Cultural Anthropology Study Guide #1

Terms and Concepts

Anthropology – the study of humanity

Culture Bound - restricted in character or outlook by belonging or referring to a particular culture.

Applied Anthropology - the application of the method and theory of anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems.

Physical Anthropology - a scientific discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their related non-human primates and their extinct hominin ancestors.

Molecular Anthropology - a field of anthropology in which molecular analysis is used to determine evolutionary links between ancient and modern human populations, as well as between contemporary species.

Paleoanthropology - the study of the origins and predecessors of the present human species, using fossils and other remains.

Primatology - the scientific study of primates.

Forensic Anthropology - the application of the science of anthropology and its various subfields, including forensic archaeology and forensic taphonomy, in a legal setting.

Archaeology - study of ancient cultures through remains

Linguistic Anthropology - the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life

Cultural Anthropology - the study of cultural variation among humans

Ethnography - the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.

Fieldwork - the work of gathering information by going into the field

Participant Observation - one type of data collection method typically done in the qualitative research paradigm.

Ethnology - the study of the characteristics of various peoples and the differences and relationships between them.

Holism – the idea that systems and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts.

Informants - a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency.

Medical Anthropology - e study of how health and illness are shaped, experienced, and understood in light of global, historical, and political forces.

Fact - something known to exist or to have happened

Hypothesis - a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

Theory - a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking.

Doctrine - a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group.

Globalization - a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology.

Culture - a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

Society - the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

Gender - the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity.

Subculture - a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.

Ethnic Group - a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.

Ethnicity - a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like

Pluralistic Society - societies that contain a diverse group of religious cultures and traditions.

Traditional Society - a society characterized by an orientation to the past, not the future, with a predominant role for custom and habit.

Enculturation - the gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group by a person, another culture, etc.

Symbols - an object that represents, stands for or suggests an idea, visual image, belief, action or material entity

Social Structure - the system of socioeconomic stratification, social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups.

Infrastructure - the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

Superstructure - an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline.

Human Relations Area Files - a microfiche collection of information on more than 330 different ethnic, cultural, religious, and national groups worldwide, is used by social scientists and students studying a particular culture or cultural trait or for making cross-cultural analyses.

Ethnohistory - the branch of anthropology concerned with the history of peoples and cultures, especially non-Western ones.

Ethnocentrism/Centrism - judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one's own culture.

Cultural Relativism - the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture.

Language - the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication

Signals - a gesture, action, or sound that is used to convey information or instructions, typically by prearrangement between the parties concerned.

Linguistics - the scientific study of language.

Descriptive Linguistics - the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used by a group of people in a speech community.

Phonetics - a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or the equivalent aspects of sign.

Phonology - a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages.

Phonemes - any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.

Linguistic Morphology - the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given language's morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonations and stresses, or implied context.

Morphemes - the smallest grammatical unit in a language.

Frame Substitution - enables the linguist to establish the rules or principles by which language users construct phrases and sentences

Syntax - the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Grammar - the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language.

Form classes - a class of linguistic forms with grammatical or syntactic features in common; a part of speech or subset of a part of speech.

Gesture - a movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning.

Kinesics - the interpretation of body motion communication such as facial expressions and gestures — that is, nonverbal behavior related to movement of any part of the body or the body as a whole.

Proxemics - one of several subcategories of the study of nonverbal communication.

Paralanguage - the nonlexical component of communication by speech, for example intonation, pitch and speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gesture, and facial expression.

Voice Qualities/inflection - the modulation of intonation or pitch in the voice.

Vocal Characterizers - nonverbal behaviors such as crying, laughing, and whining (emotions).

Vocal Qualifiers - one of the manners of speaking (as whining, chuckling, loud tone of voice, rasp, general high pitch) that may accompany the articulation of the vowels and consonants of an utterance and convey a meaning of social relationship and emotion

Tonal Language – a language (usually East Asian) where different tones will change the meaning of the words

Historical Linguistics - the scientific study of language change over time.

Language Family - a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.

Linguistic Divergence - one of the five principles by which you can detect grammaticalisation while it is taking place.

Glottochronology - that part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages.

