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Definition
| The comparitive study of human societies and cultures |
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| In anthropology an approach that considers culture, history, language, and biology essential to a complete understanding of human society |
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| A goup of people who depend on one another for survival or well-being as well as the relationships among such people, including their status and roles |
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| The learned behaviors and symbols that allow people to live in groups. The primary means by which humans adapt to their environment. The way of life characteristic of a particular human society |
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| A description of society or culture. |
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| Examining society using concepts, categories, and distinctions that are meaningful to members of that culture. |
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| Examining society using concepts, categories, and rules derived from science, an outsider's perspective, which produces analyses that members of the society being studied may not find meaningful |
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| The attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural phenomena |
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| The study of human thought, meaning, and behavior that is learned rather than genetically transmitted, and that is typical of groups of people |
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| Description of the cultural past based on written records, interviews, and archaeology |
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| A brach of linguistics concerned with understanding language and its relation to culture |
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| Study relationships among languages to better understand the histories and migrations of those who speak them |
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| The subdiscipline of anthropology that focuses on the reconstruction of past cultures based on their material remains |
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| Societies for which we have no usable written records |
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| Any object made or modified by human beings. Generally used to refer to objects made in past cultures |
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| The archeological investigation of towns and cities as well as the process of urbanization |
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| Cultural Resource management (CRM) |
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Definition
| The protection and management of archaeological, archival, and architectural resources |
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| The subdiscipline of anthropology that studies people from a biological perspective, focusing primarily on aspects of humankind that are genetically inherited. It includes osteology, nutrition, demography, epidemiology, and primatology |
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| The subdiscipline of anthropology concerned with tracing evolution of humankind in the fossil record |
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| The subdiscipline of anthropology concerned with mapping and explaining physical differences among modern human groups |
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| A member of a biological order of mammals that includes human beings, apes, and monkeys as well as prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers, and others) |
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| A subfield of cultural anthropology concerned with the way sin which disease is understood and treaded in different cultures |
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| The application of anthropology to the solution of human problems |
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| Societies that have occupied a region for a long time and are recoginized by other groups as its original inhabitants |
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| The application of biological anthropology to the identification of skeletalized or badly decomposed human remains |
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| Judging other cultures from the perspective of one's own culture. The notion that one's own culture is more beautiful, rational, and nearer to perfection than any other |
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| A situation where social or moral norms are convused or entirely absent; often caused by rapid social change |
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| The belief that some human populations are superior to others because of inherited, genetically transmitted characteristics |
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| The notion that cultures should by analyzed with reference to their own histories and values, in terms of the cultural whole, rather than according to the vales of another culture |
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| Biopsychological Equality |
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Definition
| The notion that all human groups have the same biological and mental capabilities |
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| What is the definition of anthropology? |
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Definition
| The comparitive study of human societies and cultures. Its goal is to descripe, analyze, and explain different cultures, to show how groups have adapted to their environments and given significance to their lives |
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| In what ways is anthropology holistic? |
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Definition
| It combines the study of human biology, history, and the learned and shared patterns of human behavior and thought we call culture in order to analyze human groups |
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| What are 5 subdisciplines of anthropology? |
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Definition
| Cultural anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, biological anthropology, and applied antrhopology |
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| What is the focus of cultural anthro? |
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Definition
| The learned and shared ways of behaving typical of a particular human group |
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Term
| What is the focus of linguistic anthro? |
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Definition
| Examines history, structure, and variation of human language |
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| What si the focus of archaeology? |
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Definition
| Try to reconstruct past culutres through the study of their material remains |
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| What is the focus of biological anthro? |
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Definition
| Study humankind from a biological perspective, focusing on evolution, human variation, skeletal analysis, primatology, as well as other facets of human biology |
