Quiz 1 study guide in anthro PDF

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Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5

ANTH 202

LESSON 2 (chapters 2 and 3) 

Cultural materialism: a theoretical position that takes material features of life, such as the environment, natural resources, and mode of production, as the bases for explaining social organisation and ideology.

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Participant observation: a research method for learning about culture that involves living in a culture for an extended period while gathering data.

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Kula: a trading network linking many of the Trobriand Islands in which men have long-standing partnerships for the exchange of everyday goods, such as food as well as highly valued necklaces and armlets.

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Functionalism: the theory that a culture is similar to a biological organism, in which parts work to support the operation and maintenance of the whole.

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Medical anthropology: subfield of anthropology that draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well-being, the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical systems.

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Evolutionary theory: formulated by Darwin, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allows an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring.

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Anthropology: the study of humanity, including our prehistoric origins and contemporary human diversity.

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Linguistic anthropology: the study of human communication, including its origins, history, and contemporary variation and change.

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Pre-historic archeology: the study of past human cultures through their material remains. Pre-historic archaeology studies societies that never left written records.

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Historic archeology: the study of past human culture, but of societies that did leave a written record.

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Primatology: subfield of biological anthropology, it is the study of the nonhuman members of the order of mammals called primates, which includes a wide range of animals from very small, nocturnal creatures to gorillas, the largest members.

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Armchair anthropology: refers to how early cultural anthropologists conducted research by sitting and reading about other cultures. They read reports written by travellers, missionaries, and explorers but never visited those places or had any kind of direct experience with the people.

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Interpretive anthropology: the view that cultures can be understood by studying what people think about, their ideas, and the meanings that are important to them.

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Emic: what insiders do and perceive about their culture, their perceptions of reality, and their explanations for why they do what they do.

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Etic: an analytical framework used by outside analysts in studying culture.

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Collaborative research: an approach to learning about culture that involves anthropologists working with members of the study population as partners and teammates rather than as researchers and “subjects”. 1

Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5 

ANTH 202

Cultural relativism: the perspective that each culture must be understood in terms of the values and ideas of that culture and should not be judged by the standards of another.

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Culture shock: persistent feelings of uneasiness, loneliness, and anxiety that often occur when a person has shifted from one culture to a different one.

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Primary ethical obligation of anthropologists: 1. Primary ethical obligations are to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work. These obligations can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge: a. Avoid harm or wrong, understanding that the development of knowledge can lead to change, which may be positive or negative for the people or animals worked with or studied. b. Respect the well-being of humans and nonhuman primates. c. Work for the long-term conservation of the archaeological, fossil, and historical records. d. Consult actively with the affected individuals or group(s), with the goal of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to all parties involved. 2. Ensure that anthropological research does not harm the dignity or privacy of the people with whom they conduct research, or harm the safety, well-being, and survival of animals with which they work. 3. Determine in advance whether human research participants wish to remain anonymous or receive recognition. Informed consent of persons being studied must be obtained in advance. Informed consent does not necessarily imply or require a written or signed form, but involves the quality of consent that is provided on the basis of a clear understanding of possible effects of participation in the research. 4. Recognize their obligations to individuals, groups, and host institutions that participated in or otherwise facilitated the research.

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Holism: the perspective in anthropology that cultures are complex systems that cannot be fully understood without paying attention to their different components, including economics, social organization, and ideology.

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Rapport: a trusting relationship between the researcher and the study population.

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Inductive research: a research approach that avoids hypothesis formation in advance of the research and instead takes its lead from the culture being studied.

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Triangulation of data: research technique that involves obtaining information on a particular topic from more than one person or perspective.

LESSON 3 (chapter 1) 

Symbol: an object, word, or action with culturally defined meaning that stands for something else; most symbols are arbitrary, unpredictable, and diverse.

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Origin of culture: proposed by Sir Edward Tylor. He stated culture as “Culture, or civilization . . . is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. 2

Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5 

ANTH 202

Culture: a way of life and a way of thinking about the world that is changing with the passage of time and through contact with other cultural groups.

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Ethnicity: a shared sense of identity among a group based on a heritage, language, or culture.

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Youth: boys with few responsibilities and little status.

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Characteristics of culture: p. 17 1. Culture is not the same as nature: people do not fulfill the universal human functions the same way. 2. Culture is based on symbols 3. Culture is learned 4. Cultures are integrated

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Structuralism: the view that powerful structures such as economic, politics, and media shape cultures and create entrenched systems of inequality and oppression.

