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Anth
Midterm Vocab
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Anomie | a situation where social or moral norms are confused or entirely absent; often caused by rapid social change |
| Anthropology | the comparative study of human societies and cultures |
| Applied anthropology | the application of anthropology to the solution of human problems |
| Archaeology | the subdiscipline of anthropology that focuses on the reconstruction of past cultures based on their material remains |
| Artifact | any object made or modified by human beings. Generally used to refer to objects made by past cultures. |
| Biological (or physical) anthropology | the subdiscipline of anthropology that studies people form a biological perspective, focusing primarily on aspects of humankind that are genetically inherited,. It includes osteology, nutrition, demography, epidemiology, and primatology. |
| Biopsychological equality | the notion that all human groups have the same biological mental capabilities. |
| Cultural anthropology | the study of human thought, meaning, and behavior that is learned rather than genetically transmitted, and that is typical of groups of people |
| Cultural relativism | the notion that cultures should be analyzed with reference to their own histories, and values; in terms of the cultural whole, rather than according to the values of another culture |
| Cultural resource management (CRM) | the protection and management of archaeological, archival, and architectural resources |
| Culture | the learned behaviors and symbols that allow people to live in groups. The primary means by which humans adapt to their environments. The way of life characteristics of a particular human society. |
| Emic | (perspective) examining society using concepts, categories, and distinctions that are meaningful to members of that culture |
| Ethnocentrism | judging other cultures from the perspective of one’s own culture. The notion that one’s own culture is more beautiful, rational, and nearer to perfection than any other. |
| Ethnography | a description of society or culture |
| Ethnohistory | description of the cultural past based on written records, interviews, and archaeology |
| Ethnology | the attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural phenomena |
| Etic | (perspective) examining society using concepts, categories, and rules derived from science; an outsider’s perspective, which produces analyses that members of the society being studied may not find meaningful |
| Forensic anthropology | the application of biological anthropology to the identification of skeletalized or badly decomposed human remains |
| Historical linguistics | study relationships among languages to better understand the histories and migrations of those who speak them |
| Holistic/holism | in anthropology an approach that considers culture, history, language, and biology essential to a complete understanding of human society |
| Human variation | the subdiscipline of anthropology concerned with mapping and explaining physical differences among modern human groups |
| Indigenous peoples | societies that have occupied a region for a long time and are recognized by other groups as its original (or very ancient) inhabitants |
| Linguistic anthropology | a branch of linguistics concerned with understanding language and its relation to culture |
| Medical anthropology | a subfield of cultural anthropology concerned with the ways in which disease is understood and treated in different cultures |
| Paleoanthropology | the subdiscipline of anthropology concerned with tracing the evolution of humankind in the fossil record |
| Prehistoric | societies for which we have no usable written records |
| Primate | a member of a biological order of mammals that includes human beings, apes, and monkeys as well as prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers, and others) |
| Racism | the belief that some human populations are superior to others because of inherited, genetically transmitted characteristics |
| Society | a group of people who depend on one another for survival or well |
| Urban archaeology | the archaeological investigation of towns and cities as wells as the process of urbanization |
| Civilizing mission | the notion that colonialism was a duty for Europeans and a benefit for the colonized |
| Colonialism | the active possession of a foreign territory and the maintenance of political domination over that territory |
| Colony | a territory under the immediate political control of a nation state |
| Corvée labor | unpaid labor required by a governing authority |
| Dutch East India Company | a joint stock company chartered by the Dutch government to control all Dutch trade in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Also known by its Dutch initials VOC, for Verenigde Ostendische Compagnie. |
| Heeren XVII | the Lords Seventeen, members of the board of directors of the Dutch East India Company |
| Joint stock company | an agricultural plantation specializing in the large |
| Monoculture plantation | a firm that is managed by a centralized board of director’s but is owned by its shareholder’s |
| Pillage | to strip an area of money, goods, or raw materials through the threat or use of physical violence |
| Tirailleurs Sénégalais | Senegalese Riflemen, an army that existed from 1857 to 1960 composed largely of soldiers from French West African colonies led by officers from Metropolitan France. |
| Basic human needs approach | projects aimed at providing access to clean water, education, and health care for the poorest of the world’s people |
| Development | the notion that some countries are poor because they have small industrial plants and few lines of communication and that they should pursue wealth by acquiring these and other things |
| Gross national income (GNI) | the total value of all goods and services produced in a country |
| Modernization theory | a model of development that predicts that non |
| Multinational corporation (MNC) | a corporation that owns business enterprises or plants in more than one nation |
| Neoliberalism | political and economic policies that promote free trade, individual initiative, and minimal government regulation of the economy, and oppose state control or subsidy to industries and all but minimal aid to impoverished individuals |
| Structural adjustment | a development policy promoted by Western nations, particularly the United States, that requires poor nations to pursue free |
