Unit 4
Resolution of Conflict Peaceful Resolution of Conflict
Avoidance Community Action Negotiation and Mediation Ritual Reconciliation- Apology Oaths and Ordeals Adjudication, Courts, & Codified Law
Religious Change Religious Conversion
Conversion to one of the world religions has often been associated with colonization and the expansion of state societies (universalistic religions). Christianity on Tikopia Explaining Conversion
Voluntary Associations Multiethnic Associations
Increasingly, voluntary groups draw members from many different backgrounds. Multiethnic and multiregional associations have been involved in independence movements around the world.
Taboo
A prohibition that, if violated, is believed to bring supernatural punishment.
Shaman
A religious intermediary, usually part-time, whose primary function is to cure people through sacred songs, pantomime, and other means; sometimes called witch doctor by Westerners.
Development anthropology
one of the main subfields of applied or practicing anthropology, aimed at improving people's lives, particularly decreasing poverty and hunger.
Treatment of Illness Medical Practitioners
The Shaman Physicians
Variation in Religious Practices Types of Practitioners
The Shaman Sorcerers and Witches Mediums Priests
Polyphony
Two or more melodies sung simultaneously.
Variation in Religious Practices
Magic: any act of commination with a god or spirit: prayer or communion, for examples. Sorcery may include the use of materials, objects, and medicines to invoke supernatural malevolence. Witchcraft may be said to accomplish the same ills by means of thought and emotion alone. The practice of attempting to harm people by supernatural means, but through emotions and thought alone, not through the use of tangible objects.
Characteristics of Associations
Some kind of formal, institutional structure exists Some people are excluded from membership Membership is based on commonly shared interests and purposes There is a clear sense of mutual pride and belonging Achieved qualities Ascribed qualities
Voluntary Associations Other Interest Groups
Voluntary associations in complex societies have members who belong because of common, achieved interests.
Better Angles of our Nature
Warfare was more common in the past if tribal killing rates were applied to the 20th century there would have been 2 billion and not 100 million deaths
Artistic Change, Culture Contact, and Global Trade
"Tourist" Art: produced to appeal to non-native buyers "Fine" Art: allegedly more creative because of deviations from traditional forms
Health Conditions and Diseases AIDS
(acquired immune deficiency syndrome)- A disease caused by the HIV virus AIDS is the leading cause of adult death in many countries today. Changes in attitudes, beliefs, and practices regarding sexual activity are needed.
Variation in Religious Beliefs
--Although scholars generally do not agree as to why people need religion or how supernatural beings and forces come into existence, they recognize the enormous variation in the details of religious beliefs. --Variation in religious belief are reflected in the kinds and characters of supernatural beings or forces, the structure or hierarchy of those beings, what the beings actually do, and what happens to people after death. --Across all cultures, objects, people, or places can embody good forces or harmful forces, and supernatural beings can have either nonhuman or human origins as well as varying character traits; specifics vary from culture to culture. --Religious belief can promote in-group trust/cooperation or out-group conflict. Warning signs of conflict are leaders claiming only they know the truth, a call to blindly obey, a belief that no ideal world is possible, actions using the end to justify the means, and calls for a holy war. --Among societies, concepts of life after death can include heaven, hell, and reincarnation. Support was found for the idea that judgmental beliefs parallel the society's economic practices.
Museum Anthropology
--An early practice, which still occurs, was to archive artifacts from non-Western societies in museums of natural history. More and more today, other types of museums are providing less biased views of non-Western cultures. --Public education is a central role for all museum anthropologists.
Business and Organizational Anthropology
--Anthropologists can help businesses understand other cultures, which is becoming an even more important aspect as trade becomes more global, international investments and joint ventures increase, and the multinational corporations spread their reach. --Within a business, anthropologists can help business members understand their own organizational culture, especially when it may interfere with the acceptance of new kinds of workers, mergers with other companies, or changing to meet new business needs. --Businesses and organizations also need help in developing and marketing products that people may want, and anthropologists are quite good at finding out because they observe and ask questions.
Cultural Understandings of Health and Illness
--Anthropologists, particularly those in medical anthropology, who are actively engaged in studying health and illness and associated beliefs and practices are increasingly realizing that biological and social factors need to be considered to reduce human suffering. --Western medical researchers and medical practitioners may think of medicine as purely based on "fact," but it is clear on reflection that many ideas stem from the culture in which the researchers reside. --Many cultures have the view that the body should be kept in equilibrium or balance, although the balance may entail varying elements and varying means to maintain equilibrium. --Research shows that a majority of cultures believe that gods or spirits could cause illness to some degree. Illness can also be thought of as caused by the loss of one's soul, fate, retribution for violation of a taboo, or contact with a polluting or taboo substance or object. --In most societies, people simply think that their ideas about health and illness are true. Often people are not aware that there may be another way of viewing things until they confront another medical system. --Biomedicine is the dominant Western medical paradigm today, focusing on diseases and cures. Health is seen as the absence of disease; death, as a failure. Medical interest tends not to consider psychological factors, social/cultural influences, or links within the human body.
