Term
| Franz Boas - Early Anthropology |
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Definition
Founded first U.S. Anthropology department at Columbia University.
He was also a foremost critic of evolution-ism, Social Darwinism, Eugenics, Race, and Racism |
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Term
| Franz Boas - Personal History |
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Definition
Experienced antisemitism first hand and had the scars to prove it.
He used his own experiences along with field work and cultural relativity in his published findings.
He was a Physicist and a Geographer.
He was a Jewish German, and he was born in 1858? and died in 1942. |
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Term
| Franz Boas - Early Anthropology 1880-1940 |
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Definition
He espoused that society and culture were not things or technology, but something more complex.
No single culture could be understood solely in comparison to European or American society.
Cultural Relativity: each culture must be understood on its own terms, and not on those of outsiders.
Ethnography was imperative in order to experience the people, their history and environment, and that was how you identified them; this is called "Historical Particular-ism".
Biology has nothing to do with culture. |
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Term
| Lewis Morgan: - Early Social Evolutionist |
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Definition
(Along with E.B. Tylor, James Frazer and Herbert Spencer)
He took Darwin's ideas and misinterpreted them; they all thought all cultures go through a set of stages of development: on a scale of Savage, Barbarian, Uncivilized and Civilized. They espoused that all living cultures go through these stages of civilization.
They viewed change as progress.
Morgan is the only one here that engaged in fieldwork. The other 3 only read about the cultures they investigated. They are also called Early Evolutionists, and Uni-lineal Evolutionists. |
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Term
| Emile Durkheim - Social Scientist |
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Definition
British and French.
He rejected Marx's ideas and analysis of society.
He Developed "Functionalism": The functions of society and its institutions work together; society is an organism. The different institutions balance the whole culture. If the functions become unbalanced, then ANOMIE results. Anomie means norm-less-ness.
The class system functions to maintain stability in society.
The different classes perform different functions to hold society together. |
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Term
| Herbert Spencer - Social Philosopher |
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Definition
Originator of the term "survival of the fittest".
He vulgarized Darwin's 'theory of natural selection' to advance his own ideas about the so-called "favored" races of humanity.
Social Darwinis was the result of his work; savages were technologically, materially, mentally and biologically inferior; an idea that is still posited today. |
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Term
| Margaret Meade - Student of Boaz |
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Definition
Studied under Boaz at Columbia Univ.
Pioneered work on women and children regarding gender and adolescence. |
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Term
| E.B. Tylor - Social Evolutionist |
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Definition
British.
Culture includes "knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities or habits acquired by man. He believed that cultures were humanly complex.
He also believed that all human society can be identified by their differences in customs, moral, or beliefs, which were learned, and not biological. |
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Term
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Definition
Biological Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Archaeology
Cultural Anthropology
(and a new area called
Applied Anthropology) |
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Term
| Terms - Biological Anthropology |
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Definition
The study of biological experiences of humans.
A sub-field of anthropology. |
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Term
| Terms - Cultural Anthropology |
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Definition
| Deals specifically with the study of culture in its many different forms, expressions and practices. |
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Term
| Terms - Linguistic Anthropology |
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Definition
The study of language and its relationship to culture.
A sub-field of anthropology |
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Term
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Definition
The study of material and its relationship to culture.
A sub-field of anthropology. |
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Term
| Terms - Applied Anthropology |
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Definition
A new sub-field of anthropology.
The application of all forms of anthropology (biologic, linguistic, cultural and archaeological)to human problems using all these four forms of anthropology. |
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Term
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Definition
| The study of human beings in all of their biological and cultural complexities, both past and present. The field is conventionally split into 4 sub-fields |
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Term
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Definition
| An idea that change is set into motion by catastrophic events; before the emergence of uniformitarianism, this doctrine posted that the earth had changed only through major catastrophes set into motion by the Judeo-Christian God, like the Great Flood detailed in the Bible. |
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Term
| Terms - Uniformitarianism |
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Definition
A geological theory positing that the earth's physical features result from steady, gradual processes.
Associated with Charles Lyell and his popularization of the theory in his book " Principles of Geology". |
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Term
| Terms - Natural selection |
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Definition
The complex process of adaptation to change in the physical environment, which depends on its most basic level, on reproduction and variability.
Associated with Charles Darwin and his original theory of how biological change or 'evolution' worked. |
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Term
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Definition
A theory cultural change popular in the 19th century anthropology that posited all human societies passed through a progressive sequence of development from savages, barbarians, and finally to civilization.
