CulAnth Test 1

thomas kuhn the structure of scientific revolutions

"Normal Science", that is to say everyday, bread-and-butter science, is a "puzzle-solving" activity conducted under a reigning "paradigm". The paradigm is the example or model of a great scientific achievement (such as Newton's theory of gravity, or Einstein's theory of relativity) which provides an inspiration and a guide showing how to do scientific research. It is not quite an explicit set of rules and regulations (not a recipe or formula), but it does clearly "show the way". "Puzzle solving" is the normal or everyday activity of scientists, and consists of problems which are believed, in advance, to have a solution, if only enough ingenuity and effort is brought to bear, using the paradigm as a guide. An "anomaly" arises when a puzzle, considered as important or essential in some way, cannot be solved. The anomaly cannot be written off as just an ill-conceived research project; it continues to assert itself as a thorn in the side of the practicing scientists. The anomaly is a novelty that cannot be written off, and which cannot be solved. Examples of anomalies include: According to Newtonian mechanics, there should be a difference in the speed of light when it is issued from a moving source. Careful experiments in the late 19th century found no such difference, despite the most accurate of instruments. According to the Theory of the special creation of species, a divine being created each species separately and individually, perfectly adapted to its environment. The discovery of the fossil remains of species not corresponding to any existing species (extinct species) contradicted this key assumption of biology before Darwin. This opens up a period called the "crisis", during which time new methods and approaches are permitted, since the older ones have proved incapable of rising to the task at hand (solving the anomaly). Views and procedures previously considered heretical are temporarily permitted, in the hope of cracking the anomaly. One of these new approaches is successful, and it becomes the new paradigm through a "paradigm shift". This constitutes the core of the scientific revolution. The new paradigm is popularized in text-books, which serve as the instruction material for the next generation of scientists, who are brought up with the idea that the paradigm -- once new and revolutionary -- is just the way things are done. The novelty of the scientific revolution recedes and disappears, until the process is begun anew with another anomaly-crisis-paradigm shift.

kulturkreise Grebner Schmidt

( German: "culture circle" or "cultural field") plural Kulturkreise, location from whence ideas and technology subsequently diffused over large areas of the world. It was the central concept of an early 20th-century German school of anthropology, Kulturkreislehre, which was closely related to the Diffusionist approach of British and American anthropology.

reification of capital

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses ... It is only a definite social relation between men that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things

segmentation

A way of organizing descent groups that is found particularly in Northern and Eastern Africa (some of the most famous examples, e.g. the Nuer of Southern Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1940), are pastoral nomads). In segmentary lineages, (descendents of) close kin stand together against more distant kin: (descendents of) brothers are allied against (descendents of) cousins, cousins against second cousins etc. Thus, even very distant kin will automatically put their conflicts to the side and unite against any threat from groups of non-kin (as all Nuer unite against the neighboring Dinka).

acephalous vs stratified society

Acephalous literally means 'headless,' that is, the society is without any formalized or institutionalized system of power and authority. stratified society means a society in which competing groups have unequal access to power and/or resources, some groups being subordinate to others. It thus creates superiority and inferiority complexes among citizens.

adam kuper

Adam Kuper (born 29 December 1941)[1] is a British anthropologist most closely linked to the school of social anthropology. In his works, he often treats the notion of "culture" skeptically, focusing as much on how it is used as on what it means.

ar radliffe brown

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 - 24 October 1955 in London) was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of Structural functionalism.

ambilocal

Ambilocal residence (or ambilocality), also called bilocal residence (bilocality) is the societal postmarital residence in which couples, upon marriage, live with or near either the husband's parents or the wife's parents.[1]

alleles

An allele is one of two or more versions of a gene. An individual inherits two alleles for each gene, one from each parent. If the two alleles are the same, the individual is homozygous for that gene. If the alleles are different, the individual is heterozygous.

