ANTH 2012 MIDTERM (DEFINITIONS & Concepts)

Relatedness

Anthropologists have long been interested in how human experiences such as sexuality, conception, birth, and nurturance are selectively interpreted and shaped into shared cultural practices called relatedness § The socially recognized ties that connect people in a variety of different ways. § Examples: § Friendship § Kinship § Marriage § Parenthood § Shared links to a common ancestor § Workplace associations § Affiliation

Are Men and Women Born or Made?

Back to the question of "nature versus nurture." We are accustomed to thinking that men and women have inherent, or innate, natures. We want to explore how much of these roles are constructed (i.e., cultural) versus how much they are truly biological. § Distinguishing between Sex and Gender § From a biological perspective, sex is determined by three primary factors: § 1) Genitalia: Referring broadly to external sexual organs within a species. § 2) Gonads: Essentially the internal sexual organs that produce different sets of hormones. Testes in males, and ovaries in females. § 3) Chromosome patterns: Human females have two X chromosomes. Human males have one X and one Y chromosome § We tend to think of sex as binary, made of up two discrete categories, male or female. § Differences may occur in any of these three primary factors that don't fit into binary categories § Humans also exhibit secondary sexual characteristics, that also display a range of variation. § § The Cultural Construction of Gender § The Cultural Construction of Gender § Boys, Girls, and Youth Sports § Anthropologists question how much perceived difference in capability arises from cultural norms instead of biological differences. § In 1996, anthropologists Landers and Fine published a study of gendered behavior in a children's T - ball league that included both boys and girls. § Landers and Fine found that the adults (both coaches and parents) treated the boys and girls differently, boys received more words of praise on average when they made a good play than the girls did. § On the opposite end, when girls made mistakes, they went largely uncorrected. § They also found that among the girl players, each child was treated more or less the same, but among the boys, competition was fostered. § Boys who played well received strong praise and encouragement. Boys who played poorly received less time playing on the field and less emotional support. § Landers and Fine's study suggests that many attributes we consider masculine — such as competitive drive and athleticism — are taught to children and are not simply biological. § The Cultural Construction of Gender § Constructing Masculinity § C.J. Pascoe studied the construction of masculinity in a high school in California. § The construction of gender roles is particularly heightened in American culture during adolescence, thus making this a rich ground for study. § Pascoe found that male students actively worked to express and demonstrate their masculinity. In particular, she identified what she called "fag discourse." § Discourse refers to a pattern of communication. Male students teased, bullied, and harassed one another. § Other male students would be called "fags" if they were not sufficiently masculine: § If they were too emotional, § If they did not engage in athletic competition, o § If they cared too much about their appearance. § The Performance of Gender § Anthropologist Matthew Guttmann explored this idea by looking at machismo (or masculinity) in an urban neighborhood in Mexico City. § Gutmann found it difficult to precisely define machismo. § Men who publically proclaimed certain characteristics as not masculine, or even feminine, would then exhibit similar characteristics in private. § For example, public machismo held that men should not assist with household chores, viewing these chores as feminine and beneath the dignity of true machismo. § Ye t e v e n t h e m o s t v o c a l l y m a c h o o f G u t m a n n 's i n f o r m a n t s a c t i v e l y aided his wife in childrearing and other household tasks. § Gutmann's study highlights the contextual nature of gendered behavior. § The way we express our gender varies depending on the situation. § Much like the men in Gutmann's study, many men will express their masculinity differently depending on whether they are socializing with other men ("out with the boys") versus if they are at home with female partners.

How did the idea of fieldwork develop?

Early Accounts of Encounters with Others • Nineteenth - Century Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter • The Professionalization of Social Scientific Data - Gathering and Analysis

Old English

English language from its beginnings to about 1066 AD.

How and Why Is Ethnicity Created, Mobilized, and Contested?

