Anthro 130 Midterm 1 Study Guide PDF

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ANTHRO 130 Midterm 1 Study Guide

Chapter 1 

Anthropology is the study of the diversity of human bodies and behavior in the past and the present.

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Four subfields:

- Physical or biological anthropology: study of the diversity of human bodies in the past and present, including physical adaptation, group or “race” characteristics, and human evolution.  Primatology: the study of the physical and behavioral characteristics of the category of species called primates

- Archaeology: the study of the diversity of human behavior in the past, based on the traces left behind by past humans or societies.  Two categories of evidence: o Artifacts: physical objects created by humans that are portable objects that people made and used like pottery, clothing, jewelry, tools, and weapons. o Features: larger and immovable objects or structures created and left by humans like walls, building, roads, and canals.  Ecofacts: environmental remains from past human social contexts, including wood, seeds, pollen, animal bones, and shells.  Garbology: study of contemporary trash to examine how humans make, consume, and discard material objects in the present

- Linguistic anthropology: study of diversity of human language in the past and present, and its relationship to social groups, practices, and values.

- Cultural anthropology: study of the diversity of human behavior in the present.

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Anthropological perspective: the unique “angle” or point of view of anthropology consisting of cross-cultural or comparative study, holism, and cultural relativism

- Comparative or cross-cultural study: examination of a wide variety of societies when considering any particular cultural question, for purposes of comparison.

- Holism: part of the anthropological perspective that involves consideration of every part of a culture in relation to every other part and to the whole.

- Cultural relativism: reaction to the fact of cultural diversity in which one attempts to understand and judge the behavior of another culture in terms of its standards of goods, normal, moral, legal, etc. rather than one’s own

Chapter 2

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There are many definitions and approaches of culture.

- Culture as primarily ideas and beliefs and we can inter it from behaviors of people. - Cultures as a set of real facts, albeit “social facts,” including observable behavior and products of that behaviors such as rules, groups, and institutions that shape people’s lives.

- Culture can even refer to material objects like tools and houses.  Definition by E.B. Tylor: Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. 

Qualities of culture:

- Learned  Culture, at the moment of birth, is what is going on around the individual, what people in his/her social environment are doing.  Culture is a great, ongoing conversation.

 Humans acquire culture  Enculturation: process by which a person learns or acquires his/her culture, usually as a child. Also known as socialization.  Socialization: from an anthropological point of view, synonym for enculturation  Guided reinvention of culture: the process by which individuals, ordinarily children, acquire ideas, concepts, and skills actively by observing the behavior of others, extracting meanings and rules, and testing those meanings and rules in social situations; fully competent members “guide” the learning by providing models of behavior and correction for inappropriate behaviors.

- Shared  Society: a group of humans who live in relative proximity to each other, tend to marry each other more than people outside the group, and share a set of beliefs and behaviors  Subculture: a group or subset within a society that is distinguished by some unique aspects of its behavior such as clothing style, linguistic usages, or beliefs and values.  Counterculture: a group or subset within a society that more or less intentionally adopts behaviors, beliefs, or practices that are at odds with or opposed to the main stream of society

- Symbolic  Human capability and need to create and assign meaning  Symbol: an object, gesture, sound, or image that “stands for” some other idea or concept or object; something that has “meaning,” particularly when the meaning is arbitrary and conventional and thus culturally relative

- Integrated  Culture is a system composed of many elements is some structural interrelation

 Each part or domain of culture has its own particular function, its own job to do, even as each part contributes to the functioning of the whole  Functionalism: the method and eventually the theory that a cultural trait can be investigated for the contribution it makes to the survival of individual humans, the operation of other cultural items, or the culture as whole.

- Adaptive  Adaptive power of human culture is a quantum leap above physical or genetic adaptation.  Physical adaptation is slow but cultural adaptation is fast.  Cultural adaptation is intentional and comparatively “free” –that is humans can innovate where they perceive a need. 

Culture is produced, practiced, and circulated

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Culture is in places and things

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Biocultural: mutual interaction between physical/biological and behavioral/cultural factors, in which physical traits make certain behaviors possible and behavior feeds back to influence physical traits.

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Primate: term for classification of mammals, including prosimians, monkeys, apes, and humans, that share a collection of physical characteristics including a distinct tooth

pattern, five-fingered hands, a tendency toward erectness of the spine, large eyes and good vision, and a relatively large brain in relation to body weight among others. 

Erectness: tendency to have an upright posture based on a spine that is vertical rather than parallel to the ground

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Bipedalism: ability and tendency to walk on two feet

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Dominance: social relationship in which certain individuals have higher prestige or power in the group, allowing them to enjoy more or better resources as well as deference of lower-ranked members

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Hierarchy: see dominance

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Australopithecus: genus of the category Hominid, closely related to and earlier than genus Homo

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Homo habilis: extinct human species that lived from over two million years ago until less than two million years ago. They are also known as the first stone tool makers.