ruth benedict

Benedict is known not only for her earlier Patterns of Culture but also for her later book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, the study of the society and culture of Japan that she published in 1946, incorporating results of her war-time research. This book is an instance of Anthropology at a Distance. Study of a culture through its literature, through newspaper clippings, through films and recordings, etc., was necessary when anthropologists aided the United States and its allies in World War II. Unable to visit Nazi Germany or Japan under Hirohito, anthropologists made use of the cultural materials to produce studies at a distance. They were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving their aggression, and hoped to find possible weaknesses, or means of persuasion that had been missed. Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in 1944, aimed at understanding Japanese culture. Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, Americans considered it quite natural for American prisoners of war to want their families to know they were alive, and to keep quiet when asked for information about troop movements, etc., while Japanese POWs, apparently, gave information freely and did not try to contact their families. Why was that? Why, too, did Asian peoples neither treat the Japanese as their liberators from Western colonialism, nor accept their own supposedly just place in a hierarchy that had Japanese at the top? Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer. Other Japanese who have read this work, according to Margaret Mead, found it on the whole accurate but somewhat "moralistic". Sections of the book were mentioned in Takeo Doi's book, The Anatomy of Dependence, though Doi is highly critical of Benedict's concept that Japan has a 'shame' culture, whose emphasis is on how one's moral conduct appears to outsiders in contradistinction to America's (Christian) 'guilt' culture, in which the emphasis is on individual's internal conscience. Doi stated that this claim clearly implies the former value system is inferior to the latter one. Ayako Ishigaki's Diary says, on July 10 in 1947, "Ruth Benedict's manuscript was almost all deleted (by U.S. Department of the Army). I'd known they would (but I was sad)."

bilateral descent

Bilateral descent is a system of family lineage in which the relatives on the mother's side and father's side are equally important for emotional ties or for transfer of property or wealth. It is a family arrangement where descent and inheritance are passed equally through both parents.[1] Families who use this system trace descent through both parents simultaneously and recognize multiple ancestors, but unlike with cognatic descent it is not used to form descent groups.[2]

biological determinism

Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behavior is innate, determined by genes, brain size, or other biological attributes. This theory stands in contrast to the notion that human behavior is determined by culture or other social forces.

paul broca

Broca's work also contributed to the development of physical anthropology, advancing the science of anthropometry.

henry thomas buckle history of civilisation in england

Buckle's fame rests mainly on his History of Civilization in England. It is a gigantic unfinished introduction, of which the plan was, first to state the general principles of the author's method and the general laws that govern the course of human progress—and secondly, to exemplify these principles and laws through the histories of certain nations characterized by prominent and peculiar features—Spain and Scotland, the United States and Germany. The completed work was to have extended to 14 volumes; its chief ideas are:

cognatic

By contrast, nonunilineal, or cognatic, systems allow for the construction of social groups and categories through any or all of an individual's acknowledged relatives beginning with both his/her father and mother. The open nature of cognatic organization leads to greater complexities and wider variations than are normally apparent in partilineal or matrilineal forms.

conscience collective

Collective conscious or collective conscience (French: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his Division of Labour in Society in 1893.

effervescence

Collective effervescence (CE) is a sociological concept introduced by Émile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, a community or society may at times come together and simultaneously communicate the same thought and participate in the same action. Such an event then causes collective effervescence which excites individuals and serves to unify the group

charles darwin the origin of species

Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.[3]

edward sapir

Edward Sapir (/səˈpɪər/; 1884-1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics.[1][2]

emic vs etic

Emic and etic, in anthropology, folkloristics, and the social and behavioral sciences, refer to two kinds of field research done and viewpoints obtained;[1] from within the social group (from the perspective of the subject) and from outside (from the perspective of the observer).