Ethnicity as a Source of Conflict • Tragically, ethnic identity and ethnicity has been either the source or the excuse for a great deal of conflict around the world. • In its most extreme forms, these conflicts have taken the form of ethnocide or genocide. • These terms refer to violent conflicts where there is an expressed (or implied) intent to eliminate all members of an ethnic or religious group. • The most infamous example of genocide in modern history is the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi party during World War II. • The Nazi military actively sought to detain and exterminate Europe's Jewish population. • Ethnic conflicts do not always reach such a scale. • Regardless, if we are to understand the importance of ethnicity, it is vital that we study and understand ethnic conflict, and why it can reach such extreme levels. • Ethnicity as a Source of Conflict • Mobilizing Ethnic Differences in Rwanda • In 1994, a horrific ethnic conflict broke out in the African nation of Rwanda. As many as one million people were killed, if not many more. All this occurred in a nation with only seven million people. • That's almost 15 percent of the population dead, and not from a devastating explosion or a weapon of mass destruction. • A majority of these people died by being hacked to death with machetes. • Western media described the incident as a genocide. • Ethnicity as a Source of Conflict • Orchestrating Ethnic Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia • To n e Bringa had been living in an ethnically diverse community in central Bosnia (a part of the former Yugoslavia) in 1987, before conflict broke out. • The community was largely composed of Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims. • After Bringa left the region, violence broke out and she was unable to return until 1993, after the war had ended. • When she returned to her peaceful community, Bringa found that all of the Bosnian Muslims had been killed or driven away. • Upon questioning people, she discovered what had happened. • She learned that the violence had been primarily perpetrated by outsiders, with only minimal help from locals. • Ethnicity as a Source of Conflict • China's Uighur Muslims • 2019, Uighur Muslims in China's northwestern Xinjiang province have been placed in Internment Camps. The Chinese government has claimed that the camps are vocational training centers, but in November 2019 a trove of leaked documents, dubbed the China Cables, confirmed what the world had long suspected: the camps are Communist Party re - education centers in which Uighurs are forced to abandon their traditional religion and language. • Ethnicity as a Source of Opportunity • Many ethnic groups have been able to make use of their ethnicity for opportunity, rather than destruction. • Ethnic identities have become, in some cases, recognizable commodities in the modern capitalistic global economy. • • This is visible in everything from the ethnic food market (Chinese restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Sushi bars, etc.) to ethnic jewelry and music. • • Ethnic and heritage tourism are also boom businesses. • Ethnicity as a Source of Opportunity • Native Americans and the Ethno - Corporation • Tribal lands were considered to be exempt from certain laws of the U.S. government. • This enabled some tribes to build casinos in areas where gambling establishments were otherwise illegal. • Gambling has long been a preferred (if illicit) pastime of the American people. • Thus, these Native American casinos flourished, and since the house always wins, they were profitable too. • For some Native American tribes, casinos have been a viable path to economic prosperity. • Ethnicity as a Source of Opportunity • Bafokeng, Inc. in South Africa • Despite being disconnected from their land they lost during Colonialism, they did not lose their sense of ethnic identity. • • Working together, the Bafokeng began to pool together their savings. • • Through immense collective effort, by the early twentieth century they had saved enough money to buy back thirty - three farms. • In order to protect their investment, the Bafokeng ended up registering these farms as a corporation, known today as the Royal Bafokeng Nation, Inc. Ethnic Interaction in the United States: Assimilation versus Multiculturalism • In many ways, the United States has been an experiment in merging ethnic groups together. • The modern population of the United States is primarily composed of immigrants from various European nations, forced immigrants from Africa, and recent immigrants from Latin America. • Even if we look at the United States as composed of three such ethnic groups, that represents a diverse nation. In reality, these three groups are themselves composed of numerous ethnicities. • We have not even mentioned the tremendous contributions to this country from Asian immigrants and other regions from around the globe. • As a nation, there have been two primary suggestions for how the United States should respond to such diversity. • As metaphors, these responses have been characterized as the melting pot (assimilation)and the salad bowl (multiculturalism).

Explicit and Disguised Discrimination

Explicit discrimination is easier to identify because it makes no effort to hide and is an accepted norm, evident in institutions and laws. Disguised discrimination may live on well beyond the "official" end of its explicit source. Anthropology has a strong history of standing up against discrimination, both explicit and disguised.

What is unique about ethnographic fieldwork, and why do anthropologists conduct this kind of research?

Fieldwork Begins with People • Fieldwork Shapes the Anthropologist • Culture shock

Deductive

reasoning from the general to the specific; the inverse of inductive reasoning. Deductive research is more common in the natural sciences than in anthropology. In a deductive approach, the researcher creates a hypothesis and then designs a study to prove or disprove the hypothesis. The results of deductive research can be generalizable to other settings.

Biologic sex

refers to male and female identity based on internal and external sex organs and chromosomes. While male and female are the most common biologic sexes, a percentage of the human population is intersex with ambiguous or mixed biological sex characteristics.

Plasticity:

refers to the human capacity to learn any language or culture.

Animatism:

religious system organized around a belief in an impersonal supernatural force.

Monotheistic

religious systems that recognize a single supreme God.

Polytheistic:

religious systems that recognize several gods.

Critical age range hypothesis

research suggesting that a child will gradually lose the ability to acquire language naturally and without effort if he or she is not exposed to other people speaking a language until past the age of puberty. This applies to the acquisition of a second language as well.

Peasants:

residents of a state who earn a living through farming

Positive reinforcements

rewards for compliance; examples include medals, financial incentives, and other forms of public recognition.

Poro and sande

secret societies for men and women, respectively, found in the Mande-speaking peoples of West Africa, particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, and Guinea.

Raids:

short-term uses of physical force organized and planned to achieve a limited objective

Pidgin:

simplified language that springs up out of a situation in which people who do not share a language must spend extended amounts of time together.

Reverse dominance:

societies in which people reject attempts by any individual to exercise power

Stratified:

societies in which there are large differences in the wealth, status, and power of individuals based on unequal access to resources and positions of power.

Ranked:

societies in which there are substantial differences in the wealth and social status of individuals; there are a limited number of positions of power or status, and only a few can occupy them.

Egalitarian:

societies in which there is no great difference in status or power between individuals and there are as many valued status positions in the societies as there are persons able to fill them.

Patrilineal:

societies where descent or kinship group membership is transmitted through men, from men to their children (male and female), and then through sons, to their children, and so forth.