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Universal human functions: eating, drinking, sleeping, eliminating.

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Cultural constructivism: a theory that explains human behavior and ideas as being mainly the results of learning.

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Ethnology: the study of a particular topic in more than one culture using ethnographic material.

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Globalization: increased and intensified international ties related to the spread of Western, especially United States, capitalism that affects all world cultures.

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Race: a classification of people into groups on the basis of supposedly homogeneous biological traits.

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The four model of cultural interaction: p.19 1. The clash of civilizations argument: the spread of Euro-American capitalism and lifeways throughout the world has created disenchantment, alienation, and resentment among other cultural systems. This divides the world into the “West and the rest”. 2. The McDonalization model: under the powerful influence of U.S.-dominated corporate culture, the world is becoming culturally homogeneous. 3. Hybridization: occurs when aspects of two or more cultures are mixed to form something new- a blend. 4. Localization: the transformation of global culture by local cultures into something new.

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Biological determinism: a theory that explains human behavior and ideas mainly as a result of biological features such as genes and hormones.

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Margaret Mead’s study of sexuality in Samoa: reported that adolescents there experienced complete sexual freedom, without the phenomena associated with adolescence elsewhere. She declared that this exception, which she had hoped to find, established that human nature and behavior is shaped entirely by culture, not biological inheritance. She and her colleagues then worked to establish this "cultural determinism" as the prevailing ideology in the social sciences.

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Dr. Beaucage’s interview and his take on the concept of culture core/nucleus: there exists a culture/nucleus that resists change in situations of resistance to domination. For African Americans, it is religion. They have kept the forms of religion; all the rest could change, but this would not change. We have realized that things such as 3

Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5

ANTH 202

permanent cultural centres do not really exist among the people; what we have found, however, is that that there are moments in history when a culture, a cultural group, can put an emphasis on a particular aspect of their way of life. They say: this, we do not want this to change. This aspect takes on a symbolic connotation. Yet all could take on a symbolic connotation. 

Language socialization according to Schieffelin and Ochs: conceptions about gender roles are symbolic, they can vary from society to society and they change over time. Language is a way into socialization so it is a great tool for understanding socialization. Socialization can come through many different paths, we are part of the human species and language is this beautiful tool, and so much is communicated through language practices. With language practices, you can look at what is being guided, displayed, how things like attention are being organized from a simple interaction, etc. Sometimes it is really small things that you aren’t even aware of that really make a difference in terms of how people are. So it is very hard to explain the difference between cultural socialization and language socialization because these are integrated systems of being and thinking. When looking at language socialization it is about being part of a community, through language which can be observed systematically over time, and socialization to use language. Ex: emotion, very hard to study because it is so personal but language can help us study it.

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Dr. Foster’s interview and his take on post-colonial states: a general characteristic of post-colonial states is that they are politically and economically weak. One of the peculiarities of the post-colonial South Pacific is that the nation states were brought into being more by the United Nations and by the de-colonizing powers than they were by any type of grass-route anti-colonial protesters. One of the things that grass-route anti-colonial protest movement does is create strong national identities. So, in a sense, the legacy of colonialism when you take it up with respect to national identity is a very weak kind of national identity.

LESSON 4 (chapter 12) 

Ethnosemantics: the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentence in particular cultural contexts.

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Code: way of speaking that may include marked vocabulary, grammar, and intonation depending on age, gender, occupation, class, region, and family role of the speaker and listener.

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Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: a theory in linguistic anthropology that says language determines thought.

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Pidgin: a contact language that blends elements of at least two languages and that emerges when people with different languages need to communicate.

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Creole: a language directly descended from a pidgin but possessing its own native speakers and involving linguistic expansion and elaboration.

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Digital divide: social inequality in access to new and emerging information technology, notably access to up-todate computers, the Internet, and training related to their use.

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Critical discourse analysis: the study of the relations of power and inequality in language.

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Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5 

ANTH 202

Building blocks of language: phonology (sound systems), morphology (how words are put together), lexicon (vocabulary), and syntax (grammar).

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Lexicostatistics: dramatic changes can lead a language to be unrecognizable to its relatives over time. Historical linguists help us to understand how languages are related though lexicostatistics: comparing patterns of sound changes between languages. They compare words likely to be found in each language because they encode elements of everyday life shared by all societies.