exogamy vs endogamy

Endogamy is when one marries someone within one's own group. Exogamy is when one marries someone outside one's own group. "One's own group" may be more or less comprehensive: thus, "ethnic endogamy" would mean that e.g. Norwegians only married other Norwegians; "community endogamy" would mean that one only married other members of one's community. The organizational advantage of endogamy is that few outsiders are brought into the group, so inheritance and property are not dissipated among too many persons. The organizational advantage of exogamy is that outsiders are constantly brought in, which might be desirable, e.g. if the group has shortages in their work force. Exogamy also means that representatives of other, potentially enemy groups will be present in your own group, exerting pressure to avoid conflicts. The exchange of spouses across groups, is therefore a classical mechanism of alliance formation. (See kinship, descent, affinal.)

eugenics

Eugenics, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization, based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society,

use-value

First, a commodity must be something with a "use-value." That is, it must have properties that allow it to serve some human need or want. • Use-value does not depend on the amount of labor involved in producing the commodity. (Why is this relevant? We'll see in a moment.) • Use-value is realized only in consumption. • Marx describes use-value as the "substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of wealth." This seems to suggest that use-value is, in some sense, what really matters, what it makes sense to care about

surplus

For part of the day, the workers produce the value that covers the cost of their own existence. In essence, what the workers produce the rest of the day is unpaid labor. Marxists call this extra value that the worker produces during the course of a day's work "surplus value."

functionalism

Functionalists seek to describe the different parts of a society and their relationship through the organic analogy. The organic analogy compared the different parts of a society to the organs of a living organism. The organism was able to live, reproduce and function through the organized system of its several parts and organs. Like a biological organism, a society was able to maintain its essential processes through the way that the different parts interacted together. Institutions such as religion, kinship and the economy were the organs and individuals were the cells in this social organism. Functionalist analyses examine the social significance of phenomena, that is, the function they serve a particular society in maintaining the whole (Jarvie 1973). Functionalism, as a school of thought in anthropology, emerged in the early twentieth century. Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown had the greatest influence on the development of functionalism from their posts in Great Britain. Functionalism was a reaction to the excesses of the evolutionary and diffusionist theories of the nineteenth century and the historicism of the early twentieth (Goldschmidt 1996:510). Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and 1930: Malinowski's biocultural (or psychological) functionalism; and structural-functionalism, the approach advanced by Radcliffe-Brown. Malinowski suggested that individuals have physiological needs (reproduction, food, shelter) and that social institutions exist to meet these needs. There are also culturally derived needs and four basic "instrumental needs" (economics, social control, education, and political organization), that require institutional devices. Each institution has personnel, a charter, a set of norms or rules, activities, material apparatus (technology), and a function. Malinowski argued that uniform psychological responses are correlates of physiological needs. He argued that satisfaction of these needs transformed the cultural instrumental activity into an acquired drive through psychological reinforcement (Goldschmidt 1996:510; Voget 1996:573). Radcliffe-Brown focused on social structure rather than biological needs. He suggested that a society is a system of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. Radcliffe-Brown, inspired by Augustus Comte, stated that the social constituted a separate "level" of reality distinct from those of biological forms and inorganic matter. Radcliffe-Brown argued that explanations of social phenomena had to be constructed within the social level. Thus, individuals were replaceable, transient occupants of social roles. Unlike Malinowski's emphasis on individuals, Radcliffe-Brown considered individuals irrelevant (Goldschmidt 1996:510).

stephen gould

Gould's most significant contribution to evolutionary biology was the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which he developed with Niles Eldredge in 1972.[2] The theory proposes that most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability, which is punctuated by rare instances of branching evolution. The theory was contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the popular idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth and continuous change in the fossil record.

zora neale hurston

Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. Based on her work in the South, sponsored from 1928 to 1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason,[21] a wealthy philanthropist, Hurston wrote Mules and Men in 1935. She was doing research in lumber camps and commented on the practice of white men in power taking black women as sexual concubines, including having them bear children. This later was referred to as "paramour rights," based in the men's power under racial and related to practices during slavery times. The book also includes much folklore. She used this material as well in fictional treatment developed for her novels such as Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934).[22] In 1936 and 1937, Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for research, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. She drew from this for her anthropological work, Tell My Horse (1938). From October 1947 to February 1948, she lived in Honduras, at the north coastal town of Puerto Cortés. She had some hopes of locating either Mayan ruins or vestiges of an as yet undiscovered civilization.[23] While in Puerto Cortés, she wrote much of Seraph on the Suwanee, set in Florida. Hurston expressed interest in the polyethnic nature of the population in the region (many, such as the Miskito Zambu and Garifuna, were of partial African ancestry and had developed creole cultures).

