Chapter 4

Question 1

What is circumcision?

Answer 1

excision of the foreskin of the penis to permanently expose the glans

Question 2

What is couvade?

Answer 2

term used by anthropologists to describe a variety of rituals observed by men whose wives are pregnant in order to “mimic” pregnancy. Men perform the same acts and adhere to the same restrictions as their preg-nant wives and may even feign morning sick-ness or childbirth itself

Question 3

What is cultural determinism?

Answer 3

cul-tures in which we are raised determine our character, personalities, emotional lives, and behaviours.

Question 4

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 4

individual’s beliefs and behaviours should be understood in the context of his or her own culture rather than as the product of innate or universal tendencies and values

Question 5

What are descent theorists?

Answer 5

those who study kinship; in particular, they examine the ways in which cultures think about and struc-ture consanguineal(blood)

Question 6

What is female genital cutting (fgc)/female genital mutilation (fgm)?

Answer 6

Female “circumcision”, the removal of the hood of the clitoris

Question 7

What is functionalism?

Answer 7

main-tains that the sex-based division of labour arose because it was necessary for the survival of early human societies. Men= hunters Women = stay home and care for kids

Question 8

What is hypermasculinity?

Answer 8

exaggerated display of or adherence to behaviours, traits, and beliefs seen as masculine.

Question 9

What is infibulation?

Answer 9

involves the removal of the clitoris and much of the tissue of the external genitalia, after which the vaginal opening is either stitched or held together with thorns until it heals into a closed structure with only a small opening to permit urination and menstruation.

Question 10

What is matriarchy?

Answer 10

woman-centred form of social organization in which women, particularly mothers, are at the centre of prestige and power

Question 11

What is matrilineality?

Answer 11

practice of reckoning kin-ship, naming, inheritance, and descent through the mother, rather than the father.

Question 12

What is patrilineality?

Answer 12

practice of reckoning kin-ship, naming, inheritance, and descent through the father

Question 13

What is polygamy?

Answer 13

mar-riage to more than one partner at the same time

Question 14

What is polygyny?

Answer 14

man’s marriage to more than one woman at one time

Question 15

What is purdah?

Answer 15

primarily Islamic practice of the social seclusion of women; a system of segre-gation aimed at keeping women (particularly married and marriageable ones) completely separated from the world of men

Question 16

What is ritual segregation?

Answer 16

segregation of the sexes through rituals that provide a sense of identity and group membership

Question 17

What is sex segregation?

Answer 17

concentration of men and women in gender-specific roles and locations within a society. It has been argued that sex segregation is associated with lower status for women. Within employment, the term refers to the concentration of men and women within different occupations, industries, jobs, and fields. This form of sex segregation may be either vertical or horizontal

Vertical; men at top of occupational hierarchy , women at bottom regardless of qualifications
Horizontal; both sexes are at the same occupational class but different job tasks

Question 18

What is sworn virgin?

Answer 18

Albanian society, a daughter who swore perpetual chastity and took on the social role of a man in order to serve as her fam-ily’s head of household

Question 19

What is Two-Spirited?

Answer 19

in use since the 1990s, to describe transgender or gender-variant people in North American Indigenous cultures. The term is sometimes applied to both historical people (e.g., “berdaches”) and to contemporary Indigenous people