Chapter 1

Question 1

What is the meaning of anthropology when broken down?

Answer 1

Anthropo= human beings and logos=theory or science. So literally “the science of human beings.”

Question 2

What is the professor’s definition of anthropology?

Answer 2

“Anthropology is, a holistic study of all possible human lifeways. It focuses both on the variation between lifeways, but also their commonalities. In order to explain both the variations and commonalities, anthropologists have formulated theories that can be used to critically analyze observations of people in their daily lives.”

Question 3

What is physical anthropology?

Answer 3

Paleoanthropology, primatology, human genes, demography, growth and development, adaptation, and osteology.

Question 4

What is cultural anthropology?

Answer 4

Archaeology, anthropological linguistics, social/cultural.

Question 5

What are the main differences between sociology and anthropology?

Answer 5

Sociology: The study of development, structure, interaction, and behaviour of organized groups of human beings. More quantitative.
Anthropology: Study of human beings and ancestors through time. More qualitative.

Question 6

What place has the most anthropological institutions and which has the least?

Answer 6

Most: USA with 323. Least: Asia with 4

Question 7

Why would we study other cultures?

Answer 7

Causes us to realize there are alternative ways of thinking and doing things, makes the exotic familiar, helps us to understand our own culture and society, helps us better understand who we are.

Question 8

What is applied anthropology?

Answer 8

Application of anthropological theory and methods to the analysis and solution of practical problems.

Question 9

What are some examples of applied anthropology?

Answer 9

Medical anth, business anth, refugee and migration studies, community development programs, policy development.

Question 10

What is the difference between emic and etic?

Answer 10

Emic-Insider perspective (local). Etic-outsider perspective (global).

Question 11

What are the pros and cons of an emic perspective?

Answer 11

Pros: Understand the POV of other cultures, find out what is important to those in a culture, produce in-depth, holistic knowledge generated via qualitative research
Cons: Difficult to come to generalizable conclusions, mistranslation, research can take more resources.

Question 12

What are the pros and cons of an etic perspective?

Answer 12

Pros: Cross-cultural comparisons and generalizations, key concepts that reach specific objectives are selected by researchers, multiple countries/cultures can be studied within one project
Cons: Cross-cultural comparisons can be invalid, concepts important to researcher may not be important to participants, holistic system treated more independently.

Question 13

What is ethnology vs ethnography?

Answer 13

Ethnology- study of characteristics of various peoples and the differences and relationships between them
Ethnography-The scientific description of the customs of individual people and cultures.

Question 14

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 14

The practice of regarding one’s culture as the centre of everything, and scaling and relating all others with reference to it.

Question 15

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 15

The perspective that beliefs and practices of any society can only be judged by the values and standards prevalent in that society.

Question 16

What are some cultural practices in other countries that seem barbaric here?

Answer 16

Abortion of female fetuses in China. Female genital mutilation in Africa. Suicide bombings, cannibalism, infanticide.

Question 17

What are the anthropological perspectives?

Answer 17

Holistically, objectively, relativistically, comparatively, interdisciplinary, ethnography, emically, methodologically.

Question 18

What are the steps in deduction?

Answer 18

Theory, Hypothesis, Observation, Confirmation.

Question 19

What are the steps in an induction?

Answer 19

Observation, pattern, tentative hypothesis, theory.

Question 20

What is the textbook definition of anthropology?

Answer 20

Anthropology is the study of people, their origins, their development, and their contemporary variations.

Question 21

Who developed the four-field approach?

Answer 21

Franz Boas, who was also the founder of american anthropology.

Question 22

What is practice anthropology?

Answer 22

Involves using already existing anthropological data, methods, theories, and insights on a daily basis.

Question 23

What are physical (biological) anthropologists interested in?

Answer 23

Reconstructing the evolutionary record of human species (palaeoanthropology), Primatology, and human variation (how and why physical traits in humans vary across the world) . Also study how culture and environment have influenced biological evolution.

Question 24

What do evolutionary psychologists do?

Answer 24

Interested in how human emotional and cognitive capacities evolved as psychological adaptations to ancestral environments.

Question 25

What did Richard Wrangham notice in chimps?

Answer 25

They were ingesting leaves not part of their diet in order to self medicate against internal parasites. Later used this information to preserve chimp habitats in Tanzania.

Question 26

What disciplines do biological anthropologists draw on in human variation?

Answer 26

Genetics, population biology (study of interrelationships between population characteristics and environments), and epidemiology.

Question 27

What are some examples of physical variations that have helped people adapt to their environments?

Answer 27

Darker skin in more tropical areas, favoured due to UV protection. Larger body mass in cold climates, sickle cells to protect against malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.

Question 28

What are the 3 types of remains that archaeologists work with?

Answer 28

Artifacts- objects made or modified by humans. Features- like artifacts, but cannot be readily caried away from the dig site (ex: footprints, house foundations). Ecofacts- objects found in the natural environment (bones, seeds, wood)- not made or altered by humans, but used by them.

Question 29

What are the 3 types of archaeologists?

Answer 29

Historic- reconstruct cultures of people who used writing. Prehistoric- predates advent of writing. Pre-contact- study of people in the Americas prior to European contact. (most Canadian archaeologists deal with pre-contact)

Question 30

What is one way that archaeology helped us in modern times?

Answer 30

Don Crabtree discovered that obsidian was 200 times sharper than modern surgical scalpels, and now some hospitals use obsidian scalpels.

Question 31

What is cultural resource management?

Answer 31

Deals with the protection and management of archaeological and historical cultural heritage resources, such as landmarks, historic buildings, artifacts, and archaeological sites.

Question 32

What is historical linguistics?

Answer 32

Deals with the emergence of language in general and how they have diverged.

Question 33

What is descriptive linguistics?

Answer 33

Study of sound and grammatical systems and the meanings attached to words in specific langauges.

Question 34

What is ethnolinguistics?

Answer 34

Examines relationship between language and culture.

Question 35

What is sociolinguistics?

Answer 35

Examines relationship between language and social relations.

Question 36

What are some things that anthropological linguists do?

Answer 36

Come up with the best way of teaching english as a second language, work with first nations who's languages are becoming extinct.

Question 37

What is glocalization?

Answer 37

The process whereby universalizing processes of globalization interact with the particularizing tendencies of local cultures to produce new forms of the original cultures.