idiographic

Idiographic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to specify, and is typical for the humanities. It describes the effort to understand the meaning of contingent, unique, and often subjective phenomena.

fetishism of commodities

In Karl Marx's critique of the political economy of capitalism, commodity fetishism is the perception of the social relationships involved in production, not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity fetishism transforms the subjective, abstract aspects of economic value into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value.[1]

verstehen

In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others.

unlineal descent

In many societies with unilineal descent—that is, systems that emphasize either the mother's or the father's line, but not both—ego uses one set of terms to refer to brothers, sisters, and parallel cousins...

uxorilocal

In social anthropology, matrilocal residence or matrilocality (also uxorilocal residence or uxorilocality) is a term referring to the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife's parents.

avvunculocal

In some societies, an arrangement known as avunculocal residence obtains, in which boys leave their natal homes during adolescence and join the household of one of their mother's brothers. Girls in these cultures generally remain in their mothers' homes until they marry, at which time they move to their husband's household.

hypodescent

In the United States, hypodescent is used to define the race of children of mixed-race couples where one of the parents is classified as "black" or either is considered to have any trace of African descent.

inner worldly ascetism

Inner-worldly asceticism was characterized by Max Weber in Economy and Society as the concentration of human behavior upon activities leading to salvation within the context of the everyday world

intensive agriculture

Intensive farming or intensive agriculture also known as industrial agriculture is characterized by a low fallow ratio and higher use of inputs such as capital and labour per unit land area. This is in contrast to traditional agriculture in which the inputs per unit land are lower.

historical materialism (Marx)

It is a theory of socioeconomic development according to which changes in material conditions (technology and productive capacity) are the primary influence on how society and the economy are organised.

johann fredrich blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 - 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history. His teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to the classification of what he called human races, of which he determined there to be five.

conte arthur joseph de gobineau

Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (14 July 1816 - 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races[1] (1853-1855). Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography. Since the late 20th century, his works are considered early examples of scientific racism.

lewis henry morgan ancient society (social evolutionism)

Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 - December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Interested in what holds societies together, he proposed the concept that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not the patriarchal family.

the manchester school

Manchester Liberalism, Manchester School, Manchester Capitalism, and Manchesterism are terms for the political, economic, and social movements of the 19th century that originated in Manchester, England. Led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, it won a wide hearing for its argument that free trade would lead to a more equitable society, making essential products available to all. Its most famous activity was the Anti-Corn Law League that called for repeal of the Corn Laws that kept food prices high. It expounded the social and economic implications of free trade and laissez faire. The Manchester School took the theories of economic liberalism advocated by classical economists such as Adam Smith and made them the basis for government policy. The School also promoted pacifism, anti-slavery, freedom of the press and separation of church and state.[1]

fetishism of commodities

Marx believed that commodities and money are fetishes that prevent people from seeing the truth about economics and society: that one class of people is exploiting another. In capitalism, the production of commodities is based on an exploitative economic relationship between owners of factories and the workers who produce the commodities. In everyday life, we think only of the market value of a commodity—in other words, its price. But this monetary value simultaneously depends on and masks the fact that someone was exploited to make that commodity.