| Sweatshop | generally a pejorative term for a factory with working condition that may include low wages, long hours, inadequate ventilation, and physical, mental, or sexual abuse |
| World Bank | officially called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and international agency that provides technical assistance and loans to promote international trade and economic development, especially to poor nations. |
| Achieved status | a social position that a person chooses or achieves on his or her own |
| Apartheid | the South African system of exclusive racial groups black, white, colored, and Asian that were formally recognized, segregated, treated differently in law and life, and occupied different and almost exclusive statuses within the society |
| Ascribed status | a social position that a person is born into |
| Assimilation | the view that immigrants should abandon their cultural distinctiveness and become mainstream Americans |
| Caste system | social stratification based on birth or ascribed status in which social mobility between castes is not possible |
| Class | a category of persons who all have about the same opportunity to obtain economic resources, power, and prestige and who are ranked relative to other categories |
| Class system | a form of social stratification in which the different strata form a continuum and social mobility is possible |
| Conflict theory | a perspective on social stratification that focuses on economic inequality as a source of conflict and change |
| Functionalism | the anthropological theory that specific cultural institutions function to support the structure of a society or serve the needs of its people |
| Life chances | the opportunities that people have o fulfill their potential in society |
| Multiculturalism | the view that cultural diversity is a positive value that should be incorporated into national identity and public policy |
| Power | the ability to compel other individuals to do things that they would not choose to do of their own accord |
| Prestige | social honor or respect |
| Race | a culturally constructed category based on perceived physical differences |
| Social mobility | movement from one social strata to another |
| Social stratification | a social hierarchy from the relatively permanent unequal distribution of goods and services in a society |
| Wealth | the accumulation of material resources or access to the means of producing their resources |
| Collaborative anthropology | ethnography that gives priority to informants on the topic, methodology, and written results of research |
| Cultural relativism | the notion that cultures should be analyzed with reference to their own histories and values, in terms of the cultural whole, rather than according to the values of another culture |
| Culture shock | feelings of alienation and helplessness that result from rapid immersion in anew and different culture |
| Emic perspective | examining a society using concepts and distinctions that are meaningful to members of that culture |
| Engaged anthropology | anthropology that includes political action as a major goal of fieldwork |
| Etic perspective | examining societies using concepts, categories, and rules derived from science; an outsider’s perspective which produces analyses that members of the society being studied may not find meaningful |
| Ethnocentrism | judging other cultures from the perspective of one’s own culture. The notion that one’s own culture is more beautiful, rational, and nearer to perfection than others |
| Ethnography | the major tool of cultural anthropology; includes both fieldwork among people in society and the written results of fieldwork |
| Ethnology | the attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural phenomena |
| Fieldwork | the firsthand, systematic exploration of a society. It involves living with a group of people and participating in and observing their behavior |
| Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) | an ethnographic database that includes descriptions of more than 300 cultures and is used for cross |
| Informant | a person from whom an anthropologist gathers data |
| Informed consent | the requirement that participants in anthropological studies should understand the ways in which their participation and the release of the research data are likely to affect them |
| Institutional review board (IRB) | a committee organized by a university or other research institution that approves, monitors, and reviews all research that involves human subjects |
| Native anthropologists | an anthropologist who does fieldwork in his or her own culture |
| Participant observation | the fieldwork technique that involves gathering cultural data by observing people’s behavior and participating in their lives |
| Postmodernism | a theoretical perspective focusing on issues of power and voice. Postmodernists suggest that anthropological accounts are partial truths reflecting the background, training, and social position of their authors |
| Adaptation | a change in the biological structure or lifeways of an individual or population by which it becomes better fitted to survive and reproduce |
| Cognitive anthropology | a theoretical approach that defies culture in terms of the rules and meanings underlying human behavior, rather than behavior itself |
| Cultural ecology | a theoretical approach that regards cultural patterns as adaptive responses to the basic problems of human survival and reproduction |
| Cultural materialism | a theoretical perspective that holds that primary task of anthropology is to account for the similarities and differences among cultures and that this can best be done by studying the material constraints to which human existence is subject |
| Culture and personality theorists | an anthropological perspective that focuses on culture as the principal force in shaping the typical personality of a society as well as on the role of personality in the maintenance of cultural institutions |
| Diffusion | the spread of cultural elements from one culture to another through cultural contact |
| Ecological functionalism | a theoretical perspective that holds that the ways in which cultural institutions work can best be understood by examining their effects on the environment |
| Enculturation | the process of learning to be a member of a particular cultural group |
