Anthropology 3 Final UCLA

Balinese Cockfight

Cockfighting is a practice in Bali where men stage fights between their cocks and observers place bets on which cock will win. This practice is the subject of Clifford Geertz's essay "Deep Play: Notes of the Balinese Cockfight," which is included in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures. Geertz makes use of the thick description in his piece and contends that cockfighting is highly symbolic for the Balinese.

Franz Boas

a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology." His work is associated with the movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism. He criticized social evolutionism for being empirically flawed, teleological, moralistic, and ethnocentric.

Bronislaw Malinowski

a Polish-British anthropologist who advocated for intense fieldwork and a methodical, theoretical approach. He conducted research in Australia, Oceanian, Africa, and Oaxaca, Mexico.

Hijra

a South Asian term used to describe those who are categorized as men (or intersex) at birth and undergo ritual castration. They live on the margins of society and are both feared and revered.

Rapport

a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well. It is important that anthropologists establish a good rapport with the people they are studying.

Deep Play

a game with extremely high stakes (amounts of money and status). The term was adapted by anthropologist Clifford Geertz from the writings of Jeremy Bentham, and used in his influential study of the meaning of the Balinese cock-fight.

Race

a group of people whose perceived characteristics are popularly believed to be reflecting a more profound biological difference. According to anthropologists, the idea that humans constitute different races is a folk belief, not a scientific one. Racial classifications are arbitrary cultural products that change over time and across cultures. Race has no biological basis and is socially constructed.

Two Spirit (Berdache)

a modern term used by some indigenous North Americans to describe those who adopt roles and practices of the "opposite" gender. They are culturally recognized as being neither man nor woman.

Armchair Anthropologist

a person who studies anthropology from a distance and does not participate in fieldwork. Armchair anthropologists do not have any direct contact with the people they study. Lewis Henry Morgan was an armchair anthropologist.

Ethnography

a scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures, encompassing both the research and the written end product. It is the most distinctive feature of anthropology and its basic research method. It involves the gathering and interpretation of information based on intensive, firsthand study of a particular culture (this is known as anthropological fieldwork).

Sex

a term used to describe the physical differences between women and men. Sex is a biological category. The manner in which we understand biological differences between sexes and assign meaning to them are sociocultural.

Gender

a term used to describe the socially constructed norms, ideas, and practices about masculinity and femininity. Gender is a social construct.

Reading Culture

aimed at deciphering the meanings embedded in and conveyed through language, objects, gestures, and activities that are shared by members of a society. Such a practice is necessary for developing a thick description.

Clifford Geertz

an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and for re-popularizing the thick description. He wrote The Interpretation of Cultures in 1973.

Lewis Henry Morgan

an American attorney and armchair anthropologist who is famous for his 1877 piece, Ancient Society. In this piece, he postulated a theory of human development in which human societies evolved through the following three stages in the following order: savagery, barbarism, civilization. Passage from one stage to the next was enabled by some technological revolution.

Alfred Kroeber

an American cultural anthropologist who received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901. This was the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He is remembered for the work he did with Native Americans.

Margaret Mead

an American cultural anthropologist who was among the first to question the assumed biological basis of gender roles. She sought to find out if there is an essential male or female nature. She influenced public debate and encouraged the 1960s' sexual revolution.

Intersectionality

an analytical framework for understanding how individuals' various social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality takes into account things such as gender, race, and sexual orientation.

Thick Description

an explanation of culture using as many details, conceptual structures, and meanings as possible. This is in contract to a thin description, which is just a factual account without any interpretation. A thick description is composed not only of facts but also of interpretations and interpretations of those interpretations.

Phenotype

an organism's form that results from the interaction between genotype and environment. In other words, phenotype is a set of observable characteristics. A small number of superficial phenotypic traits (skin color, hair texture, eye color and shape, etc.) have historically been used to categorize humans into distinct groups.

Insider's Perspective

an understanding of local beliefs and practices in their own socio-cultural context. The Emic perspective seeks to understand the insider's point of view. Obtaining the insider's perspective is an important aspect of anthropological fieldwork. Malinowski contends that the goal of ethnography is to "grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world." Anthropologists seek out informants to help them in grasping the insider's perspective.

Culture

can be understood as the distinct ways that different groups of people understand their experiences, communicate, and act upon the world. It is a misconception that some groups have culture whereas others do not. All human societies have culture. Culture can be understood as a manual for understanding and interacting with the people around us. Culture is learned, shared, normative, symbolic, naturalized, integrated, and dynamic.

Third Gender

concept in certain Native American cultures is used in the modern day to buttress the argument that Western binary gender systems are neither universal nor innate. This is viewed as an example of cultural appropriation, as it transplants Western concepts of gender, transgender, and sexuality onto other cultures.

Mestizo / Mestizaje

has historically referred to a person of mixed European and indigenous non-European ancestry in the Spanish Empire. Today, mestizaje is used as a synonym for miscegenation, but with a positive connotation. Following the 1910 Mexican Revolution, this term was used to help create a unified Mexican identity with no racial distinction.

De Facto Apartheid

in contrast to de jure apartheid, is the informal segregation of groups (usually racial groups). This is done by means of social norms, economic inequalities, etc.

Folk Taxonomy

in contrast to scientific taxonomy, is the way people traditionally describe and organize the world around them. Linnaeus's racial taxonomy is an example this concept, and also demonstrates how such a belief can be very harmful.