Ethics of Applied Anthropology
--Applied anthropology researches how a condition might be treated, whether or not it would actually be an improvement, and whether it is actually a change that is wanted by the people affected. --Anthropology as a profession has adopted ethical codes of responsibility, above all a responsibility to ensure the welfare and dignity of those who are being studied and a responsibility to report openly and truthfully to those who will read about their research. --Even with a code of ethics, complicated ethical issues arise for anthropologists in connection with development projects as well as for physical anthropologists and archaeologists.
War
--Armed conflict appears to be greater in periods of worsening climate and more frequent climate-related natural events associated with disasters. --Teaching children to mistrust others may be another factor predicting war. People who grow up to be mistrustful may be more likely to go to war than to negotiate or seek conciliation. Mistrust or fear of others seems to be partly caused by threat or fear of disasters. --Interstate wars today are uncommon; internal wars and civil wars constitute most of the present armed conflict. Recent research suggests that civil wars are predicted by the per capita income of the country—all of the wars today are in poorer regions.
Artistic Change, Culture Contact, and Global Trade
--As cultures come into contact, the art within those cultures tends to change, partly to reflect the contact itself and partly because new materials and techniques are introduced. --As societies change and become more complex after cultural contact and global trade, changes such as social stratification may well affect the art of those societies.
Natural Disasters and Famine
--Climatic and other events in the physical environment become worse disasters because of events or conditions in the social environment. Therefore, disasters are also social problems, which have social causes and possible social solutions. --Famine almost always has some social causes and is determined by who has rights to the available food and whether those who have more food distribute it to those who have less. --Cross-cultural research suggests that societies with individual rather than shared property rights are more likely to suffer famine.
Nonvoluntary Associations
--Complex societies may have nonvoluntary associations, but such associations are more typical of relatively unstratified or egalitarian societies, and in those societies associations tend to be based on characteristics of age and sex. --All societies use a vocabulary of age terms, just as they use a vocabulary of kinship terms. Entry into an age-set system is generally nonvoluntary. --Unisex associations restrict membership to one sex. Membership is often nonvoluntary in noncommercial societies and voluntary in commercial societies. --Cross-cultural research suggests that male age-sets lower the status of women, particularly when they include segregated "male" huts and male councils. --Age-set systems may arise in societies that have both frequent warfare and local groups that change in size and composition throughout the year.
Cultural Resource Management
--Cultural resource management involves recovering and preserving the archaeological record before programs of planned change disturb or destroy it. --Another focus of cultural resource management is public archaeology, educating the public about the past.
Environmental Anthropology
--Environmental anthropology focuses on issues relating to the interaction of humans with their environments at the local, regional, and global levels, particularly focusing on how to understand and alleviate the degradation of the environment. --There is increasing recognition that imposing environmental policies from the top down does not work very well and that efforts are more likely to succeed if the affected communities participate in the planning of programs.
Evaluating the Effects of Planned Change
--Even if a program of planned change has beneficial consequences in the short run, a great deal of thought and investigation has to be given to its long-term effects, which could eventually produce negative results. --Applied anthropologists have played an important role in pointing out the problems with development programs that fail to evaluate long-term consequences. Governments and other agencies are beginning to ask for anthropological help in the planning stages of projects.
Forensic Anthropology
--Forensic anthropology is devoted to helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, usually by applying knowledge of physical anthropology. --A relatively new area of forensic anthropology is work to confirm abuses of human rights, especially in terms of systematic killings of citizens.
Inadequate Housing and Homelessness
--In 2010, half of the people in the world lived in urban areas, and it is projected to be about 70 percent by 2050. --As of 2012, approximately 1 billion people or about 33 percent of urban dwellers lived in slums. Four in ten of nonpermanent houses in slums were in high-risk areas such as flood zones or areas prone to landslides. --All but the upper-income elite may be found in illegal settlements. Squatter settlements are not chaotic, unorganized, or full of crime. Most dwellers cannot find affordable housing, but they are employed, aspire to get ahead, live in intact nuclear families, and help each other. --Research suggests differences in the causes of homelessness in different parts of the world. Social and political policies cause homelessness. --Many countries have "street children." In the late 1980s, 80 million of the world's children lived in the streets. In the 2000s, the estimated number grew to about 150 million worldwide.
