Final Anthro
What are the 3 dimensions of Political Organization?
-Extent to which political institutions are distinct from other aspects of the social structure. -Extent to which authority is concentrated in specific political roles. -The level of political integration (the size of group controlled under the political structure)
What is Ethnicity?
A concept that organizes people into groups based on their membership in a group with a particular history, social status, or ancestry.
What is Race?
A concept that organizes people into unequal groups based on specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences.
What is a government?
A separate legal and constitutional domain that is the source of law, order, and legitimate force.
What is Instrumentalism?
A social theory that ethnic groups are not naturally occurring or stable but highly dynamic groups created to serve the interests of one powerful group or another.
What is Primordialism?
A social theory that ethnicity is largely a natural phenomenon, because of biological, linguistic, and geographical ties among members
38. What are the three different types of gift exchange/reciprocity defined by M. Sahlins? Provide examples of each. What is the key thing that shapes the kinds of reciprocity people practice?
Generalized reciprocity- gifts are given freely without the expectation of return (in the near term), uninhibited and generous - parents to children, married couples, close-knit kin ties. Balanced reciprocity- the giver expects fair return at some later time- Kula, Sagali, birthday presents among friends. Negative reciprocity- giver attempts to get something for nothing, to haggle one's way into a favorable personal outcome- bartering, haggling- among distant relations and sometimes strangers or adversaries. Key thing is that social relationships shape the kinds of reciprocity people practice.
29. If you wanted to conduct ethical research on a vulnerable population, such as undocumented migrant workers or refugees, what issues would you be especially concerned about concerning the work with them?
I would conduct research on the populations immigrants and how they moved from their previous location to where they are now. The interview would include questions like why they left, why they choose this location, and what was bad about their previous location.
What is Cognatic descent
Includes double descent, ambilineal descent, and bilateral descent
20. People who have sexual organs and functions that are not just male or female, but often include elements from both, are classified as:
Intersex
What is Kinship?
It refers to the relationships - found in all societies - that are based on blood or marriage.
33. _______ is the system of notation and analysis of postures, facial expressions, and bodily motions that convey meaning:
Kinesics
What is Uncentralized System?
Leaders have no real power to force compliance with societies rules or customs. The organization is vested in kinships, age, and common-interest groups. Ex: bands or tribes
23. Who was the first social scientist to distinguish between biological sex and culturally distinct gender roles?
Margaret Mead
What is affinal kinship?
Marriage Relations
36. List five (5) of the seven (7) cultural universals (remember: what it does for us!!): Basic needs -
Marriage and Family System, Social Control System, System of Communication, Economic System, Educational System, System of Supernatural Beliefs
25. Race is not a valid biological concept when referring to modern humans. Why? A) Support your answer with 3 facts discussed in class and your readings (Moses article- Thinking Anthropologically About Race, for instance). B) What does racism attempt to justify or accomplish? C) What is the difference between how race is defined in the United States and how it is defined in Brazil? (rely on Fish's article- Mixed Blood to answer this):
A) No subspecies with humans (Homo sapiens), No one group has a specific gene or genes as their own, Too young as a species, It's human variation B) Racism seeks to enforce prejudice and impose a hierarchy of superiority/inferiority of one group over another. Implies unequal access in terms of wealth, power, and prestige (social inequality) based on physical characteristics. C) Race in US is defined by ethnicity/ancestry- role of parents and where from. Race in Brazil is defined by types (tipos) based on skin color categories.
28. Describe/define the three types of repressive change discussed in class.:
Acculturation- Culture changes that people are forced to make as a consequence of intensive, firsthand contact between societies. Ethnocide- Violent eradication of an ethnic group's cultural identity; occurs when a dominant society sets out to destroy another society's cultural heritage. Genocide- Extermination of one people by another, in the name of "progress," either as a deliberate act or as the accidental outcome of activities carried out by people with little regard for their impact on others.
1. Economic anthropologists study: the decisions people make about earning a living, what types of work people choose to do, the creation of value, or all of the above?
All of the Above
16. "Foodways" describes a perspective that approaches food as: a tangible object that provides nutrition, a conduit for social relationships, symbolic, or all of the above?
