Test 1 - Midterm Flashcards
Cultural Relativism
suspending our beliefs to learn about others, methodological tool emphasizing that cultural practices need to understand as a part of the larger symbolic system it is a part of
7 characteristics of culture
- Learned and acquired
- Necessary
- Adaptive, designed for living
- Maladaptive (ie. environmental pollution)
- Non-Ultilitarian
- Patterned
- Symbolic system
Bronislaw Malinowski and fieldwork
Malinowski
- father of anthropology as we know it today
(- born in Poland and studied math and physics at the University of Krakow)
Fieldwork
- goal is to grasp the natives view
- requires being “set down” in the field aka: participant observation
- long term
- immersion
- Specific location, specific group
- Avoid missionaries and Europeans
Participant observation
type of field work that requires being “set down” in the field
“imponderabilia of daily life”
According to Malinowski fieldwork…
- aka Flesh and blood
- what people do, minute observations of daily life
“Corpus inscriptionum”
According to Malinowski fieldwork…
- aka spirit
- natives point of view
- collection of statements, narratives, folklore, magical formulae collected in native language
“Termini technici”
According to Malinowski fieldwork…
-verbatim statements to get at the spirit
Ethnography
- end result of Malinowski fieldwork
- empirical and descriptive results of peoples and cultures
Degeneration theory/white man’s burden
a belief that civilization might decline and that causes of decline lay in biological change (Biblical cause for variation, entire species became sterile, weaker, smaller)
the white mans alleged duty to care for non-white indigenious subjects in their colonial possesions
Progressivism
all societies started out primitive and were progressing toward a more advanced state of being
John Locke
progressivism
-progressed based on experience since the human mind is a blank slate
immutability of species vs. Darwin
every species was created by God and will not fundamentally change vs. evolution and natural selection as outlines in “on the Origin of Species”
Herbert Spencer and survival of the fittest
survival of the fittest was a phrase coined by ____ ( social darwinism) which means that certain groups/people can be described as “less evolved” and are subject to natural selection like plants and animals
Unilineal Evolution
- savagery
- Barbarism
- civilization
Lewis Henry Morgan
American social theorist who wrote “Ancient Society” and is created with the theory of unilineal evolution
Savagery
first stage of unilineal evolution, promiscuous (NW coast US, Apes, Austrialians Aborigines)
Barbrism
second stage of unilineal evolution, polygamous (Pueblo, Iroquois, Maya)
Civilization
third stage of unilineal evolution, Monogamous (Greeks, Romans, Europeans)
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
founder of cultural anthropology, looked at evolution of religion (animism, polytheism, monotheism)
Animism
the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena
Polytheism
Belief in many Gods
Shakespear in the bush
shakespear story told to bush people, but many terms such as ghost are not understood.
bush people are not wrong for interperating different because culture is based on experience
“Voyages of discovery”
15th-18th century, ferdinand Magellan and spice islands, ponce de leon and fountain of youth, columbus and the new world, entounters with natives show human similarities and differences
Ferdinand Magellan
first European to cross Pacific Ocean, discovered the straight, dies in Philippines from natives.
Spice Island
discovered by Magellan during the first circumnavigation of world
Airchair Anrhropology
anthropology without field work, cause of unilineal evolution, EB tylor and Lewis Morgan
Ethnology
the study of the characteristics of various peoples and the differences and relationships between them. (cultural anthropology)
monotheism
Belief in one God
nomothetic
(part of unilineal evolution) generalized understanding of a given case based on law (stereotypes)
Cesare Lombroso
father of criminology, concept of the criminal type
anthropometrics
where skulls were measured to point out a criminal type (Cesare Lombroso)