Characteristics of Associations
--In addition to kin groups and territorial groups, humans also form associations, or nonkin and nonterritorial groups. --Associations have the following characteristics in common: (1) some kind of formal, institutionalized structure; (2) the exclusion of some people; (3) members with common interests or purposes; and (4) members with a discernible sense of pride and feeling of belonging. Societies differ considerably in the degree to which they have such associations and in what kind they have. In the United States just about all associations are voluntary—that is, people can choose to join or not join. But in many societies—particularly more egalitarian ones—membership is generally nonvoluntary: All people of a particular category must belong. Implicit in the rituals and rules of such associations is a means of maintaining the social order and smooth functioning of the group.
Variation in Political Process
--In some tribal societies where becoming a leader has been studied, leadership appears to depend upon individual characteristics such as intelligence, generosity, and height. In some societies, leadership is more competitive and leaders are described as "big men" or "big women." --Adult political participation varies considerably in preindustrial societies. Small-scale societies are likely to have high participation, whereas more complex societies less. But with industrialization, the trend reverses somewhat and political participation increases. --More "democratic," political units in the ethnographic record fight have fought with each other significantly less often or with less severity than have less participatory political units, which also seems to be the case among modern nation-states.
Health Conditions and Diseases
--Medical anthropologists have studied an enormous variety of conditions, including epidemics of infectious disease such as AIDS as well as conditions related to mental and emotional disorders and undernutrition. --Epidemics of infectious disease, including AIDS, have killed millions of people within short periods of time throughout recorded history. Epidemics like AIDS are more than a medical problem and need to be addressed through behavioral, cultural, and political measures. --Although researchers disagree about the comparability of mental illnesses among cultures, most agree that effective treatment requires understanding a culture's ideas about a mental illness. --Biological but not necessarily genetic factors may be very important in the etiology of some of the widespread mental disorders. Nutritional factors may play a large role. --The ways people obtain, distribute, and consume food have been generally adaptive; many serious nutritional problems observed today are due to rapid culture change.
Terrorism
--One marker of the difference between most crime and terrorism is that criminals rarely take public credit for their activities because they do not want to be caught. Terrorist perpetrators usually proclaim their responsibility. --Terrorist violence is directed mostly at unarmed people, including women and children. It is intended to frighten the "enemy," to scare them into doing something that the terrorists want to see happen. --Terrorism is not a new development and goes back to at least the first century. Today, there is a heightened fear of terrorists who may have access to weapons of mass destruction. --More research has been done on state terrorism than on terrorism. State terrorism has resulted in four times more deaths than all the wars, civil and international, that occurred in the 20th century. A clear predictor of state terrorism is the presence of a totalitarian government. --Terrorists generally come from higher statuses and have higher levels of education. Terrorist organizations tend to arise in countries that have lower measures of human development, poor records of political rights and civil liberties, and higher concentrations of young people.
Variation in Types of Political Organization
--Over the last century, countries have either imposed political systems on others or have developed governmental structures to deal with the larger world. Before colonization, the band or village was the largest autonomous political unit in 50 percent of recorded societies. --Societies range on a continuum from less to more centralized types of political organization: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. --Studies support collection action theory: When the state relies more heavily on resources from taxpayers, the rulers must give the public more in return or else face noncompliance and rebellion. --Nation refers to the idea that a people share a common territory, history, and identity. Nations can be associated with states (nation-states), but not necessarily always. --The more intensive the agriculture, the greater the likelihood of state organization. Larger communities predict a wider range of political officials and more levels of decision making. Societies with higher levels of political integration tend to exhibit social differentiation. --Anthropologists do not clearly understand why changes in political organization occur, although competition among groups, need for defense, economic and technological variables, and trade may be strong factors.
Body Decoration and Adornment
--People in all societies decorate or adorn their bodies for aesthetic considerations; to delineate social position, rank, sex, occupation, local and ethnic identity, or religion within a society; and for sexual provocation. --The level of permanence of body decoration and adornment can reflect important characteristics of a culture.
Religious Change
--Perhaps the most dramatic is religious conversion, particularly when large numbers of people switch to a completely new religion presented by missionaries or other proselytizers. --Religious change also happens in more indirect ways, including revitalization and fundamentalist movements, which appear to be responses to the stress of rapid social change. All major religions have had fundamentalist movements in times of rapid culture change. --Dramatic economic, political, and demographic change is associated with religious change, particularly of the dramatic kind. --Nearly all of the major churches or religions in the world began as minority sects or cults, which were probably always political and social, as well as religious, movements.
The Universality of Religion
--Religion is any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural power, whether that power be forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons. --Religious beliefs and practices are found in all known contemporary societies, and archaeologists think they have found signs of religious belief associated with Homo sapiens who lived at least 60,000 years ago. --Theories about the universality of religion suggest that humans create religions in response to universal needs or conditions, including a need for intellectual understanding, reversion to childhood feelings, anxiety and uncertainty, and a need for community and/or cooperation.