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| What do applied anthropologists do? |
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Definition
| Are trained in one of the other subfields. They use anthropological research techniques to solve social, political, and economic problems for governments and other organizations |
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| Name some cirtical issues that concern cultural anthropologists. |
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Definition
| Ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, race, and globalization |
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Term
| What is ethnocentrism and what is its importance in the study of different cultures? |
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Definition
| Ethnocentrism is the notion that one's own culture is superior to all others. Anthropologists fidn that ethnocentrism is common among almost all people and may serve important rules in society. However, anthropology also shows the problems of judging other people through the narrow perspective of one's own culture |
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Term
| What is cultural relativism and is it the same as moral relativism? |
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Definition
| Cultural relativism is the belief that cultures must be understood as the products of their own histories, rather than judged by comparison with eachother or with our own culture. Cultural relativism differs from moral relativism; understanding cultures on their own terms does not necessarily imply approval of them |
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Term
| What is the anthropological perspecitve on race? |
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Definition
| Anthro. demonstrates that race is not a valid scientific category, but rather an important social and cultural construct. |
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Term
| How have anthropolists responded to the increasing interconnections among people throughout the world? |
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Definition
| Anthropologists are deeply concerneed with documenting and understanding the ways in which global economic, social, and political processes affect local culture throughout the world. Anthropologists have often been involved in advancing the rights and interests of native peoples |
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Definition
| The frequency change of a particular trait (race) as you move geographically from 1 point to another |
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Definition
| The major research tool of cultural anthropology; includes both fieldwork among people in society and the written results of fieldwork |
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Definition
| Judging other cultures from the perspective of one's own culture. The notion that one's own culture is more beautiful, rational, and nearer to perfection than others |
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Definition
| The notion that cultures should be analyzed with reference to their own histories and values, in terms of the cultural whole, rather than according to the values of another culture |
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Definition
| The firsthand, systematic exploration of a society. It involves living with a group of people and participating and observing their behavior |
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Definition
| The fieldwork technique that involves gathering cultural data by observing people's behavior and participating in their lives |
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| Institutional Review Board (IRB) |
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Definition
| A committee organized by a university or other research institution that approves, monitors, and reviews all research that involves human subjects |
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Definition
| Feelings of alienation taht result from rapid immersion in a new and different culture |
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Definition
| Examing a society usign concepts and distinctions that are meaningful to members of that culture |
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Definition
| Examining societies using concepts, categories, and rules derived from science; an outsider's perspective which produces analyses that members of the society being studied may not find meaningful |
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Definition
| A person from whom an anthropologist gathers data |
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Definition
| The attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural phenomena |
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Term
| Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) |
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Definition
| An ethnographic database that includes descriptions of more than 300 cultures and is used for cross-cultural research |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective focusing on issues of power and voice. Postmodernists suggest that anthropological accounts are partial truths reflecting the background, training, and social position of their authours |
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| Collaborative anthropology |
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Definition
| Ethnography that gives priority to informants on the topic, methodology, and written results of research |
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Definition
| Anthro. that includes political action as a major goal of fieldwork |
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Definition
| An anthropologist who does fieldwork in his or her own culture |
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Definition
| The requirement that participants in anthropological studies should understnad the ways in which their participation and the realease of the research data are likely to affect them |
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Term
| When did anthropology begin as an academic discipline and what were the methods and goals of early anthropologists |
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Definition
| Anthropology began in the 19th century. In that era, anthropologists were compilers of data rather than fieldworkers. Their goal was to descirbe and document the evolutionary history of human society. There were numerous problems with their data and methods |
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Term
| Who was Franz Boas and what role did he play in American anthropology? |
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Definition
| Franz Boas was a German trained social scientist. In the United States, Franz Boas established a style of anthropolgy that rejected evolutionism. Boas insisted that anthropologists collect data through participant observation. He argued that cultures were the result of their own history and could not be compared to one another, a position called cultural relativism |
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Term
| Who was Bronislaw Malinowski and what rold did he play in anthropology? |
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Definition
