Exam 3 - Anth 201 Lecture Notes

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E.R. Service

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claimed that cultures could be studied from 4 primary levels of subsistence and political organizations:

-bands (nomadic foragers)

-tribes (farming or herding societies)

-chiefdoms (farming)

-states (intensive agriculture

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Band type of structure

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originally the only type of human society; remaining bands of the Neolithic era were marginalized to less desirable regions of the world like deserts, islands, and the arctic

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Important numbers in bands

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FOUR: women needed a man for four important years

TWENTY-FIVE: average size of a nomadic band

FIVE HUNDRED: general size of a single cultural group of many small bands all of whom share common language/similar culture

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Carrying Capacity

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the optimal population of a nomadic band; bands kept their population low... rarely used more than 30-50% of potential carrying capacity to ensure against famine during lean years when the CC would be reduced

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Optimal Foraging Theory

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mathematical way to determine how effective a band is in obtaining its food and other resources (how hunters spend time searching for food, how bands make decisions as to who gathers/hunts and where, determines the limits and potential CC)

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Balanced reciprocity

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trades or transactions which are mutually beneficial to both parties; importance of this type was to maintain respect and friendship between traders; trades between friends or between one member of a band and another of a related band

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Negative reciprocity

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trade or exchange where one party tries to take advantage of the other party; most often occurs among strangers; often occurred when one group was forced to accept trades of lesser value (ex: natives forced to trade with colonial Americans)

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Difference between sex and gender

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sex is based on chromosomes that govern a biological sex; gender is based on cultural identification of whether someone wants to be considered male or female

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Polygyny

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having more than wife (more common - 77%)

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Polyandry

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having more than one husband (less common - 2%)

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Amazons

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women warriors (legend calls them Amazons but they were probably Scythians) who were renowned for their excellent cavalry; legend said they would cut off their right breast so it would not interfere with shooting a bow or throwing a spear

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Scythians

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real life "Amazons" who would fight in battle and were buried dressed in battle gear with war chariots; they were revered women, but men were still in charge of the society

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Patrilineal and patrifocal societies

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the most obvious gender differences are within theses societies ruled by men; women have the least dominance and prestige; often a high degree of violence toward women

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ERA Amendment

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Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution - introduced in 1923 and still hasn't been passed by both houses; 35 states have approved it; many worry it would protect abortion rights; says:

1) equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of sex

2) Congress has power to enforce the provisions of the article

3) would take effect 2 years after ratification

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Gender and Poverty

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50% of all family households with incomes below poverty line are matrifocal; poverty reinforces non-traditional living and marriage; matrifocal families are the most common family type AND the most common family type living in family; poverty begets poverty

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Edwin Burnett Tylor

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originally a British sociologist who changed his views and became the "father of modern cultural anthropology"; claims culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, law, morals, custom, any capabilities acquired by man (Primitive Culture - book)

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Alfred Kroeber & Clyde Kluckhohn

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two early American anthropologists; claim that the culture is comparable to gravity in physics, disease in modern medicine, and evolution in biology (book - Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions)

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Descriptive patterns

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patterns in cultures/societies that describe what the culture or society does (ex: how many people to a house, how much farm land do they own, how many people in the village, etc.)

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Central patterns

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the "norm" or average in terms of descriptive patterns of a group (ex: 4 ppl to a house, usually 2 acres, etc.)

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Distributional patterns

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the expected range of a descriptive pattern in a society/culture (ex: 2-10 in a house, 1-20 acres, etc.)

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Historical patterns

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reflects changes that have taken place from one time period in the past to another time period (women used to marry at age 20, now they marry at age 30)

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Normative preferential patterns

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patterns that people SHOULD follow but often do not (ex: no premarital sex, no adultery, no drugs, etc.)

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Normative mandatory patterns

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patterns all people MUST follow (no incest, no rape, no murder, etc.)

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Symbols

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reflect abstract ideas of a culture; cultural learning requires learning the meaning of a vast number of symbols

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Enculturation

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the concept that one generation teaches the next generation the essentials of their own culture

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Culture is symbol based

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meanings of words, things, signs, expressions, languages are unique to cultures (good vs. bad); many symbols may have no obvious meaning except to those of a specific culture who will recognize them

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Culture is integrated

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changes in one part of a culture will often affect changes in other areas as well

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Culture is adaptive or maladaptive

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some changes in culture are adaptive and help the culture while others creative maladaptive results

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Ethnocentrism

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the emotional attitude that one's own race, nation, or culture is superior to all others

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Cultural relativism

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the principle that an individual's beliefs, culture, and activities should be understood in terms of his or her own culture and not judged by the criteria based on another cultural standard

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Cultural rights

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(according to the UN) focuses on the rights of indigenous peoples in accordance with international human rights and urges all governments to treat indigenous people and all ethnically distinct cultures with equal respect and without discrimination

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superior and inferior cultures

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false perception of culture

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Cultural Universals

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biological: we are all members of the same genetic group

psychological: we all have the same basic brains, how we think, feel, process info in essentially the same manner

social: we are all social species, live in groups, have families, share food, etc.

