Term
| What is cultural anthropology? |
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Definition
| The study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought, and feelings. it fouses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures. Also known as social or socio-cultural anthropology. |
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Term
| What is culture? Why is it important? |
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Definition
A society's shared and socially transmitted ideas, values, and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and generate behavior and are reflected in that behavior.
"Everything that people have, think, and do as members of a society" (Ferrarro, 2008)
Culture is functionally important in terms of:
-communication
-a tool
-gives meaning to differences
-identity
-adaptive
-culture is both public and private |
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Term
| Why do we say culture is shared? |
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Definition
As a shared set of ideas, values, perceptions, and standards of behavior, culture is the common denominator that makes that actions of individuals intelligible to other members of their society.
EX-everyone knows what "the simpsons" is |
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Term
| Why do we say culture is integrated? |
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Definition
-Culture is a complex, integrated systemic mechanism which consists of
1. learned concepts and behavior
(boys vs. girls)
2. underlying perspectives
(worldview)
3. resulting products
-expressive (customs/rituals)
-material (artifacts) |
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Term
| What kinds of characteristics does culture have? |
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Definition
Culture is:
-learned
-unconscious
-shared
-integrated
-symbolic
-a way of life
-dynamic
-relative |
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Term
| What kinds of things do you have to do before you do cultural anthropology fieldwork? |
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Definition
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Term
| What kinds of things do you do in cultural anthropology fieldwork? |
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Definition
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Term
| What do you do when you return from cultural anthropology fieldwork? |
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Definition
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Term
| Why are symbols multi-vocal? |
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Definition
-they are ambiguous(open to interpretation; having double meaning)
-arbitrary (Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system) |
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Term
| What is the sign, signifier, and signified? How do they relate to a symbol? |
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Definition
| sign=signifier/signified --> they are always in relation to each other |
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Term
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Definition
| symbols provide people with an emotional and intellectual commitment |
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Term
| What were some of the symbols within Clifford Geetz's study? What did they mean in terms of society? |
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Definition
| religious system-cluster of scared symbols possessing a power or force (mana) emanating from the spiritual world |
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Term
| What is economic anthropology? |
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Definition
economic archaeology is the study of how people control their economic resources, most particularly but not entirely, their food supply.Economic anthropologists study how humans use the material world to maintain and express them-selves in social groups
Economic anthropologists focus a good deal of our work around three areas: production, exchange, and consumption and distribution and it might seem fairly simple to ask:
How does a social group produce what it wants, needs, and desires?
How are those goods exchanged?
How are those goods consumed? |
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Term
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Definition
| the activities through which people produce circulate and consume things |
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Term
| Why does traditional economic theory have problems with anthropological cases? |
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Definition
| Traditional ecenomic theory believes in rationality. It does not take into account rituals like potlatches were social position is often given a boost by giving thigs away. |
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Term
| How does economic anthropology do things differently than traditional economic theory? |
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Definition
| Doesnt take into social accounts |
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Term
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Definition
the act of giving or taking one thing in return for another
The transfer of things between social actors |
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Term
| Why are gift more complicated then they seem? |
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Definition
| because the reasons for gift giving can be different. |
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Term
| What was Marcel Mauss' contribution to economic anthropology? What is reciprocity? |
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Definition
according to him, gifts make relationships. appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to keep the very relationship between givers alive; a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of any future gifts
For Mauss its not individuals its groups. Refusal of a gift is a refusal of a relatinship reciprocity is the direct exchange of goods and services generalized. recipriocity:gifts are given freely without caculated value or repayment due. Balanced recipricoty: direct exchange. value of gift is caculated |
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Term
| What does Potlatch tell us about exchange? |
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Definition
| : to feed or to consume. Include objects, ceremonial objects, objects of beauty, symbolic value. Today, potlatch gifts include coffe mugs, socks hand knit blankets and clothes, carved masks. |
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Term
| What problems exist with the nuclear family model? |
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Definition
Today, families that make up a traditional idea of a nuclear family (1 man, 1 women, and child unit) are about 20% of actual US households.
