Test 1
Why is colonization important to this class?
Because this class seeks to teach anthropology that takes into account the different power, political, and economic relations that exists among and between human groups, and colonialism is a key part of the past that shapes those relations.
Does biological determinism/environmental determinism fall into essentialism?
Biological determinism is "the idea that biology is the basis of human behavior and the explanation for differences in the ways people live," so embedded in this is an assumption that aspects of human behavior are INNATE—and therefore is a type of essentialism.
How are globalization and colonialism related?
Colonialism is one way in which global connections have occurred
Does orientalism apply to any region East of the U.S. or does it only apply to Asia?
In the current time period we tend to use Oriental to describe East Asian cultures, however in the context that Said was using it (he was writing at a different time and about a historical time period), the Orient actually referred to areas that are now called the Middle East. The concept of Orientalism was demonstrated through Said's study of portrayals of people in the middle east but the practice he is describing occurs in all kinds of situations, not just with that particular instance.
What does colloquial mean?
It means informal, ordinary, familiar—often in terms of people's speech/speaking.
How are maps a form of knowledge?
Maps are a representation. A 2-D map image is describing something that is quite far from that format—that is, a 3-dimensional complex world—and so some sort of translation and transformation has to occur to represent geographical space and in this process decisions are made that can be shaped by individual or cultural bias. Because we've grown up around certain map images we take them for granted and think they are obvious and natural ways of portraying the world, but if you step backward into the how they are made you can see that certain practices are used that can exaggerate the shape of some areas of the globe and minimize others (in the mathematical transformation from 3-d to 2-d) and that decisions are made about how to center the map/what direction to put up. We may think of a map centered on the Atlantic Ocean with North America and Europe on either side as normal, but if you think of a globe there is no "center" in terms of surface features so there is always a decision making process behind how the globe is portrayed in a 2-D image.
How does the article on fetuses in Ecuador connect to biological determinism?
Morgan's article challenges the notion that fetal personhood is some sort of natural, biologically determined state. Instead, Morgan argues, people draw on ideas of biology and/or other cultural notions to shape when/how a fetus is seen as a person or not as a person.
What is cultural relativism? It seems to me that it means examining a culture through the eyes of someone from that culture, but does that mean true cultural relativism leaves no room for bias on the researchers part?
Officially, cultural releativism is "the idea that there are no objective, neutral, universal criteria for evaluating cultures; rather, each culture must be understood on its own terms." This basically means that anthropologists call for the study of cultural practices to occur without EVALUATING those cultural practices using the standards/norms of the researcher's own cultural practices. That said, it can get a little bit complicated and anthropologists debate how far to take cultural relativism because in the most extreme form it might mean withholding judgements on practices that may be harmful to certain subsets of a population (e.g. women). Different anthropologists end up with different conclusions about whether they hold ethical values that stand regardless of the cultural norms of a group of people
Connection b/t politics of knowledge and ethnocentrism?
One connection is that ethnocentric views tend to shape how a particular event is portrayed, e.g. how colonialism was presented in a 5th grade textbook. So our own biases shape what forms knowledge takes.
Participant observation
TYPE of method used in fieldwork. Qualitative methods, such as participant observation and interviews (or describing what is learned from those methods using thick description) are part of what distinguishes anthropology from some other fields that rely more on quantitative/statistical data.
How is the reading with wolves relevant to this class?
The Weaver article seeks to draw an analogy or metaphor between ecosystems and global economic systems. While we each may have our own opinions about how effective this tactic is/whether Weaver's argument is strong or weak, the connection is that as this class seeks to think about politics and power, the article provides one way of thinking about global economic systems by considering how, through terms used in ecology, it might be seen as being LIKE systems in the natural world.
How do anthropologists minimize the amount of details they miss in their "thick descriptions" when what we consider important is based on our own culture/experience not the perspective of the culture being studied
This is an excellent question and one that anthropologist still debate/discuss. Ideally, we strive to identify our own biases about what is important and try to learn as much as we can about what is considered important from other points of view, but this is an imperfect process and, indeed, everything we learn is shaped by—some even say co-produced by—our own observations.
When does something qualify as being an instrument of the politics of knowledge?
We can observe the politics of knowledge in all kinds of settings, as power can shape how information is produced and disseminated across many different contexts, thus many different things are instruments of the politics of knowledge (e.g. educational practices, textbooks, news outlets, official gov't documents, documentaries, etc.)
How are such identities constructed?
We construct particular identities through discourse (e.g. about race, about gender) than can make certain identity categories appear common sense or even "natural" (in a biological sense). We know that such identities are culturally constructed rather than being innate and biological in origin through studies that show there is no clear biological basis for such categories.
Colonialism vs. Postcolonialism vs. Neocolonialism
What is an example of postcolonialism? A previously colonized country's government having a similar structure to that of the government of their colonizer. Post vs. Neo: postcolonialism is like the "baggage" that different countries/groups have due to their past embeddedness in colonial relations; neocolonialism is the production/maintenance of colonial relations through other tactics than full on occupation of a country—it is, as one student described, "low key colonialism"—it is conducted through economic and political regulations/agreements but does not involve one country taking explicit control of another.
Is racialization a form of naturalization?
