Test 1

Question 1

What is Anthropology?

Answer 1

Anthropo – Greek – Refering to Humans
Anthropology – The study of humans throughout space and time
Very broad scope
Study of humans culturally and biologically
How did we change, and how did culture influence that change
Holistic

Question 2

What distinguishes anthropology from most other sciences which study humans?

Answer 2

The great scope, and study of the change between culture and biology

Question 3

Besides being much broader in scope than other social sciences, what sort of approach does anthropology take towards understanding human groups?

Answer 3

Holistic Approach

Question 4

Biological Anthropology

Answer 4

Not just present, but study of biological variation over time

a. Paleo-anthropology
i. Study of bones/fossils from millions of years ago
b. Human Variation
i. Looking at differences between living humans
c. Primatology

Question 5

Archeology Subfield

Answer 5

Studies Culture through studying artifacts

a. Archeology
b. Historical Archeology
i. Anything in recent history, all the way back to when a culture started recorded it’s history

Question 6

Ethnology Subfields (Cultural Anthropology (Mainly living culture)

Answer 6

Study of Culture you can visit

a. Ethnography
i. ‘Picture’ of a ‘Culture’
ii. A detailed description and analysis of a culture
b. Ethno-history
i. Emphasizes archival research
c. Cross-cultural research
i. Comparison of ethnographic research across cultures

Question 7

Anthropological Linguistics

Answer 7

a. Historical Linguistics
i. Refering to studying language over time, including pre history. Focusing on the change of language over a long period of time.
b. Descriptive (Structural) Linguistics
i. Breaks down the pieces of language
c. Sociolinguistics
i. The variation of our language based on a social setting
ii. Observing language behavior within a society

Question 8

Applied Anthropology

Answer 8

Hands on, solving problems
Essentially taking anthropological theories and methods and applying them to solve a problem that a particular culture has

	Can be applied to any of the four fields 
		‘Applied archeology’ is like ‘contract archeology.’ Cultural resource management.

Question 9

What is culture?

Answer 9

Learned set of beliefs, values, ideologies that are intangible, not material
Material: Behavior, such as observable behavior, like brushing your teeth
Non-Material: Behavior that you cannot observe, like beliefs

Question 10

Text emphasizes culture as:

Answer 10

non-material culture in its definition of culture as,
“the set of learned behaviors and ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values, and ideals) that are characteristic of a particular society or other social group.”

(How is material culture indirectly included in this definition?)
Society has people, and people has culture, and that culture influences or determines your behavior. Culture doesn’t exist without us as a society.

Question 11

Culture is

Answer 11

Shared

Question 12

Is there any way in which culture is shared beyond a particular society?

Answer 12

Religion
Language

All humans are cultured

Unless you’re severely neglected and have no human contact
It’s possible yet very rare

Any human is going to have culture simply through interaction

Question 13

Culture is Universal - Ralph Linton

Answer 13

“Every society has a culture, no matter how simple this culture may be, and every human being is cultured, in the sense of participating in some culture or other.”

In other words, all human societies share culture, but they do so in both different and similar ways… with many cultural ways of living/ patterns being practiced in all societies.

Question 14

Culture is a learned behavoir

Answer 14

How different cultures prepare their own food is cultural. Eating is shared, but not cultural. It’s not learned.

The process of how one eats is learned and extremely cultural

Remember to consider “everything that people have, think and do as members of a society”

Question 15

What’s the difference between our learned behavior and that of other animals?

Answer 15

Communication is more complex
Our behavior in general in more complex. There is a difference in degree, not in kind.

One way in which culture is so complex is that culture is highly patterned.
Human culture is mostly integrated or systematic

• Before we explore one more characteristic of culture which has not only allowed for human culture to be so complexly patterned, but for there to be so many different cultures/ so much cultural diversity –
• the fact that culture changes (constantly, while also often persisting or changing more slowly) –
we need to consider the primary obstacle to the study of cultures…

Question 16

Ethnocentrism

Answer 16

To see or judge other cultures mostly on their standards of your own culture
Your culture is the center of everything

Question 17

Cultural Relativism

Answer 17

Looking at another culture through that culture’s point of view and trying to understand that culture
“the anthropological attitude that a society’s customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of that society’s problems and opportunities”

Question 18

Where does Culture Change come from?