Weber the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a study of the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Weber argues that the religious ideas of groups such as the Calvinists played a role in creating the capitalistic spirit. Weber first observes a correlation between being Protestant and being involved in business, and declares his intent to explore religion as a potential cause of the modern economic conditions. He argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous. Weber's goal is to understand the source of this spirit. He turns to Protestantism for a potential explanation. Protestantism offers a concept of the worldly "calling," and gives worldly activity a religious character. While important, this alone cannot explain the need to pursue profit. One branch of Protestantism, Calvinism, does provide this explanation. Calvinists believe in predestination--that God has already determined who is saved and damned. As Calvinism developed, a deep psychological need for clues about whether one was actually saved arose, and Calvinists looked to their success in worldly activity for those clues. Thus, they came to value profit and material success as signs of God's favor. Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, and the Baptist sects had similar attitudes to a lesser degree. Weber argues that this new attitude broke down the traditional economic system, paving the way for modern capitalism. However, once capitalism emerged, the Protestant values were no longer necessary, and their ethic took on a life of its own. We are now locked into the spirit of capitalism because it is so useful for modern economic activity.

Melville j herskovits

Melville Jean Herskovits (September 10, 1895 - February 25, 1963) was an American anthropologist who firmly established African and African-American studies in American academia.

meyer fortes the tallensi jurisdiction

Meyer Fortes (1906-1983) was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana. Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion of the "person" into his structural-functional analyses of kinship, the family, and ancestor worship setting a standard for studies on African social organization. His famous book, Oedipus and Job in West African Religion (1959), fused his two interests and set a standard for comparative ethnology. He also wrote extensively on issues of the first born, kingship, and divination.

Moynihan the Moynihan report

Moynihan believed that the crisis of the black family was the result of having been "battered and harassed by discrimination, injustice and uprooting."

national character studies

National character studies refers to a set of anthropological studies conducted during and directly after World War II that arose from (and ultimately ended) the Culture and Personality School within psychological anthropology. National Character Studies arose from a variety of approaches with Culture and Personality, including the Configurationalist Approach of Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, the Basic Personality Structure developed by Ralph Linton and Abram Kardiner, and the Modal Personality Approach of Cora DuBois. These approaches disagreed with each other on the exact relationship between personality and culture. The Configurationalist and Basic Approaches both treated personalities within a culture as relatively homogeneous, while Cora DuBois argued that there are no common personality traits found in every single member of a society.

nomothetic

Nomothetic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to generalize, and is typical for the natural sciences. It describes the effort to derive laws that explain objective phenomena in general.

oedipus complex

Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams

paleoanthropology

Paleoanthropology (English: Palaeoanthropology; from Greek: παλαιός (palaeos) "old, ancient"), anthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος), "man", understood to mean humanity, and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study"), which combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology, is the study of ancient humans as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.

pastoralism

Pastoralism is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep.

patriliny (agnation)

Patrilineality, also known as agnatic kinship, is a kinship system in which an individual is identified with his or her father's lineage.[1] It generally involves the inheritance of property, names, or titles through the male line.

prognatic

Prognathism is the positional relationship of the mandible and/or maxilla to the skeletal base where either of the jaws protrudes beyond a predetermined imaginary line in the coronal plane of the skull. In general dentistry, oral and maxillofacial surgery and orthodontics, this is assessed clinically or radiographically (cephalometrics). The word "prognathism" derives from Greek pro (forward) and gnathos (jaw). One or more types of prognathism may result in the common condition of malocclusion, in which an individual's top teeth and lower teeth do not align properly.

ruth landes

Ruth Landes (October 8, 1908, New York City - February 11, 1991, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for studies on Brazilian candomblé cults and her published study on the topic, City of Women (1947). Landes is recognized by some as a pioneer in the study of race and gender relations.[1]

exchange value

Second, a commodity must be something with an "exchange-value." The exchange-value of a commodity with a certain use-value (e.g., corn) is a matter of the proportion at which it is exchanged for a commodity with another use-value (e.g. iron). • This means that something that one makes solely for one's own use is not a commodity. It becomes a commodity only when it is created for free-floating, open-end exchange. • And this means that commodities have only "social reality." The very same (useful) object in a different social context might not be a commodity

simon le vay

Simon LeVay (born 28 August 1943) is a British-American neuroscientist. He is renowned for his studies about brain structures and sexual orientation.