Also called 'Evolutionism' or 'Unilineal evolution'. |
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Term
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Definition
A form of Social Evoluionism that was popular in the lat 19th and early 20th centuries, that surmised from Darwin's theory of natural selection, which posited that, first, 'inferior' groups of people remained inferior because of their biological differences, or more simply, because of their race; and second, that 'favored' races would inevitably supplant the unfavorable ones through the process of 'survival of the fittest'.
Associated with Herbert Spencer. See alo "Eugenics". |
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Term
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Definition
| A powerful social and cultural category that while having no actual counterpart in human biology, differentiates groups of people based on observable physical characteristics and their presumed relationships to behavioral differences. |
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Term
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Definition
A popular movement that gained momentum inthe late 19th and early 20th centures that put Social Darwinism into practice, focused on the selective breeding and elimination of human populations.
The movement climaxed with the end of WWII - although eugenics still has adherents today. |
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Term
| Terms - Cultural Reletivity |
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Definition
The idea that each 'society' or 'culture' must be understood on its own terms, not by those of 'outsiders' (ETIC point of view).
Associated with Franz Boaz's ideals. |
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Term
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Definition
| A group of interacting individual, which among humans, is interdependent with 'culture'. |
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Term
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Definition
A shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn; and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior.
Interdependent with 'society'.
Human action exists within larger systems of meaning; we call those systems 'culture'. |
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Term
| Terms - Historical Particularism |
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Definition
An approach to understanding cultural diversity that postulates that each 'society' or 'culture' is the outgrowth of its past.
Associated with Franz Boas. |
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Term
| Terms - Cultural Selection |
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Definition
| The influence of 'culture' on biology. In particular on Biological reproduction. |
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Term
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Definition
| In Biology: an interbreeding group. |
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Term
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Definition
In Biology: the classification of the natural world.
See 'Linnaean Hierarchy'. |
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Term
| Terms - Linnaean Hierarchy |
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Definition
The classification of the natural world into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species.
Associated with Carolus Linnaeus |
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Term
| Terms - "Survival of the fittest" |
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Definition
| An extreme misuse of Darwin's theory of natural selection; human social progress that 'resulted from' more fit and favored human societies/groups prevailing over less fit and less favored societies. |
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Term
| Terms - Modern Anthropology |
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Definition
Franz Boaz - Father of "modern" anthropology.
A critique both of race and of social evolution in its various forms. |
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Term
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Definition
| A 1990's social scientist report that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. |
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Term
| Terms - Emic point of view |
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Definition
Emic knowledge and interpretations are those existing within a culture, that are 'determined by local custom, meaning and belief' (Ager and Loughry, 2004:n.p) and best described by a 'native' of the culture.
(www.wikipedia.org) |
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Term
| Terms - Etic point of view |
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Definition
| Etic knowledge refers to generalizations about human behavior that are considered universally true, and commonly links cultural practices to factors of interest to the researcher, such as economic or ecological conditions, that cultural insiders my not consider very relevant (Morris et al., 1999).(www.wikipedia.org) |
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Term
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Definition
| Materials that human beings purposefully create either as tools to adapt to their environment or as meaningful expressions of their experience (i.e.: GNP, populaiton data, food sources, per capita info., etc.) |
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Term
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Definition
| An object created by humans. |
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Term
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Definition
In simple terms, the sending and receiving of information through sounds, gestures, and/or other indicators; in anthropological terms, the use of arbitrary symbols (included those nonverbal, such as those written) to impart meaning.
See also Language. |
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Term
| Terms - Socio-cultural Anthropology |
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Definition
| See Cultural Anthropology |
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Term
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Definition
| A system of communication - verbal and/or nonverbal - that among humans depends on the cultural assignment of meaning to symbols, the arrangement of which depends on grammatical rules. |
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Term
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Definition
A perspective emphasizing the whole rather than just the parts.
See also 'Comparativism'. |
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Term
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Definition
The search for or study of similarities and differences between and among human beings in all of their biological and cultural complexities.
See also 'Holism'. |
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Term
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Definition
| The process of learning a culture. |
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Term
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Definition
| The far-reaching process of influence that can be expressed directly or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly. |
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Term
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Definition
| The cross-cultural study of music. |
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Term
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Definition
| The tendency to view the world, sometimes exclusively, from the basis of one's own experience. |
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Term
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Definition
The study and description of 'culture', which specifically refers to both
(1) a field method of studying 'culture' in its social context, and
(2) the approach to writing about 'culture'.
Presenting the native's point of view, and 'basic data' of how people negotiate and share meaning in their everyday lives. |
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Term
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Definition
| Someone who undertakes ethnography as an approach to studying culture. |
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