Answer 18

Discovery (any addition to knowledge)
Or
Invention/Innovation (A new application of knowledge)
Adding to knowledge or applying knowledge in a new way to create a new tool or a new way of doing things
If it catches on, and becomes shared, then it is cultural

Question 19

Diffusion

Answer 19

the process by which cultural elements are borrowed from another society and incorporated in the culture of the recipient group.
All cultures are product of diffusion through sharing

How much of it is original to our own society and how much of our culture originated elsewhere?
There are examples, but overwhelmingly, everything originated elsewhere

Question 20

Acculturation

Answer 20

When one culture is dominated by another culture. The one with less power is changing and becoming more like the powerful culture.
Acculturation is a kind of cultural diffusion in which there is a great disparity of/difference in power between the societies involved in the transmission of culture from one society to another, 
… such that the transmission becomes an almost overwhelmingly one way process of culture change from the more powerful to the less powerful, from the dominator to the dominated.
Cultural annihilation – Prussians

Question 21

What is the most drastic or rapid form of culture change?

Answer 21

Revolution

Question 22

What are some conditions which lead to such rapid, often violent, change?

Answer 22

1. Loss of prestige of established authority
 

2. Threat to recent economic improvement

3. Indecisiveness of government

   
4. Loss of support of the intellectual class

Question 23

3 different ways in which choices people make about how to change may have negative outcomes:

Answer 23

1. People may make mistakes in judgment, especially if some new behavior seems to satisfy a physical need (ex. drug use);
 

   2. People may be correct in their short term judgment of a new behavior’s benefit, but wrong in their assessment of its long term benefit;
 

   3. People may be forced by the more powerful to change, with little benefit to themselves (acculturation).

Question 24

What are some of the primary types of change occurring in the modern world today?

Answer 24

1. Commercialization
2. Religious Change
3. Political and Social Change

Question 25

Religious Fundamentalism

Answer 25

While it can be simply defined as the literal interpretation of a sacred scripture, it can more usefully (for understanding society and culture) be defined as follows:
“religious/political movements that appear in response to the rapidly changing environment of the modern world”.

Question 26

Globalization

Answer 26

“the massive flow of goods, people information, and capital across huge areas of the earth’s surface” and
the global or worldwide culture change resulting from this massive flow.

Question 27

Ethnogenisis

Answer 27

The creation of new cultures. Cultures that are being acculturated by globalization, they are growing and changing and becoming new

Question 28

Early Evolutionism

Answer 28

Originated in the 1800s as the idea that all human cultures develop uniformly and progressively
Most cultures evolve through the same stages of development to a common “higher” or more progressive state of “civilization”
What does this early approach assume about the source of culture change?
The seeds of culture change are embedded within each separate culture
Cultural evolution was assumed to be internally determined

Question 29

Edward Taylor

Answer 29

widely rejected today
Culture evolves from the simple to the complex, through 3 stages of development:

SAVAGRY

BARBARISM

CIVILIZATION
Tylor explained this uniform progression by primarily assuming
a PSYCHIC UNITY OF HUMANITY, 
supplemented by simple cultural exchanges or “DIFFUSSION” of cultural characteristics
(everybody has equal opportunity to culture. But they didn’t understand that culture is usually based on sharing)

Question 30

Diffusionism

Answer 30

Diffusionism is another early theoretical approach which explained the spread of cultural characteristics primarily through their original development in one culture and subsequent spread or “diffusion” to other cultures, rather than through independent parallel development as the result of “psychic unity”

Although anthropologists now reject early evolutionism and diffusionism as originally formulated, this does not mean that we do not still recognize that all societies have the capacity for cultural change and innovation or that much of this change comes through cultural exchange. 



We reject the idea that cultural change occurs through uniform evolution or instead primarily through diffusion from a small number of culture centers/innovators. 

And neither account for why a particular cultural characteristic originates in the first place.

