Quiz 1 Cultural anthropology

Fable

A fable becomes a tradition by being retold and accepted by others in the community. Different cultures have very similar stories sharing common themes.

AAA Code of Ethics Principles

Do no harm those you are studyingBe open and honest regarding your work. Obtain informed consent and necessary permissionsEnsure the vulnerable populations in Every study are protected from competing ethical obligationsMake your results accessible (let the locals see it) (publish your findings in the form of an ethnography)Protect and preserve your recordsMaintain respectful and ethical professional relationships

Ethics in describing other cultures

Tell the stories of the natives as they tell them. •That anthropologists get rid of their own cultural biases against cultures or that culture in particular

urban anthropology

The branch concerned with the sociocultural patterns, organization, and meanings of everyday life in cities. subsumed by the broader shift towards globalization.

Stories

They are for entertainment-discuss problems encountered in life. - are a form of cultural preservation- a way to communicate morals or values to the next generation. - a means of social control over certain activities or customs that are not allowed in a society.

Arm-chair anthropology

Viewing a culture from a distance (as from an armchair), which makes the observer measure that culture from his or her own vantage point and draw comparisons that place the observer/anthropologist's culture as superior to the one being studied.

Culture

a set of beliefs, practices and symbols that are learned and shared. They bind people together and shape world view and lifeways

Qualitative methods

aim to produce an indepth and detailed description of social behaviors and beliefs.The ethnographic method, which involves prolonged and intensive observation of and participation in the life of a community.The comparative method/ethnology allows anthropologists to derive insights from careful comparisons of two or more cultures or societies.

Functionalism

an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole. Functionalism views cultures as stable and orderly and ignores or cannot explain social change.

Coercive Harmony

an approach to dispute resolution that emphasizes compromise and consensus rather than confrontation and results in the marginalization of dissent (harmony ideology) and the repression of demands for justice.

Diversity in Anthropological field sites

anywhere where there is a community exhibiting shared and conflicting interests and part of a culture some of which shows the dominant trends of that group and community and some that shows its dissent

Tylor's method of classifying cultures based on social evolutionism

believed that peoples in different locations were equally capable of developing and progressing through the stages.culture evolved from the simple to the complex, and that all societies passed through the three basic stages of development suggested by Montesquieu: from savagery through barbarism to civilization.

quantitative methods

classify features of a phenomenon, count or measure them, and construct mathematical and statistical models to explain what is observed.

Political economy

contextualizes the world as an open system

Subfields of Anthropology

cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology

Culture and Personality

culture affects individuals psychologically, shaping individual personality traits and leading the members of a culture to exhibit similar traits such as a tendency toward aggression, or calmness.

Social evolutionism

dividing the ethnological record into evolutionary stages ranging from primitive to civilized was

The Concept of Other in Anthropology

has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are different from one's own

Enculturation

he process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group

Harmony Ideology

healthy society is one that achieves harmony between people and minimizes conflict and confrontation

FEAR

is a cultural construction created in a variety of ways in people to solicit loyalty from them in the form of aggression and hate

Human Diversity

multiplicity and variety in being human around the world

Change

new topics, issues, and problems emerge means more for anthropologist to study

Ethics in Anthropological Fieldwork

primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to the people, species, or artifacts they study.

Plasticity

refers to the human capacity to learn any language or culture....founding father of American anthropology was German-born Franz Boas who assessment was that all homo sapiens had this plasticity

Holism

taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.

Globalization

the idea that we have become a society so connected by various aspects of our respective cultures, that in some sense, we have become one large society.

Cultural Relativism

the idea that we should seek to understand another person's beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

Ethnocentrism

the tendency to view one's own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.

Going native

to become fully integrated into a cultural group.

Participant-observation

type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.