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Anthropologico
Unit 2
Question | Answer |
---|---|
Economics | How people create (a web of) material relationships with each other and with the environment to sustain lives. |
Production | Pattern of human economic activity, practice a way of livelihood. (foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, industrialized agriculture) Sometimes called a subsistence strategy. |
Exchange | Pattern of human economic activity, what we produce: we practice a way of exchange. (reciprocity, redistribution, and market) |
Consumption | Pattern of human economic activity, we use up the goods and services we produce. (minimalism and consumerism) |
Foraging | Gather and Hunting food, what is naturally available. |
Domestication | When humans intervene in the breeding patterns of plants or animals. |
Horticulture | An agricultural technology distinguished by the use of hand tools to grow domesticated plants. Does not use draft animals, irrigation, or specially prepared fertilizers. |
Pastoralism | Subsistence gained by tending and breeding animals. |
Band | A small group of related people, who are primarily organized through family bonds. Foraging typifies the subsistence technology. A respected and older person may be looked to for leadership, but the person has no formalized authority. |
Cultural Evolution | A change in culture over time. |
State | A culture that has a formal political organization with a central bureaucracy with the authority to employ legalized force. |
Reciprocity | A mutual or cooperative interchange of favors or privileges, especially the exchange of rights or privileges of trade between individuals or groups as in the transfer of goods or services between two or more individuals or groups. |
Market Exchange | Systems that exchange goods and services using all-purpose money as a standard measure of relative value. |
Globalization | “The process of integrating nations and peoples--politically, economically, and culturally--into a larger community.” (web of relationships are inter-connected) |
World System | Global combination of the worlds people into a single economic system based on capitalism (economic system controlled by private owners) |
Core/Periphery | The structural relation between centralized core, often an urban area, and communities on the periphery, usually tribal or rural, resource-based communities. |
Gender | Cultural basis of sexual difference. (refers to patterns of culturally constructed and learned behaviors/ideas attributed to females and males in society) |
Sex | Biological Differences |
Rites of Passage | Ritual event marking a persons progress from one status to another. Boy to Man for example (Hua – Figapa to Kikora –Blood) |
Third/Alternate Genders | Hijras, Sanhidran, Kikora, Figapa |
Hijra | Not man nor woman |
Gender Stratification | The degree to which human groups allocate material and social rewards to women and men based on gender. |
Sexual Division of Labor | The division of subsistence tasks between women and men. |
Gender Roles | The attitudes, practices, attitudes and means to what is appropriate for ones gender. |
Two specific changes brought on by globalization to the village of Arembepe between 1962 and 2007 as documented by the anthropologists Conrad Kottak (Boyd #13) | 1) Changes in Fishing Industry. They found motorboats that allowed them to travel farther. 2) They were able to expand new high ways and eat food they normally would not have eaten. |
Why have anthropologists described the !Kung as wealthy? | Kung are considered affluent because they have more than enough to satisfy with a variety to choose from. They also provide themselves with varied and well balanced diet. |
According to Billy Evans Horse (Boyd #14), Kiowa culture has changed considerably in the 19th and 20th centuries. Identify three specific ways that Kiowa culture has changed. | 1) Loss of Traditions (Sun Dance) 2) Loss of Language (not able to worship) 3) Money Wagon (people jump on) |
When did the first human groups begin to abandon foraging and start taking up the practice of domesticating plants and animals? | 10,000 to 12,000 years ago |
Be able to concisely summarize Lassiter’s arguments about why people started to domesticate plants and animals? | settling-more food feed more people; subsizdize foraging |
What are some specific differences between foragers and human groups that have domesticated plants and animals (pastoralists and horticulturalists)? | Foragers simply went looking for natural (hunting and gathering), while domesticated groups already have their food at home |
What prices have humans had to pay as they adopted agriculture (review Lassiter pages 120-122)? | Worsened health, most dangerous was population growth. |
How much has the human population grown in the last fifty or so years? | It double the population nearly 2.5 times, from 2.5 to over 6 billion (pg 122) |
Men and women have different ideas about the purpose and meaning of conversation and communication. How do their ideas contrast (be specific)? | Men: Purpose of convo is negotiation and “one-upmanship”, Independence is Key (maintain status), Give orders and make them stick; Women: Purpose of conversation is connection, Intimacy id Key (create connection), “Express preferences as suggestions” |
