Chapter 4 Flashcards
(27 cards)
Biological Anthropology
The study of humans as biological organisms.
Chiefdom
A centralized society in which power is concentrated in a single chief who heads a ranked hierarchy of people.
Cultural Generalization
The description of commonly shared values, beliefs, and behaviors in a society.
Cultural Relativity
Suspending judgment of other societies’ customs, practices, and institutions.
Family
Traditionally defined as the residential kin group.
Folkways
A trivial norm that guides action.
Functionalism
A perspective in anthropology that emphasizes that cultural institutions and practices serve individual or societal needs.
What are the functions of power in a society?
To maintain internal peace, organize and direct community enterprises, conduct warfare, rule and exploit.
Gender-based Differences
The cultural characteristics linked to male and female that fine people as masculine and feminine.
Idealism
A perspective in anthropology that focuses on the importance of ideas determining culture.
Intensification
When population growth causes increased use and exploitation of the environment.
Kinship Group
People related to one another by blood.
Linguistic Anthropolgy
A method of analyzing societies in terms of human communication, including its origins, history, and contemporary variation and change.
Materialist Perspective
A perspective in anthropology that focuses on how people make their living in a specific environmental setting.
Mores
Important norms that carry moral authority.
Multiculturalism
Acknowledging, protecting, and promoting multiple cultures and subcultures.
Monogamy
A marriage union of one husband and one wife.
Nation
A society that sees itself as one people with a common culture, history, ideology, language, set of institutions, and territory.
Patriarchal Family
The male is the dominant authority, and kinship is determined through the male line.
Political System
Organization and distribution of power in a society.
Public-Private split.
The theory that men dominate in the public arena and women focus on the private and domestic arena.
Religion
A set of beliefs and practices pertaining to supernatural powers and the origins and meaning of life.
Sanction
A reward or punishment for conforming to or violating cultural norms.
Socialization Process
Process by which culture is communicated to successive generations.