| Bronislaw Malinowski was a British trained anthropologist whose approach and fieldwork were critical in establishing anthropology in Britain. Although the focus of Malinowski's work was different from Boas's, both emphasized participant observation and both saw members of other cultures as fully rational and worthy of respect |
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Term
| How is reasearch in anthro. today different from research in the early 20th century? |
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Definition
| Almost all anthropologists today do fieldwork, and many continue to work in small communties. Most focus on answering specific questions rather than desciribing entire societies. Anthropological techniques inclue participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, and mapping. |
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Term
| What is participant observation? |
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Definition
| The technique of gathering data on human cultures by living among the people, observing their social interaction on an ongoing daily basis, and participating as much as possible in their lives. This intensive field experience is the methodological hallmark of cultural anthro. |
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Term
| What are the emic and etic perspectives? |
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Definition
| Anthropologists using the emic perspective seek to understand how culutres look from the inside. Their goal is to enable cultural ousiders to gain a sense of what it might be like to be a member of the culture. Anthropoligsts using an etic perspective seek to derive prinicples or rules that explain the behavior of members of a culture. Etic research is judged by the usefulness of the hypotheses it generates and the degree to which it accurately describes behavior, not by whether or not members of the culture studied agree with its conclusions |
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Term
| What is the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) and what is it used for? |
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Definition
| The HRAF is a database of information on more than 300 cultures. It is used for coss-cultural research. Cross-cultural researchers attempt to compare cultures to derive laus or principles that can be applied to many different cultures |
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Term
| What is feminist antrhopology and what is its importance in the development of anthropological thinking? |
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Definition
| Most anthropology before the late 1960s focused on men's lives. In the 1960s feminist anthropology was a movement to change the focus of anthro. to inclue all people and to increase the number of female anthropologists. Began a trend of thinking about both the structure of anthropology as a discipline and the role of gender, power, and voice in society. |
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Term
| What is postmodernism and how did it affect anthropology? |
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Definition
| Postmodernism is a theoretical position focusing on the role of power and voice in shaping society and research. Postmodernists urged anthropologists to become more sensitive to these issues. Postmodernists alos held that the objective world was unknowalbe and anthropologists' voice uncertain. Postmodernism created intense debate within anthropology but ultimately enriched ethnography |
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Term
| What are engaged and collaborative anthropology? |
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Definition
| Collaborative anthropologists take great pains to involve members of the groups they study in the production of ethnographic knowledge. Engaged anthropologists lace speical emphasis on the political dimesoins of their work and combine fieldwork with political and social activism |
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Term
| What are native anthropologists and what special advantages and problems do they have? |
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Definition
| Native anthropologists are those who study their own society. Native anthropologists may have advantages of access and rapport. However, in some cases, they also experience burdens more intensely, wuch as whether to expose aspects of the culture that may be received unfavorably by outsiders. |
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Term
| What are some ethical dilemmas that face anthropologists? |
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Definition
| Anthropological ethics require protecting the dignity, privacy, and anonymity of the people one studies as well as obtaining their informed consent. However, it is not not clear that this can be accomplished in all cases. In places of violence and instability, anthropoligists may not have the power or knowledge necessary to provide such protection. |
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Term
| What is the importance of anthropology in an increasingly globalized world? |
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Definition
| Anthropologists are increasingly enmeshed in a global society. Those they study are rarely isolated and are often quite knowledgeable about anthropology. Anthropological knowledge is often important in the ways people understand their identity, as such, in increasingly politcal |
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Term
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Definition
| The process of learning to be a member of a particular cultural group |
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| Culture and Personality theory |
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Definition
| An anthropological perspective that focuses on culture as the principle force in shaping the typical personality of a society as well as on the role of personality in the maintenance of cultural institutions. |
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Definition
| A theoretical approach that focuses on the ways in which members of a culture classify their world and holds that anthro. should be the study of cultural systems of classification |
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Definition
| A theoretical approuach that defines culture in terms of the rules and meanings underlying human behavior, rather than behavior itself |
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Definition
| A field of anthropological research focused on describing the ways in which different cultures classify and understand plants |
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Definition
| A field of anthropological research devoted to describing the medical systems and practices in different cultures |
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Definition
| A theoretcial perspectie that holds that all cultures reflect similar deep, underlying patterns and that anthrpologists should attmept to decipher these patterns |
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Definition
| Something that stands for something else |
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Term
| Interpretive (symbolic) Anthropology |