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Verlan: form of French slang that plays with syllables and sounds and typically reverses the order of syllables as they are being heard (not written). Most famous examples are words such as Verlan (means: reverse) and ripou (a corrupt police officer). Was originally used to keep information away from those in authority, and it spread as a language of resistance to authority and identity (now used by disenfranchised youths).

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Origin of Pacific Islanders: may or may not have migrated from the Americas or Asia. Using lexicostatistics, the languages could be grouped into two families: Papuan and Austronesian languages. Austronesian languages of the Pacific were then compared to those of Southeast Asia and South America in order to discover the existence of similarities or not. There are four conclusions about their origin: 1. The Austronesian languages of the Pacific are very similar to the languages of aboriginal Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Madagascar. But not the languages of Australia which belonged to the Australian language family. Not either to Papuan New Guinea which belonged to the the Papo languages. 2. All the Austronesian languages of the Pacific have nothing in common with all the languages of the American cultures (North or South), even accounting for the passage of time. 3. Ethnographic and physical anthropology study of the Pacific Islands have corroborated the finding of the lexicostatistics method. There are definitely cultural linkages with South Asia. 4. When did these migrations take place? At what time did these people from South Asia move to the Pacific? Around 10,000 BC to 1080. This took place in canoes.

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Bill 101: the fear that without protection, the French language in Quebec will be contaminated by English, become corrupted and degenerate, with a resulting loss in cultural identity (p. 339).

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Speech: language in action (different form language), and by studying speech, we can know language and the role it plays in social relationships.

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Arbitrariness (with regards to language): means that the relationship between sound and meaning is irrelevant (all languages would use the same words otherwise). Words are symbols: their meanings are defined by culture, not label.

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Historical linguistics: the study of language change using formal methods that compare shifts over time and across space in aspects of language such as speech sounds, syntax, and semantics.

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Dialect: a way of speaking in a particular place or a variety of a language arising from local circumstances.

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Productivity of human language: offers the ability to communicate many messages efficiently.

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Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5 

ANTH 202

Language shift/decay: condition of a language in which speakers adopt a new language for most situations, begin to use their native language only in certain contexts, and may be only semi-fluent and have limited vocabulary in their native language.

LESSON 5 (chapter 11) 

Monotheism: the belief in one supreme deity.

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Animatism: a belief system in which the supernatural is conceived of as an impersonal power.

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Syncretism: the blending of features of two or more cultures, especially used in discussion of religious change.

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Cargo cult: a form of revitalization movement that emerged in Melanesia and New Zealand, in response to Western and Japanese influences.

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Animism: the belief in systems in which the supernatural is conceived of as an impersonal power. Belief in souls or “doubles”.

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Mana: related to animism, a concept widespread throughout the Melanesian region of the South Pacific. It is a force outside nature that works automatically; it is neither spirit nor deity. It manifests itself in objects and people and is associated with personal status and power since some people accumulate more of it than others.

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Polytheism: the belief in many deities.

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Law of contagion: basis of contagious magic. It says that persons or things once in contact with a person can still have an effect on that person. Common items for working contagious magic include a person’s hair trimmings, nail clippings, teeth, spit, blood, fecal matter, and the placenta of a baby. In cultures where contagious magic is practised, people are careful about disposing of their bodily wastes so that no one else can get hold of them.

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Religion: is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

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Communitas: rituals help people achieve a sense of unity with each other. This is what Victor Turner called communitas. During rituals, people’s individuality can be subsumed to an overwhelming feeling of belonging. Note that communitas takes place as well in non-religious rituals or events. During the state of communitas, the 'normal' social order (including social hierarchy) is often forgotten and people feel as if they belong to a community of equals.

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Victor Turner: provided insights about the phases of life-cycle rituals (p. 293)

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Five main world religion: 1. Christianity 2. Islam 3. Buddhism 4. Judaism 5. Hinduism 6

Quiz 1: Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5 

ANTH 202

Snake handling: also called serpent handling, is a religious ritual in a small number of isolated churches, mostly in the United States, usually characterized as rural and part of the Holiness movement.

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Emile Durkheim: said that religion serves to reinforce social control by enforcing moral codes and setting rules for appropriate social behavior.

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Ritual: a patterned from of behavior that has to do with the supernatural realm. Described as beliefs in action. Well-perform...