Matrilineal:

societies where descent or kinship group membership is transmitted through women, from mothers to their children (male and female), and then through daughters, to their children, and so forth.

Built environment

spaces that are human-made, including cultivated land as well as buildings

Sodality:

system used to encourage solidarity or feelings of connectedness between people who are not related by family ties

Holism:

taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.

Delayed return system:

techniques for obtaining food that require an investment of work over a period of time before the food becomes available for consumption. Farming is a delayed return system due to the passage of time between planting and harvest. The opposite is an immediate return system in which the food acquired can be immediately consumed. Foraging is an immediate return system

Lineage:

term used to describe any form of descent from a common ancestor

Kinship:

term used to describe culturally recognized ties between members of a family, the social statuses used to define family members, and the expected behaviors associated with these statuses

Cisgender:

term used to describe those who identify with the sex and gender they were assigned at birth.

Ordeal:

test used to determine guilt or innocence by submitting the accused to dangerous, painful, or risky tests believed to be controlled by supernatural forces.

Interchangeability:

the ability of all individuals of the species to both send and receive messages; a feature of some species' communication systems.

Displacement:

the ability to communicate about things that are outside of the here and now.

Productivity/creativity:

the ability to produce and understand messages that have never been expressed before.

Circumscription:

the enclosure of an area by a geographic feature such as mountain ranges or desert or by the boundaries of a state.

Balanced reciprocity

the exchange of something with the expectation that something of equal value will be returned within a specific time period.

Religion:

the extension of human society and culture to include the supernatural.

Middle English

the form of the English language spoken from 1066 AD until about 1500 AD.

Modern English

the form of the English language spoken from about 1500 AD to the present. Morphemes: the basic meaningful units in a language

Reincarnation:

the idea that a living being can begin another life in a new body after death

Cultural determinism

the idea that behavioral differences are a result of cultural, not racial or genetic causes.

Linguistic relativity

the idea that the structures and words of a language influence how its speakers think, how they behave, and ultimately the culture itself (also known as the Whorf Hypothesis).

Cultural relativism

the idea that we should seek to understand another person's beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

Ethnography:

the in-depth study of the everyday practices and lives of a people.

Speech act:

the intention or goal of an utterance; the intention may be different from the dictionary definitions of the words involved.

Semanticity:

the meaning of signs in a communication system; a feature of all species' communication systems.

State:

the most complex form of political organization characterized by a central government that has a monopoly over legitimate uses of physical force, a sizeable bureaucracy, a system of formal laws, and a standing military force.

Collective effervescence

the passion or energy that arises when groups of people share the same thoughts and emotions.

Kinship system

the pattern of culturally recognized relationships between family members

Legitimacy:

the perception that an individual has a valid right to leadership.

Sororate marriage

the practice of a man marrying the sister of his deceased wife.

Levirate:

the practice of a woman marrying one of her deceased husband's brothers.

Oaths:

the practice of calling on a deity to bear witness to the truth of what one says.

One-drop rule:

the practice of excluding a person with any non-white ancestry from the white racial category.

Patrilateral cousin marriage

the practice of marrying a male or female cousin on the father's side of the family.

Historical ecology

the study of how human cultures have developed over time as a result of interactions with the environment.

Historical linguistics:

the study of how languages change

Morphology:

the study of the morphemes of language.

Proxemics:

the study of the social use of space, including the amount of space an individual tries to maintain around himself in interactions with others.

Phonology:

the study of the sounds of language

Modes of subsistence

the techniques used by the members of a society to obtain food. Anthropologists classify subsistence into four broad categories: foraging, pastoralism, horticulture, and agriculture

Ethnocentrism:

the tendency to view one's own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.

Kinship terminology

the terms used in a language to describe relatives

Pharynx:

the throat cavity, located above the larynx.

Language death

the total extinction of a language

Pragmatic function:

the useful purpose of a communication. Usefulness is a feature of all species' communication systems.

Standard:

the variant of any language that has been given special prestige in the community.

Lexicon:

the vocabulary of a language.

Minimal response:

the vocal indications that one is listening to a speaker

Larynx:

the voice box, containing the vocal bands that produce the voice.

Domestic economy:

the work associated with obtaining food for a family or household

Language shift

when a community stops using their old language and adopts a new one.

What Is Marriage?

§ A prototypical marriage is an institution that . . . § Transforms the status of the participants. § Stipulates the degree of sexual access the partners are expected to have to each other. § Perpetuates social patterns through the production or adoption of offspring. § Creates relationships between kin of the partners. § Is symbolically marked in some way. § An institution that prototypically involves two individuals, transforms the status of the participants, carries implications about sexual access, gives offspring a position in the society, and establishes connections between the kin of those who marry. § Marriage and Affinal Ties § What about Love?

Modes of Subsistence

• Every household must feed its members, creating a domestic economy that interacts with modes of production and exchange • Immediate return system vs. Delayed return system • Four modes of subsistence: Foraging, Pastoralism, Horticulture, Agriculture

Families, Households, and Domestic Groups

• Family - the smallest group of individuals who see themselves as connected to one another • Household/Domestic Group - family members who reside together or who share resources and activities pertaining to domestic life (may also include chosen kin)

Post - Marital Residence

• Family of orientation - the family in which a person is raised • Family of procreation - new household for raising children • Residence patterns - Neolocal - Patrilocal - Matrilocal - Avunculocal

Emic:

a description of the studied culture from the perspective of a member of the culture or insider

Etic:

a description of the studied culture from the perspective of an observer or outsider.