Yes, since racialization is "the process of socially defining people as members of a 'race' that is assumed to have distinct characteristics rooted in biological difference" it is ONE type of naturalization, which is "seeing social differences as the result of 'natural' differences"
Eurocentric
a perspective that assumes Western ideas and institutions are the correct, normal or best ones
participant observation
a research method involving taking part in the activities and lives of the people you are studying
orientalism
a shared set of assumptions about Middle Eastern people and cultures defined in terms of contrast to Western culture
postcolonial
a society that was formerly a colony of another nation
global north/global south
a way of representing relationships of inequality in wealth and power on a global scale (in this case by referring to the geographical locations of wealthier[north] and poorer[south] nations)
discourse
an established way of talking about something that includes unspoken assumptions
deconstruction
analyzing something to reveal the hidden assumptions it contains
fieldwork
anthropological research carried out in the place or places where the people being studied live and work
Social categories
are a TYPE of cultural category.
thick description
careful, detailed, observations that capture in writing the lived reality of a particular event or activity whether an important ritual, or a daily routine
Hecht on street children
his article seeks to explain how people who aren't engaged in stereotypical forms of globalization (international travel, using the internet, etc.) are still playing a part in globalization and have an awareness of their position on a global scale; the street children are aware of how people from other places come to view them/are interested in filming and/or interviewing them.
Savage Actsàthe film
looking at various relations b/t powerful and less powerful countries and shows how stereotypes about racial and cultural others shaped U.S. attitudes toward other countries and even justified particular kinds of occupation, i.e. in the Phillipines when the U.S. came in and wanted to do exactly what Spain had just been doing b/c the people living there were seen as "unfit for self-governance"—this notion was shaped by racist stereotypes that cast Filipinos/as as primitive, barbaric, or savage when the U.S. was committing atrocities through their occupation and trade policies. The filmmakers seemed to be arguing that the U.S. was hypocritical in its actions.
Examples of socially constructed identities
racial categories, gender
neocolonial
relations of domination by a foreign power or powers, even though the dominated nation is formally recognized as an independent nation with its own government
colonialism
rule by a foreign power
ethnocentrism
seeing everything as if your culture's values, worldview and behavior are the only ones or are the best ones
naturalization/naturalizing
seeing social differences as the result of 'natural' differences
Moral universe
set or system of ideas about what is good or bad/what makes a person good or bad. It is related to culture in the sense that notions of what makes someone a good or bad person is culturally specific and varies across social groups.
A holistic approach
simply refers to taking into account all kinds of different factors (political, cultural, economic, historical, etc.) when examining a particular social phenomena or social group. Rather than ONLY analyzing economics, for example, anthropologists would take economic processes and systems into account alongside other factors.
civilizing mission
the idea that Western societies deserve to dominate non-Western societies because Western ways are more advanced, more modern, etc.
essentialism/essentialist
the idea that an individual or group's characteristics are innate
biological determinism
the idea that biology is the basis of human behavior and the explanation for differences in the ways people live
myth of choice
the idea that individuals choose most aspects of their lives
universalism/universalist
the idea that something [a path to progress, a legal right, a value system, etc.] applies across the board to all humanity
cultural relativism
the idea that there are no objective, neutral, universal criteria for evaluating cultures; rather, each culture must be understood on its own terms
cultural construction of reality
the idea that we perceive, interpret, and understand our experience and the world we live in, through the lens and the language that our culture has made available to us
politics of representation
the issue of from whose perspective something is being seen, depicted, or described and also which elements or characteristics are included or excluded in that view
politics of knowledge
the many ways in which the production and dissemination of knowledge involves relations of power
racializing/racialization
the process of socially defining people as members of a 'race' that is assumed to have distinct characteristics rooted in biological difference
cultural categories
the taken for granted categories used to perceive people, things, or activities as belonging to one group/type or another
wholistic approach
the view that sees culture as an integrated whole in which all facets of life- work, family, beliefs, play, etc. are interrelated
Culture is like a lens, culture is like a language, etc.:
these are all metaphors for how culture operates/how culture shapes our experience. With each of these, consider what the thing culture is being compared to is/does and how that is LIKE how culture shapes an individual's experience of the world.
Global north vs. global south
these are terms we use to describe sets of countries that is loosely based on geographic region (north and south) but, more significantly, indexes an unequal relationship b/t powerful countries (global north) and exploited countries (global south.)
Cultural Constructions of Reality and social constructions:
these concepts are not to say that things "don't exist" or are "fake," but rather describe how we, as humans, view the world based on the cultural categories that we've learned through socialization. So things that may seem natural—such as racial categories or disease categories—are describing things in the world but are assigning culturally specific meaning to characteristics/qualities of people/experiences/things.
Structural adjustment:
this term describes the process in which the World Bank and the IMF offered loans to "developing" countries under the idea of helping them develop/helping them become economically self-sufficient, but the conditions under which those loans were offered (that is, the things the countries had to agree to in order to receive the money) essentially increased those countries' economic dependence on more powerful countries and made it easy for wealthy countries to benefit from those countries' labor/market. With those regulations, it essentially became impossible for those countries to repay the loans and they are continually in debt/paying off interest.
Cultural relativism vs. racialization vs. biological determinism
ultural relativism is distinct from the other two terms, it is: "the idea that there are no objective, neutral, universal criteria for evaluating cultures; rather, each culture must be understood on its own terms"; racialization—the process of socially defining people as members of a 'race' that is assumed to have distinct characteristics rooted in biological difference—has to do with assuming that the racial categories that exist in any given society (e.g. the United States) are natural/have some sort of clear biological basis (when in reality there is not clear break between racial categories). Biological determinism has more to do with attributing human behavior and differences in how people live (that is, attributing cultural differences) to biological/biologically determined causes.