What does Tannen mean when she says that women and men often have “conflicting metamessages” (again, think specifically here about an illustrative example)? | For example, parents are trying to plan a wedding and the meaning is that they care, but the metamessage could be that they do not think their daughter is capable of planning it herself, making them in authority. |
What is the cultural definition of hijra (Boyd #21)? | Hija are “born as males, but adopt clothing, behavior and occupations of women, who are neither male or female, neither man nor woman” (neither man nor woman) |
How are ideas about the hijra related to Hindu religious beliefs? | Hijra are seen as part of the variety in life. Variety is valued. Explains the nature of their world (variety). |
Is it true to say that all hijras are also homosexual? | No it is not true |
What is the difference between hijras and Sadhin? | hijras (man being woman) and Sadhin (women being man) are that hijras are completely women, while sadhin are women who MUST take on women roles and have choice to take on man roles (virgins). sadhin wanted respect or had to take male role in family |
What do the “sworn virgins” of Albania gain from their unusual practice (Boyd #20)? | They gain respect and Pride and Independence (woman dressing like men, usually armed – to escape marriage, no guys in family, gain respect) |
According to John Coggeshall, gender roles in prison do not contradict values that are held by many American males (Boyd #19)what does he mean by this statement? | He means that in prison men gain their status by maintaining control over others, protecting their women, and providing for them. That is the same in many American males eyes as well. They still had to prove their masculinity. |
What does it mean to say that cultural groups like the !Kung and other foragers are economically self-sufficient, whereas cultural groups like our own (modern nation-states) are not economically self-sufficient? | The !Kung are involved with all parts of their economy, not having to depend on others, whereas we are not economically self-sufficient because we mainly only consume, we do not produce or exchange making us dependent on the places that do that for us. |
Identify specific examples we discussed in class, or reviewed in our readings, that illustrate how our economic life is dependent upon the work of people from other cultures, places, etc. | Depend on cell phones for almost everything we do. A main substance in our cell phones is Coltan from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the “Heart of Darkness” (rape, militia, rebel groups, WWIII). Without Coltan our technology would come to a halt |
What do anthropologists mean when they say that gender is culturally and socially constructed? | each culture has their own ideas/norms of behavior that each person should be like. Physical parts do not mean that they are considered a man or woman in their culture, it would depend on how their culture would categorize them. |
Lassiter asserts that “gender and its attributes are not pure biology” (138). What does he mean? | He means that gender does not all have to do with genetalia, but with cultural behaviors and patterns in society. |
Be able to provide examples of how culture “grafts meaning onto sexed individuals throughout their lives” (138). | bound to social interaction, who we are is shaped by everyone else around us, as well as who we should be as a man or woman. We then create culture and pass that down to next generations. |
How do the Hua of Papua New Guinea determine gender? | A person’s Sex and how much Nu one possesses. Nu is a spirit, an essence, contained in bodily fluids. |
How many gender categories are there in Hua society? | Four; women, men, figapa, kikora |
Be able to explain how the Hua system of gender works. | Women, Men, Figapa (like women), kakora, (like men). Figapa - children, women in childbearing years (no children), menopausal women and elderly men. Kakora - males in early teens who have been intiated, and postmenopausal women (more than 2 children). |
Identify two reasons why Hua gender categories may seem “sensible” to cultural outsiders like you and me. | People with more fluids (when pregnant or when born) tend to have abnormal things happen to them, or with less fluids (post-menopausal), and they put them into a different category because they no longer fit with men or women. |
What are some anthropological explanations for why male dominance seems to be so widespread in human societies? | Physiological makeup (stronger), women take on family supporting tasks, and based on universal patterns in the sexual division of labor. |
What are two theories anthropologists have developed to explain general patterns in the sexual division of labor? (Follow class notes and Lassiter carefully here) | Strength Theory (physical strength), and Expendability Theory (Men tend to do dangerous work because the loss of a man is less disadvantageous (reproductively) than the loss of a woman) |