption to environment


- how human biology influences & influenced by culture, behavior and society

Paleoanthropolgy

Evolution of humans and our closer relatives (Dead and living)

Primatology

study of non-human primates for clues about basic human nature (ex: chimps)

Archaeology

cultural anthro of the past


-study of past cultures based primarily on remains of material culture (stuff left from the past and also their bodies)

Applied Anthropology

Applying anthro in policy and area experts


-business anthro: culture of the workplace


-medical anthropology

Ideal Culture

How things are suppose to be in culture

Real Culture

How things are in actual practice; often different from ideal culture.

Material Culture

Physical things people make and use as a result of symbolic culture

Symbolic Culture

Ideas in people's minds


(beliefs about people, the world, etc.)



Holistic view and comparative approach

-take every aspect of culture into consideration


- compare data from multiple cultures helps find patterns

Culture is... Learned

-not inborn


-children learn cultures they r raised in

Culture is.. Shared

values, rules of behavior, idea, etc= people in same culture have in common

Culture is.. symbolic

-symbols are things that refer to other things


-saying culture is essentially about meanings


-turns objects into symbols of other things



Culture is.. integrated

-many aspects or parts of a culture fit together into a coherent, functional whole.


"integrated into one whole."

Culture is... practical (adaptive)

-many aspects of a culture are ways of dealing with practical problems


-may not be effective but r meant to solve practical problems

Culture is.. naturalized and unconsidered

meanings that culture places on the world seem natural, normal, inherently human

Culture is.... arbitrary

not determined, given, or fixed by the physical world.


purely by convention


not established by fixed features if the real world

society

a group of people who interact more with each other than they do with other individuals.


-vs. culture = the ideas and values they they share

Arbitrary Cultural Construct

arbitrary ideas or interpretation shared by members of the culture.

Naïve realism

the mistaken assumption that some arbitrary cultural construct from one's own culture is actually a universal, real fact of life.

Ethnocentrism

refers to widespread human tendency for people to see themselves as being at the center of the universe.

Cultural Relativism

stresses importance of analyzing cultures in own terms instead of in terms of the culture of the anthropologist's.



Ethical relativism

acceptance of all ethical systems as equivalent.

Culture shock

cultural affects is so strongly that immersion in a unfamiliar culture causes severe physiological problems.



What is an haj

the journey a muslim might take to the holy land

Ethnicity (or ethnic group)

a category of people thought to be similar to each other and different from other ethnicities, based on shared


-lang and or


-culture


-religion


-history

Race

A category of people thought to be similar to each other, and different from other races based on..


-physical, biological characteristics


-due to shared descent from people of a particular region.

social race

racial categories define social race


a socially constructed, socially significant categorizing scheme.


-but not a biological reality


-race is no more real, objective, or inherent in people than is ethnicity.

emic

insiders perspective


using their terms to explain things


ex; christians pray in order to get help from God

etic

way of thinking about a culture using terms, concepts, categories, and constructs familiar to an outside observer.


"christians pray because it gives them psychological benefits..

Cline, clinical

gradual variation across a space (land) instead of clumped groups of skin color (black white yellow)


the variation is clinical (continuous or gradual)

Essentialize

To think that a category has "essential" features


-implies each member of the category has those features.


ex: Asians are smart

Pidgin

a "contact language" usually a mix of two languages


-with limited vocal and simplified grammar


-used only in contact situation b/w ppl who do not otherwise share a language


-poor for communicating more subtle ideas

Who is Bronislaw Malinowski

went to Trobriand island (which were under british colonial rule) and made methods of a good ethnography


went during world war I, so he was stuck there until war was over

Malinowski secret for successful anthro work: participant observation

have to live WITH the people you are studying.

Malinowski secret for successful anthro work: Have scientific aims

purpose is to understand&explain them, not judge


-task if to figure out the reasons, the logic, of the culture that allows us to understand it.

Malinowski secret for successful anthro work: make systematic observations

using his three methods of ethnography

Malinowski's ethnographic methods: record concrete, statistical documentation

collect lots of specific cases


-make tables/charts that summarize them


-try to figure out what cases have in common;patterns,

Malinowski's ethnographic methods: record the imponderabilia of actual life

means things ppl don't even think about; don't think need 2 be explained& often can't explain


-only way 2 learn is by observing & participating in them

Malinowski's ethnographic methods:record a corpus inscriptionum

write pals explanations, stories, expressions, folklore, magical incantations etc in their own words, and own language.


-documents the native mentality.

informant (cultural consultant), key informant

person who teaches an anthropologist about a culture


-certain people who know a lot about some are of interest and are willing to explain things.

genealogical method

collect info about who is related to who and how


-usually involves setting up interviews with every person in a community.


