Test 1 Flashcards

Question

Religious Fundamentalism

Answer 1

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”.

Answer 2

“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.

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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)

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

“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).

Answer 8

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. 

Answer 9

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?”

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

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

Answer 13

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)

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

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

Answer 16

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

Answer 17

Communication of meaning through symbolic and non-symbolic signs

Answer 18

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

Answer 19

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.

Answer 20

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).

Answer 21

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

Answer 22

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.

Answer 23

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.

Answer 24

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.) 

Answer 25

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.

Answer 26

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

Answer 27

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.

Answer 28

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

Answer 29

Death Life Sleeping

Answer 30

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. 

Test 1 Flashcards

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