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Definition
| A theoretical approach that emphasizes culture as a system of meaning and proposes that the aim of cultural anthropology is to interpret the meanings that cultural acts have for their participants |
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Definition
| The anthropological theory that specific cultural institutions function to support the structure of society or seve the needs of individuals in society |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective concerned with applying the insights of Marxist thought to anthropology; neo-marxists modify marxist analysis to make appropriate to the investigation of small-sclae, non-Western societies |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective that holds that the ways in which cultural institutions work can best be understood by examining theif effects on the environment |
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Definition
| An ideal pattern that influences behavior in a society |
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Definition
| A culturally defined idea of what is true, right, and beautiful |
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Definition
| A system of perceptions, values, beliefs, and customs that are significantly different from those of a larger, dominant culture within the same society |
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Definition
| A change in the biological structure or lifeways of an individual or population by which it becomes better fitted to survive and reproduce in its environment |
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Definition
| The ability of humans to change their behavior in response to a wide range of environmental demands |
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Definition
| A theoretical approach that regards cultural patterns as adaptive responses to use the basic problems of human survival and reproduction |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective that holds taht the primary task of anthropology is to account for the similarities and differences among cultures and that this can best be done by studying the material constraints to which human existence is subject |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective concerned with historical change of culture from small-scale societies to extremely large-scale societies |
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Definition
| A theoretical perspective that explores the relationship between human cultural behavior and genetics |
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Definition
| A new variation on an existing cultural pattern that is subsequently accepted by other members of the society |
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Definition
| The spread of cultural elements from one culture to another through cultural contact |
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Definition
| The transformation of adopted cultural traits resulting in new cultural forms |
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Term
| What might human beings without culture be like? |
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Definition
| No humans can truely be said to be without culture but people with autism guve us insight into what having culture differently than others might be like |
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Term
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Definition
| The learned, symbolic, at least partially adaptive, and ever-changing patterns of behavior and meaning shared by members of a group |
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Term
| Describe the importancee of learning in human cultural behavior |
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Definition
| At a basic level, culture is learned behavior. For most humans, almost all behavior is at least partially learned, even though things such as eating are biological necessitites involve culture learning. |
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Term
| Describe the importance of symbols in human cultural behavior. |
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Definition
| Cultures are symbolic systems, mental templates for organizing the world. Every culture has a system of classification through which its people identify and organize the aspects of the world that are important to them. Culture is also a collection of symbols and meaning that permit us to understand others, understand ourselves, and experience our humanity |
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Term
| In what ways are cultures like biological organisms and whar are the problems with this organic anology? |
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Definition
| Cultures, like biological organisms, can be thought of as systems composed of interrelated parts. Changes in one aspect of culture result in other changes as well. However, unlike biological organisms, conflicts between different elements of culture are found in all cultural systems. If culture is a system, its parts do not fit together easily or well. |
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Term
| What are norms and value? Do people within a culture agree upon them? |
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Definition
| Norms are shared ideas about the way things ought to be done. Values are shared ideas about what is true, right, and beautiful. Norms and values are not necessarly consistent and may not be shared in the same way by all members of a culture. Individuals and groups manipulate them, renegotiate them, and battle over them. Norms and values involve conflict and subjugation as well as accommodation and consensus. |
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Term
| How is culture similarto the biological adaptations of non human animals to their environments? |
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Definition
| Many anthropologists understand culture as the major adaptve mechanism of the human species. Whereas other animals adapt primarily through biological mechanisms, humans satisfy their needs for food, shelter, and safety largely through the use of culture. Cultural adaptation has advanages of speed flexibility but disadvantages of misinformation and maladaptive practices |
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Term
| Are there any culturs that are static and unchanging? |
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Definition
| Cultures are constantly changing. There have been no "Stone Age people" since the Stone Age. Cultural change often occurs as part of the domination of one culture by another. |
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Term
| Define innovation and diffusion and describe their importance to culture. |
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Definition
| An innovation is a new variation on an existing cultural pattern. Diffustion is the spread of elements from one culture to another. Both are present in all cultures. However, both depend on cultural context. New cultural traits, and the use and meaning of symbols and objects may change as they move among cultures. |
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Term
| Do anthropologists agree of the definition and meaning of culture? |
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Definition