Finally, the early period of anthropology was also dominated by another type of theory, which unlike later evolutionism and understandings of cultural diffusion, has been completely rejected by modern anthropologists as pseudoscientific, although its core concept has persisted in popular culture.

Question 31

Race Theory

Answer 31

“Race” theory emerging as dominant in the 1800’s and reaching its height during World War II, was based on the false premise that “the reason human cultures differed in their behaviors was because they represented separate subspecies of humans, or ‘races’.”

Anthropologists now reject “race” as a biological construct, while recognizing it as a social construct in many societies, such as our own, but “race” theory divides humanity into different typologies made up of supposedly biologically discrete/distinct populations or “races”, such as that of Linneaus (African, American, Asiatic, and European) or
that of Johann Blumenbach (American, Caucasian, Ethiopian, Malayan, and Mongolian).

Question 32

Franz Boaz

Answer 32

Founder of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropologist who led the opposition to early evolutionism and its claim that all cultures develop according to universal evolutionary laws. 



Boaz also challenged the assumption of cultural and biological superiority/inferiority implied by the early evolutionist and racist frameworks.

Historical Particularism,
which means that you do not assume theoretical knowledge of humans, but you just go there, and build theory after you research them. Don’t be deductive, be inductive.
Because evidence was so lacking to make generalizations about human culture, Boaz proposed a research approach or method known as historical particularism, which stresses the extreme diversity of cultural variation and the need to identify this rich diversity, before focusing on how it originated or changes.
Central to Boaz’s approach was the investigation of different cultural characteristics in (or relative to) the cultural context in which they exist: 
cultural relativism (rather than simply relative to one’s own culture: ethno-centrism).

He also stressed the need to collect data on as many cultures as possible with a focus on those which were under threat of disappearing, an approach which came to be known as salvage anthropology.


Question 33

Functionalism - Bronislaw Malinowski

Answer 33

Functionalism in anthropology seeks to analyze a cultural characteristic according to how it either serves basic human needs or maintains the culture, of which it is a part, as a system.
 


Assumes that all cultural characteristics serve the basic or derived needs of individual members of a society.


How culture satisfies basic human needs. “How does culture provide us with food?” “How does religion function to help us survive?”

Question 34

Structural Functionalism

Answer 34

ATHRUR RADCLIFFE-BROWN’s functionalism or
STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONALISM instead assumes that socio-cultural behavior functions primarily to maintain a society’s social structure, rather than to serve individual needs.

Question 35

Julian Steward - Cultural Ecology

Answer 35

By considering the relationship between culture and environment, Steward was able to identify cultural (behavioral, rather than biological) adaptation to the environment as a primary mechanism of cultural evolution of particular cultures. A behavior is adaptive if it is likely to be culturally transmitted to future generations.
 
Steward called the study of the relationship between culture and environment, CULTURAL ECOLOGY, but distinguished it from BIOLOGICAL ECOLOGY.

Cultural ecologists assume human cultural adaptation involves NATURAL SELECTION or differential reproduction with the better adapted reproducing more frequently.
 
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY expanded on the treatment of natural selection as a primary mechanism of cultural evolution.

Question 36

Political Economy

Answer 36

Views colonialism and imperialism, and now globalization as the primary forces behind socio-cultural change. 
 
The political economy approach emphasizes the importance of history and processes external to the culture under consideration.
Interaction between societies with more power and societies with less power

Question 37

Feminist Approaches

Answer 37

INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES – subjective, non-scientific approach
 


POSTMODERNISM – better as a critique, than as an approach in and of itself (also non-scientific and therefore compatible with interpretive approaches); rejects that anthropology can be objective, only subjective (scientific anthropologists strive for objectivity, while recognizing that they can never be absolutely objective – that their work will always be affected by their subjectivity as well)

Question 38

Participant Observation

Answer 38

Fieldwork method whereby cultural anthropologists study the culture of a society firsthand by not only observing people’s behavior, but also by participating in that behavior – participating in their way of life.

Question 39

Ethnography

Answer 39

holistic description and analysis of a culture based on long term fieldwork involving participant-observation as a primary research method

What is the most important responsibility of a cultural anthropologist has in doing fieldwork? Protect that culture from harm

Question 40

What is a language?

