Important Concepts from Unit 7 notes Flashcards
true/false: population pressures only determine how many people can be sustained by a given environment
true
true/false: political anthropology doesn’t adopt a more holistic approach to the explanation of social organization
false
when did political anthropology really emerge as a distinct specialization within the discipline?
during the second period, from approximately 1942 to 1971
which two anthropologists operated during the second period of the development of political anthropology?
Meyer Fortes and E.E Evans-Pritchard, they were attempting to devise typologies to allow them to compare similarities/differences between different political systems of societies
_____: relatively egalitarian forms of organizing social relations in which decisions tend to be made either through consensus or through the influence of individuals who emerge as temporary leaders
Uncentralized political systems
true/false: Like bands, tribes are generally egalitarian with a decentralized decision making process
true
what are the two other words used to describe tribe leaders in anthropological literature?
village heads or big men
______________ political systems: distinct, permanent, public decision-making institutions (eg. a chief, a king or a queen, a formal government) and often involve an important degree of social stratification and inequality between different social groups
centralized
true/false: As in bands or tribes, the social relations involved in chiefdoms are organized through kinship
true!
______: a stratified society, controlled by a formal government, that possesses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police
state (!)
true/false: Anthropologists argue that examples of the state can be seen as early as 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt
false, 5,000 years ago!
______: definable aspects of political power – the formal rules, structures, authorities, institutions, and procedures of decision-making
visible power (leadership roles and authoritary groups are the best examples, King/Queen, Police/Military)
________: an exercise of power that results in political or social effects that individuals can identify, but where the sources, reasons, or strategies behind these effects are often less easy to trace
hidden power, political lobbying
true/false: hidden forms of power can often lead to conspiracy theory or political paranoia
true!
_______: a political style in which individuals link disparate events that may or may not in fact be linked together into an often-totalizing scheme of how power is operating
political paranoia
____ power: the power relations that shape “people’s beliefs, sense of self, and acceptance of their own superiority or inferiority”
invisible power
what is the most important example of invisible power?
ideology, the social beliefs, practices, or senses of self that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply natural and right, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce existing systems of power and inequality even when we recognize them as unfair
________: a form of power that organizes social settings themselves and controls the allocation of social labor
structural power (colonialism, led to an unequal division of power)
“________ _________” approach to ideology: ideology works primarily through the adoption by individuals of “false” ideas and beliefs that persuade them to accept the rule of the governing class or existing social order as simply natural and right
false consciousness, “The American Dream”
true/false: Marx didn’t believe capitalism offered relative freedom
false!
which philosopher came up with the idea of “cynical reason” ideology?
slavoj zizek
“______ _____” approach to ideology: individuals may even be aware of the exploitative nature of capitalism or some other social system, and yet, through their actions, may nonetheless continue to participate in and reproduce this unequal social system
“cynical reason”
true/false: Zizek developed his cynical reason approach to ideology in large part in relation to Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism.
true!
_______ _________: even though it is human labour, intentions, and efforts that produce the value of commodities, in our everyday lives, we treat commodities as though value were inherent in these objects themselves
commodity fetishism
