Anthro Quiz 01 Introduction
Linguistic anthropology
the subfield of anthropology that studies language
Who is increasingly becoming anthropologists?
women, indigenous people, and members of racial and ethnic minorities
What did western colonial powers understand?
The different customs and cultures of the people they colonized as proof of their primitive nature
A key principle of the holistic perspective developed by Franz Boas is:
a goal of synthesizing the entire context of human experience
Theories
a key element of the scientific method, which both explains things and guides research
Salvage Paradigm
anthropologists need to collect information from societies before they die out
Ethnocentrism
assuming your culture's way of doing something is the best
Why do some anthropologists not see what they do as science?
because the complexity of social behavior prevents any completely objective analysis of human culture
Comparative method
holds that no society or behavior should be seen in isolation (general approach). The comparative method is how anthropologists derive insights and refers to the practice of comparing two or more cultures
What do linguistic anthropologists study?
how our mouths form words, how our language evolved, and how indigenous people classify their social worlds
Industrialization
involves shifting from an agricultural economy to a factory-based one
What is diversity focused on?
multiplicity and variety
Quantitative data
techniques that classify features of a phenomenon and count, measure, and construct statistical models all to collect and analyze quantitative data
When did anthropology emerge as an academic discipline?
the 1800s
E.B. Tylor
the 19th century British anthropologist who is credited with the development of the concept of culture through an evolutionary perspective
A qualitative approach to studying social life at your university would NOT include
the construction of statistical models to explain activities in the community (quantitative)
Cultural Relativism
the moral and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic practices
Colonialism
the natural abilities of more civilized people to control less civilized people
Who is the primary ethical responsibilities of anthropologists to?
the people or species they study
Natural Selection
the process by which inheritable traits are passed along to offspring because they are better suited to the environment
An ethical approach to anthropological research would emphasize:
the rejection of clandestine research, responsibilities toward the host country and people you are studying, and a commitment to doing no harm
Cultural anthropology
the subfield of anthropology that studies human diversity, beliefs, and practice
Archaeology
the subfield of anthropology that studies the material remains of past cultures, often focusing on the rise of cities
A relativistic perspective on the meanings of Coca-Cola in Tzotzil, Maya communities
this would emphasize that those meanings are only sensible within a culturally specific set of ideas about religion and spirituality
A quantitative approach to studying the archaeological past would be most interested in
building and testing hypotheses by collecting, classifying, and measuring the remains of past cultures
The applications of the comparative method in his research in Papua New Guinea has led Robert Welsch to focus on:
interviews of village elders in different villages, museum collections, and published and unpublished accounts of mask collectors who visited different villages
What did the Industrial Revolution prompt people to do?
it prompted intellectuals to start systematically explaining the differences among people
What do cultural anthropologists do during fieldwork?
learn the local language, record people's economic transactions, and study how environmental changes affect agriculture
Biological anthropology
subfield of anthropology that studies human evolution, including human genetics and human nutrition
Charles Darwin
the thinker who developed evolutionary theory in the 19th century
