Lecture series 2 Flashcards Preview

Anthropology 201 > Lecture series 2 > Flashcards

Flashcards in Lecture series 2 Deck (68)
Loading flashcards...
1
Q

theory

A

a statement that suggests a relationship among phenomena and explains that relationship theories can generate hypotheses to be tested in an empirical research investigation theories also shape methods of interpretation in qualitative approaches

2
Q

positivism

A

there is a structure that determines truth and it can be identified (science)

3
Q

determinism

A

all human action comes from external causes

4
Q

idealism

A

mind/spirit determines human nature

5
Q

agency

A

humans consciously do as they please

6
Q

materialism

A

physical matter determines human nature (biological characteristics, wealth)

7
Q

history of anthropology

A
  • pre-disciplinary
  • pre-formative
  • relativism and cultural preservation (1900’s-1980’s)
  • critical and post modern (1960’s-present)
  • activist (1980’s-present)
  • neo-evolutionary
8
Q

pre-disciplinary

A
  • across cultures and across history, understaning “other”cultures was used for empire building
  • orientalism (asia as a projected other against which to define the west)
  • modern academia in some cases recognizes, or looks for, ancient roots in other philosophies
9
Q

pre-formative

A
  • european colonialism (1400’s- 1960’s)
  • efficient subjucation (production/extraction)
  • empire
10
Q

colonialism

A

a social system in which one society dominates another through political and economic force

colonialism established extractive processes

11
Q

capitalism

A

the economic system that assigns value to items based on supply and demand

12
Q

the transition to capitalism assigned_____________to land, labor, and wealth

A

european values

13
Q

three key concepts that shaped early anthropology (1850’s)

A
  • disruptions caused by industrialization in europe and america
  • the rise of evolutionary theories
  • the spread of european colonialism
14
Q

idustrialization

A
  • disrupted american and european societies by bringing large numbers of rural people into towns and cities to work in factories. urbanization, secular trends. specialization (academics)
  • studying how european villages and cities were structured and how they perpetuated their cultures led to questions about how non-western societes worked as well
15
Q

evolution

A
  • On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 by Charles Darwin
  • evolutionary theories were subsequentially applied to the study of culture
  • early concepts of unilineal cultural evolution were abandoned
16
Q

salvage paradigm

A

to observe indigenous ways of life before knowledge of traditional languages and customs before they were persumed to disappear

17
Q

early academic

A
  • grand theories (1880’s-1940’s)
  • goal is prediction of behavior and beliefs-a focus on “other” seemingly simple cultures
  • evolutionism
  • diffusionism
  • american historicism
  • functionalism
  • WW2 reconstruction efforts spawned international development
18
Q

structural-functionalism

A

culture is structured to meet needs of the individual within society

19
Q

psychological anthropology

A

culture and personality-culture groups share personality traits that encourage behaviors

20
Q

evolutionism

A
  • represented by edward tylor and lewis henry morgan in the 19th century
  • attempted to explain variations in world cultures by the single deductive theory that they all pass through a series of evolutionary stages
  • defined by the presence and absence of certain technological features
  • savagery-barbarism-civilization
21
Q

functionalism

A

purposes that cultural practices and beliefs perform functions for societies:explaining how the world works, organizing people into efficient roles, etc.

emphasizes that socil institutions function together in an integrated and balanced fashion to keep the whole society functioning smoothly and to minimize social change

associated with british anthropologists bronislaw malinowski and a.r. radcliffe-brown

22
Q

critics of fuctionalism argued that it was too_____________and viewed culture as too stable and smoothly functioning

A
23
Q

diffusionism

A

a theory that stated that certain cultural features were invented originally in one or several parts of the world and then spread to other cultures

overemphasized the valid idea of diffusion

24
Q

american historicism

A

inductive approach-interpret themes from extensive collections of ethnographic data based upon direct fieldwork

headed by franz boas

prominent in the first part of the 20th century

25
Q

person

A

the socially recognized individual

26
Q

modern societies value__________while premodern societies emphasize____________

A

each unique individual (egocentric)

social solidarity (sociocentric)

27
Q

ruth benedict was an influential proponent of _______________

A

culture and personality studies

28
Q

“self” refers to_______________

A

an individual’s conception of his or her fundamental qualities and consciousness

29
Q

relativism and cultural preservation (1900’s-1980’s)

