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anthro midterm
all vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| anthropology | the study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another |
| ethnocentrism | the belief that one's own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using one's own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others |
| ethnographic fieldwork | a primary research strategy in cultural anthropology; typically involving living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives |
| holism | the anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life—culture, biology, history, and language—across space and time |
| cross-cultural and comparative approach | the approach by which anthropologists compare practices across cultures to explore human similarities, differences, and the potential for human cultural expression |
| cultural relativism | the view that one should not judge the behavior or beliefs of other people using the standards of one's own culture, but work to understand different groups' behaviors and beliefs on their own terms |
| challenging ethnocentrism | Ethnocentrism involves the attitude or opinion that the morals, values, and customs of one's own culture are superior to those of other peoples. Anthropologists are committed to challenging ethnocentrism. |
| four-field approach | the use of of four interrelated disciplines to study humanity (biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropoloy) |
| holism | the anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life - culture, biology, history, and language - across space and time |
| biological anthropology | the study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly how they have evolved over time and adapted to their environment |
| paleoanthropology | the study of the history of human evolution through the fossil record |
| primatology | the study of living nonhuman primates as well as primate fossils to better understand human evolution and early human behavior |
| archaeology | the investigation of the human past by means of excavating and analyzing artifacts |
| prehistoric archaeology | the reconstruction of human behavior in the distant past (before written records) through the examination of artifacts |
| historic archaeology | the exploration of the more recent past through an examination of physical remains and artifacts as well as written or oral records |
| linguistic anthropology | the study of human language in the past and present |
| descriptive linguistics | those who describe and analyze languages and their component parts |
| historic linguistics | those who study how language changes over time within a culture and how languages travel across cultures |
| sociolinguists | those who study language in its social and cultural contexts |
| cultural anthropology | the study of people's communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together |
| participant observation | a key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied |
| ethnology | the analysis and comparison of ethnographic data across cultures |
| globalization | the worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders |
| time-space compression | the rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space(distances) and time |
| flexible accumulation | the flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate technologies associated with globalization that transforms they way people think about space(distances) and time |
| increasing migration | the accelerated movement of people within and between countries |
| uneven development | the unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization |
| anthropocene | the current historical era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways |
| applied anthropology | the use of anthropological research methods and insights to address problems in the real world (medical, development, educational, and corporate) |
| medial anthropology | uses anthropology to improve health outcomes to patients |
| development anthropology | helps agencies adapt projects to community needs |
| educational anthropology | deals with issues of learning and teaching |
| corporate anthropology | advising companies on intercultural communication, especially in working with employees and/or clients from a wide range of cultural backgrounds |
| climate change | changes to Earth's climate, including global warming, produced primarily by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases created by the burning of fossil fuels |
| language | a system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sound, and gestures to convey information |
| enculturation | the process of learning culture |
| norms | ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people |
| values | fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful |
| symbol | anything that represents something else |
| mental maps of reality | cultural classification of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications |
| acculturation | the mutual influencing of two unequal groups that have come into continuous firsthand contact |
| assimilation | a powerful group's imposition of its cultural practices upon an economically, politically, or demographically weaker target group |
| cultural appropriation | the unwanted taking of cultural practices or knowledge from one group by another, more dominant group |
| unlineal cultural evolution | the theory proposed by nineteenth century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex |
| historical particularism | the idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories |
| structural functionalism | a conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium |
| interpretivist approach | a conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning |
| thick description | a research strategy that combines detailed description of cultural activity with an analysis of the layers of deep cultural meaning in which those activities are embedded |
| power | the ability or potential to bring about change through action or influence |
| hegemony | the ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force |
| agency | the potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power |
| society | the focus of early British anthropological research |
| stratification | the uneven distribution of resources and privileges among members of a group or culture |
| epigenetics | an area of study in the field of genetics exploring how environmental factors directly affect the expression of genes during one's lifetime |
| engaged anthropology | application of the research strategies and analytical perspectives of anthropology to address concrete challenges facing local communities and the world at large |
| anthropologist's toolkit | the tools needed to conduct fieldwork, including information, perspectives, strategies, and even equipment |
| what are the key elements of an anthropologist's toolkit? | conducting a literature review, learning the local languages(s), designing the study, applying for grants, acquiring local permissions for research, developing ethical protocols to protect research subjects, and assembling equipment |
| quantitative data | statistical information about a community that can be measured and compared |
| qualitative data | descriptive data drawn from non-statistical sources, including personal stories, interviews, life histories, and participant observation |