| Ethnobotany | a field of anthropological research focused on describing the ways in which different cultures classify and understand plants |
| Ethnomedicine | a field of anthropological research devoted to describing the medical system and practices of different cultures |
| Ethnoscience | a theoretical approach that focuses on the ways in which members of a culture classify their world and holds that anthropology should be the study |
| Functionalism | the anthropological theory that specific cultural institutions function to support the structure of society or serve the needs of individuals in society |
| Innovation | a new variation on an existing cultural pattern that in subsequently accepted by other members of the society |
| Interpretive anthropology | a theoretical approach that emphasizes culture as a system of meaning and proposes that the aim of cultural anthropology is to interpret the meanings that cultural acts have for their participants |
| Neo evolutionism | a theoretical perspective concerned with the historical change of culture form small scale societies to extremely large scale societies |
| Neo Marxism | a theoretical perspective concerned with applying the insights of Marxist thought to anthropology; neo Marxists modify Marxist analysis to make it appropriate to the investigation of small scale, non Western societies |
| Norm | an ideal cultural pattern that influences behavior in a society |
| Plasticity | the ability of humans to change their behavior in response to a wide range of environmental demands |
| Sociobiology | a theoretical perspective that explores the relationship between human cultural behavior and genetics |
| Structural anthropology | a theoretical perspective that holds that all cultures reflect similar deep, underlying patterns and that anthropologists should attempt to decipher these patterns |
| Subculture | a system of perceptions, values, beliefs, and customs that are significantly different from those of a larger, dominant culture within the same society |
| Symbol | something that stands for something else |
| Transculturation | the transformation of adopted cultural traits, resulting in new cultural forms |
| Value | a culturally defined idea of what is true, right, and beautiful |
| Agriculture | a form of food production in which fields are permanent cultivation using plows, animals, and techniques of soil and water control |
| Efficiency | yield per person hour of labor invested |
| Foraging | a food getting strategy that does not involve food production or domestication of animals and that involves no conscious effort to alter the environment |
| Globalization | the integration of resources, labor, and capital into a global network |
| Horticulture | production of plants using a simple, nonmechanized technology; fields are not used continuously |
| Industrialism | the replacement of human and animal energy by machines in the process of production |
| Industrialized agriculture | a production technology that adapts mechanized manufacturing processes in production, processing, and distribution of food |
| Nomadic pastoralism | a form of pastoralism in which the whole social group (men, women, children) and their animals move in search of pasture |
| Pastoralism | a food getting strategy that depends on the care of domesticated herd |
| Patrilineal | a society that reckons descent through the male line |
| Peasants | rural cultivators who produce for the subsistence of their households but are also integrated into larger, complex state societies |
| Population density | the number of people inhabiting a given area of land |
| Productivity | yield per person per unit of land |
| Rain forest | tropical woodland characterized by high rainfall and a dense canopy of broad |
| Sedentary | settled, living in one place |
| Subsistence strategy | the way of society transforms environmental resources into food |
| Swidden cultivation | a form of cultivation in which a field is cleared by felling the trees and burning the brush. Typical of horticulture. |
| Transhumant pastoralism | a form of pastoralism in which herd animals are moved regularly throughout the year to different areas as pasture becomes available |
| Balanced reciprocity | the giving and receiving of goods of nearly equal value with a clear obligation of a return gift within a specified time limit |
| Capital | productive resources that are used with the primary goal of increasing their owner’s financial wealth |
| Capitalism | an economic system in which people work for wages, land and capital goods are privately owned, and capital is invested for profit |
| Cargo system | a ritual system common in Central and South America in which wealthy people are required to hold a series of costly ceremonial offices |
| Economic system | the norms governing production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services with a society |
| Economics | the study of the ways in which the choices people make combine to determine how their society uses its scarce resources to produce and distribute goods and services |
| Economizing behavior | choosing a course of action to maximize perceived benefit |
| Firm | an institution composed of kin and/or non |
| Generalized reciprocity | giving and receiving goods with no immediate or specific return expected |
| Household | a group of people united by kinship or other links who share a residence and organize production, consumption, and distribution among themselves |
| Kula ring | a pattern of exchange among trading partners in the South Pacific islands |
| Leveling mechanism | a practice, value, or form of social organization that evens out wealth within a society |
| Market exchange | an economic system in which goods and services are bought and sold at a money price determined primarily by the forces of supply and demand |
| Negative reciprocity | exchange conducted for the purpose of material advantage and the desire to get something for nothing |
| Potlatch | a form of redistribution involving competitive feasting practiced among Northwest Coast Native Americans |
| Productive resources | material goods, natural resources, or information used to create other goods or information |
| Reciprocity | a mutual give and take among people of equal status |
| Redistribution | exchange in which goods are collected then distributed to members of a group |
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ladybee55
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