| Anthropologists argue frquently over the proper definition of culture and the right ways to study and understand it. |
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Term
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Definition
| The act of transmitting information |
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Definition
| The form of communication among nonhuman primates composed of a limited number of sounds that are tied to specific stimuli in the environment |
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Definition
| The notion that, in human language, words are only arbitrarily or conventionally conncected to the things for which they stand |
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Definition
| The ability of humans to combind words and sounds into new meaningful utterances |
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Definition
| The capacity of all human languages to describe things not happening in the present. |
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Definition
| A group of people who share a set of norms and rules for the use of language |
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Definition
| A basic set of principles, conditions, and rules that underlie all languages |
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| Descriptive of structural linguistics |
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Definition
| The study and analysis of the structure and content of particular languages |
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Definition
| The sound system of a language |
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Definition
| A system for creating words from sounds |
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Definition
| The part of grammar that has to do with the arrangement of words to form phrases and sentences |
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Term
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Definition
| The subsystem of a language that relates words to meaning |
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Definition
| A sound made by humans and used in any language |
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Term
| International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) |
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Definition
| A system of writing designed to represent all the sounds used in the different languages of the world |
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Term
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Definition
| The smalles significant unit in a language. A phonemic system is the sound system of a language |
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Term
| Standard Spoken American English (SSAE) |
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Definition
| The form of English spoked by most of the American middle class |
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Term
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Definition
| Two or more different phones that can be used to make the same phoneme in a specific language |
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Term
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Definition
| The smalles unit of language that has a meaning |
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Term
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Definition
| A unit of measuring that must be associated with another |
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Definition
| A unit of measuring that may stand alone as a word |
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Term
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Definition
| The smallest part of a sentence that can be said alone and still retain its meaning |
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Term
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Definition
| The total stock of words in a language |
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Term
| Are some forms of speech better than other forms? |
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Definition
| Stratified societies often have many different forms of language. When this is the case, some forms are often considered to be correct and others improper or interior. Although society may stigmatize some forms of speech, there is no scientific sense in which one grammatical patter or accent is better or worse than another |
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Term
| Define and describe ebonics or African American Vernacular English (AAVE) |
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Definition
| Ebonics is the speech pattern common to rural and urban working class African American communities. Historically, highly stigmatized, Ebonics uses grammatical rules that are different but no less logical that SSAE. |
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Term
| What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? |
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Definition
| The notion that grammar and vocabulary influence perception of the environment, and therefore speakers of different languages perceive their worlds in different ways. Although some evidence supports the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, most linguists argue that similarities among languages far out-weigh their differences and athat language does not have a systematic effect on thought or perception |
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Term
| What forms of nonverbal communication are used in human societies? |
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Definition
| Humans everywhere communicate nonverbally as well as verbally. In ever society, people use gestures, facial expressions, posture, and time to communicate with one another. However, the meaning of a gesture or expression may vary greatly from culture to culture |
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Term
| Describe 2 key ways in which language changes |
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Definition
| Both the sound and vocabulary of languages change over time. For example, many sounds of medieval English do not exist in current English. new words enter vocabulary through innovation as well as contact between cultures. |
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Term
| Was there ever a single human language? |
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Definition
| Linguists have developed techniques to trace the histories of languages and relationships among them. However, these techniques cannot determine if there ever was a single human language. The development of language involved genetic changes and these are likely to happen in a single small group. Hence, there probably was a sinle original language |
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Term
| Are we moving toward a world with onle a single language? |
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Definition
| Linguistic diversity has decreased dramitically, and many languages have illions of speakers and are unlikely to dissapear. As langauges expand to include more speakers, the diversity within them may increase. People who speak the same language may not understand one another |
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