Variation in Religious Practices
--Religious practices can vary in terms of kinds of religious practitioners and how people interact with the supernatural. Many practices involve rituals, repeated behaviors and patterns, which are generally collective and thought to strengthen faith. --People's interactions with the supernatural vary widely and include prayer, divination, physiological experience, simulation, feasts, and sacrifices. Achieving altered states, referred to as trances, is part of religious practice in 90 percent of the world's societies. --Interacting with the supernatural can be categorized as pleading, asking, or persuading the supernatural to act a certain way or as compelling the supernatural through magic, which can be used for good or harm. Sorcery is important in societies that lack judicial authorities. --Almost all societies have part-time or full-time religious or magical practitioners that can fall into four major types: shamans, sorcerers or witches, mediums, and priests. The number of types of practitioners in a society seems to increase with degree of cultural complexity.
Resolution of Conflict
--Resolution of conflict may be accomplished peacefully by avoidance, community action, mediation, apology, appeal to supernatural forces, or adjudication by a third party. The procedures used usually vary according to the degree of social complexity. --Crime is violence within a political unit that usually settles disputes peacefully. Warfare is socially organized violence among groups of people from different territorial units. Civil war is violence among subunits of a population that had been politically unified. --Law, whether informal as in simpler societies or formal as in more complex societies, is a means of dealing peacefully with conflict. Data from a large, worldwide sample of societies suggest that codified law is associated with political integration beyond the local level. --More often than not, societies with one type of violence have other types. Societies with more war tend to have warlike sports, malevolent magic, severe punishment for crimes, high murder rates, feuding, and family violence. --Systems of individual self-help, characteristic of egalitarian societies, tend toward violence and away from consensus. Systems of community action are explicitly based on obtaining a consensus and likely lead to the ending of particular disputes. --Societal complexity does not explain warfare frequency, but unpredictable disasters may play a role. Countries that are both democratic are less likely to fight each other. Military buildups do not make war less likely, but trade does. --Political changes typically occur when a foreign system of government is imposed, but changes in a political system can also occur voluntarily. A striking type of political change in recent years is the spread of participatory forms of government—"democracy."
Making the World Better
--Social problems such as disasters, famine, inadequate housing, homelessness, family violence, crime, war, and terrorism can be studied, and the research findings can be applied to improve or resolve those problems. --Factors that create social problems are not always obvious, so it is important to look carefully at beliefs and practices within and among cultures to better understand the dynamics of these problems.
Explaining Variation in the Arts
--Societies vary in terms of an emphasis on uniqueness, materials, ideas of beauty, and characteristic styles and themes. Form and style in visual art, music, dance, and folklore are very much influenced by other aspects of culture. --Art may express the typical feelings, anxieties, and experiences of people in a culture. The form of art a society prefers may reflect its way of life; choice and use of artistic materials often reflects how a society views its environment. --Repetition of elements, use of space, symmetry, and presence or absence of enclosed figures are stylistic features that vary strongly depending on the degree of stratification. --Making sense of another culture's music is similar to making sense of a foreign language. Cultural differences in music reflect widely varying rhythms, singing styles, and tonal ranges. Some features of song style can be correlated with cultural complexity. --Folklore is not always clearly separable from the other arts, particularly music and dance.
Religion and Adaptation
--Some theorists argue that religion is adaptive because it helps individuals reduce anxiety and uncertainty as well as develop solidarity and cooperation. --Some particular customary aspects of religious belief such as the Hindu taboo against slaughtering cows may not appear to be adaptive but probably are.
The Spread of State Societies
--State societies have larger communities and higher population densities than do band, tribal, and chiefdom societies. They also have armies ready to fight. State systems waging war against chiefdoms and tribes have almost always won and politically incorporated the losers. --Depopulation, conquest, or intimidation has decreased the number of independent political units worldwide, particularly in the last 200 years. It is estimated that, in 1000 b.c., between 100,000 and 1 million separate political units existed in the world; today, fewer than 200.
Political and Economic Influences on Health
--The incidence or relative frequency for many diseases, health problems, and death rates varies directly with social class and ethnicity. --Power and economic differentials among societies also have profound health consequences.
Family Violence and Abuse
--To avoid having to decide what is or is not abuse, many researchers focus their studies on variation in the frequencies of specific behaviors, for example, which societies have physical punishment of children. --Much of the violence directed at children is believed to be morally correct by the people practicing it. --Children who are corporally punished are more likely to later physically assault their dating partners or spouses, be convicted of a crime, and have depression. Corporal punishment is possibly a cradle of violence. --Two main predictors of corporal punishment in the cross-cultural record that are practically universal in the nation-states of the world are a money economy and a stratified social system. --Wife beating occurs in 85 percent of the world's societies; it is most common when men control family labor and have the final say in the home, when divorce is difficult for women, when a husband's kin control remarriage for a widow, or when women have no female work groups.
