Anthro Exam Flashcards
(107 cards)
What is anthropology?
A search for what it means to be human and a documentation of human life and possibility
What is sociocultural anthropology?
The study of cultures and societies of human beings and their recent past.
What methods do anthropologists use?
Ethnography-Observing people by interacting with them intimatley over a long period of time
Culture Definition
-Socially transmitted knowledge and behaviour shared by a group of people.
-Immersion of researchers in the lives and cultures of the people they are trying to understand in order to comprehend the meanings these people ascribe to their existence.
Key points about culture
-Critical mass: Other’s have to know what we’re doing
-Common culture identity: Something has to be common
-Integrated into daily experience: something we do daily, holidays normally mock these practices
-Dynamic and contingent: depends on specific social context, circumstances arise and culture shifts
-Uses symbols
Five key components
Norms: Shared ideals of how people should behave
Values:Beliefs about what is desirable for ourselves and society
Collective Understandings:Unconscious ways of interpreting behaviour, have to have collective understanding to have culture
Classification of Reality: we divide the world into categories, whatever doesn’t fall into the category causes pause
World views: How we perceive reality
Ethnocentrism
Measure others relative to our own values
Cultural Relativism
Not judging a culture to our own standards of what is right or wrong
Kinship
Social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage
Ervin Goffman
We display a series of masks, trying to set ourselves in the best light, we adapt depending on who is around us
Descent
All relationships by blood
Clan
Group of relatives who claim to descend from a single relative, could be an entity
Lineage
Ancestry through an ancestor
Polyandry
A marriage in which one woman has multiple husbands
Polygyny
A marriage in which a man has multiple wives
Compassionate marriage
Romantic love marriages
Arranged marriage
Parents pick very specific partners
Social Scripts
We have social roles that guide our behaviour, a social script is what we say in these roles
Intersectionality
The multiple dimensions of our identity intersecting to affect our experiences and opportunities
Race
Categorization based on human physical or social qualities
Ethnicity
collective identity on shared descent, usually relating to common regional or national origin
Nationalism
Shared heritage and experience on the basis of state
Anthropology and the economy
-focuses on how symbols and morals help shape a community’s economy
-Approaches economy as a category of culture
Pastoralism
Raising animals