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SOCA 105/Spring 2013 Exam 1 Study Guide Chapter 1 -What is Anthropology? 

Adaptation o What is it? Process by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses.

o Four types of adaptation

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What are the origins of American Anthropology? The origin of U.S. (four-field) anthropology can be traced to the nineteenth century. Early American anthropologists were especially concerned with exploring the origins and diversity of Native American groups, studying their customs, social life, language, and physical traits

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The four subfields of Anthropology

- Archeological Anthropology The study of past societies: an attempt to reconstruct past cultural systems 1. Artifacts 2. Prehistoric 3. Historical 4. Classical - Physical Anthropology The study of human biological and physiological characteristics and their development. - Cultural Anthropology The study of Contemporary Cultures - Linguistic Anthropology a. The study of language i.Structural linguistics ii.Sociolinguistics - influenced by social and cultural factors iii.Historical linguistics - language changes over time

o What are they? o What are their primary areas of research? Four-field anthropology also helps to explore the relationship between biology (e.g. race) and culture.

o What is the similar goal they all share? o The four subdisciplines share a similar goal of exploring variation in time and space to improve our understanding of the basics of human biology, society, culture and their interrelations.What is the four-field approach?  The four field approach in anthropology sees the discipline as composed of the four subfields of Archaeology, Linguistics, Physical Anthropology and Cultural anthropology.

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Diachronic vs. synchronic research o The role of each in anthropology Diachronic: variation in time, Synchronic: Examining variation in space, Studying societies at one time.

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Anthropology vs. Sociology Applied Anthropology the application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems

Chapter - Culture

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Tylor’s definition of culture “That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

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Enculturation o What is it? the process by which a child learns his or her culture.

o Why is it so important to understanding culture? Culture is massively impactful

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According to Kottak , what are the seven aspects of culture?

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C. Culture Is Learned

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1.

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2. Cultural learning is the accumulation of knowledge about experiences and information not perceived directly by the organism but transmitted to it through symbols.

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a. Symbols are signs that have no necessary or natural connection with the things they signify or for which they stand.

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b. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defines culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols.

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3. Culture is learned through direct instruction and observation, providing conscious and unconscious means for the acquisition of cultural knowledge.

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4. Anthropologists accept a doctrine named in the nineteenth century the “psychic unity of man,” which asserts that all human populations share the same capacity for culture.

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D.

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1. The human ability to use symbols is the basis of culture. (A symbol is defined as something verbal or nonverbal within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for something else.)

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2. While human symbol use is usually linguistic, a symbol is anything that is used to represent any other thing, when the relationship between the two is arbitrary and conventional (e.g., a flag).

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3. Other primates have demonstrated a rudimentary ability to use symbols, but only humans have elaborated cultural abilities such as to learn, to communicate, to store, to process, and to use symbols.

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E.

Culture Is Shared

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1.

Culture is an attribute not of individuals per se but of individuals as members of groups.

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2. The social transmission of culture tends to unify people by providing them with common experiences.

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3.

Such experiences in turn shape people’s values, memories, and expectations.

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F.

Culture and Nature

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1.

Cultural habits, perceptions, and inventions mold human nature in many directions.

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2. Our culture and cultural changes affect the ways in which we perceive nature, human nature, and the natural world.

Cultural learning is unique to humans.

Culture Is Symbolic

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G.

Culture Is All-Encompassing

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1.

The anthropological concept of culture includes all aspects of human social life.

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2.

Everyone is “cultured,” not just wealthy people with elite educations.

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H.

Culture Is Integrated

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1. A culture is an integrated, patterned system: Changes in one dimension of culture will likely generate changes in other dimensions.

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2. Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes, symbols, and judgments that further integrate a particular culture and distinguish it from others.

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I.

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1. In addition to biological adaptations, humans rely upon social and cultural means of adaptation.

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2.

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a. These include our basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort and reproduction.

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b. They also include our psychological and emotional needs for such things as friendship, companionship and approval.

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3. Sometimes adaptive behavior that offers short-term benefits to particular individuals may harm the environment and threaten a group’s long-term survival, thus making certain

Culture Is Instrumental, Adaptive, and Maladaptive

Culture is also used as an instrument to fulfill our needs.

o What does each aspect say about culture?