Core Vocabulary - a small set of simple words, in any language, that are used frequently and across contexts

Pidgin - a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common

Creole - people of present or former colonies, usually locally born with foreign ancestry; or, a stable, full-fledged language that originated from a mixture of two or more languages

Linguistic Nationalism - a dominant culture's use of language to exercise its dominance

Ethno-Linguistics - a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics.

Linguistic Relativity - the structure of a language affects the ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - the structure of a language determines or greatly influences the modes of thought and behavior characteristic of the culture in which it is spoken

Gendered Speech - a sociolinguistic matter concerned with the language which differs between the two genders.

Dialects - a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.

Code Switching - when a speaker alternates between two or more languages

Displacement - the capability of language to communicate about things that are not immediately present (spatially or temporally); i.e., things that are either not here or are not here now.

Writing System - any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication.

Alphabet - the letters of a language in their customary order.

Codification - he process of standardizing and developing a norm for a language in linguistics.

Practice - the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method as opposed to theories about such application or use.

Agency - the capacity of an entity to act in any given environment.

Self & Other - a person or thing referred to with respect to complete individuality; concept of the identity of difference

Speed Mechanisms

Voice Box & Chords - Vocal cords produce the sound of your voice by vibration and the air passing through the cords from the lungs.

Diaphragm/Breath Control – organ that performs an important function in respiration

Broca’s Area - part of the brains frontal lobe linked to speech production

Wernicke’s Area – a region of the brain concerned with the comprehension of language

Thoracic Vertebrae - help to support the weight of the upper body and protect the delicate spinal cord as it runs through the vertebral canal.

Hyoid - a U-shaped bone in the neck that supports the tongue.

Trachea - a tube that connects the pharynx and larynx to the lungs, allowing the passage of air, and so is present in almost all air-breathing animals with lungs.

Esophagus - an organ in which food passes from the pharynx to the stomach.

Self-Awareness - the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Non-Human Primates & Language – attempts to make primates capable of speech

Gensus Homo - the genus that includes modern humans and their close relatives.

Australopithecines – refers to all species in the related genera of Australopithecus and Paranthropus

Basal Hominids – origin of modern hominids

Naming Ceremony - the event at which an infant, a youth, or an adult is given a name or names.

Personality - refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Dependence Training - refers to child rearing practices that foster dependence on the family rather than reliance on oneself.

Independence Training - refers to child rearing practices that foster independence, self-reliance and personal achievement.

Modal Personality - the personality characteristic held by the most people in the group.

Coral Values - attitudes and beliefs thought to uniquely pattern a culture.

Intersexual - a general term that refers to those individuals which have sexual characteristics midway between normal males and normal females.

Transgender - denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.

Ethnic Psychoses - mental disorders specific to particular ethnic groups

Informal Science - science teaching and learning that occurs outside of the formal school curriculum in places such as museums, the media, and community-based programs.

Formal Science - an area of study that uses formal systems to generate knowledge such as in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Problem Solving - the act of defining a problem; determining the cause of the problem; identifying, prioritizing and selecting alternatives for a solution; and implementing a solution

Research Hypothesis - the statement created by researchers when they speculate upon the outcome of a research or experiment.

Null Hypothesis - refers to a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no difference among groups.

Quantitative Data - information about quantities

Qualitative Data - a categorical measurement expressed not in terms of numbers, but rather by means of a natural language description (i.e. this is blue)

Standardized Measurements - accepted or approved instance or example of a quantity or quality against which others are judged or measured or compared.

Random Sample - a set of items that have been drawn from a population in such a way that each time an item was selected, every item in the population had an equal opportunity to appear in the sample.

Statistical Analysis - involves collecting and scrutinizing every data sample in a set of items from which samples can be drawn.

Fact - something known to exist or to have happened:

Hunch - a feeling or guess based on intuition rather than known facts

Objective - not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Subjective - belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought

Chance Probability - the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled

Event Probability - a set of outcomes of an experiment to which a probability is assigned

Sample Size - the act of choosing the number of observations or replicates to include in a statistical sample.

Theory - a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking.

Law/Principle - a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

Supernatural - attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Revelation - a surprising and previously unknown fact, especially one that is made known in a dramatic way.

