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Flashcards in Anth final Deck (71)
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1
Q

how do we define affluence?

A

The condition of having more than enough of whatever is required to satisfy consumption needs.

2
Q

what are three anthropologically accepted economic phases?

A

1) Kin-ordered mode: labour deployed on the basis of kinship relations.
2) Tributary mode; the primary producer is allowed to access to the means of production while tribute is exacted from him by political or military means.
3) Capitalist mode:
- the means of production are private property owned by the member of the capitalist class.
- Workers must sell their laboyr power to the capitalists in order to survive.
- Surpluses of wealth are produced that retain as profit or reinvest in production.

3
Q

What is biopower and how does it work?

A

Forms of powers preoccupied with bodies, both the bodies of citizens and the social body of the state itself. It is exercised over person specifically insofar as they are subjects as members of a population in which issues of individual interconnect with issues of national policy.

4
Q

What is meant by ‘plurality of worlds’ and what is Ingold’s stance on it

A

Ingold is against the idea of the plurality of worlds because it leaves us powerless to oppose to the hegemony of global forces. Instead he believes in a world not of similarity but of manifold differences.

5
Q

and how are rituals patterned?

A

1) Repetitive social practice
2) Set off from the social routines of everyday life
3) Adhere to characteristics, culturally defined schema
4) Closely connect to a specific set of ides that are often encoded in a myth.

6
Q

how do differences in the cultural meanings of women’s bodies affect relations among women?

A

female bodies are assigned different cultural meanings in different historical and ethnographic settings and that thoes meanings affect the way females constitute their relations with other females.

7
Q

what did Marshall Sahlins think about Ju/’hoansi in terms of poverty?

A

Juhoandsi foragers used culture to construct a nich within which their wants were fuew but abundantly fulfilled by their local environment. They experience greed but live in societies whose insitutions do not reward greed. They therefore should not be considered poor.

8
Q

and at what point broadspectrum

foraging was popular

A

Broad spectrum foraging was practices prior to the transition to domestication in America and in Mexico. Between 6000 and 1000 years ago.

9
Q

how does he view instinct in humans and other animals, and why?

A

Sameness divides people whereas difference is the glue that binds us all.

10
Q

and how might we define the state?

A

The state is a stratified society that posseses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police. Have separate governmental instituitions to enforce laws and to collect taxes and tributes, are run by an elite that possess a monopoly on the use of force.

11
Q

What were some

problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A

1) there’re languages in which only one third-person pronoun is used for both males and females even if male-dominant patterns are common.
2) If language determined though it would be impossible to translate from one language to another or even to lern another language with a different gramamtical structure
3) Even if it were possible to draw firm boundaries around speech communities every language provides its native speakers with alternative ways of describing the world.
4) In many society people learn to speak more than one language fluently.

12
Q

and how is domination different from persuasion?

A

Coercive rule is expensive and unstable. Rulers do better if they can persuade the dominated to accept their rules as legitimate.

13
Q

where complex foragers generally live

A

In area of abundant resources that may appear inexhaustible.

14
Q

Define free agency:

A

The freedom of self-contained individuals to purse their own interests above everything else and to challenge one another for dominance.

15
Q

and how is serial monogamy different from

polygamy?

A

Serial monogomay is being married with many people but one at a time whereas polygamy there are more people at the same time.

16
Q

When and what species was first domesticated?

A

Dogs were domesticated 16000 years ago in Spain.

17
Q

why may anthropology actually be an ‘anti-discipline’

A

Because it has not truck with the kind of intellectual colonialism that divides the world of knowledge into separate parcels for each discipline to rule.

18
Q

and how do myths change?

A

If social arrangments change, myths change too in order to justify the arrangments.

19
Q

How are

primate call systems different from human language?

A
  • They cannot use their call systems to discuss events. -The number of calls in a call system range between 15 to 40 calls and the calls are produced only when the animal finds itself in a situation.
  • They cannot emit a signal that has some features of one call and some of another. (They are closed compare to human calls).
  • They lack displacement (our human ability to talk about absent or non-existent objects and past or future events.
  • They lack arbittariness (the fact that there is no universal, necessary link between prticular linguistic sounds and particular linguistic meanings).
20
Q

What do we know Marcel Mauss best for

A

He contrasted non-capitalist gift exchanges with impersonal commodity exchange typical of capitalist maket.