symbolic anthropology

Symbolic anthropology studies how people create meaning out of their experiences or construct their own concept of reality through the use of shared cultural symbols, such as myths or body language

Boasian concept of culture

The American anthropologist, Franz Boas, founded Boasian Anthropology: he introduced the idea that culture was what differed between races and ethnicities and, therefore, was what must be studied to understand humanity. Boasian anthropology changed the idea of culture, as a whole, from what a person, "ate, drank, religious views and their music tastes," to the complete "mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the individuals of a social group." 1Boasian anthropology is known to divide the anthropology discipline to include the four subfields of linguistic, biological, archaeological, and cultural anthropology, a view that is still popular in anthropology departments of many universities today. 2The most notable and attributed ideas of Boasian anthropology though are cultural relativism, diffusion, historical particularism, and salvage ethnography.

richard hernstein and charles murray the bell curve

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is a 1994 book by American psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein (who died before the book was released) and American political scientist Charles Murray. Herrnstein and Murray's central argument is that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and is a better predictor of many personal dynamics, including financial income, job performance, birth out of wedlock, and involvement in crime than are an individual's parental socioeconomic status, or education level. They also argue that those with high intelligence, the "cognitive elite", are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence.

corpus inscriptionum

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history. The Corpus continues to be updated in new editions and supplements.

labor theory of value (LTV)

The LTV is the theory that market prices are attracted by prices proportional to the labor time embodied in commodities

nuer

The Nuer people are a Nilotic ethnic group primarily inhabiting the Nile Valley. They are concentrated in South Sudan, with some representatives also found in southwestern Ethiopia after they pushed off Anywaa from their land. They speak the Nuer language, which belongs to the Nilo-Saharan family.

jared diamond guns germs and steel

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

post industrialism

The economy undergoes a transition from the production of goods to the provision of services. Knowledge becomes a valued form of capital, see human capital. Producing ideas is the main way to grow the economy. Through processes of globalization and automation, the value and importance to the economy of blue-collar, unionized work, including manual labor (e.g., assembly-line work) decline, and those of professional workers (e.g. scientists, creative-industry professionals, and IT professionals) grow in value and prevalence. Behavioral and information sciences and technologies are developed and implemented. (e.g. behavioral economics, information architecture, cybernetics, Game theory and Information theory.)

class struggle

The idea, associated with Karl Marx, that conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is inevitable and will result in the triumph of socialism over capitalism.

Infrastructure

The infrastructure is made up of the forces, the means, and the relations of production: the material "stuff" of life. The infrastructure comprises 1) Forces: the workers, the technical knowledge to perform the work (training, knowledge), 2) Means: the actual materials of production (raw materials, machines, tools), and 3) Relations: the interactions between workers as well as between workers and business owners. Of course, there are potential clashes between workers and owners, but it is ultimately through the forces of production that real change occurs.

organic metaphor

The similarity early sociologists saw between society and other organic systems.

highlighting and hiding

The. very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another (e.g., comprehending an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept

Methodological individualism

This doctrine was introduced as a methodological precept for the social sciences by Max Weber, most importantly in the first chapter of Economy and Society (1922). It amounts to the claim that social phenomena must be explained by showing how they result from individual actions, which in turn must be explained through reference to the intentional states that motivate the individual actors.

foraging

This model describes the behavior of a forager that must return to a particular place to consume food, or perhaps to hoard food or feed it to a mate or offspring.