(Key) Informant

members of a culture who are sought out by anthropologists for the purpose of providing them with the insider's perspective of said culture. They are an important part of anthropological study.

Symbolic Violence

nonphysical violence manifested in the power differential between social groups. It is composed of tacit, almost unconscious modes of cultural/social domination agreed upon by both parties and exercised upon people with their complicity.

Detached Observer

one who observes a culture without participating in said culture. This is like being a fly on the wall.

Genotype

one's inherited genetic makeup. Genotype works with environmental factors to determine phenotype (appearance).

Intersex

refers to someone who is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of male or female. Many Western societies ignore the existence of intersex individuals. They are often legally required to choose either male or female.

Hypodescent

refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group, in societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior. Hypodescent operates on the basis of the one drop rule. In other words, any amount of minority ancestry makes one a member of that minority group. Brazil is an example of a country in Latin America that has historically refused this practice.

Militarization

refers to the use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement officers. This has serious ramifications, especially in the United States where Black people and Mexicans are targeted disproportionately.

Positionality

refers to where one is located in relation to their various social identities (gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, geographical location etc.). The positionality of the observer is relevant to how certain observations are interpreted.

Symbol

something, such as an object, gesture, picture, or word that stands for something else. Words are symbolic in that a particular sound invokes a particular meaning. Humans have the ability to establish arbitrary relations between signs and what they refer to. For example, humans decided that person 1 showing their palm to person 2 signifies that person 1 wants person 2 to stop.

Culture Shock

the anxiety and uncertainty of operating within a different and unknown cultural environment. When studying cultures radically different from their own, anthropologists often react by getting surprised, confused, disoriented, or shocked by strange beliefs, practices, and lifestyles.

Naïve Realism

the belief that people everywhere see the world in the same way. This is a result of naturalization. Shakespeare in the Bush is an example of this principle at play.

Tacit Culture

the cultural knowledge that people lack words for. You learn it mostly by practice, imitation, and observation.

Explicit Culture

the cultural knowledge you can talk about. You learn it mostly by hearing it from others.

Ethnocentrism

the evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture. Social evolutionism is often criticized on the grounds that it is ethnocentric.

Cultural Construction

the formation of our definitions of social concepts based on our cultures rather than objective realities. Things such as gender and race are culturally constructed.

Fieldwork

the gathering and interpretation of information based on intensive, firsthand study of a particular culture. This is a very important component of an ethnographic study.

Social Evolutionism

the idea that all societies follow a universal path to progress, the same sequence of stages of cultural evolution. Such a belief system posits certain societies as primitive and others as advanced. The likes of James Frazer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Edward Burnett Tylor all believed that their own societies were the most evolved. Social evolutionism was criticized by modern anthropologists such as Malinowski and Boas for being empirically flawed, teleological, moralistic, and ethnocentric.

Scientific Racism

the idea that distinct races had clearly identifiable physical or phenotypic traits that could be classified and cataloged and ranked as representing different evolutionary stages of development that ranged from the primitive to the civilized. According to scientific racism, distribution of status and power in 19th century America accurately reflected the biological makeup of different races. Enslaved Africans were represented as the lowest order of humanity while whites were thought as fully evolved civilized humans.

Prevention Through Deterrence

the idea that the terrible things experienced by migrating people en route to the United States from Latin America are neither random nor senseless, but rather part of a strategic federal plan. This idea is outlined by Jason De León in The Land of Open Graves. The author contends that American Border Patrol agents engage in a variety of heinous acts and attempt to disguise their wrongdoings by redirecting blame towards things like the natural processes of the Sonoran Desert.

Ishi

the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. He was studied by Alfred Kroeber in a practice that is referred to as salvage anthropology (the recording of the culture and language of societies threatened with extinction).

Sexual Dimorphism

the manner in which men and women differ in primary as well as secondary sexual characteristics. This includes things like breast size, hair distribution, pitch of voice, etc.

Colonialism

the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. Anthropology emerged in the context of colonialism as both a product of and response against the colonization of the world by European powers.

Cultural Relativism

the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values. Anthropologists are encouraged to embrace such a position, making an effort to free themselves from ethnocentric sentiments.

One Drop Rule

the racist idea that any amount of minority ancestry makes one a member of said minority group. Hypodescent is the cultural practice that makes use of this rule.

Anthropology

the study of humans. This includes humankind's present and past biological, linguistic, social, and cultural variations. Anthropologists seek to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Alfred Kroeber refers to anthropology as the "most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities." There are four main subfields of anthropological study: Archaeology, Physical/Biological Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Sociocultural Anthropology. The ethnography is anthropology's most distinctive feature and its basic research method.

Structural Violence

the violence of injustice and inequity embedded in ubiquitous social structures and normalized by institutions and everyday experience. There is a parallel to physical violence in that structural violence can create health disparities among different social groups. This includes disparities that exist along the lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, and more. Structural violence is largely invisible, yet massive. The enormity of suffering caused by structural violence is not easily or effectively conveyed by statistics or graphs.

Etic Perspective

understanding a community from outside of the culture. The focus is placed on observation of the culture. Etic = Outside. (Remember: there is a "T" in outside but not inside).

Emic Perspective

understanding a community in its own terms; from an insider's point of view. Emic = Inside (Remember: there is a "T" in "outside" but not in "inside").

Participant Observation

when an observer interacts with people of a culture and participates in their everyday lives. This can be understood as a form of immersion.