Prophet - a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.

Creation Myth - a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it.

Oral Narrative Myth – myth told through oral narratives; passed down as such

Conflation Evidence – evidence that sometimes wrongly combines different ideas into one

Faith - confidence or trust in a person or thing or a belief not based on proof.

Supernatural-Natural Approach – dealing with something in vis a vis a supernatural manner; dealing with something via a natural manner

Edward Taylor - an English Anthropologist and was often regarded as the founder of modern anthropology.

Franz Boas – argued that culture developed historically through the interactions of groups of people and the diffusion of ideas, and that consequently there was no process towards continuously "higher" cultural forms; introduced the concept of cultural relativism

Charles Darwin – anthropologist known for his theories of natural selection and common decent

Charles Lyell - proposed that for the vast majority of the Earth’s history, only slow-acting processes have been agents of geological change (Uniformitarianism); same concept influenced Darwins theory of evolution

Bronislaw Malinowski - His ethnography of the Trobriand Islands described the complex institution of the Kula ring, and became foundational for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange

Margaret Mead - her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual mores within a context of traditional Western religious life.

Ruth Benedict - studied the relationships between personality, art, language and culture, insisting that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency

Claude Levi-Strauss - key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology; argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere.

Lewis Henry Morgan - best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois.

Hammurabi - known for the set of laws called Hammurabi's Code, which constitute one of the earliest surviving codes of law in recorded history.

Herodotus - the first historian known to collect his materials systematically and critically, and then to arrange them into a historiographic narrative.

Victor Turner - a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage.

Paul Rabinow – anthropologist known for his application of Michel Foucaults concepts of power onto the field of anthropology; the mutually productive relations of knowledge, thought, and care are given form within shifting relations of power

Constantine the Great - a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD; known for his successful expansionism

Abrahamic Religions - religions originating from the traditions of Iron Age proto-Judaism; the major ones are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Monotheism - the doctrine or belief that there is only one God.

Polytheism - the belief in or worship of more than one god.

Anitimism/Animism - the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.

Age of Exploration - an informal and loosely defined European historical period from the 15th century to the 18th century, marking the time in which extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture.

Age of Enlightenment - an era from the 1620s to the 1780s in which cultural and intellectual forces in Western Europe emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority.

Romans - of or relating to ancient Rome or its empire or people.

Hebrews - a member of an ancient people living in what is now Israel and Palestine

Cannanites - a historical/Biblical region and people in the area of the present-day Levant

Chinese - of or relating to China or its language, culture, or people.

Greeks - the ancient or modern language of Greece; also an inhabitant of Greece

Celtic - an ethnolinguistic group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages.

Germanic - an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin,

Aryans - a member or descendant of the prehistoric people who spoke Indo-European

Dravidians - native speakers of any of the Dravidian languages of South Asia.

Egyptians - an ethnic group and the citizens of Egypt sharing a common culture and a variety of Arabic.

!Kung - San people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola; constantly use the click constant in their language.

Inuit - a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.

Murngin - an Indigenous Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Kpelle - e largest ethnic group in Liberia.

Americans - citizens of the United States of America

Nuer - a Nilotic ethnic group primarily inhabiting the Nile Valley.

Trobrianders – people who reside in the Trobriand Islands

Saami - an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi

Renaissance – a period in Europe, from the 14th to the 17th century,

Reformation - the schism within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers.

Colonialism - the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

World View - the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point of view.

Lexicon - the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.

Historical Particularism - Claims that each society has its own unique historical development and must be understood based on its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process.

Functionalism – a theory of the mind; mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of.

Functional- - spin-off from systems theory in sociology.

Structuralism - the theory that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure (or “the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity”).

Interpretative - something helping you understand or make meaning (i.e. signs on a memorial to help you understand a memorials symbolism).

Post-Modern - subsequent to or coming later than that which is modern.

Hybrid Approach – combination of two systems

Religion - an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.

Magic - the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.

Possible Essay Questions

Discuss the benefits and problems with Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism, be complete.

Describe the steps for the scientific method, be complete.

Describe the field of Historical Linguistics, using an example, be complete.