Cultural Anthropology Mid-Term: PART II

descent

Descent is based on the notion of a common heritage. It is a cultural rule tying together people on the basis of reputed common ancestry. Descent functions to guide inheritance, group loyalty, and, above all, the formation of families and extended kinship groups.

production

Rendering material items useful and available for human consumption. Production systems must designate ways to allocate resources.

Routines and Rituals

A course of action that is regularly followed. Routines are comforting; they bring order into a world in which people have little control. The varied elements in routines often produce the tangible benefit of helping the player (or person) concentrate. Some of what people do goes beyond mere routine. These actions are defined as rituals. These are prescribed behaviors in which there is no empirical connection between the means.

Magic

Humans have strong tendency to repeat any behavior that is coincident with reinforcement. The best evidence that players turn to rituals, taboos, and fetishes to control chance and uncertainty is found in their uneven application.

subsistence economies

Organized around the need to meet material necessities and social obligations. These are usually associated with smaller groups.

subsistence strategies

Societies employ several different strategies to meet their material needs, strategies that affect their complexity and internal organization as well as relationships to the natural environment and to other human groups. Anthropologists use this to put different groups into 5 types.

technology

The cultural knowledge for making and using tools and extracting and refining raw materials.

allocation of resources

The cultural rules people use to assign rights to the ownership and use of resources.

unit of production

The persons or groups responsible for producing goods, follows a pattern similar to the way labor is divided in various societies.

economic system

The provision of goods and services to meet biological and social wants. Humans must eat, drink, maintain a constant body temperature, defend ourselves, and deal with injury and illness. This system meets these needs by providing food, water, clothing, shelter, weapons, medicines, and the cooperative services of others. *Material goods serve more than just our survival needs: they meet our culturally defined wants as well.

division of labor

The rules that govern the assignment of jobs to people. In hunting and gathering societies, labor is most often divided along the lines of gender, and sometimes age.

market exchange

The transfer of goods and services based on price, supply and demand. Every time we enter a store and pay for something, we engage in market exchange. *Market exchange appears in human history when societies become larger and more complex.

redistribution

The transfer of goods and services between a central collecting source and a group of individuals.

reciprocal exchange

The transfer of goods and services between two people or groups based on role obligations. Birthday and holiday gift giving is a find example of reciprocity.

distribution

There are three basic modes of distribution: market exchange, reciprocal exchange, and redistribution.

Fetishes

These are charms and material objects believed to embody supernatural power that can aid or protect the owner. Good luck charms are standard equipment for some ballplayers. These include objects from coins, chains, and crucifixes to a favorite hat. These fetishized objects may be a new possession or something a player found that coincided with the start of a streak and which he believes contributed to his good fortune.

Taboos

These are the opposite of rituals. These are things that you shouldn't do. Breaking this leads to undesirable consequences or bad luck. For example, most baseball players have a few of these, like never stepping on the chalk foul lines. On the day a pitcher is scheduled to start, he is likely to avoid activities he believes will detract from his effectiveness.

market economies

These differ from subsistence economies in their size and motive for production. Although reciprocity and redistribution exist in market economies, market exchange drives production and consumption. Market economies are larger and are characterized by high economic specialization, as well as impersonality.

hunting and gathering

This groups depends on wild plants and animals for subsistence. They forage for food, moving to different parts of their territories as supplies of plants, animals, and water grow scarce. They live in small bands of 10 to 50 people and are typically egalitarian, leading a life marked by sharing and cooperation. Tend to lack formal political, legal, and religious structure.

cultural environment

This is a perspective in which people will conceive their environment in terms that seem most important to their adaptive needs and cultural perspective.

Pastoralism

This is a strategy based on the herding of domesticated animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, and camels. They move on a regular basis during the year to take advantage of fresh sources of water and food for their animals.

Industrialism

This is what our society is. These societies/nations are highly complex; they display an extensive variety of subgroups and social statuses. Industrial societies tend to be dominated by market economies in which goods and services are exchanged on the basis of price, supply and demand. This may lead to a depersonalization of human relations.

Agriculture

This refers to a kind of farming based on the intensive cultivation of permanent land holdings. These people usually use plows and organic fertilizers and may irrigate their fields in dry conditions.

Horticulture

This represents the earliest farming strategy, one that continues on a diminishing basis among many groups today. This group of people garden. They often use a technique called slash and burn agriculture. Although these people farm, they often continue to forage for wild foods and still feel closely related to the natural environment.

slash and burn agriculture

This requires people to clear and burn over wild land and, with the aid of a digging stick, sow seeds in the ashes.

matrilocal

a custom in marriage whereby the husband goes to live with the wife's community.

patrilocal

a pattern of marriage in which the couple settles in the husband's home or community

Ethos

the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations

kinship

the complex system of culturally defined social relationships based on marriage (the principle of affinity) and birth (the principle of consanguinity).

neolocal

the custom of marriage where the couple go to live in their own brand new environment.

Ecology

the relationship of an organism to other elements within its environmental sphere.

Cultural ecology

the way people use their culture to adapt to particular environments.

physical environment

the world people can experience through their sense.

Rule 1 of Descent: bilateral descent

this links a person to kin through both males and females simultaneously.

Rule 1 of Descent: matrilineal descent

this links relatives through females only.

Rule 1 of Descent: patrilineal descent

this links relatives through males only.