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Homo: genus that contains the modern human species (Homo sapiens) as well as several other extinct human species.

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Homo erectus: an extinct human species that lived approximately 1.8 million years ago until a few hundred thousand years ago or perhaps even more recently

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Homo sapiens: the species name for modern humans

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Neandertal: species or subspecies of Homo that first appeared around 130,000 years ago and is associated with the cold climate of Europe. They became extinct in the last 35-40,000 years and are generally not regarded as direct human ancestors, although this interpretation is still somewhat controversial

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Tool technologies:

- Oldowan: earliest known stone tool technology, associated with Homo habilis and names for the location of its discovery, Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. Made by hammering one stone with another to produce a cutting edge.

- Acheulian: stone tool technology associated with Homo erectus, which involves a more complex flaking of bifacial implements

- Mousterian: stone tool technology associated with Neandertals, first appearing less than 130,000 years ago. Included a variety of implements specialized for particular purposes with more “finishing” of the tools. 

Biological and cultural characteristics

- Neandertals  Inhabited Europe and Middle East.  Had larger bodies and brains, and their behavior was remarkably sophisticated.  Made new and better tools, Mousterian, which included a variety of implements specialized for particular purposes with more “finishing” of the tools  Evidence of intentional burials suggests some symbolic abilities and perhaps beliefs about death and after death.  Some anatomists conclude that they had the anatomy for speech

- Homo sapiens  Appeared in Africa and migrated to the rest of the world, displacing the Neandertals in Europe  Tools and culture were not initially more advanced than other species, but in the past 30,000 years, their culture development has been so rapid  Produced realistic paintings, often on cave walls, craving and jewelry and other “arts”  New “composite tools” made of multiple parts like an arrow or spear distinguished their technology along with fast-changing and regionally diverse technologies and cultures  Fully functional languages and belief and meaning-systems comparable to those found in any society today 

Method in cultural anthropology

- Fieldwork: anthropological method of traveling to the society one wants to study and living there for a prolonged period of time to collect data first-hand

- Participant observation: anthropological method in which we travel to society we want to study and spend long periods of time there, not only watching but joining their culture as much as possible

- Structured interview: fieldwork method in which the anthropologist administers a prepared set of questions to an informant/consultant

- Unstructured interview: fieldwork method in which the anthropologist conducts a relatively free-flowing conversation with an informant/consultant, either without prepared questions or unconstrained by these questions

Chapter 3  Franz Boas - Regarded as father of American cultural anthropology - First major fieldwork, cultural geography led Boas’ interest in Arctic landscapes where “population distribution, migratory movements, types of settlement, travel routes, and use of renewable resources among the Inuit were influenced by temporal fluctuations in the national conditions of Arctic environment.

- Conducted research on Baffin Island in norther Canada in 1883-1884 and produced one of the earliest ethnographies in 1888, The Central Eskimo

- Rejected diffionists, evolutionist, and racist theories of the day - Important statement about what would become anthropology, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology.”

- Proposed that there are no higher or lower cultures and that all such judgements are merely relative to one’s own standards of culture

- Rather than ordering cultures on the basis of supposed progress or similarity, he recommended actually observing each single culture in maximal detail and each part of culture within the context of the whole

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Bronislaw Malinowski

- Studied under the pioneering psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and early ethnologists like C. G. Seligman and Edward Westermarck in England before joking an expedition of Papua New Guinea in 1914.

- Practiced a different kind of research and spent 4 years in the filed - Pitched a tent among the native people, learned the language, and participated in their daily life

- Helped establish modern method of participant observation. - Published his epochal ethnography, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, on Trobriand economics and exchange activities, followed by Crime and Custom in Savage Society, The Sexual Life of Savages in Northwestern Melanesia, and Coral Gardens and their Magic.

- Determined that there were 3 general types of cultural data, each requiring its own collection technique

 Description and analysis of institutions  Constitute another dimension of cultural reality, was the minutiae of everyday life, which filled out an deepened the analysis of general institutions

 Narratives, utterances, folklore, and other conventional sayings in activities

- His theoretical approach that connected to this method - Like Boas, he rejected cultural evolutionism and speculative historical reconstructions

- Anthropologists should study the present with all possible attention and clarity before they indulge in speculations about the past a point he criticized the Boasians

- Recommended an approach known as functionalism - Rather than pursue its history, anthropologist can observe its function here and now essence of function was to be found in the needs of the individual who compose a society

Chapter 4  Language and culture - Many features of language are also features of culture in general - Language consists of symbols; it depends on the capacity to engage in symbolism - Language is a set of acts and gestures that mean something - In language, as in culture in general, humans invent their own worlds and live them - Humans can create their own cognitive, meaningful world, and they must create it. 