Treatment of Illness
--Two competing mindsets influence medical anthropology: Some anthropologists who study diseases within cultures think there are few cultural universals about any illness, and some think there are cross-cultural similarities in the conception and treatment of illness. --The kinds of food eaten in a culture and when they are eaten may significantly combat illness in various societies. --Increasing evidence indicates that the form of treatment may be just as important as the content of treatment. --Personalistic practitioners deal with more than the body when someone is ill. Shamans, mediums, sorcerers, and priests usually act as personalistic healers. Physicians, chemists, and herbalists take a more naturalistic view that certain substances or treatments will cure. --Four categories important to healers worldwide are the naming process, the personality of the doctor, the patient's expectations, and curing techniques.
Voluntary Associations
--Voluntary associations may be found in some relatively simple societies, but they tend to be more common in stratified and complex societies. Voluntary associations vary widely from professional affiliations and sports clubs to self-help groups and online chat rooms. --Voluntary associations that are less familiar to North American culture include military associations, regional associations, ethnic associations, rotating credit associations, and multiethnic associations. --The majority of the voluntary associations in complex societies have members who belong because of common, achieved interests, including occupation, political affiliation, recreation, charities, and social clubs. --A society's voluntary associations become more numerous and important as its technology, complexity, and scale advances. Urbanization, economic factors, an industrialized focus on specialization, or mass marketing and media may lead to voluntary associations. --Social media may give rise to virtual communities over face-to-face communities, which may endanger social and political engagement.
Viewing the Art of Other Cultures
--Westerners tend to classify art from less complex societies as "primitive art" and display it differently from Western and Oriental art. --To Westerners, non-Western art is considered unchanging in style, but studies indicate that members of the non-Western cultures are aware of nuanced changes in their art. --Although it seems that individual artists can usually be recognized in any community, some societies do appear to be more communal than others in their art style.
Crime
--What is a crime in one society is not necessarily a crime in another. Researchers tend to look at homicide rates to assess variability among societies in terms of crime. --Whether a nation is defeated or victorious, homicide rates tend to increase after a war. --More countries show murder rates going down rather than up after capital punishment was abolished. --Homicide is usually highest in nations or societies with high poverty and income inequality.
Difficulties in Instituting Planned Change
--Whether a program of planned change can be successfully implemented depends largely on whether the people want the proposed change and like the proposed program. Lack of awareness can be a temporary barrier to solving the problem at hand. --A growing trend is for anthropologists to become advocates for affected communities, involving the people affected in all phases of the project, from participating in the research design to execution and publishing. --Applied anthropologists are increasingly asked to work on behalf of indigenous grassroots organizations. Grassroots organizations can succeed with development projects where government or outside projects fail. --Anthropologists are also collaborating more with people from other disciplines.
Family Violence and Abuse
-As noted, spousal abuse, broken homes, high crime rates, child abuse, & corporal punishment are interrelated. -Promoting the equality of men and women and the sharing of childrearing responsibilities may reduce family violence -However, poverty is not a strong predictor of violence
Evaluating the Effects of Planned Change
-Even if the planned change will benefit its target population, the people may not accept it. -Target populations may reject or resist a proposed innovation: Unaware of the need for change Customs conflict with change Fear of change
Chiefdom
A political unit, with a chief at its head, integrating more than one community but not necessarily the whole society or language group.
Animism
A belief in a dual existence for all things—a physical, visible body, and a psychic, invisible soul.
Animatism
A belief in supernatural forces.
age-grade
A category of people who happen to fall within a particular, culturally distinguished age range.
Segmentary lineage system
A hierarchy of more inclusive lineages; usually functions only in conflict situations.
Ordeal
A means of determining guilt or innocence by submitting the accused to dangerous or painful tests believed to be under supernatural control.
Chief
A person who exercises authority, usually on behalf of a multicommunity political unit. This role is generally found in rank societies and is usually permanent and often hereditary.
Headman
A person who holds a powerless but symbolically unifying position in a community within an egalitarian society; may exercise influence but has no power to impose sanctions.
Nation
A set of people sharing a common territory, history, and a sense of identity.
Raiding
A short-term use of force, generally planned and organized, to realize a limited objective.
Variation in Types of Political Organization State Organization
A society is described as having state organization when it includes one or more states. Multilocal group Cities and Towns Much specialization among political officials (tax, infrastructure, military) Intensive agriculture and herding Class and caste societies
Feuding
A state of recurring hostility between families or groups of kin, usually motivated by a desire to avenge an offense against a member of the group.