-the term nuclear family is used to cover the social reality of several types of small parent-child units, including single-parents with children and same-sex couples with children. |
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Term
| What does family mean in the context of cultural anthropology? |
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Definition
| the definition of family is necessarily broad: 2 or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. the family may take many forms ranging from a single parent, to a married couple or polygamous spouses with out without offspring, to several generations of parents and their children |
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Term
| What two ways do cultural anthropologist study family? |
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Definition
conjugal-marital ties
consanguineal-blood ties |
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Term
| What are some problems with a functional approach to studying "the family?" |
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Definition
| In making comparisons between small scale , pre-industrial societies and large scale industrial ones, the anthropologist Edmund Leach claims that the decline of the extended family has isolated the nuclear family and placed emotional demands upon it which are unbearable. The inevitable result is conflict both within the nuclear family and within societies as a whole as the nuclear family creates barriers between it and the wider society breeding suspicion, fear and social conflict. Leach concludes, "Far from being the basis of the good society, the family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontents." |
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Term
| What are some other types of families besides the "nuclear" family? |
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Definition
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Term
| Is there a superior family type? why or why not? |
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Definition
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Term
| How is family important to social organization? |
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Definition
| a child is born and the first society that he will emerge with is the family. this is the basic unit of the society. we all start from meeting our parents. and as a child grows, we learn from their behavior, the basic norm is inculcated in our identity. and once developed, we are ready for the society at large. this is basic concept, the family is first group we meet. |
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Term
| What can we say about family relationships historically? |
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Definition
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Term
| What are reductionist theories of religion? |
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Definition
Religious reductionism generally attempts to explain religion by boiling it down to certain nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic explanations for the presence of religion are: that religion can be reduced to humanity's conceptions of right and wrong, that religion is fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, that religion is a way to explain the existence of a physical world, and that religion confers an enhanced survivability for members of a group and so is reinforced by natural selection.
ex-frued and marxist had very influential reductionist explanations of religion |
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Term
| What were the 7/seven theories of religion we talked about? What were some of the problems inherent to these approaches? |
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Definition
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.Max Weber: a source of social action (anti-recutionist)
6.Mircea Eliade: the reality of the sacred
-independence of religion
-study history and comparisons
7.E.E Evans-Pritchard "societys consrtuct of heart" (the relationist) theories of primitive religion |
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Term
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Definition
| language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used to encode ones experience and sharing it with others. |
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Term
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Definition
| the scientific study of language |
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Term
| How do linguistic anthropologist break down language? What are the basic units and forms of analysis? |
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Definition
Linguists look at how words are arrayed
Phonetics: sound of language
Phonemes: individual sounds in a letter or a word
Morphology- patterns or rules
Syntax- patters in which morphine’s become sentences
Grammer-morphemes.snytax |
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Term
| Sapir and Whorf argued that language shapes how we see the world. What does this mean? |
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Definition
| the theory that human languages determine how the real world is perceived by humans and that this structure is different and unable to be relayed from one language to another |
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Term
| How does language relate to cognition? |
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Definition
cognition: nexus of relations between the thinking mind and the world.
Given that
(1) differences occur in linguistic categories across languages
(2) linguistic categories determine aspects of individuals’ cognition
Then:
(3) aspects of individuals’ cognition differ across linguistic communities according to the language they speak. |
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Term
| How do Metaphors relate to worldview? |
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Definition
Identity, symbols, meaning and powerMetaphors are forms of though and langaugte that asserts a meaningful link between two expressions.
Sociatel metaphors: the u.S is a melting pot
Organic metaphors: the head of the nation is in Washington
Technological metaphors- my brain is processing this |
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Term
| What is the difference between sex and gender? |
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Definition
Sex: biological categorization based on reproductive potential
Gender: social elaboration of biological sex- gender as a social construction |
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Term
| Why do anthropologists argue that gender is constructed? Why is it asymmetrical and non-static? |
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Definition
| Gender is learned. Gender is calobrated. Gender is something we do. Gender is asymmetrical. Gender is a inequality |
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Term
| What are speech communities? Why are they important to power relations? |
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Definition
A community sharing rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety. people who speak the same language are not always members of the same speech community.
[M]embership in a speech community includes local knowledge of the way language choice, variation, and discourse represents generation, occupation, politics, social relationships, identity,
Ex. a elderly man may not understand a college student. |
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Term
| How can language force gendering (in terms of actual words)? |
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Definition
A: primary: a male is a male. A female a female
b. secondary: associated meanings
c.the way someone talks: tone of voice, pitch of voice |
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Term
| What are some ways men and women pattern their speech differently? Why is this important? |
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Definition
Men are encouraged to talk more, sign of leadership and masculinity
Women should be submissive and quiet. Men uses reductions more often then women. Lisp is more associated with women and gays. |
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Term
| What is speech act theory? |
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Definition
| attempts to explain how speakers use language to accomplish intended actions and how hearers infer intended meaning form what is said. |
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Term
| In terms of language, what is "gendered positioning?" |
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Definition
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