All of the above
20. Doing fieldwork with a particular culture or group means that ethnographers might: stay in their country of origin and interview immigrants from the country they wish to study, go to the country and interview the members of a particular culture, live in the country but try to maintain a balance between participation and observation, or all of the above?
All of the above.
25. _________ is/are example(s) of non-verbal communication that we discussed in class:
All the above
34. Which of the following features are characteristic of language: it developed over time, it is flexible, it is dynamic, or all of the above?:
All the above
32. Koko and Washo were two primates who had learned:
American Sign Language
19. All of the following are TRUE about biological sex except:
Biological sex is always linked to gender & sexual preference.
What is consanguineal kin?
Blood relations
39. What are six characteristics of food collecting and the impacts on society?
Characteristics:Move about a great deal, Small size of local groups, and Populations stabilize at numbers well below the carrying capacity of their land. Egalitarian, populations have few possessions and share what they have. The Impacts: Division of labor by gender. Food sharing and The camp as the center of daily activity and the place where food is shared.
What are Tribes?
Consist, autonomous local communities, which form alliances for various purposes. Economy based on crop cultivation and herding.
38. What is cultural relativism (define it) and why is it a valuable perspective in cultural anthropology? Define ethnocentrism and address the concept of bias.:
Cultural Relativism-the notion that one must suspend judgment on other peoples' practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms. Ethnocentrism is the belief that the ways of one's own culture are the only proper ones. Your culture is superior to others.
36. Define cultural landscape and define artifactual landscape. Give an example of a cultural landscape and explain why it is a cultural landscape. This can be an example from the text or a personal example, both need details however.:
Cultural landscape: The culturally specific images, knowledge, and concepts of the physical landscape that help shape human relations with that landscape. Artifactual landscapes: The idea that landscapes are the product of human shaping. Ex: 9/11 Memorial- an attack that led to many casaulties and affected the US citizens drastically.
7. _______ is the abandonment of an existing practice or trait, with or without replacement:
Cultural loss
8. ______ is one of the challenging mental aspects of doing fieldwork.:
Culture shock
26. _______ refers to a linguistic situation where two varieties of the same language are spoken by the same person at different times and under different social situations.:
Diglossia
39. Define the emic perspective and the etic perspective:
Emic- A perspective in ethnography that uses concepts and categories that are relevant and meaningful to the culture under analysis; the native viewpoint. Etic- A perspective in ethnography that uses the concepts and categories of the anthropologist's culture to describe another culture; the scientific viewpoint
What is Social Control?
External control through open coercion
What are the Ideas of control?
Formal Mechanism, Informal Mechanism, Social Control, Cultural Control
26. How is gender different from sex? Define and provide examples for each to illustrate your understanding of both the concepts.
Gender: Cultural expectations of how males and females should behave. Ex: transgender, gay, queer, etc. Sex: The reproductive forms and functions of the body. Ex: male, female, intersex
40. How is communication between animals (choose a specific animal please) (call system communication) different from human language? Distinguish between the open versus closed concept of communication. Give an example or description we discussed/used in class- be specific.:
Most animals have ways of sending and receiving messages. Honeybees, dolphins, chimps. Animals sounds however are unique in form and message. One sound is made when threatened, one sound is a warning, etc. each sound is mutually exclusive. That is animals cannot combine elements of 2 or more sounds in order to develop a new sound. To this extent we speak of this form of nonhuman communication as being a closed system of communication (a communication system that cannot create new sounds/words by combining two or more existing sounds/words). Humans on the other hand operate with languages that are open systems of communication because we are capable of sending messages that have never been sent before. When using another form of communication such as sign language, animals can use an open system of communication. EX> research with Chantek the orangutan- several hundred signs, understands spoken language, actually created language. Evidence of planning, creative simulation, and the use of objects in novel relations to one another to invent new meanings. There is one difference in the communication abilities of humans and other animals, that is called displacement/abstract thought - the ability to convey information about a thing or event that is not immediately present. It allows us to talk about purely hypothetical theories such as events in the past or future. Also for the most part language is vertically transmitted as a form of education, rather than an experiential thing. warning cry learned, etc.
15. Humans started producing their own food during the ____________transition/revolution.
Neolithic
What are the Positive and Negative Sanctions?