Mana
A supernatural, impersonal force that inhabits certain objects or people and is believed to confer success and/or strength.
Tribe
A territorial population in which there are kin or nonkin groups with representatives in a number of local groups.
Health Conditions and Diseases
AIDS Mental and Emotional Disorders Undernutrition
Nonvoluntary Associations
Age-sets are groups of people of similar age and the same sex who move through some or all of life's stages together. --Karamojong Age-Sets --Shavante Age-Sets
Body Decoration and Adornment
All societies decorate or adorn the body, either temporarily or permanently. There is enormous cultural variation in the parts decorated and how.
State
An autonomous political unit with centralized decision making over many communities with power to govern by force (e.g., to collect taxes, draft people for work and war, and make and enforce laws). Most states have cities with public buildings; full-time craft and religious specialists; an "official" art style; a hierarchical social structure topped by an elite class; and a governmental monopoly on the legitimate use of force to implement policies.
associations
An organized group not based exclusively on kinship or territory.
Museum Anthropology
Anthropologists typically hold one of three positions in museums: Curators are responsible for the overall content and use of collections. Collection managers ensure that the museum's collections are preserved. Museum educators teach the public about the peoples and cultures represented in the museum's collections.
Viewing the Art of Other Cultures
Art from less complex cultures tends to be treated as nameless, "primitive art," and timeless. Some societies do appear to be more "communal" than others in their art style (Pueblo vs. Great Plains in text).
Variation in Types of Political Organization
Aspects of variation in political organization are generally associated with shifts from food collection to more intensive food production, from small to large communities, from low to high population densities.
Variation in Types of Political Organization
Band Organization Tribal Organization Chiefdom Organization State Organization
Inadequate Housing and Homelessness
Because homelessness cannot occur if everyone can afford housing, there is evidence showing homelessness can happen only in a society with great economic inequality. Many disabled and mentally ill released from state hospitals
Monotheistic
Believing that there is only one high god and that all other supernatural beings are subordinate to, or are alternative manifestations of, this supreme being.
Body Decoration and Adornment
Body Decoration and Adornment serve the following purposes: Delineate social position, rank, sex, occupation, local and ethnic identity, or religion In short, they signal or communicate
Voluntary Associations Regional Associations
Bring together migrants from a common geographic background. The functions of regional associations may change over time as social conditions change.
Practicing and Applying Anthropology
Business and Organizational Anthropology Cultural Resource Management Museum Anthropology Forensic Anthropology
Business and Organizational Anthropology
Business and Organizational Anthropology looks at the larger culture in which organizations are situated, the culture and subcultures of the organization, and the perspectives of different groups.
Cultural Understandings of Health and Illness
Concepts of Balance or Equilibrium Supernatural Forces The Biomedical Paradigm
Health Conditions and Diseases Mental and Emotional Disorders
Culture bound disorders such as Susto, Amok, pibloktok, and anorexia Depression and schizophrenia appear universal
Explaining Variation in the Arts
Different cultures not only use or emphasize different materials and have different ideas of beauty, but they also may have characteristic styles and themes. However, beauty in the human form emphasizes symmetry, averageness, & male and female distinctive features
Resolution of Conflict
Dramatic changes in a political system can occur more or less voluntarily. Perhaps the most striking type of political change in recent years is the spread of participatory forms of government: democracy.
Variation in Political Process "Big Men" versus "Big Women"
Egalitarian societies Patrilineal or matrilineal Vanatinai
Environmental Anthropology
Environmental anthropology focuses on the interaction of humans with their environments, particularly focusing on how to understand and alleviate the degradation of the environment.
Cultural Understandings of Health and Illness
Ethnomedicine is the health-related beliefs, knowledge, and practices of a cultural group.
Voluntary Associations Military Associations
Exist to unite members through their common experiences as warriors, to glorify the activities of war, and to perform certain services for the community.
Natural Events, Disasters, and Famine
Famines, or episodes of severe starvation and death, often appear to be triggered by physical events such as severe drought or hurricanes. Famines rarely result from just one bad food production season. ---Note discussion of famines in Europe and Asia versus Africa
Forensic Anthropology
Forensic anthropology is the specialty in anthropology that is devoted to solving crimes and why they occur.
Codified laws
Formal principles for resolving disputes in heterogeneous and stratified societies.
Priests
Generally full-time specialists, with very high status, who are thought to be able to relate to superior or high gods beyond the ordinary person's access or control.
Divination
Getting the supernatural to provide guidance.
