MIDTERM REVIEW Flashcards
1
Q
What is anthropology?
A
- Study of humankind
- Anthropos + logos -> human + knowledge
2
Q
What questions does anthropology ask?
A
- What is human?
- What are similiarities and diff betwn humans?
- Between humans and other life forms?
- Is the disctinction between nature/culture fixed or even real?
3
Q
What ‘objects’ do anthropologists study?
A
- People, objects, spirits, landscapes, animals, insitutions, plants, etc
4
Q
What are the different fields in anthropology?
A
- Biology/physical anthropology
- Linguistics
- Archeology
- Socio-Cultural anthropology
- Sub-fields: medical, applied
5
Q
What is the scope of anthropology?
A
- Panoramic
- Holistic
- Comparative
- Interdisciplinary
- Both scientific and humanistic
6
Q
What is “cultural anthropology” about?
A
- A social science that explores how people understand and act in the contemporary world
- Describes, interprets, analyzes social and cultural similarities and differences
7
Q
What were the centers of anthropology?
A
- Great Britain
- United States
- France
8
Q
What are the early assumptions through which the discipline worked?
A
- West has the tools to know others
- We have and produce knowledge; they have beliefs and superstitions
- We are modern; they are primitive
- West established evolutionary hierarchy for the rest of the world
9
Q
How is contemporary anthropology different from its earlier phases?
A
- Undoes the distinction between the West and the Rest
- Makes the “us” unfamiliar
- Focuses on relations and interconnections
- Focuses on different approaches to “culture”
10
Q
What is “culture”?
A
- A set of practices, beliefs, behaviors, values shared by ANY group of people
- Learned, made by those who practice it, and symbolic
11
Q
What meanings did the term “culture” had in the 18th-19th centuries?
A
- Culture meant being civilized, refined
- Hierarchical
- Aristocracy can lay claim to culture
- Some people have more “culture” than others
12
Q
What meanings did the term “culture” had in the 20th century?
A
- Response to race as the concept that explained differences among human groups
- Differences in social learning, NOT in biology
- One human race – many cultures
13
Q
How has the term “culture” changed over time?
A
- Culture was being used to refer to a progression from “primitive” to “civilized”
- Understood now as moving and changing within a group or society to evolve to social challenges and opportunities
14
Q
What is the Miner Reading and its main ideas?
A
- Satirical essay
- Critique of Euro-American culture and arrogance
- Magic is not the prerogative of non-western societies
- Ignorance of ethnocentrism
15
Q
What is the Linton Reading and its main ideas?
A
- Satirical piece about irony of what is “american”
- the “typical” american
- Waking up in a world populated by other cultures and practices
- Everyday life of being interconnected and in relation with other worlds
16
Q
What is the Lavenda and Schultz reading and its main ideas?
A
- Culture is presented as learned, shared, adaptive, and symbolic
- Biological evolution and cultural influences are connected
- Critique of ethnocentrism
- Cultural relativism - encouraging an understanding of cultural behaviors without imposing external judgements
- Critique of Cultural determinism - human behavior, thoughts, and values, are primarily shaped by the culture in which individuals are raised
17
Q
What do anthropolgists do?
A
- Study human societies, cultures, and systems of different communities to attempt to understand them
18
Q
What is immersive fieldwork?
A
- Hands-on research conducted outside of a controlled environment
- Observing, collecting data, and interaction with subjects in their natural settings
- Opposite of armchair anthropology
19
Q
What is ethnography?
A
- Research process and writing practice
- Analytical description of what which we observe and participate in
- Ethnos + graphy -> culture/people + writing
- Description that uses concepts and observations
20
Q
What are the tools for ethnographic research?
A
- Fieldnotes, interviews, words, theories, cameras, tape recorders, drawings, etc.
21
Q
What does it mean to do “participant observation”?
A
- Hanging out with people we want to understand
- Observe the imponderbilia of everyday life - routines and unspoken in full actuality
- Learning through observation and participation
22
Q
What does it mean to see the world “from the native’s point of view”?
A
- Understanding a culture or society from the perspective of its members
- Immersive study to attempt to achieve a level of empathy and insight with one’s subjects
- Geertz - limits of understanding in that it may not be possible
23
Q
What is the difference between “experience-near” and “experience-far” concepts?