| rapport | relationships of trust and familiarity that an anthropologist develops with members of the community under study |
| key informant | a community member who advises the anthropologist on community issues, provides feedback, and warns against cultural miscues; also called cultural consultant |
| life history | a form of interview that traces the biography of a person over time, examining changes in the person's life and illuminating the interlocking network of relationships in the community |
| kinship analysis | a fieldwork strategy of examining interlocking relationships of power built on marriage and family ties |
| social network analysis | a method for examining relationships in a community, often conducted by identifying whom people turn to in times of need |
| polyvocality | the practice of using many different voices in ethnographic writing and research question development, allowing the reader to hear more directly from the people in the study |
| do no harm | anthropologists are responsible to the people they study and must not cause harm to them through the research process |
| informed consent | a key strategy for protecting those being studied by ensuring that they are fully informed of the goals of the project and have clearly indicated their consent to participate |
| anonymity | protecting the identities of the people involved in a study by changing or omitting their names or other identifying characteristics |
| salvage enthography | fieldwork strategy developed by Franz Boas to collect cultural, material, linguistic, and biological information about Native American populations being devastated by the westward expansion of European settlers |
| participant observation | a research method in which investigators systematically observe people while joining them in their routine activities |
| structural functionalists | believed that culture could be studied scientifically and that every aspect of culture served as a function in maintaining the stability of the social structure |
| synchronic approach | the study of how aspects of societies and cultures fit together at any given point in time |
| public anthropology | efforts to extend anthropology's visibility beyond academia and to demonstrate its public policy relevance |
| reflexivity | a critical self-examination of the role the anthropologist plays and an awareness that one's identity affects one's fieldwork and theoretical analyses |
| surveys | an information-gathering tool for quantitative data analysis |
| field notes | the anthropologist's written observations and reflections on places, practices, events, and interviews |
| mapping | the analysis of the physical and/or geographic space where fieldwork is being conducted |
| zeros | elements of a story or a picture that are not told or seen and yet offer key insights into issues that might be too sensitive to discuss or display publicly |
| mutual transformation | the potential for both the anthropologist and the members of the community being studied to be transformed by the interactions of the fieldwork |
| emic | an approach to gathering data that investigates how local people think and how they understand the world |
| etic | description of local behavior and beliefs from the anthropologist's perspective in ways that can be compared across cultures |
| kinesics | the study of the relationship between body and movements and communication |
| paralanguage | noises and tones of voice that convey significant information about the speaker |
| sapir-whorf hypothesis | the idea that different languages create different ways of thinking |
| sociolinguistics | the study of how language and culture shape one another |
| prestige language | a particular language variation or way of speaking that is associated with wealth, success, education, and power |
| language ideology | beliefs and conceptions about language that often serve to rationalize and justify patterns of stratification and inequality |
| code switching | switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another, or one language and another, depending on the cultural context |
| language loss | the extinction of languages that have very few speakers |
| digital natives | the generations of people born after 1980 who have been raised in the digital age |
| language continuum | the idea that variation in languages appears gradually over distance so that groups of people who live near one another speak in a way that is mutually intelligible |
| speech community | a group of people who come to share certain norms of language use through living and communicating together |
| phonemes | the smallest units of sound that can make a difference in meaning |
| morphemes | the smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own |
| syntax | the specific patterns and rules for combining morphemes to construct phrases and sentences |
| grammar | the combined set of observations about the rules governing the formation of phonemes, morphemes, and syntax that guide language |
| linguistic relativity | the notion that all languages will develop the distinctive categories necessary for those who speak them to deal with the realities around them |
| lexicon | all the words for names, ideas, and events that make up a language's dictionary |
| race | a flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups |
| genotype | inherited genetic factors |
| phenotype | the way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form as a result of genotype interaction with environmental factors |
| nativism | the favoring of certain long-term inhabitants, namely white people, over new immigrants |
| racialization | the process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a person or group of people |
| racial ideology | a set of ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal |
| ethnicity | a sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group |
| ethnogenesis | creation of a new culture |
| ethnic boundary markers | a practice or belief, such as food, clothing, language, shared name, or religion, used to signify who is in a group and who is not |
| identity entrepreneurs | use the narrative of ethnic difference to galvanize a population to collective action in a struggle for wealth or power |
| ethnic cleansing | Process in which more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogeneous region |
| state | an institution which holds military and political power over a territory and its people |
| nation | originally meant something similar to 'ethnicity' or 'ethnic group' |
| nation-state | a group of people associated with a particular territory, who share a state (government) and a sense of common identity |
| citizenship | legal membership in a nation-state |
| nationality | an identification with a group of people thought to share a place of origin |
| nationalism | the desire of an ethnic community to create and/or maintain a nation-state |
| imagined community | the invented sense of connection and shared traditions that underlies identification with a particular ethnic group or nation whose members likely will never all meet |
| dispora | a group of people who live outside their ancestral homeland yet maintain emotional and material ties to home |
| nation-building | to create a sense of unity to confront colonial powers and to build a new country after independence |
Created by:
phoebew