Variation in Political Process
Getting to Be a Leader Political Participation
Inadequate Housing and Homelessness
In most nations, the poor usually live in inadequate housing: Slums Squatter settlements Forced migration from countryside Lack of sanitation, police, and other services
Explaining Variation in the Arts Folklore
Includes all the myths, legends, folktales, ballads, riddles, proverbs, music, and dance of a cultural group. Told before groups as a form of knowledge and entertainment.
Resolution of Conflict Violent Resolution of Conflict
Individual Violence Feuding Raiding Large-Scale Confrontations
The Arts
It expresses aesthetically as well as communicates meaning and values. It stimulates the senses, affects emotions, and evokes ideas. It is produced in culturally patterned ways and styles It has cultural meaning.
Health and Illness
Medical anthropologists are increasingly realizing that biological and social factors need to be considered if we are to reduce human suffering. The anthropological study of health and illness and associated beliefs and practices.
Treatment of Illness
Many cultures believe in natural as well as supernatural causes and cures. Shamans as medical practitioners • Diagnose • Treat • Provide care and reassurance Western biomedical physicians
Health Conditions and Diseases Undernutrition
Many of the serious nutritional problems today are due to rapid culture change, particularly when there is increasing social inequality.
Voluntary Associations Ethnic Associations
Membership is largely based on ethnicity. Tribal unions Friendly societies
Variation in Religious Beliefs Structure or Hierarchy of Supernatural Beings
Monotheistic Religions Polytheistic Religions
Variation in Types of Political Organization Chiefdom Organization
Multilocal group Large communities Chief has higher rank than others (hereditary) Extensive/intensive agriculture or herding Rank society
Natural Events, Disasters, and Famine
Natural disasters can have greater or lesser effects on human life, depending on social conditions. ---Earthquakes in the US vs. India Disasters are also social problems, problems that have social causes and possible social solutions.
Revitalization movements
New religious movements intended to save a culture by infusing it with a new purpose and life.
Nonvoluntary Associations
Nonvoluntary associations are more characteristic of relatively unstratified or egalitarian societies. --Age-Sets --Unisex Associations
Crime
One suggestion to reduce rates of violent crime is to reduce socialization and training for aggression. The reduction of inequalities in wealth may also help to reduce crime.
Difficulties in Instituting Planned Change
Overcoming Resistance Discovering and Utilizing Local Channels of Influence Need for More Collaborative Applied Anthropology Applied anthropologists are increasingly asked to work on behalf of indigenous grassroots organizations.
Mediums
Part-time religious practitioners who are asked to heal and divine while in a trance.
Resolution of Conflict
Peaceful Resolution of Conflict Violent Resolution of Conflict
Political and Economic Influences on Health
People with more social, economic, and political power in a society are generally healthier. In socially stratified societies, the poor usually have increased exposure to disease.
Treatment of Illness
Physicians are the most important full-time medical practitioner in the biomedical system. The patient-physician relationship is central
Supernatural
Powers believed to be not human or not subject to the laws of nature.
Artistic Change, Culture Contact, and Global Trade
Recent culture contact has had profound effects on art in various parts of the world. The decimation of many indigenous populations has led to a loss of many artistic traditions.
Polytheistic
Recognizing many gods, none of whom is believed to be superordinate.
Cultural Resource Management
Recovering and preserving the archaeological record before programs of planned change disturb or destroy it is called Cultural Resource Management (CRM).
The Universality of Religion
Religion is defined as any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural power, whether that power be forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons. The Need to Understand Reversion to Childhood Feelings Anxiety and Uncertainty The Need for Community Need for Cooperation
Rituals
Repetitive sets of behaviors that occur in essentially the same patterns every time they occur. Religious rituals involve the supernatural in some way.
Making the World Better
Social problems are mostly of human making and are therefore susceptible to human unmaking.
Warfare
Socially organized violence between political entities such as communities, districts, or nations.
Variation in Religious Beliefs Types of Supernatural Forces and Beings
Supernatural Forces (animatism) Supernatural Beings (animism) Gods Spirits Ghosts Ancestor Spirits
Gods
Supernatural beings of nonhuman origin who are named personalities; often anthropomorphic.
Ancestor spirits
Supernatural beings who are the ghosts of dead relatives.
Ghosts
Supernatural beings who were once human; the souls of dead people.
Terrorism
Terrorism involves the threat or use of violence to create terror in others, usually for political purposes.
Revitalization Religious Change
The Seneca and the Religion of Handsome Lake Cargo Cults Fundamentalism
Oath
The act of calling upon a deity to bear witness to the truth of what one says.
Ethics of Applied Anthropology
The anthropologist's first responsibility is to ensure that the welfare and dignity of those being studied will be protected. Research findings should be reported openly and truthfully. Will the change truly benefit the target population? When physical anthropologists and archaeologists work with skeletal and even fossil materials, the ethnical considerations can become complex. NAGPRA
Voluntary Associations Rotating Credit Associations
The basic principle is that each member of the group agrees to make a regular contribution, in money or in kind, to a fund, which is then handed over to each member in rotation.