-reveals tendencies and rules about who marries who, gender roles, fam structure,

life histories

collect complete life stories of few willing to tell


-takes a long time

qualitative methods

are anecdotal (based on anecdotes: individual stories, events, conversations)



quantitative methods

produce numerical, statistical results: surveys, censuses



interview schedule

an outline of topics to cover during interview

time allocation study

follow people around and systematically record what they are doing on a regular, often on minute-minute to basis.

archival research

research various types of documents from -relevant history - census records - depends on what anthropologists have in mind to study on pop.

reflexive ethnography

include some biography and experiences of the ethnography (is essentially present in story)

kinship notation

figure to plot out family tree


circle represents female


square or triangle represents male


double horizontal lines= marriage


dotted =going to b married



ethnographic present

style of writing that describes observations in present tense.



explaining culture in terms of: adaptation

culture is a biological adaptation


-have to explain it's function & how it is effective

functionalism

explains beliefs & practices in terms of problems they solve and needs they full fill

Doctrine of Needs

ideas and practices serve basic human needs of individuals


-need for food, shelter, friendship etc..

explaining culture in terms of: meaning

culture is a set of meanings assigned to things, and responses appropriate to those meanings.

structural functionalism

explains beliefs and practices in terms of how they meet societies need to maintain it's social structure


ex: parents will always want to control their children more than the children want to be controlled

pollution

the taint one gets from committing a wrong


ex: hindu eating cow

explaining culture in terms of: system (of interrelated parts)

culture is a system of institutions, roles, and relationships that are all interconnected.


-any one aspect of the culture is affected by many others.


-a change in 1 thing affects many others.

materialism

view that most aspects of life (religion,art, social organization, government, wars..) are ultimately determined by the material, economic demands of the real world.

historical materialist

using a materialist approach to explain the long-term history of changing social organization


-argue that changes in social organization largely reflected changes in material (economic) organization.

cultural materialism (Marvin Harris promoted it)

use a materialist approach to explain aspects of culture


-cultural practices and beliefs reflect material (economic) needs

Marvin Harris

made approach of cultural materialism

infrastructure

the basic, practical practices that provide for survival and continuation of the society


-esp. subsistence (food production), technology, & economics

Structure

social organization: how social relations are arranged

superstructure

systems of meanings


-religion, symbols, philosophy, ideology

infrastructural determinism (materialists assume infrastructural determinism)

idea that infrastructure is most basic level,


-structure develops to meet need of infrastructure


-the superstructure is virtually a byproduct of structure and infrastructure

symbolic anthropology

emphasizes that people see culturally defined meanings in things and act in accordance with those meanings


-symbolic anthro's invert the materialists' order of causation.

culture as a text

view that you can read meanings of things and actions


-figure out what something means is like reading a text


-ex: "reading the Balinese cock fight"

Clifford Geertz

man who viewed culture as a text

subsistence



"how people get their groceries"


-how people get by


fundamental to understand everything else

hunting and gathering (foraging)

living on wild resources w/o intentionally altering the landscape.

agropastoralism

mix of agriculture and pastoralism, but cant be moving around bc of fixed place in agriculture

agriculture

farming


-activities to artificially increase plant food yields

pastoralism

herding


-moving with herds of pasture, not moving feed to them

wage labor system

people work for pay, instead of producing own subsistence goods


-exchange income for subsistence goods produced by other for exchange.

band, band society

"simple" social organization based on kinship


-one system but complex

shifting agriculture

also called slash and burn, swidden


-clear area of forest ("slash") and usually burn the debris ("Burn")

fallow

the resting period b/w periods of agricultural use of a plot of land

intensification or intensive agriculture

putting more energy into acre(s) of land to get more crop production out per acre


-by plowing, weeding, irrigating

staple, or staple crop

food crop produced in large quantities as a major part of the diet


ex: sweet potato from Kapauku

sedentary

having one permanent place of residence, year around

semi-sedentary

various partially settled patterns


- ex: several fixed homes, one for each season.

nomadic

having no long term place of residence


-always living in temp. camps

transhumant

moving through a regular seasonal round of locations


-may rotate b/w fixed settlements

subsistence agriculture

each family mostly produces food for its own consumption

crash cropping

each family mostly produces farmed crops for sale


-often non foods -coffee cocoa, cotton tobacco, opium


-rather than staple foods that the fam would actually consume

age set

all people born in a period of a few years


-often participate in coming-of-age rituals and other activities as a group,


-feel solidarity "SSU class of 2016"