edward burnett tylor primitive culture

Tylor is representative of cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture and Anthropology, he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell. He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion, which he determined was universal. Tylor is considered by many to be a founding figure of the science of social anthropology, and his scholarly works helped to build the discipline of anthropology in the nineteenth century.[2] He believed that "research into the history and prehistory of man... could be used as a basis for the reform of British society."[3]

alienation/estrangment

Under the economic system of private ownership, society divides itself into two classes: the property owners and the property-less workers. In this arrangement, the workers not only suffer impoverishment but also experience an estrangement or alienation from the world. This estrangement occurs because the worker relates to the product of his work as an object alien and even hostile to himself. The worker puts his life into the object and his labor is invested in the object, yet because the worker does not own the fruits of his labor, which in capitalism are appropriated from him, he becomes more estranged the more he produces. Everything he makes contributes to a world outside of him to which he does not belong. He shrinks in comparison to this world of objects that he helps create but does not possess. This first type of alienation is the estrangement of the worker from the product of his work. The second type of alienation is the estrangement of the worker from the activity of production. The work that the worker performs does not belong to the worker but is a means of survival that the worker is forced to perform for someone else. As such, his working activity does not spring spontaneously from within as a natural act of creativity but rather exists outside of him and signifies a loss of his self. The third form of alienation is the worker's alienation from "species-being," or human identity. For human beings, work amounts to a life purpose. The process of acting on and transforming inorganic matter to create things constitutes the core identity of the human being. A person is what he or she does in transforming nature into objects through practical activity. But in the modern system of private ownership and the division of labor, the worker is estranged from this essential source of identity and life purpose for the human species. The fourth and final form of alienation is the "estrangement of man to man." Since the worker's product is owned by someone else, the worker regards this person, the capitalist, as alien and hostile. The worker feels alienated from and antagonistic toward the entire system of private property through which the capitalist appropriates both the objects of production for his own enrichment at the expense of the worker and the worker's sense of identity and wholeness as a human being.

maria montessori

Utilizing scientific observation and experience gained from her earlier work with young children, Maria designed learning materials and a classroom environment that fostered the children's natural desire to learn.

a diary in the strict sense of the term

When it was first published (in 1967, posthumously), Bronislaw Malinowski's diary, covering the period of his fieldwork in 1914-1915 and 1917-1918 in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands, set off a storm of controversy. Many anthropologists felt that the publication of the diary—which Raymond Firth describes as "this revealing, egocentric, obsessional document"—was a profound disservice to the memory of one of the giant figures in the history of anthropology. Almost certainly never intended to be published, Malinowski's diary was intensely personal and brutally honest. He kept it, he said, "as a means of self-analysis." Reviews ranged from "it is to the discredit of all concerned that the diary has now been committed to print" to "fascinating reading."

bilocal

When the couple alternates between the wife's group and the husband's group, their household arrangements are called bilocal residence.

whr rivers (diffusionist)

William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS, (12 March 1864 - 4 June 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work treating World War I officers who were suffering from shell shock. Rivers's most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he remained close friends until his own sudden death. Rivers was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and is also notable for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898 and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship.

espirit de corps

a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared by the members of a particular group.

synecdoche

a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning "Cleveland's baseball team").

imperialism

a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force.

collectivism

a political or economic system in which the government owns businesses, land, etc.

industrialism

a social or economic system built on manufacturing industries.

capitalism

an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

gustav e klemm

anthropological idea of culture

synchronic

concerned with something, especially a language, as it exists at one point in time.

diachronic

concerned with the way in which something, especially language, has developed and evolved through time.

francis galton charles davenport harry laughlin

eugenics

Gender vs. sex

gender (how we define) sex=characteristically male or female

jeremy bentham ultitarianism

greatest good for the greatest number

matrilliny

he practice of tracing descent through the mother's line —contrasted with patriliny

Social Contract Theory

if the government and laws do not conform to general will they should be discarded

neolocal

living or located away from both the husband's and the wife's relatives:

virilocal

living with or located near the husband's father's group; patrilocal.

A diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

malinowski fieldwork of the argnoauts said to be founding father of anthropology

avunculus

maternal uncle

george lakoff and mark johnson the metaphors we live by

metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.

nomadism vs sedentarism

moving vs staying in one place

serial polygamy

multiple wives at different times

Franz Boas

o Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University (1899) o Helped develop anthropology as a methodologically rigorous field of inquiry: • Proponent of fieldwork. • Rejection of "arm-chair" approaches. o Critiqued grand theories on race, social evolution, and cultural determinism o Critique of social evolution: • Unsubstantiated Hypothesis: Historical changes in cultural life follow definite laws that apply to every society • Boas: Cultural similarities can arise through diffusion, adaptation to similar environments, and/or historical accident o Critique of diffusionism: • Unsubstantiated Hypothesis: Historical changes in cultural life are the result of contact between more and less "civilized" peoples • Boas: Must assume migration and contact over enormous geographical areas (e.g., Egypt and Mexico, 2,500 years ago). Ignores possibility of independent invention o Advocates Historical Particularism • "A detailed study of customs in their relation to the total culture of the tribe practicing them, in connection with an investigation of their geographical distribution among neighboring tribes, affords us almost always a means of determining with considerable accuracy the historical causes that led to the formation of the customs in question and the psychological processes that were at work in their development." - Boas, "The Limitations of the Comparative Method in Anthropology" (1896) • Cultures can be understood only with reference to their particular, local, historical developments • No general theories (e.g., evolution, diffusion) can explain processes of culture change for every society • Every culture is unique and must be studied in terms of its uniqueness (precursor to cultural relativism) • If we want to understand a group of people, let's look at that group of people o Cultural Relativism • "Civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative. Our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes." - Boas, "Museums of Ethnology and their Classification" (1887) • Different truths in the world • Understand how things seem true to people given their cultural context o Racial Classifications (scientific racism) • Cranial dimensions reflect racial differences • Assumption that such traits are biologically determined; hence, races are "fixed" categories • Assumption that such traits reflect a given race's position on evolutionary trajectory • Assumptions about race and intelligence, aptitude, etc. • Leads to things that justify white supremacy and colonialism o Boas's Rejection of Scientific Racism • 1908 Study: Cranial dimensions of immigrants and their children • Evidence: Immigrant children had different skull shapes than parents (result of different diets, habits, environment, etc.) • Therefore, cranial morphology is not an immutable marker of "race"; it can vary through time and according to environment o Human Adaptability

Retentiveness

obsessive compulsive

kindred

one's family and relations.

Dowry

payment made by the bride to the grooms family

Bridewealth

payment made by the groom to the brides family

Terray the lineage mode of production

refers to societies in which use rights to products labor and land are restricted along retraceable kin lines

monogamy vs polygamy

relationship with one person vs relationship w many

margaret mead

rgaret Mead (December 16, 1901 - November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and 1970s.[1] She earned her bachelor degree at Barnard College in New York City and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. Mead was a respected and often controversial academic who popularized the insights of anthropology in modern American and Western culture.[2] 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. As an Anglican Christian, Mead played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.[3]:347-348

idiom

states that idioms are culturally-driven aspects of society and function as unique genetic imprint that makes each national population of idioms unlike any other

claude levi strauss structuralism

structuralism is the theory that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure

carl linnaeus

taxonomic system

James Frazer the Golden Bough

the Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (retitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941). It was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; the third edition, published 1906-15, comprised twelve volumes. The work was aimed at a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855). Frazer offered a modernist approach to discussing religion, treating it dispassionately[1] as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective. The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought was substantial.[2]

superstructure

the institutions and culture considered to result from or reflect the economic system underlying a society.

rendition

the practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners.

sociobiology

the scientific study of the biological (especially ecological and evolutionary) aspects of social behavior in animals and humans.

imponderabilia

things or matters beyond measure or comprehension.

herbert spencer and social darwinism

• Herbert Spencer (1820-1902) • Human societies are analogous to biological organisms • Attempted to identify the functions of the various social "organs" in maintaining society o Some societies are more fit than others o Justification for European powers to dominate other societies (moral imperative to improve them)