Ch. 5-8 Anthropology

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)

(5) A comparative anthropological database that allows easy reference to coded information about several hundred cultural traits for more than 150 societies. The HRAF allows statistical analysis of the relationship between the presence of one trait and the occurrence of other traits.

Participatory action research

(5) A research method in which the research questions, data collection, and data analysis are defined through collaboration between the researcher and the subjects of research. A major goal is for the research subjects to develop the capacity to investigate and take action on their primary political, economic, or social problems.

Genealogical method

(5) A systematic methodology for recording kinship relations and how kin terms are used in different societies.

Armchair anthropologist

(5) An anthropologist who relies on the reports and accounts of others rather than original field research.

Comparative method

(5) Any anthropological research that involves systematic comparison of several societies.

Open-ended interview

(5) Any conversation with an informant in which the researcher allows the informant to take the conversation to related topics that the informant rather than the researcher feels are important.

Secondary materials

(5) Any data that come from secondary sources such as a census, regional survey, historical report, other researchers, and the like that are not compiled by the field researcher.

Fieldnotes

(5) Any information that the anthropologist writes down or transcribes during fieldwork.

Informant

(5) Any person an anthropologist gets data from in the study community, especially people interviewed or who provide information about what he or she has observed or heard.

Life History

(5) Any survey of an informant's life, including such topics as residence, occupation, marriage, family, and difficulties, usually collected to reveal patterns that cannot be observed today.

Interview

(5) Any systematic conversation with an informant to collect field research data, ranging from a highly structured set of questions to the most open-ended ones.

Fieldwork

(5) Long-term immersion in a community, normally involving firsthand research in a specific study community or research setting where people's behavior can be observed and the researcher can have conversations or interviews with members of the community.

Action anthropology

(5) Research in which the goal of a researcher's involvement in a community is to help make social change.

Rapid appraisal

(5) Short-term, focused ethnographic research typically lasting no more than a few weeks about narrow research questions or problems.

Headnotes

(5) The mental notes an anthropologist makes while in the field, which may or may not end up in formal fieldnotes or journals.

Intersubjectivity

(5) The realization that knowledge about other people emerges out of relationships and perceptions individuals have with each other.

Participant observation

(5) The standard research method used by sociocultural anthropologists that requires the researcher to live in the community he or she is studying to observe and participate in day-to-day activities.

Ethnohistory

(5) The study of cultural change in societies and periods for which the community had no written histories or historical documents, usually relying heavily on oral history for data. Ethnohistory my also refer to a view of history from the native's point of view, which often differs from an outsider's view.

Multi-sited ethnography

(6) An ethnographic research strategy of following connections, associations, and putative relationships from place to place.

Diffusionists

(6) Early twentieth-century Boasian anthropologists who held that cultural characteristics result from either internal historical dynamism or a spread (diffusion) of cultural attributes from other societies.

World culture

(6) Norms and values that extend across national boundaries.

Exiles

(6) People who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries.

Migrants

(6) People who leave their homes to work for a time in other regions or countries.

Immigrants

(6) People who migrate because of political oppression or war, usually with legal permission to stay in a different country.

Hybridization

(6) Persistent cultural mixing that has no predetermined direction or end-point.

Transnational

(6) Relationships that extend beyond nation-state boundaries without assuming they cover the whole world.

Development anthropology

(6) The application of anthropological knowledge and research methods to the practical aspects of shaping and implementing development projects.

Localization

(6) The creation and assertion of highly particular, often place-based, identities and communities.

Anthropology of development

(6) The field of study within anthropology concerned with understanding the cultural conditions for proper development, or, alternatively, the negative impacts of development projects.

Postcolonialism

(6) The field that studies the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism.

Cultural imperialism

(6) The promotion of one culture over others, through formal policy or less formal means, like the spread of technology and material culture.

World systems theory

(6) The theory that capitalism has expanded on the basis of unequal exchange throughout the world, creating a global market and global division of labor, dividing the world between a dominant "core" and a dependent "periphery."

Globalization

(6) The widening scale of cross-cultural interactions caused by the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas within nations and across national boundaries.

Taste

(7) A concept that refers to the sense that gives humans the ability to detect flavors, as well as the social distinction associated with certain foodstuffs.

Swidden agriculture

(7) A farming method in tropical regions in which the farmer slashes and burns small area of forest to release plants nutrients into the soil. As soil fertility declines, the farmer allows the plot to regenerate to forest.

Food security

(7) Access to sufficient nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life.

Structuralism

(7) An anthropological theory that people make sense of their worlds through binary oppositions like hot-cold, culture-nature, male-female, and raw-cooked. These binary oppositions are expressed in social institutions and cultural practices.

Lactase persistence

(7) Continuation of lactase production beyond early childhood that allows a person to digest milk and dairy products.

Sustainable agriculture

(7) Farming based on integrating goals of environmental health, economic productivity, and economic equity.

Pastoralist societies

(7) Groups of people who live by animal husbandry, which is the breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks.

Overweight

(7) Having abnormally high fat accumulation.

Agroecology

(7) Integrating the principles of ecology into agricultural production.

Horizontal migration

(7) Movement of a herding community across a large area in search of whatever grazing lands may be available.

Foraging

(7) Obtaining food by searching for it, as opposed to growing or raising it.

Intensification

(7) Processes that increase agricultural yields.

Transhumance

(7) Regular seasonal movement of herding communities from one ecological niche to another.

Foodways

(7) Structured beliefs and behaviors surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food.

Industrial agriculture

(7) The application of industrial principles to farming.

Animal husbandry

(7) The breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks.

Nutrition transition

(7) The combination of changes in diet toward energy-dense foods (high in calories, fat, and sugar) and declines in physical activity.

Obesity

(7) The creation of excess body fat to the point of impairing bodily health and function.

Horticulture

(7) The cultivation of gardens or small fields to meet the basic needs of a household.

Modes of subsistence

(7) The social relationships and practices necessary for procuring, producing, and distributing food.

Green Revolution

(7) The transformation of agriculture in the Third World that began in the 1940s, through agricultural research, technology transfer, and infrastructure development.

Ecological footprint

(8) A quantitative tool that measures what people consume and the waste they produce. It also calculates the area of biologically productive land and water needed to support those people.

Environmental justice

(8) A social movement addressing the linkages between racial discrimination and injustice, social equity, and environmental quality.

Environmental determinism

(8) A theory that attempts to explain cultural characteristics of a group of people as a consequence of specific ecological conditions or limitations.

Sustainable development

(8) Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Traditional ecological knowledge

(8) Indigenous ecological knowledge and its relationship with resource management strategies.

Ecosystem

(8) Natural systems based on the interaction of non-living factors and living species.

Cultural landscape

(8) The culturally specific images, knowledge, and concepts of the physical landscape that help shape human relations with that landscape.

Political ecology

(8) The field of study that focuses on the linkages between political-economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction.

Environmental anthropology

(8) The field that studies how different societies understand, interact with, and make changes to the natural world.

Artifactual landscapes

(8) The idea that landscapes are the product of human shaping.

Carrying capacity

(8) The population an area can support.

Ecological anthropology

(8) The specific vein with environmental anthropology that studies directly the relationship between humans and natural ecosystems.

Ethnoscience

(8) The study of how people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings.

Ethnobiology

(8) The subfield of ethnoscience that studies how people in non-Western societies name and codify living things.