Symbol: conventional and arbitrary vehicle for a meaning

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Productivity: capacity of language to combine meaningless sounds to create new words or to combine words to create new utterances

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Competence: in language, the mastery of the elements (sounds, semantics, and grammar) of a language to be able to make intelligible utterances

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Phonology: study of how sounds are used in a language, specifically which sounds occur and the practices for how they combine and interact

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Morphology: area of language dealing with how meaningful bits (usually but not exclusively words) are created and manipulated by the combination of language sounds

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Semantics: study of meaning in language. See morphology

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Morpheme: smallest bit of meaningful sound in a language, usually word but also a prefix or suffix or other meaning conveying sound that can be used in conjunction with a word

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Free morpheme: morpheme that has meaning in its own right that can stand alone as a meaningful sound (for the most part, a word)

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Bound morpheme: morpheme that has meaning but only when used in conjunction with a word (such as the suffix –s to indicate plural)

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Semantic range: set of meanings conveyed by a particular word that is the range of its referents or variety of phenomena or conceptions that it names

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Syntax: rules in a language for how words are combine to make intelligible utterances of speech acts. Also known as grammar.

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Pragmatics: rules or practices regarding how language is used in particular social situations to convey particular social information such as the relative status or power of the speakers

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Honorifics: specialized forms of speech (terms, titles, tones, grammar, etc.) that convey respect or deference

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Performatives: linguistics utterances that do not merely describe but actually accomplish transformation in the social world

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Folklore: the traditional usually oral, literature of a society, consisting of various genres such as myth, legend, folk tale, song, proverb, and many others.

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Paralanguage: qualities that speakers can add to language to modify the factual or social meaning of speech such as tone of voice, volume, pitch, speech, and cadence

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Vocalization: non-linguistic sounds that can accompany and affect the meaning of speech

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Kinesics: study of how body movements are used to communicate social information, sometimes referred to as body language

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Proxemics: study of how cultures use personal space

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Diglossia: use of two varieties of a language by member of a society for distinct functions of by distinct groups of classes of people

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Pidgin: simplified version of a language that is usually used for limited purposes such as trade and economic interactions by non-native speakers of the language; usually an incomplete language that is not the first language of any group

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Creole: a pidgin language that has become elaborated into a multi-functional language and distributed into a first language of the community

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Anti-language: a speech style used by individuals or groups in the performance of roles opposing or inverting the society outside of their group

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Linguistic relativity hypothesis: language is not only a medium for communication about experience but actually a more or less powerful constituent of that experience; language

consists of concepts, relations, and values, and speakers of different languages approach and interpret reality through different sets of concepts, relations, and values (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

Chapter 5

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Sexual dimorphism: occurrence of two physically distinct forms of a species based on sexual characteristics as well as non-sexual ones such as body size

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Gender: cultural categories and concepts relating to sexually distinct bodies, sexual preferences, sexual identity, and sexual norms

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“The Fluid Gender Cosmos of the Navajo”

- A male, nadleehi, may wear women’s clothing, participate in women activities like cooking and washing and have sexual relations with other man

- Configuration of “other gender” behaviors has been treated as a single phenomenon across cultures and such individuals have been termed “berdache”

- Gender is foreign Western concept - In Navajo understanding, Sa’ah Naaghai Bik’eh Hozho (natural order) is male and female and organizes everything as male and female; living cycle and organizes everything as a cycle  nature itself is male and female  everything exits in terms of this arrangements gender valuation to many Navajos is largely situational even it appears in combination with seemingly fixed attributes such as genitals.

- No basis for determining whether the individual has the personality aspects, occupations attire, and other features of only one gender or both.

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Gender divisions and differences

- No reason that two gender categories should be segregated and valued unequally - Male activities are valued as dominantly important - Cultural systems give authority to men

- Women’s activities have been held in lower esteem then men’s - Women cosigned to a private or domestic space like household based on their nurturing tendencies, which is closed off from economically and politically important public space where men function

- Women are associated with nature and its lower biological and emotional function while men are associated with higher achievements of culture

- Women in Middle East exercise more power in public cultural sphere than is usually appreciated.

- In French village, there’s “sexual geography.” Men claimed village square, the café, and mayor’s office while women mostly inhabit home, three shops, and church.

- Men are more likely to interrupt, argue, ignore other’s comments and try to take control

- Linguistic segregation by sex 

Construction of masculinity

- Women are born but men ar...