Practicing or applied anthropology
The branch of anthropology that concerns itself with applying anthropological knowledge to achieve practical goals, usually in the service of an agency outside the traditional academic setting
Nation-state
The co-occurrence of a political state and a nation
biomedicine
The dominant medical paradigm in Western societies today
Religious Change
The history of religion includes periods of strong resistance to change and periods of radical change. Religious movements have been called revitalization movements.
Variation in Types of Political Organization Tribal Organization
The kind of political organization in which local communities mostly act autonomously but there are kin groups (such as clans) or associations (such as age-sets) that can temporarily integrate a number of local groups into a larger unit. Some multilocal integration Small communities Informal leadership Extensive Agriculture or Herding Egalitarian
Variation in Types of Political Organization Band Organization
The kind of political organization where the local group or band is the largest territorial group in the society that acts as a unit. The local group in band societies is politically autonomous. Community is the largest group that acts as a political unit. Typically small, less than 100 people Informal leadership Food Collecting Egalitarian
Treatment of Illness Mechanisms used all over the world to heal:
The naming process The personality of the doctor The patient's expectations Curing techniques
Variation in Religious Practices
The number of types of practitioners seems to vary with degree of cultural complexity The more complex the society, the more types of practitioners.
Complementary opposition
The occasional uniting of various segments of a segmentary lineage system in opposition to similar segments.
adjudication
The process by which a third party acting as judge makes a decision that the par-ties to a dispute have to accept.
Mediation
The process by which a third party tries to bring about a settlement in the absence of formal authority to force a settlement.
Negotiation
The process by which the parties to a dispute try to resolve it themselves.
The Spread of State Societies
The state level of political development has come to dominate the world. Based on past history, a number of investigations have suggested that the entire world will eventually come to be politically integrated. Treaty and economic organizations (EEU and NAFTA but Brexit)
Nationalism
The strong sense of loyalty, attachment, and devotion to a nation (see nation).
Resolution of Conflict
The type of warfare varies in scope and complexity from society to society. Preindustrial societies with higher warfare frequencies are likely to have had a history of unpredictable disasters that destroyed food supplies.
Explaining Variation in the Arts Visual Art
The way in which a society views its environment is sometimes apparent in its choice and use of artistic materials and subjects.
Explaining Variation in the Arts Music
There is wide variation in music styles and musical instruments from society to society. There have been relationships suggested between childrearing practices and certain rhythmical patterns, tonal ranges, and voice quality. However, Lomax's work on cultural variation in music shows a strong relationship between social and musical complexity on page 546-47 And the work of Ekman on masks and emotions shows some universal patterns (p. 549).
universally ascribed qualities
Those ascribed qualities (age, sex) that are found in all societies.
variably ascribed qualities
Those ascribed qualities (such as ethnic, religious, or social class differences) that are found only in some societies.
Achieved qualities
Those qualities people acquire during their lifetime.
Ascribed qualities
Those qualities that are determined for people at birth.
Variation in Religious Beliefs
Types of Supernatural Forces and Beings The Character of Supernatural Beings Structure or Hierarchy of Supernatural Beings Intervention of the Gods in Human Affairs Life After Death
Nonvoluntary Associations
Unisex Associations are associations that restrict membership to one sex, usually male. --Mae Enga Bachelor Associations --Poro and Sande --Ijaw Women's Associations
Spirits
Unnamed supernatural beings of nonhuman origin who are beneath the gods in prestige and often closer to the people; may be helpful, mischievous, or evil.
Variation in Religious Practices Ways to Interact with the Supernatural
Various methods are used to attempt communication with the supernatural. Prayer, taking drugs, simulation, feasts, and sacrifices are some examples.
Family Violence and Abuse
Violence Against Children Violence Against Wives Reducing the Risk
Crime
Violence not considered legitimate that occurs within a political unit.
Voluntary Associations
Voluntary associations are more common in stratified or complex societies. -Military Associations (VFW) -Regional Associations (Appalachian migrants to large cities) -Ethnic Associations (The National Council of La Raza or NCAAP) -Rotating Credit Associations -Multiethnic Associations -NGO's Interest Groups (Lions, Kiwanis, Red Cross) ---Political ---Health ---Social welfare
War
War is an unfortunate fact of life in most societies known to anthropology. People seem more likely to go to war when they fear unpredictable disasters that destroy food supplies.
Crime
What is crime in one society is not necessarily a crime in another. Violent crime does appear to be associated with one economic characteristic: Homicide is usually highest in nations with high income inequality.