21
Q

and what is the difference between bilateral kindred and a unilineal descent group:

A

Unilineal descent is a descent group is formed by people who believe they are related to each other by connections made through either their mothers or their father whereas bilateral believe they are related throug connections made through their mothers and their fathers equally.

22
Q

Finally, what

does he propose to be the real contribution of our discipline

A

Lies in its capacity to transform lives.

23
Q

how did Scott’s Malasian peasants respond to routine

repression

A

They were not about to rise up against their oppressors. But this was because they accepted their poverty and low status as natural and proper. They engaged in everyday forms of peasant resistance.

24
Q

What do we mean by openness when it comes to art, myth, ritual, and religion?

A

The ability to the same thing in different ways and to different things in the same way.

25
Q

how is communitas related to metamorphosis?

A

Because people in the liminal state of their rite of passages tend to develop an intense comradeship with each other in which their liminal distinction disappear called communitas.

26
Q

What is meant

when we say that states engage in naturalizing discourses?

A

The deliberate representation of particular identities as if they were a result of biology or nature, rather tna history or culture, making them appear eternal and unchanging.

27
Q

What were some core findings of Richard Lee’s among Ju/’hoansi?

A

The juhoansi provided themselves with a varied and well-balanced diet based on a selection from among the food sources available in their environment. They periodically suffered from shortages of food and were forced to consume less desired items.

28
Q

How does he approach speculation in

anthropology

A

Anthropologists have to understand what the study to speculate what the conditions and possibilities of life might be.

29
Q

and

how can we infer occupational specialization:

A

When the are concentration of particular artifacts in a specific areas of a site indicating that particular social activities took place at a particular area in an archeological site when it was inhabited.

30
Q

and who studies non-verbal communication?

A

Kinesics: the study of body movement gestures and facial expression as a form of communication.

31
Q

How even is

multiculturalism in Canada, especially in regard to language?

A

The practice of multiculturalism in Canada is somehow uneven as it privileges those that speak one of the two official languages and it is not consistent in all regions.

32
Q

How do ascribed and achieved status differ

A

Ascribed is a social positions assigned at birth whereas achieved status is a social position that people may attain later in life, as a result of their own effort.

33
Q

and how come Aboriginal speakers are not always trying to keep up their ancestral languages?

A

Because of the cocnern of many parents who care less about preserving their dying language than they do about making sure their children become literate in a world language that will offer them the chance for their future.

34
Q

what is

meant by linguistic inequality?

A

Making value judgements about other people’s speech in a context of dominance and subordination.

35
Q

how are natural selection and play connected?

A

Play gives young animals the exercise they need to build up the skills necessary for physical survival as adults.

36
Q

What are examples of niche construction:

A

Burning off vegetation to encourage the growth of preferred plants that thrive in burned-over landscapes or to attract wild animals that feed on such plants.

37
Q

where did the

word caste come from:

A

From portugues word casa, meaning “chaste”. They applied it to the stratification systems they encountered in South Asia in fifteenth century.

38
Q

How can we tell (in archaeology) if an animal was

domestic or wild

A

1) the presence of an animals species outside its natural range
2) Morphological chnges occur in most animals as domoestication progresses.
3) An abrupt population increase of some species relative to others
4) the age and sex of the animals from archeological site.

39
Q

why did Chin’s African-American girls play with white Barbies?

A

Because by doing this the girls bring their dolls into their own worlds, and whitness here is not absolutely defined by skin and hair, but by style and way of life. They reconfigured the boundaries of race.

40
Q

what is a two-spirited person:

A

Supernumerary gender roles developed that apparently had nothing to do with morphological sex anormalities.

41
Q

and what sort of wheat stalks would

people have preferred?

A

Wild wheat would require a much less brittle rachis, seed heads that mature at the same time, and a softer glume. It would also require a larger, more easily visible seed head. The earliest domesticated wheat shows precisely these evolutionary trends, including six rows of kernels instead of two.

42
Q

What are economic anthropologists concerned with?

A

Debates the issue of huma nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living.

43
Q

what are summarizing symbols?

A

Symbols that sum up, express, or represent for people in an emotionally powerful way what the system means to them. Represent a complex collection of idea and feelings all together. They might mean different things to different people.

44
Q

is social

organization always predicted by the environment?

A

No

45
Q

and how does the lexicon of a language speak to the values of a society?