People are often rewarded for behaving in a socially approved manner and they are often punished when they don't. Positive sanctions can range from a smile, to Congressional Medal of Honor Negative sanctions can range from a frown to capital punishment
27. What is repressive change (define)?
People don't always have the liberty to make their own choices and changes are forced upon them by some other group, in the course of conquest and colonialism.
15. Another name for the subfield of biological anthropology that is concerned with humans as biological organisms is:
Physical Anthropology.
What is Centralized Systems?
Power is centralized in single individual or a body of individuals Ex: Chiefdoms or States
What is Prejudice?
Pre-formed usually unfavorable opinions that people hold about people from groups who are different from their own.
What is Vertical Function?
Provides social continuity by binding together a number of successive generation
37. What is reciprocity? Describe the concept in regard to Malinowski and the Kula ring OR Mauss and the spirit of the gift.
Reciprocity is the give and take that builds and confirms relationships> Each based his analysis in functionalism- that gift exchange fulfills certain needs. Malinowski- stressed the individualistic aspects of gift exchange and Mauss stressed the importance of gift exchange for maintaining social cohesion/group solidarity. For Malinowski- delayed reciprocity- A form of reciprocity that features a long lag time between giving and receiving. For Mauss- gift exchange is based on obligation and has three dimensions: the obligation to give- establishes the giver as generous and worthy of respect; the obligation to receive- shows respect to the giver; and obligation to return the gift in an appropriate ways- demonstrates honor. All of this creates bonds of solidarity between people who would otherwise pursue their own personal interests.
10. What are the factors or patterns that may affect diffusion?
Selectivity, reciprocity, modification, and likelihood.
16. What is a person's habitual sexual attraction to, and sexual activities with, persons of the opposite sex, same sex, or both sexes?
Sexual Orientation
37. List five (5) of the six (6) assumptions/characteristics of culture:
Shared, Learned, Based on Symbols, Integrated, Dynamic, Adaptive, Integrated
What are Bands?
Small nomadic groups of politically independent, though related, households. It is the least complicated form of political organisation.
What is Informal Mechanism?
Small-scale Band Societies: emphasize cultural control, somewhat diffuse in nature, involves spontaneous expression of approval or disappoint by members of the group or community.
What is Acephalous Society?
Societies without a government head generally with no hierarchical leadership
What is Horizontal Function?
Solidify or tie together a society across a single generation through marriage
What is Formal Mechanism?
State-like Societies: written laws, legal systems (lawyers, judges, juries), prisons, capital punishment, and police force
What is Egalitarian?
The belief in equal political, economic, social and civil rights for all people
What is Intersectionality?
The circumstantial interplay of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other identity markers in the expression of prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory actions.
What is Social Stratification?
The classification of people into unequal groupings
What is a Chief?
The head of a ranked hierarchy of people, usually for life and often hereditary Ex: Zulu, Bakuba
What is Caste?
The hierarchical distinction between social groups in society based on wealth, occupation, and social standing.
What is the State?
The most formal of political organizations, governs many communities over a large geographical area
What is Discrimination?
The negative or unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her membership in a particular social group or category.
What is Political Power?
The processes in which people create, compete, and use power to attain goals that are presumed to be for the good of a community.
What is Incest Taboo?
The prohibition of sexual relations between specifc individuals, usually parents and sibling relations at a minimum.
What is Racism?
The repressive practices, structure, beliefs, and representations that uphold racial categories and social inequality.
What is Racialization?
The socail, economic, and political processes of transforming into races and creating racial meanings.
What is Political Organization?
The way power is accumulated, arranged, executed, and structurally distributed and embedded in society- through which a society creates and maintains a social order
What is Politics?
Those relationships and processes of cooperation, conflict, and power that are fundamental aspects of human life.
What is Culture Control?
Through beliefs and value deeply internalized in the minds of those in the society
What is unilineal descent?
Trace their ancestry through mother's line or father's line but not both
Extra Credit 40. Define traditional ecological knowledge. Why is it important from an ecological management perspective and why is it not as well known to Western Science (give 2 reasons)?
Traditional ecological knowledge: Indigenous ecological knowledge and its relationship with resource management strategies. Traditional ecological knowledge is not well known in the West because- it is often shared in local languages, some species and ecological interactions exist in only one place, and Westerners don't value this type of knowledge.