Broad spectrum diet:

a diet based on a wide range of food resources.

Contested identity

a dispute within a group about the collective identity or identities of the group.

Extended family

a family of at least three-generations sharing a household.

Discreteness

a feature of human speech that can be isolated from others.

Open system:

a form of communication that can create an infinite number of new messages; a feature of human language only

Closed system:

a form of communication that cannot create new meanings or messages; it can only convey pre-programmed (innate) messages.

Unbound morpheme

a morpheme that can stand alone as a separate word

Family of procreation

a new household formed for the purpose of conceiving and raising children

Nuclear family

a parent or parents who are in a culturally-recognized relationship, such as marriage, along with minor or dependent children.

Shaman:

a part time religious practitioner who carries out religious rituals when needed, but also participates in the normal work of the community.

Neolithic Revolution

a period of rapid innovation in subsistence technologies that began 10,000 years ago and led to the emergence of agriculture. Neolithic means "new stone age," a name referring to the stone tools produced during this time period.

Prophet:

a person who claims to have direct communication with the supernatural realm and who can communicate divine messages to others.

Proletarianization:

a process through which farmers are removed from the land and forced to take wage labor employment.

Hypodescent:

a racial classification system that assigns a person with mixed racial heritage to the racial category that is considered least privileged

Animism:

a religious system organized around a belief that plants, animals, inanimate objects, or natural phenomena have a spiritual or supernatural element.

Legitimizing ideologies

a set of complex belief systems, often developed by those in power, to rationalize, explain, and perpetuate systems of inequality

Pigmentocracy:

a society characterized by strong correlation between a person's skin color and his or her social class.

Matriarchal:

a society in which women have authority to make decisions.

Register:

a style of speech that varies depending on who is speaking to whom and in what context.

Horticulture:

a subsistence system based on the small-scale cultivation of crops intended primarily for the direct consumption of the household or immediate community

Pastoralism:

a subsistence system in which people raise herds of domesticated livestock.

Foraging:

a subsistence system that relies on wild plant and animal food resources. This system is sometimes called "hunting and gathering."

Taxonomies:

a system of classification

Gesture-call system:

a system of non-verbal communication using varying combinations of sound, body language, scent, facial expression, and touch, typical of great apes and other primates, as well as humans.

Heteronormativity

a term coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the often-unnoticed system of rights and privileges that accompany normative sexual choices and family formation.

Thick description

a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures to describe a detailed description of the studied group that not only explains the behavior or cultural event in question but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it.

Exogamy:

a term describing expectations that individuals must marry outside a particular group.

Endogamy:

a term describing expectations that individuals must marry within a particular group.

Cargo cult

a term sometimes used to describe rituals that seek to attract material prosperity. The term is generally not preferred by anthropologists.

The Other

a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are "different" from one's own

Homo economicus

a term used to describe a person who would make rational decisions in ways predicted by economic theories.

Jim Crow

a term used to describe laws passed by state and local governments in the United States during the early twentieth century to enforce racial segregation of public and private places.

Universal grammar (UG):

a theory developed by linguist Noam Chomsky suggesting that a basic template for all human languages is embedded in our genes.

Cultural evolutionism

a theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced. This theory was later shown to be incorrect

Biological determinism:

a theory that biological differences between males and females leads to fundamentally different capacities, preferences, and gendered behaviors. This scientifically unsupported view suggests that gender roles are rooted in biology, not culture.

Filial piety

a tradition requiring that the young provide care for the elderly and in some cases ancestral spirits.

Participant observation

a type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

Coercive harmony

an approach to dispute resolution that emphasizes compromise and consensus rather than confrontation and results in the marginalization of dissent (harmony ideology) and the repression of demands for justice.

World Systems Theory:

an approach to social science and history that involves examination of the development and functioning of the world economic system.

Oralist approach

an approach to the education of deaf children that emphasizes lip reading and speaking orally while discouraging use of signed language.

Race:

an attempt to categorize humans based on observed physical differences.

Negative reciprocity

an attempt to get something for nothing; exchange in which both parties try to take advantage of the other.

Armchair anthropology

an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.

Nation:

an ethnic population.

Cosmology:

an explanation for the origin or history of the world.

Language:

an idealized form of speech, usually referred to as the standard variety.

Noble savage

an inaccurate way of portraying indigenous groups or minority cultures as innocent, childlike, or uncorrupted by the negative characteristics of "civilization."

Sorcerer:

an individual who seeks to use magic for his or her own purposes.

Zoomorphic:

an object or being that has animal characteristics.

Anthropomorphic:

an object or being that has human characteristics

Qualitative

anthropological research designed to gain an in-depth, contextualized understanding of human behavior.

Quantitative:

anthropological research that uses statistical, mathematical, and/or numerical data to study human behavior

Status:

any culturally-designated position a person occupies in a particular setting.