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Charles Hockett

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believed that early human languages developed out of a form of communication in animals he called a "call system"

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Closed call system

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the form of communication used by the earliest humans and still used by other primates; has a limited number of sounds and each sound is exclusive (can't be combined with other calls to create new meanings)

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Open call system

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emerged as human language; uses a limited number of sounds but each sound can be combined to form new meanings (this is the essential aspect of any language system)

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Chimps and language

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chimps cannot learn a spoken language

Viki: raised with human child and only learned 4 words in 2 years

Washoe: was taught American Sign Language and could use it to make new sentences and jokes with correct syntax; taught it to own young

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Deborah Tannen

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linguist who is known for her study of kinesics (body language) and how body language relates to what a person says verbally; says that "when the body language and what is said do not match" to believe the body language

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Kinesics

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body language

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Proxemics

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cross-cultural look at how people view their own personal space; not all cultures have the same views about distances that apply to personal space

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Paralanguage

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nonverbal cues of your voice when you talk (tone, pitch, loudness, accent); meaning of the same word can change depending on how it is said; expresses emotion, attitude, meaning, personality, etc.

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Noam Chomsky

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linguist who believes the human brain is structured and wired to learn language; says that all languages are based on a similar set of limited rules and this is why all languages tend to be similar in form

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Pidgin language

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new language that is nobody's native language; arises when two speakers of different languages try to communicate with each other and begin using a makeshift language; typically the Lexicon of one language and the syntax of the other; first step of communication between two cultures

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Lexicon

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the vocabulary of a language

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Syntax

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the structure and word order of a language

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Creole languages

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a language that usually begins as a pidgin language but then becomes formalized and nativized; a large group or community of speakers all claim the creole as being their primary form of communication; common among people of African descent who were brought to the Caribbean

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Gullah

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major creole language that is still used in South Carolina and Georgia; primary language used on a number of offshore coastal islands where it was developed by runaway slaves who all spoke different African languages but wanted to talk to each other

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sign languages

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develop in regions where different cultures wanted to meet and trade with each other but didn't see each other/trade often enough to learn a pidgin language

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Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf

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Sapir was the first to claim that languages affect how people express their culture; Whorf, his student, expanded on this; they claim language molded or programmed the brain into different ways of thinking which then affected how the culture was expressed

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how language shapes culture

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example: if a language makes no distinction in the gender of words, either formally or implied, it suggests that the culture probably pays little or no attention to the actual differences in the gender of the people (and thus, that culture probably treats both genders equally)

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Focal Vocabulary

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the number of words associated with some important event or important part of a culture, subculture, or ethnic group (ex: Aggie focal vocab, baseball focal vocab, etc.)

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Descriptive Linguistics

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study of the structure of language; says all spoken languages have the same three main structural components: 1) phonology, 2) morphology, 3) syntax

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phonology

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the study of the sound system of a language

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Language morphology

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the study of the ways in which sounds can be combined to make meaning

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Syntax

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the study of the correct arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences that provide meaning in a language

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Minimal pair

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two words that are different from each other by only one phoneme (1-2 letters) --> ex: rat/bat, bed/bet, sin/sit,

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Phonetics

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the study of the significant sound contrasts of a given language that directly affect how a person interprets the meaning of words

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Semantics

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the study of the meaning of words in a language; lexical meaning and distinction of the same words in a language can be affected by cultural changes, isolation, and time

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Sociolinguistics

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the study of how speech and language might shift when used in specific social situations and investigates the relationships between the linguistic variations a person might use in certain social situations

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Dioglossia

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regular expected style shifts between dialects or the use of fomral speech vs. slang among people of the same culture who speak the same language

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Cheris Kramarae

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linguist who studies gender in sociolinguistics; found that women are more talkative, use fewer power words, speak less aggressively, use qualifiers, etc.