What are Descent Groups?
a kind of kinship group in which being in the direct line of descent, having a strong sense of identity, often share community held property, regulate marriage, basis for political units
24. Hijras (India), Nadelehe (Navajo), and the concept of Two Spirits (translated from some California, Plains, and Great Basin Native American cultures) interest anthropologists mainly because they are:
a reflection of a gender/sex system that sees meaning in combining male and female roles
30. Food security refers to
access to sufficient nutritious food to be healthy and active
16. The process by which organisms adjust beneficially to their environment, or the characteristics by which they overcome hazards and gain access to the resources they need to survive, is called:
adaptation.
11. Development anthropologists often think of themselves as:
advocates of poor and marginalized people
17. Intensive cultivation, relying more on animal power and technology defines:
agriculture
9. Which of the following is a key argument of ethnobiologist Brent Berlin, who compared human classification systems?
all human classification systems are reflective of an underlying cognitive structure of the human brain that organizes information in systematic ways
12. Characteristics of market exchange are: value of goods determined through principle of supply and demand, it's found mostly in sedentary societies, money is used for payment for goods and services or all of the above?
all of the above
14. Sustainable development for indigenous people involves which of the following elements: it must address local people's ability to make a living, it must involve them in natural resource management, it must create sustainable alternatives to economic activities that deplete natural resources or all of the above?
all of the above
15. Which of the following are areas of social activity that globalization affects: finances, communication, migration or all of the above?
all of the above
2. According to anthropologists, economies are shaped by which factors: the decisions people make, social relationships, culture and morality, or all of the above?
all of the above
21. How are males and females different: sex, gender, hormones, or all of the above?
all of the above
24. Anthropologists study food holistically, which means that they focus on: the diversity of diets, complex interactions between nutrition and the environment, cultural beliefs surrounding food, all of the above?
all of the above
25. Foodways are dynamic because: some foods become trendy, they are subject to large-scale industrial processes, trade relationships change, all of the above?
all of the above
28. Eating practices can be an indicator of : gender, age, ethnic group, or all of the above?
all of the above
29. Which of the following is a contributing factor to the development of creoles, pidgins, and other hybrid forms of language: Colonialism, Globalization, Migration, or all of the above?:
all of the above
31. Linguistic anthropology is concerned with: the description of languages, the history of languages, how language reflects a people's worldview or all of the above?:
all of the above
5. An ethical approach to anthropological research would emphasize: a commitment to do no harm, the rejection of clandestine research, responsibilities toward the host country and the people you are studying, or all of the above?
all of the above
8. What do environmental anthropologists study: the impact of pollution on certain groups, the effects of global economic changes on human-nature relationships, the impact of sustainable development initiatives on certain groups, or all of the above?
all of the above
21. When anthropologists go into the field:
all the above
3. In doing fieldwork, an anthropologist often relies on ___________________ to achieve their research goals:
all the above
1. What is ethnicity?
belonging to a group with a particular history and social status.
19. An approach that emphasizes humans that are made up of complex biological and cultural processes is:
biocultural
35. Throughout human history, humans have tended to adapt to the land in a way that is supportive of population size, a practice referred to as:
carrying capacity
2. Besides being interested in descriptions of particular cultures, the cultural anthropologist is interested in:
cross-cultural comparisons.
17. Humans' major or primary mode of adaptation, which enables them to live effectively in diverse environments, is:
culture.
26. Richard Lee (in The Hunters: Scarce Resources in the Kalahari) feels that the key to successful subsistence for many hunter-gatherers, such as the !Kung, is :
dependence largely on a diet of edible plants
22. Sexual dimorphism refers to the:
different sexual forms, hormones, and chromosomal structures in men and women
9. The spread of cultural elements from one culture to another through culture contact. This is referred to as:
diffusion
5. Negative or unfair treatment of a person because of his or her group membership or identity is called:
discrimination
31. Foodways are subject to large-scale industrial processes, trade relationships, and trends, suggesting that they are:
dynamic
7. The process of learning culture from a very young age is called:
enculturation
22. A word that best describes participant observation is:
engaged
27. In his article on the !Kung, R. Lee claims that when he studied them in the 1960s:
enjoyed a large amount of leisure time
33. A social movement that addresses the linkages between racial discrimination and injustice, social equity, and environmental quality is