Symbol:

anything that serves to refer to something else.

Duality of patterning:

at the first level of patterning, meaningless discrete sounds of speech are combined to form words and parts of words that carry meaning. In the second level of patterning, those units of meaning are recombined to form an infinite possible number of longer messages such as phrases and sentences.

Revitalization rituals

attempts to resolve serious problems, such as war, famine or poverty through a spiritual or supernatural intervention

Going native:

becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.

Ethnicity:

degree to which a person identifies with and feels an attachment to a particular ethnic group.

Unilineal:

descent is recognized through only one line or side of the family

Patriarchy:

describes a society with a male-dominated political and authority structure and an ideology that privileges males over females in domestic and public spheres

Supernatural:

describes entities or forces not governed by natural laws.

Design features

descriptive characteristics of the communication systems of all species, including that of humans, proposed by linguist Charles Hockett to serve as a definition of human language

Cline:

differences in the traits that occur in populations across a geographical area. In a cline, a trait may be more common in one geographical area than another, but the variation is gradual and continuous, with no sharp breaks.

Feuds:

disputes of long duration characterized by a state of recurring hostilities between families, lineages, or other kin groups.

Polygamous:

families based on plural marriages in which there are multiple wives or, in rarer cases, multiple husbands

Household:

family members who reside together.

Affinal:

family relationships created through marriage

Nonconcordant:

genetic traits that are inherited independently rather than as a package.

Generalized reciprocity

giving without expecting a specific thing in return.

Ethnogenesis:

gradual emergence of new ethnicities in response to changing social circumstances

Matrifocal:

groups of related females (e.g. mother-her sisters-their offspring) form the core of the family and constitute the family's most central and enduring social and emotional ties.

Patrifocal:

groups of related males (e.g. a father-his brothers) and their male offspring form the core of the family and constitute the family's most central and enduring social and emotional ties.

Indigenous:

people who have continually lived in a particular location for a long period of time (prior to the arrival of others) or who have historical ties to a location and who are culturally distinct from the dominant population surrounding them. Other terms used to refer to indigenous people are aboriginal, native, original, first nation, and first people. Some examples of indigenous people are Native Americans of North America, Australian Aborigines, and the Berber (or Amazigh) of North Africa.

Subsistence farmers

people who raise plants and animals for their own consumption, but not for sale to others.

Key Informants

individuals who are more knowledgeable about their culture than others and who are particularly helpful to the anthropologist.

Lineage:

individuals who can trace or demonstrate their descent through a line of males or females back to a founding ancestor

Amalgamation:

interactions between members of distinct ethnic and cultural groups that reduce barriers between the groups over time

Bilateral descent

kinship (family) systems that recognize both the mother's and the father's "sides" of the family.

Unilineal descent

kinship (family) systems that recognize only one sex-based "side" of the family

Matrilineal:

kinship (family) systems that recognize only relatives through a line of female ancestors.

Patrilineal:

kinship (family) systems that recognize only relatives through a line of male ancestors.

Chiefdom:

large political units in which the chief, who usually is determined by heredity, holds a formal position of power

Symbolic ethnicity

limited or occasional displays of ethnic pride and identity that are primarily for public display.

Acculturation:

loss of a minority group's cultural distinctiveness in relation to the dominant culture.

Multiculturalism:

maintenance of multiple cultural traditions in a single society.

Serial monogamy

marriage to a succession of spouses one after the other.

Polygyny:

marriages in which there is one husband and multiple wives.

Polyandry:

marriages with one wife and multiple husbands.

Patrilocal residence

married individuals live with or near the husband's father's family.

Matrilocal residence

married individuals live with or near the wife's mother's family

Remittances:

money that migrants laboring outside of the region or country send back to their hometowns and families. In Mexico, remittances make up a substantial share of the total income of some towns' populations.

Age sets

named categories to which men of a certain age are assigned at birth

Neolocal residence:

newly married individuals establish a household separate from other family members.

Vernaculars:

non-standard varieties of a language, which are usually distinguished from the standard by their inclusion of stigmatized forms

Sumptuary rules:

norms that permit persons of higher rank to enjoy greater social status by wearing distinctive clothing, jewelry, and/or decorations denied those of lower rank.

Profane:

objects or ideas are ordinary and can be treated with disregard or contempt

Sacred:

objects or ideas are set apart from the ordinary and treated with great respect or care

Age grades:

of men who are close to one another in age and share similar duties or responsibilities.

Dowry:

payments made to the groom's family by the bride's family before marriage.

Ethnic group

people in a society who claim a distinct identity for themselves based on shared cultural characteristics and ancestry

Millenarians:

people who believe that major transformations of the world are imminent.

Tribe:

political units organized around family ties that have fluid or shifting systems of temporary leadership.

Magic:

practices intended to bring supernatural forces under one's personal control.

Assimilation:

pressure placed on minority groups to adopt the customs and traditions of the dominant culture.

Nuclear Family

A family made up of two generations: the parents and their unmarried children.

How Is Race Constructed in the United States?