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Language symbolic capital

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a person's probable social, political, and economic status can be evaluated by their speech and can determine access to various jobs or how other people see/treat them; this symbolic capital often converts into economic and social capital and opportunities

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Symbolic Domination

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a culture's views as to hwo certain status groups in a society are "supposed to speak"

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William Labov

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professor who studies "linguistic uniformitarionism"; points out that a person's speech is important in establishing his or her status and when seeking employment; focused on NYC speech

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Black English Vernacular

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a dialect of English spoken by African Americans

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Ebonics

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BEV; ebony + phonics

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Origin of BEV

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standard English spoken in SW part of England and along the coastal areas that had many large seaports; slave ships in the triangular trade carried slaves to the New World and the first and only English the slaves heard was the BEV dialect

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protolanguages and daughter langauges

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P.L.: original language from which various daughter languages have descended (ex: Latin)

D.L.: evolve from the same parent language and have slowly been changing over hundreds of years caused by separation and isolation from the P.L.

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Logographic Writing systems

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writing system that gives one specific meaning to each logo as a word; useful because all dialects can read it, but difficult to memorize thousands of logos in order to read

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Syllabary writing systems

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phonetic writing system that consists of symbols that each represent different syllables; symbols are combined to make different words and meanings

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Alphabetic system

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Phoenicians/Persians cut down syllabary systems to make it easier to learn and use for recording and come up with the alphabet system (Greek was the first true alphabet)

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Positive ethnicity

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binds a specific culture together and gives a person pride to be part of that certain ethnic group

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Race

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technically refers to a "geographically isolated subspecies or subdivisions of a species"; there are no biologically different human race, only different phenotypes; however, the term "race" is often used to define an ethnic group

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Gloger's Rule and genetic natural selection

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says animals living in hot regions have more melanin in their skin, eyes, hair, etc.; the first humans were from Africa and therefore had black skin color

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Social races

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the belief that social or religious groups have a biological basis (German, Southern, Jewish), but these are arbitrary groups; may be an ethnic group have some social/religious aspect in common, but these are not true races based on biological basis

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Hypodescent and Minority Rights

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concept that children of a union/mating between members of 2 ethnic groups are automatically placed into the ethnicity of whichever is the minority; this system devised societies into groups that have been unequal in access to wealth, power, etc.; Minority Rights today: Census Bureau uses racial classes to gather detailed info and some want this removed; however, special racial groups get grants from federal funds, jobs, etc. and they don't want to lose these assets or advantages

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Ascribed status

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the status that a person is born into or given

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Achieved status

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the status that a person gains through the choices they make; depends on actions, efforts, talents (can be positive or negative)

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Contextual status

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"temporary status" ; depends on the situation, event, special occasion, or a time period (a student, a team member, a sorority girl, etc.)

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Exclusive status

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difficult to change and is mutually exclusive (male OR female, Christian OR atheist, etc.)

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Nation

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"that entity we once called a state"; carefully planned and people must be convinced that they belong to it

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Multiculturalism

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the allowance of ethnic groups to maintain their own customs and ethnic identity as long as their overall loyalty is to the nation

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World systems

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also known as First World Nations; the most affluent nations, most highly industrialized, most politically stable, most economically prosperous

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Prince Henry the Navigator

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led the Portuguese west to Africa and brought the first slaves, gold, and ivory to Europe; beginning of colonialism and beginning of the Age of Discovery

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Age of Discovery

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the discovery of Africa provided wealth, new people to enslave, new lands to claim and rule

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Count Buffon

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French scientist who tried to classify the races of humans; said the most temperate climates lie between 40-50 degrees latitude and produced the most handsome/beautiful people; the climate for ideal color and beauty

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Samuel Morton

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Philadelphia doctor who collected human skulls and claimed that you could measure race and intelligence by the size of the skull; "Teutonic Family" were the largest and most intelligent while the "Negro Group" was smallest and least intelligent; used to support racism

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William Stern

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German psychologist who created the IQ Test (Intelligence Quotient), which he said could be assigned by a number and be used to rank human groups

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Robert Yerkes

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American psychologist who gave the IQ test to all new US army draftees; the army then used these results to assign draftees to certain divisions/tasks; he wrote that the white race had the highest IQ and Afro-Americans had the lowest

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QDr. Arthur Jensen

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tested children and minorities in California and said that IQ correlates with different ethnic groups; IQ cannot be improved with special remedial programs for minorities

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Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray

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publishers of the Bell Curve; claimed IQ is based on heredity and can't be raised; said it was the most important factor governing a person's mental ability and that differed among ethnic groups

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Bell Curve

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title of book comes form the bell0shaped normal distribution of IQ scores in a population