A

Speakers of a particular language tend to develop larger vocabularies to discuss aspects of live that are important to them.

46
Q

why is communicative competency

so important?

A

Communicative competency is the mastery of adult rules for socially and culturally appropriate speech. It is important because adult can choose words and topics of conversation appropriate to their social position, the social position of the person they are talking with and the social context of interaction.

47
Q

Where do we experience communitas today?

A

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval de Quebec, Calgary Stampede, large-scale rock concert, winning moments of a sport team.

48
Q

how, where, and why did fraternal polyandry occur?

A

It occurs in Nepal and Tibet. A group of brothers marry one woman. It has special cultural value and the solidarity of brothers is a central kinship ideal.

49
Q

and how can we define ethnicity?

A

A principle of social classifiation used to create groups based on selected cultural features such as language, religion or dress.

50
Q

and what is the difference between art by

intention and art by appropriation?

A

Art by intention includes objects that were made to be art. Art by appropriation consists of all the other objects that became art becaue at a certain moment people decided it was art.

51
Q

hat constitutes body language?

A

Movements and posture that communicate attitudes and feeling non-verbally.

52
Q

Define hegemony:

A

The persuasion of subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by mutual accomodations that nevertheless preserve the rulers privileged position.

53
Q

How does feasting feature in explanations of domestication?

A

According to this theory, there was an increasing expenditure of resources on ritual and exchange, engaging neighbours in a kind of prehistoric feasting extravaganza. To meet the demans for food and other resources, land use was intensified, and the development of food production followed.

54
Q

what is the goal of cultural ecology?

A

To explain the patterns of human consumption focusing on the available resources in particular habitat that are exploited by human groups.

55
Q

How might we define power?

A

Transformative capacity, the ability to transform a given situation.

56
Q

how may the use of statistics not

favour everyone?

A

Statistics can provide government with information it needs to operation in opposition to the interests of specific cultural groups.

57
Q

how can we define a creole?

A

A cmplex laguage with native speakers that has developed over one or more generations from two or more distinct languages.
A complex language that has developed from two or more distinct languages and that is used as a main language, whether or not it has native speakers.

58
Q

How do anthropologists define language?

A

The system of arbitrary symbols people use to encode their experience of the world and of others.

59
Q

How different are

North America and Europe really in terms of class-based access to resources?

A

Canadians and Americans have believed that the may purse wealth, power, prestige umhampered by the unyeldinng class barries characteristi of traditional European societies.

60
Q

What is characteristic of Inuit adoption?

A

Inuti view extended families encompasses the concept of custom adoption: a traditional form of adoption in which the adoptee maintains flexible relationship with her or his birth and adoptive families.

61
Q

Talking about the origins of domestication; do we have any proposed time frames for
it

A

It occured independently in seven different areas of the world between 10.000 and 4000 years ago.

62
Q

and what is meant by terra nullius?

A

The idea that before their arrival the land had been owned by nobody

63
Q

how does he view instinct in humans and other animals, and why

A

He see the appeal to instinct flawed because the tendency are not inborn, instead they develop.

64
Q

Does biological race exist, and how real are the consequences of race as a social
category?

A

There are no major biological discontinuities within the human species that correspond to races. The result of the fact that races are society produced is a highly distorted but more or less coherent set of criteria that members of a society can use to assign people to racial categories. Race can become real in its consequences even if it has no reality in biology.

65
Q

What are the benefits of divorce among Inuit

A

A divorce results in more and not fewer connections.

66
Q

What do we understand myths to be

A

Stories that recount how various aspects of the world came to be the way thye are and that make life meaningfl for those who accept them.

67
Q

how real are gender, class, caste,

race, ethnicity, nationality?

A

All of these are cultural inventions designed to create boundaries around one or another imagined community.

68
Q

How is morphological sex established?

A

The appearence of external genitalia and observable secondary sex characteristics.

69
Q

nd how common is polygyny?

A

Is far mor common than polyandry around the world.

70
Q

and what is Nunavut a good example of?

A

It is a good example of good relationship between indigenous people and the government of a state and marked the beginning of new relationship. It is the most successful outcome of Canadian Aboriginal peoples figh for self-determination.

71
Q

and what

does he think about the painter Paul Klee in reference to anthropology

A

He think that is not for art or for anthropology to hold the mirror to the world. It is rather to enter into relations and processes that give rise to wordly things so as to bring them into the field of our awareness.