Answer 40

A language is any system of symbols (and other non-arbitrary signs) used to transmit shared (or agreed upon) meanings (information and knowledge).
Language is a system of signs used to transmit culture
A symbol is cultural because a society has to agree upon it’s definition

Question 41

What is the function of language?

Answer 41

Communication of meaning through symbolic and non-symbolic signs

Question 42

Is language what makes us human?

Answer 42

No, because other animals also have language
Animals also communicate meaning through a system of signs
(Bird calls)

Question 43

What’s the difference between our language and that of other animals?

Answer 43

The degree of which our language is complex compared to theirs
What distinguishes us from other animals is the degree to which we use symbols to communicate.
On a scale from simple to complex, human language is extremely complex in its ability to communicate meaning.

Question 44

What is a quantitative way in which our language is more complex than that of other animals?

Answer 44

The lexicon of each human language is vastly larger than that of other animals.
A language’s lexicon is all the symbols of a language and their meanings (a dictionary approximates a language’s lexicon).

Question 45

What is a qualitative way in which our language is more complex than other animals?

Answer 45

Human languages are open systems, while the languages of other animals are usually closed systems. Open in that signs and symbols can be combined in different ways to produce new meanings.
Animals are closed. They do not combine symbols or signs to make new meanings

Question 46

What is the origin of the human language? How long have humans used language to communicate?

Answer 46

Humans have almost certainly used language to communicate for millions of years.
 

The earliest systems of writing are only about 6,000 years old, but when we started to develop spoken systems of symbols is far less certain and the nature or way in which those symbols were first combined is even less certain.

Question 47

Creole language

Answer 47

Some linguists theorize that creole languages are similar to early human language.

Creole languages are a combination of the language of those who are dominated by another society and the language of the dominant society that has occurred as the result of colonialism and imperialism.

Creole languages are similar in grammar throughout the world.

Question 48

Descriptive Linguistics

Answer 48

Descriptive linguistics describes and analyzes language by breaking down each language into the following three elements:

phones or all the sounds a particular language uses;
 (Sounds)
morphs or the smallest units of a language that have meaning;
(Words) and

syntax or the rules that predict how morphs are generally combined in meaningful ways to form phases and sentences.

(Grammar is the rules governing the use of morphs and how they change in relationship to each other syntactically.)


Question 49

Historical Linguistics

Answer 49

Historical Linguistics studies how language changes over time
Historical linguists study how languages change over time by first attempting to reconstruct the original language from which related languages have subsequently developed.

A proto-language(hypothesis of original first language) is a reconstructed language that linguists use to approximate what they theorize was the original language spoken by the distant ancestors of people speaking related languages today.
All languages derived from the same proto-language are grouped into the same language family.

Question 50

Relationship between Language and Culture

Answer 50

Culture influences language (Slang)
For instance, how a society experiences and describes its environment influences its lexical content or the vocabulary of its language.


Question 51

Sapir-Worf Hypothesis

Answer 51

Language in and of itself (in the way that it communicates shared meanings or culture) affects how individuals in a society perceive and conceive reality and therefore their culture.
Different languages have different meaning for things, so you could theoretically perceive time, or snow, differently than other cultures.

Question 52

Sociolinguistics

Answer 52

Sociolinguistics studies the cultural and sub-cultural patterns of speech variation in different social contexts (through the ethnographic study of speaking).

Question 53

What isn’t cultural? What are some examples of what is non-cultural?

Answer 53

Death
Life
Sleeping

Question 54

Historical Particularism

Answer 54

You do not assume theoretical knowledge of humans, but you just go there, and build theory after you research them. Don’t be deductive, be inductive.

Stresses the extreme diversity of cultural variation and the need to identify this rich diversity, before focusing on how it originated or changes

Investigation of different cultural characteristics in (or relative to) the cultural context in which they exist: 
cultural relativism (rather than simply relative to one’s own culture: ethno-centrism).



He also stressed the need to collect data on as many cultures as possible with a focus on those which were under threat of disappearing, an approach which came to be known as salvage anthropology.