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Patterns of culture - Define each and understand what makes them different from one another o Universality o Generality

o Particularity 

UNIVERSALITY, GENERALITY, AND PARTICULARITY

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A. Anthropologists distinguish among the universal, the generalized, and the particular in studying human diversity.

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1. Cultural universals are certain biological, psychological, social, and cultural features that are found in every culture.

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2. Cultural generalities include features that are common to several but not all human groups.

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3.

Cultural particularities are features that are unique to certain cultural traditions.

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B.

Universals and Generalities

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1.

Universals:

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a. Some biologically based universals include a long period of infant dependency, yearround sexuality, and a complex brain that enables us to use symbols, languages, and tools.

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b.

Some social universals include life in groups and families of some kind.

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2.

Generalities:

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a.

Generalities occur in certain times and places, but not in all cultures.

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b. The nuclear family is one cultural generality that is present in many but not all societies. The view of the nuclear family as the “natural” family unit is an ethnocentric one.

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c. Cultural generalities may arise through cultural borrowing (diffusion), inheritance from a common cultural ancestor, or through domination imposed by one powerful group over another.

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C.

Particularity: Patterns of Culture

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1.

Practices that are unique to a single place, culture, or society are cultural particulars.

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2. Cultures are integrated and patterned differently and display tremendous variation and diversity.

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Levels of culture - Define each and understand what makes them different from one another o National o International o Subculture

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D.

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1. National culture refers to the experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions that are shared by citizens of the same nation.

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2. International culture refers to cultural practices that extend beyond and across national boundaries.

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3. Subcultures are identifiable cultural patterns and traditions associated with particular groups in the same complex society.

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Ethnocentrism o What is it?

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Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to apply one’s own values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures.

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a.

What may seem alien to us might appear normal, proper, and prized elsewhere.

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b.

The fact of cultural diversity calls ethnocentrism into question.

Levels of Culture

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c. What happens when cultural practices, values, and rights come into conflict with human rights?

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Cultural Relativism o What is it? The concept of cultural relativism asserts that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture.

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Human rights vs. cultural rights

The concept of human rights invokes the realm of justice and morality superior to countries, cultures, and religions; rights that are vested in the individual. Cultural rights are vested not in individuals but in groups and include a group’s ability to preserve its cultural traditions.

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Mechanisms of Culture Change - Define each and understand what makes them different from one another o Diffusion o Acculturation o Independent invention

A. Diffusion, defined as the spread of cultural traits through borrowing between cultures, has been a source of cultural change throughout human history.

1. Diffusion can be direct, when two cultures trade, intermarry, or wage war on one another; or indirect, when cultural practices or traits move from group A to group C via group B without any firsthand contact between groups A and C. 2. Diffusion can be forced when one culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group, as through warfare or colonization. B. Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact. 1. Acculturation may occur in any or all groups engaged in such contact. 2. Pidgin is an example of acculturation, because it is a language form that develops by blending elements from different languages in order to facilitate communication between the populations in contact such as in trade relationships. C. Independent invention is the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems. 1. Cultural generalities are partly explained by the independent invention of similar responses to comparable cultural and environmental circumstances. 2. The independent invention of agriculture in the Middle East and Mexico is an example.

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Globalization o What is it?

Globalization encompasses a series of processes that work to promote change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent.

Chapter 3 - Applying Anthropology 

What is applied anthropology? Applied anthropology relies on the ethnographic method. 1.

The ethnographic method involves firsthand study and participant observation; it takes a holistic, biological, cultural, and systemic approach, which makes it uniquely valuable in application to social problems.

o Early applications vs. applied anthropology today 

Early Applications

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1. Early approaches to applied anthropology had dangerous effects on British colonialism and World War II.

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2. Bronislaw Malinowski proposed a so-called “practical anthropology” that would focus on Westernization and the diffusion of European culture into tribal societies.