environmental justice
28. The study of how people classify things in the world is called:
ethnoscience/ethnosemantics
9. If you wanted to understand the norms of a society, you would be most likely to focus on:
everyday interactions
32. Which mode of subsistence includes the search for edible things?
foraging
13. The theory of culture that proposes that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill the psychological and physical needs of society (i.e. what does it do for me...) is called:
functionalism
4. All societies divide labor by these criteria:
gender and age
18. Expressions of sex and gender that diverge from the male and female norms that dominate in most societies is called:
gender variance
12. Anthropologists doing fieldwork typically involve themselves in many different experiences. They try to investigate not just one aspect of culture (such as the political system) but how all aspects relate to each other (for example, how the political system fits with economic institutions, religious beliefs, etc.). This approach is called the __________ perspective:
holistic
18. The use of only hand tools combined with slash and burn cultivation defines:
horticulture
20. Members of these groups is have no concept of property rights and move to take advantage of seasonal changes.:
hunters and gatherers
19. This type of food getting/subsistence strategy has accounted for about 99% of our human history.
hunting and gathering/food collecting/food foraging
24. People from Western cultures who try to eliminate various practices among people from other cultures should take a class in cultural anthropology to realize the possible effects they might be having on those cultures. They would realize that culture is an integrated and interrelated whole, which means that:
if you alter one aspect of a culture, you can drastically affect and possibly endanger the functioning of the whole.
23. Why do foragers turn to agriculture?
increased population density causes too much competition for resources
5. A/An _________ occurs when production of marketable commodities escapes regulation, enumeration, or any other form of public monitoring.
informal economy
11. Because our values and beliefs include many elements of life such as clothes, food, and language means that culture is:
integrated
29. Why was meat eating important for human evolution?
it provides high-quality protein for human brain development
8. The US government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed most profoundly to:
language death/language loss/culture loss
6. The subfield of anthropology that studies language use is called:
linguistic anthropology
30. If you studied speech patterns such as those analyzed in Robin Lakoff's study of gendered speech, you might find that "talking like a lady":
marginalizes women's voices in work contexts
3. "Mother nature" and "natural resources" are a good examples of:
metaphors of human-nature interaction
14. ________________ are people who leave their homes to work for a time in other regions or countries:
migrants
17. An anthropologist who studies how societies control sexuality would likely be most interested in the following situations?
obstacles in access to birth control or attempts to control the number of children a couple have
22. The human diet is typically
omnivorous
13. What relationship between nature and human does Western thought emphasize?
oppositional
23. This type of interaction may include playing basketball, cooking, dining, or having coffee with informants:
participant observation
35. _____________ refers to the structure of speech sounds:
phonology
10. As part of your job, you may study the frequency of blood types in human populations, or watch the behavior of monkeys and apes, or dig for early hominin bones in East Africa. You are a/an:
physical anthropologist.
34. Analyses that focus on the linkages between political-economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction are typical of which approach?
political ecology
2. A preformed, usually unfavorable, opinion (based on stereotypes) about people who are different is:
prejudice
4. _____ is a concept that organizes people into groups based on specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences.:
race
6. The social, economic, and political processes of transforming populations into races and creating racial meanings is called:
racialization
3. What is an important factor in making race real?
racism
7. The simplest mode of distribution is ___________________________.
reciprocity
6. Goods and services are allocated by:
reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange/market economy
10. Which of the following reasons explains why a collaborative approach to conservation can be so challenging?
scientists and conservationists are often skeptical of indigenous knowledge claims
1. An archaeologist might attempt to:
study present languages to reconstruct when they diverged from a parent stock.
13. A key difference between anthropologists of development and development anthropologists is:
the first are analysts of development; the second seek ways to influence it from within
11. In most non-industrial societies the main unit of production is:
the household
12. Promoters of globalization highlight which of the following?
the more open a country is to foreign trade, the better the economy will be
4. The primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to:
the people they study
What is Naturalization?
the social processes through which something becomes part of the natural order of things
14. Anthropology is:
the study of humankind everywhere, throughout time.
18. Culture/cultural models/cultural framework help us make sense of the world because:
they provide a pattern for one's own behavior and interpreting others' actions
21. This type of pastoralism, or movement pattern, is practiced when the men take the herd to better grazing land while the rest of the people remain in the settlement:
transhumance