History of U.S. Racial Categories: Constructing Whiteness By the end of the seventeenth century, the terms "black" and "white" came to symbolize the differences between the two groups, shifting the emphasis of stratification from class to "race." • The Rule of Hypodescent • A rule of racial classification was established in many states. • • Informally known as the "one drop" rule, it was used to create racial classifications of the children of mixed parentage. • Race and Immigration • Chinese Immigrants • In the 1850s, workers flocked to California because of the booms of the gold rush and railroad building in the first major influx of people of Asian ancestry into the United States. • Chinese immigrants were looked down upon socially and labeled as the "Yellow Peril" here to take American jobs. • Building on the 1875 Page Act, which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States In 1882, the United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which marked the first legal barrier to immigrants from a particular country . • It was active legal protection from a perceived racial threat. • Race and Immigration • Irish Immigrants • Prior to the late nineteenth century, they were discriminated against as a racial minority despite having light skin. • • Since these "natural" orders are built by culture, they can just as easily be deconstructed by culture. • • Irish Americans, Jews, Italians, Finns, Greeks, Armenians, and all Latin Americans were once classified as "nonwhite" in the United States.

How Is Globalization Affecting the State?

International Nonstate Actors Challenge State Sovereignty • Civil Society Organizations • In recent decades, civil society organizations, also known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), have become increasingly common and influential. • Civil society organizations are typically activist organizations seeking to raise awareness about issues such as indigenous rights, the plight of the hungry, or the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. • The Maasai Demand Political Rights • The good intentions of NGOs and civil society organizations, however, often run up against the very complicated reality of modern cultural identity, national identity, and the struggle over political power. • The Maasai people represent a traditional cultural group in the African nation of Tanzania. • • The Maasai have largely avoided modernization and integration with the nation - state. • Instead they have maintained their traditional cultural values along with traditional pastoral economic practices.

Patterns of Residence after Marriage

Neolocal: married couple set up independent household at a place of their own choosing. Patrilocal: married people live with or near the husband's father.

• How Have Anthropologists Viewed the Origins of Human Political History?

Service classified all political systems into just four types: Bands Tribes Chiefdoms States • Bands • Band: a small, nomadic, and self - sufficient group of anywhere between 25 and 150 individuals with face - to - face social relationships, usually egalitarian. • Tribe: a type of pastoralist or horticulturist society with populations usually numbering in the hundreds or thousands in which leadership is more stable than that of a band but usually egalitarian, with social relations based on reciprocal exchange. • Chiefdoms • Chiefdom: a political system with a hereditary leader who holds central authority, typically supported by a class of high - ranking elites, informal laws, and a simple judicial system, often numbering in the tens of thousands, with the beginnings of intensive agriculture and some specialization. • Chiefdoms • Chiefdoms in Micronesia • In his ethnography of the chiefdoms found in Micronesia, Glenn Petersen found a fascinating dual chiefdom system. • Essentially there were two different chiefdom systems running at the same time within the same group of people. • Petersen found these systems emphasized two different cultural values within Micronesia. • One emphasized pacifism and kinship. • The other emphasized warriors and martial skill. • Putting Typologies in Perspective • Service's typology has been both widely embraced and widely criticized by his fellow anthropologists. • The most prominent critique has been that Service's typology oversimplifies the reality. • This is undeniably true. • We are boiling down every single culture that has ever existed on the planet into just four types. • By this point in the semester, you should have a new appreciation for just how diverse culture can be.

What Is the State?

State: the most complex form of political organization, associated with societies that have intensive agriculture, high levels of social stratification, and centralized authority. • Aspects of State Power • Anthropologists have also found that states always attempt to establish a monopoly on power and force. • Many modern states have standing armies, and virtually all have government - backed police forces. • The use of force outside of these institutions is typically illegal, or closely controlled and monitored. • Political power — that is, the power to make laws and control the population — is also tightly controlled.