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3. During World War II, a number of U.S. anthropologists studied Japanese and German culture at a distance to predict the behavior of America’s enemies

C. Applied Anthropology Today 1. Applied anthropology today is usually seen as a helping profession, devoted to assisting local peoples and the disenfranchised in the international political arena. 2. Contemporary anthropologists often face ethical problems posed by their inability to set or influence policy and the difficulty of criticizing programs in which they have participated. 3. Anthropology’s professional organizations have established codes of ethics and ethics committees to address some of the ethical problems that arise in practicing anthropology. 4. Anthropologists endeavor to study, understand, and respect cultural values, positioning themselves to suggest, plan, and implement policies that affect people. 5. There are three roles or actions for applied anthropologists: a. Identify locally perceived needs for change. b. Work with local people to design culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change. c. Protect local people from harmful policies and projects.

*** READ UP ON ACADEMIC VS APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY 

Academic vs. applied anthropology o Define each and understand each in relation to one another

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Development anthropology o What is it? Development anthropology is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development o Strategies for innovation  Overinnovation vs. underdifferentiation vs. indigenous models B. Overinnovation

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1. Overinnovation refers to development projects that require major changes on behalf of the target community.

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2. Projects that require major changes in people’s daily lives are generally not successful.

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3. To avoid overinnovation, development projects need to be sensitive to the culture and concerns of daily life in the community involved.

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C. Underdifferentiation

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1. Underdifferentiation is the tendency to overlook cultural diversity and view all “less developed” countries as alike.

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2. Many development projects assume, incorrectly, that the nuclear family is the basic unit of production and land ownership.

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3. Many development projects also incorrectly assume that cooperatives based partially on models from the former Eastern bloc and socialist countries will be readily adopted by rural communities.

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4. Development projects also tend to emphasize benefits that will accrue to individuals, rather than social groups and communities.

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D. Indigenous Models

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1. The best models for economic development are to be found in the target communities.

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2. Kottak describes a form of economic development that took place in Madagascar that attended to local forms of social organization and treated local communities as partners.

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3. Realistic development promotes change, not overinnovation, by preserving local systems and relations.

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Urban Anthropology o What is it? Urban anthropology is the cross-cultural, ethnographic, and biocultural study of global urbanization and life in cities. o What are its primary areas of research?

Urban anthropological topics can include immigration, ethnicity, poverty, class, and violence, among many others.

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES 1. Understand what is meant by the statement that anthropology is the holistic and comparative study of humanity.

2. Know the four primary types of human adaptation and consider why their interrelationship has been particularly important for the human species. (This subject will be raised more systematically in subsequent chapters.) 3. Be able to identify, distinguish, and describe the four subfields of U.S. anthropology. Know what distinguishes ethnography from ethnology. 4. Understand why anthropology is considered a social science, how it integrates scientific and humanistic perspectives, and the role that the scientific method plays in structuring anthropological research and explanation.

CHAPTER OUTLINE I.

INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES A. Who we are is a product of the cultures we have experienced. One way to think about this is through the exercise of imagining what our lives would have been like if we had been born and raised in a different time or place. B. Culture is an environmental force that shapes our personalities and bodies by influencing, among other things, what we do, what we eat, and what we think. C. Culture is often “invisible” until it is compared to another culture. Anthropology relies on cross-cultural comparison to understand the particularities of individual groups of people as well as wider generalizations about all humans. The cross-cultural test is fundamental to the anthropological approach.

II.

HUMAN DIVERSITY A. Humans are among the most adaptable animals in the world, having the ability to inhabit widely variant ecological niches. Adaptability is what leads to human diversity. 1. Humans, like all other animals, use biological means to adapt to a given environment. 2. Humans are unique in having cultural means of adaptation. B. Anthropology is the study of the human species and its immediate ancestors. 1. Anthropology is holistic in that the discipline is concerned with studying the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.

2. Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural perspective by comparing the beliefs and behaviors of one society with those of others: ancient and modern, simple and complex, local and global. C. Humans share both society and culture. 1. Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans share with other animals. 2. Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that form and guide the beliefs and behaviors of the people exposed to them. Children learn these cultural traditions and customs through enculturation. 3. While culture is not biological, the ability to use it rests on certain features of human biology: the advanced ability to learn, think symbolically, use language, and make and use tools. D. Adaptation, Variation, and Change 1. Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses. a. Human adaptation involves interaction between culture and biology. b. For example, human adaptation to high altitudes (see Recap 1.1) uses both cultural and biological means: i.

Technological adaptation (cultural)