A
  • deconstructioning dominant cultural concepts like “race”
  • complex and relative theories
  • cultural relativity-understand culture in its own terms
  • what does this require? (language, time-experience-methods)
  • political (race, war)
  • international development
30
Q

ethnopsychology is an anthropological analysis of

A

world psychologies

31
Q

ethnopsychology

A
  • explores how societies make sese of persons, selves, and emotions
  • the emtions we experience, and assume to be univeral may not have an exact equivelant in other cultures
32
Q

materialist/marxist theory

A
  • human agency operates within cultural and historical material constraints
  • “men make theirwon history, but they do not make it jsut as they please”
33
Q

marx’s constraints on agency

A

power-there are individual differences in the ability to make change

34
Q

coevolution

A

culture (symbols) and agency (ideas) both influence and are influenced by the material (physical environment)

35
Q

franz boas and his students were_________

A

diffusionists

36
Q

diffusionists

A

early twentieth-century anthropologists who held that cultural characteristics result from either internal historical dynamism or a spread (diffusion) of cultural attributes from other societies

37
Q

in the 1950’s, marxists anthropologists like eric wolf suggested that non-western societies could not be understood without reference to

A

their place within a global capitalist system

38
Q

until the 1980’s, mainstream anthropology was locally focused on research in face-to-face village settings

A

research in face-to-face village settings

39
Q

as globalization has increased in pace, anthropologists now realize that too narrow a focus gives an incomplete understanding of people’s lives and the underlying causes of cultural differences

A

too narrow a focus gives an incomplete understanding of people’s lives and the underlying causes of cultural differences

40
Q

critical, postmodern and activist

A
  • deep relexivity
  • reflection on anthropologist’s own role in creating the social encounter
  • view of social phenomena as subjecitvely experienced rather thta fundamentally constructed of elements (distanced from objective science/positivism)
  • representation becomes the goal (film, poetry, photography)
  • theories of visibility and invisibility (postmodern)
  • anti-war, anti-hunger, universal human rights, civil rights
41
Q

globalization

A

the widening scale of cross-cultural interactions caused by the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas within nations and across national boundaries

42
Q

the process of globalization affects__________, especially anthropologists who seek to understand the differences and similarities between_______________

A

everyone

human groups and cultures

43
Q

interpretive contemporary theory

A

understanding the symbolic meaning used to express and transmit culture.

ex. structural functionalism/historical particularism/symbolic/postmodern or hermaneutic

44
Q

evolutionary contemporary theory

A

understand how culture changes in response to human needs

45
Q

activist contemporary theory

A

direct social change for a purpose

46
Q

evolutionary psychologists use____________ to help explain contemporary human behavior, cognition, and perception

A

natural selection

47
Q

biological determinism

A

the belief that human behaviors and beliefs are primarily, if not solely, the result of biological characteristics and processes

48
Q

migrants

A

people who leave their homes to work for a time in other regions or countries

49
Q

immigrants

A

people who leave their countries with no expectation of ever returning

50
Q

refugees

A

people who migrate because of political oppression or war, usually with legal permission to stay in a different country

51
Q

exiles

A

people who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries

52
Q

transnational

A

refers to the relationships that extend beyond nation-state boundaries without assuming they cover the whole world.

53
Q

financial globalization

A
  • began in the 1870’s
  • was interrupted by two world wars
  • has accelerated over the last sixty years
54
Q

eric wolf challenged

A

anthropology’s traditional focus on small, local groups of people, while negledting the world system’s influence

55
Q

postcolonialism

A

the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, the study of which has also helped anthropologists understand the linkages between local social relations and larger regional, national, and transnational levels of political-economic activity

56
Q

anthropologists study resistance groups on the periphery which show how

A

people interpret and challenge global processes through local cultural idioms and beliefs

57
Q

localization

A

the creation and assertion of highly particular, often place-based, identities and communitites

  • localization is relected in patterns of consumption. may other cultues use clothing to convey messages
58
Q

development anthropology

A

the application of anthropological methods to the practical aspects of shaping and implementing development projects

59
Q

anthropology of development

A

the field of study within anthropology concerned with understanding the cultural conditions for proper development or, alternatively, the negarive impacts of development projects

60
Q

postmodernism

A

a school of anthropology that advocates the switch from cultural generalization and absolutes to instead focus on the processes of description, interpretation, and the search for meaning through culture

61
Q

ethnographies should be a_____________between the anthropologist and those of the people under analysis

A

dialogue

62
Q

interpretive anthropologist clifford geertz focused on culture as_____________

A

symbols

63
Q

humans are very____________

A

altrical (dependent on parent nurturing ar birth)

64
Q

humans have limited survival without

A

social interaction

65
Q

human biology (anatomy and physiology) is evolved for

A

sociality and expression of culture

66
Q

cultural adaptions to ecological changes are much more rapid than

A

genetic changes

67
Q

cultural adaption is a better strategy for survival in a

A

variable environment

68
Q

cultural adaption is probably essential when culture is also a

A

selective pressure (people decide if you live, die, or reproduce)