A
- Emic vs. etic
- Experience-near - concepts used in everyday life to define feelings and thoughts
- Experience-far - concepts that specialists use to forward scientific, philosophical, or practical aims
24
Q
What is the history of ethnographic methods?
A
- Shift from armchair anthropology to immersive fieldwork coined by Malinowski
25
What was the Malinowski Reading about?
- Immersive fieldwork
- Participant observation
- Researchers must reside among the "natives", observe and participate in their everyday life
- Functionalism
- Translating knowledge to create relations among different cultures
26
What was the Geertz Reading about?
- Can never fully "become" a native, or understand through "empathy"
- Interpretations will always be partial, situated, and filtered through our own
27
Why is anthropology a form of translation?
- Interpretatin that creates a dialogue between diff worlds and experiences
- Geertz
28
Why is anthropology an interpretive discipline?
- Interpretive anthropology - culture is a system of meanings
- Understanding is always an interpretation since we can never be unbiased and avoid our own cultural prejudices
29
What is Cannibal Tours about?
- Draws from ethnographic ways of representing "other"
- Critique of Western tourism and the desires to know/extract from the "other"
- Ethnocentrism
- Cannibals were tourists and Iatmul people
30
What is colonialism?
- Conquest and control of other people's land and goods
- Settlement of people in a new locality, forming a community connected with their parent state
31
What is a colonial encounter?
- Interactions and relationships that occur between the colonizer and colonized
- Never neutral
32
Why is the history of colonialism important for the contemporary world?
- Establishment of cultural hierarchies placing certain usually Wester/european cultures above others
- Creation of hybrid identities
33
What was the relationship between anthropology and the colonies?
- Anthropology served as a tool for colonial powers to better understand and control colonized populations
- Anthropologies reinforced stereotypes and provided justification for colonial domination
34
What are the most important things that Fanon taught us about the relationships between colonizer and colonized?
- Psychological impacts of colonialism on colonized and colonizer
- Struggle with multiple racial identities
- Language is power in civilization
- the "gaze"
35
What is the relationship between language and colonialism?
- Speaking a language is to assume another culture
- Colonizer erased local culture and traditions, and has reduced colonized to an inferior by imposing new language and traditions
36
What is the Fanon Reading about?
- Effort to understand the black-white relationship
- Colonizer-colonized relationship
- Instrumental role in US Civil Rights and Black Power movements of 1960s
- Anti-colonial movements in the colonies used his work as a manifesto of freedom
- Effect on the psyches of both parties
- Inferiority/superiority complex
37
Race as a "biological" construct
- 18th-19th centuries
- Innate characteristics
- Cranial capacity
- Shared gene pools
38
Race as a "cultural" construct
- 19th century-present
- Social concept
- Shaped by broader social forces
- Racial meanings vary over time and between different societies
39
What is a system of classification?
- Way to organize and categorize ideas based on shared characteristics or attributes
- Works by establishing defining categories with certian characteristics
40
What functions does a system of classification perform?
- Reduce chaos
- Translate the complexity of reality into specific categories
- Help us generalize about the social or physical world
41
Does "race" work as a language?
- Yes
- Discorsive construct - language and communication
- Has different meanings to different people and may represent different things
42
Is "science" culture-free?
- Emphasizing hierarchy of certain behavioral and cultural traits
- Eugenics - advocates practices to improve the genetic composition of a population
43
What does it mean that science is a social practice?
- Science being used to enhance and back social agendas
- Shaped by human interactions, cultural norms, societal values, and power dynamics
44
What are the relationships between blackness and slavery?
- Racial category of blackness evolved as a consolidation of slavery
- Omi and Winant
45
What does Barracoo teach us about race and slavery?
- Highlights the complexity of slavery and levels of exploitation
- Experience of having a unique identity be stripped and then groups into a racial classification of "black"
- Comments of racial identity shifting throughout Cudjo's lifetime
46
How does ZNH portray her encounter with the last "Black Cargo"?
- Story of how black people came to America and the resilience they demonstrated through a unique perspective
- Preserved his voice by writing most of it using his language and dialect
- Unfiltered account
- Emphasizes importance of storytelling
47
In what ways does ZNH's work provide a "decolonial" exmaple of ethnography?
- Preserving Southern Black culture from Africa and historical context
- Allowing Cudjo to tell his own story without interruption
- Sense of "racial health"
- New interpretation of conventional historical narratives of the slave trade
- Does not impose her own interpretations and biases