Subsistence and Economics

What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Production, Distribution, and Consumption ́ All economies involve these 3 key stages: ́ Production ́ Production involves how necessary goods are produced. ́ When talking about production, anthropologists often focus on food production. ́ As such we will look at different food production strategies — everything from foraging to industrialized agriculture. What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Production, Distribution, and Consumption ́ Distribution ́ Distribution involves how produced goods are distributed among the people who need them. ́ For Americans, this is where money becomes involved. ́ We employ a monetary - based distribution system, but there are many forms of distribution, including: ́ Market exchange (or barter) ́ Reciprocity ́ Redistribution ́ The ways in which a culture handles production and distribution have major impacts on day - to - day life. ́ Do you have to grow your own food? Do you have to travel to a market in the next town? Do you receive goods that are redistributed by your ruler? redistributed by your ruler? ́ ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Production, Distribution, and Consumption ́ Consumption ́ Consumption, the final stage of an economy, is usually a little more straightforward. ́ You eat the food, you wear the clothes, and so on. ́ While this stage is straightforward, it is nonetheless important. ́ If you do not consume the goods, then you cannot survive. ́ Then, cultural replication stops, and the system falls apart. Pre - industrial Peoples and Food Production Industrial Peoples ́ Industrialism, in which people discovered ways of harnessing the energy in fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), resulted in a dramatic increase in levels of material consumption and profits for private industries. A Brief Survey of Food Production ́ Anthropologist Yehudi Cohen has proposed five primary strategies that humans have employed to produce food to eat: ́ Food foraging ́ Pastoralism (i.e., raising animals) ́ Horticulture (i.e., raising plants) ́ Agriculture (i.e., an intensified version of horticulture) ́ Industrialized agriculture (i.e., the mass production of food stuffs) ́ ́ A Brief Survey of Food Production ́ Food Foraging ́ The majority of human beings who have ever lived on this planet lived as hunter - gatherers. ́ They hunted for their meat and gathered the plants that they needed. ́ Foraging and hunting and gathering are synonymous terms in anthropology. ́ Food foragers hunt, fish, and gather nuts, fruits, root crops, and so on. ́ To d a y, v e r y f e w p e o p l e s t i l l e m p l o y f o o d f o r a g i n g a s t h e i r p r i m a r y subsistence system. ́ Estimates suggest fewer than 250,000 still live such a lifestyle. ́ ́ Food Foraging and Culture ́ Division of labor based on sex and age ́ Seasonal mobility ́ Seasonal congregation and dispersal of groups Food Foraging Basics ́ Small mobile groups of 50 or less (bands) ́ Resource allocation: ́ Typically, groups vary on how rights are claimed. Some may be first come first serve and others might be "owned" by commonly used watering holes. ́ Reciprocal sharing: ́ This is a normatively expected behavior. Domestication of Plants and Animals ́ Domestication: The purposeful planting and cultivation of selected plants and taming and breeding of certain animals ́ Increases the supply of the selected species by controlling their location and numbers. ́ Arose 10,000 years ago in the Old World and 5,000 years ago in the New World. ́ Supports greater numbers of people per unit of land. Old World Crops and Livestock ́ The region known as the Fertile Crescent (Jordan, Israel, Syria, Old World Crops and Livestock ́ The region known as the Fertile Crescent (Jordan, Israel, Syria, eastern Turkey, western Iran, and Iraq) produced some of the world's earliest crops. ́ Examples include wheat, barley, lentils, peas, carrots, figs, almonds, pistachios, dates, and grapes. ́ Dogs were among the earliest domesticated animals in the Old World. New World Crops and Livestock ́ In Central America and Mexico, some of the worlds most widely used crops today were domesticated. These included: ́ Examples include maize (corn), tomatoes, several varieties of beans, red peppers, avocados, cacao (used for making chocolate) and squash. ́ Llamas and alpacas were among the earliest domesticated animals in this region. A Brief Survey of Food Production ́ Pastoralism, Horticulture, and Agriculture ́ Pastoralism involves raising domesticated animals as a primary food resource. These animals including sheep, goats, cattle, llamas, turkeys, chickens, pigs, and so on. ́ Raising these animals can easily become a full - time occupation, and each animal represents a considerable investment by the community. ́ This is where foragers have some advantage. ́ If you have an unsuccessful hunt, you can go out the next day and try again. ́ But if your pig dies from an illness or is stolen by a neighbor, you have lost everything that you put into that pig, and now your food source is gone. Pastoralism Pastoralism ́ Pastoral peoples can also farm. ́ When farmers raise livestock, they generally grow crops especially for their animals. ́ Pastoral peoples rely on grassy pasturelands that grow naturally in especially for their animals. ́ Pastoral peoples rely on grassy pasturelands that grow naturally in their territories. Advantages of Pastoralism ́ The pastoral adaptation occurs mainly in deserts, grasslands, savannas, mountains, and the Arctic tundra. ́ ́ Cultivation in these areas is impossible, extremely difficult, or highly risky. ́ ́ Inadequate rainfall, wide fluctuations in rainfall, or very short growing seasons ́ ́ Most of the vegetation of grasslands, arid savannas, and tundra is indigestible by humans. ́ Livestock can eat this vegetation and transform it into milk, blood, fat, and muscle. ́ Livestock provide an insurance against droughts and accompanying crop failures. ́ Livestock are mobile and can be moved to areas with fresh pasture and water. Principle Regions of Pastoralism at the Contact Period Advantages & Costs of Plant Cultivation ́ Why did domestication begin? ́ Climate shift in eastern Mediterranean ́ Growing human populations ́ Costs? ́ Plots must be cleared by removing forest or grasses ́ Crops must be planted, requiring labor ́ Natural processes continually invade artificial plant community and landscape (pests, weeds) What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Food Foraging ́ Pastoralism, Horticulture, and Agriculture ́ Horticulture involves raising domesticated plants through nonintensive means as a primary food source. Horticulture involves raising domesticated plants through nonintensive means as a primary food source. ́ When we adopt intensive means for raising domesticated plants, it becomes agriculture. Horticulture is simpler and generally produces less food. ́ Common examples of horticulture include swidden (or slash and burn) farming. ́ This style of agriculture typically involves clearing a field of vegetation, allowing that vegetation to dry out, and then burning it before you start planting. The ash provides an effective fertilizer for the field. ́ Another common form of horticulture is household garden plots. Garden plots are typically fertilized by family waste products. ́ Horticulture methods can typically produce enough food for a family but cannot support a larger population Horticulture ́ Method of cultivation in which hand tools powered by humans are used and land use is extensive ́ Produces more food per unit of land than foraging ́ Requires a labor investment in a piece of land Principle Regions of Horticulture at the Contact Period Shifting Cultivation (Slash and Burn) Dry Land Gardening Cultural Consequences of Horticulture ́ Living groups are larger and more permanently settled compared to foraging groups. ́ ́ Families have more definite rights of ownership over particular pieces of land. ́ ́ Resource allocation differs compared to foragers. ́ Families are more attached to specific, fairly bounded places where their ancestors established a claim. What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ A Brief Survey of Food Production A Brief Survey of Food Production ́ Food Foraging ́ Pastoralism, Horticulture, and Agriculture ́ Agriculture, however, has the ability to support much larger populations. ́ Agriculture is technically defined as the intensive production of domesticated plants. ́ Agricultural intensification can be achieved through many means, including: ́ The construction of irrigation systems ́ Building raised fields in swampy territory ́ Building terraces in hilly areas ́ The use of intensive fertilization (usually from animal feces) ́ Through these means of intensification, much larger amounts of food can be produced. ́ ́ Agriculture Consequences of Agriculture ́ Allowed a single farm family to produce a surplus over and above its own food needs ́ The surplus can be traded, sold, or taxed. ́ Surplus supports people who do not do farm work themselves ́ Rulers, aristocrats, bureaucrats, priests, warriors, merchants, and craft specialists ́ Supported the rise of civilization and city life. Principal Regions of Agriculture at Contact Period Ancient Civilizations Peasants Nature and Culture in Pre-industrial Times ́ Foraging is most efficient when people live in small, mobile groups that maintain flexible rights to the natural resources of large territories. ́ Horticultural people settle in hamlets or villages in which land and territories. ́ Horticultural people settle in hamlets or villages in which land and other productive resources are owned by families or other kinship or residential groups. ́ Agriculture resulted in development of towns and cities occupied by elites and specialists and surrounded by rural peasant communities that contribute labor, tribute and/or tax to support the government and public projects. ́ ́ Pastoral peoples are seasonally nomadic, with grazing rights to pasturelands vested in families, kin groups, or the tribe as a whole. ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Food Foraging ́ Pastoralism, Horticulture, and Agriculture ́ Industrial Agriculture ́ With the introduction of modern machinery, many cultures have taken intensified agriculture to the level of industrialized agriculture. ́ Industrial agriculture is defined by the introduction of mechanization and the resultant mass production of food stuffs. ́ Fewer people involved in growing the food we eat than ever before, increasingly, industrialized agriculture involves the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified crops. ́ ́ Industrialism ́ One condition of industrialism is that few people work in activities that extract natural resources like farming, fishing, lumbering, and mining. ́ This is a new condition in human history. Consequences of Industrialism ́ Acquiring energy from fossil fuels was the key development of the Industrial Revolution. ́ The process by which these harnessed fossil fuels provide most energy used in production, dramatically increasing the quantity of products that can be produced. products that can be produced. Consequences of Industrialism ́ Population growth = More food, chemicals for larger food supply, and transportation needed to distribute food ́ People rarely have knowledge or access to land or water to hunt or farm. ́ We rely on grocery stores. Modes of Production ́ Anthropologist Eric Wolf identified three distinct modes of production in human history: domestic (kin - ordered), tributary, and capitalist. ́ 1) Domestic or kin - ordered production organizes work on the basis of family relations and does not necessarily involve formal social domination, or the control of and power over other people. However, power and authority may be exerted over specific groups based on age and gender. ́ 2) Tributary Mode of production, the primary producer pays tribute in the form of material goods or labor to another individual or group of individuals who controls production through political, religious, or military force. ́ 3) Capitalism, is the one most familiar to us. The capitalist mode of production has three central features: (1) private property is owned by members of the capitalist class; (2) workers sell their labor power to the capitalists in order to survive; and (3) surpluses of wealth are produced, and these surpluses are either kept as profit or reinvested in production in order to generate further surplus. What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? Distribution and Exchange What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Distribution and Exchange ́ Market Exchange ́ The earliest markets found among human cultures operated on a barter system. ́ Barter is the exchange of goods and services one for the other. ́ Those individuals involved in the exchange would have to come to an agreement as to the value of a variety of goods. ́ Then a mutually beneficial exchange could be agreed upon. ́ Then a mutually beneficial exchange could be agreed upon. ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Distribution and Exchange ́ Market Exchange ́ Reciprocity ́ In their study of reciprocity, anthropologists have identified three main types of reciprocity: ́ ́ Generalized reciprocity ́ ́ Balanced reciprocity ́ ́ Negative reciprocity ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Reciprocity - Generalized ́ Generalized reciprocity reflects exchanges where value is not closely monitored, and the timing and value of a reciprocal exchange (i.e., repayment) is left open. Generalized reciprocity is widely used to build and reinforce social networks. ́ ́ If you are generous and offer your friend a ride today, you hope that someday in the future your friend may be able to help you study for an exam. ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Reciprocity - Balanced ́ ́ Balanced reciprocity represents a more formalized and regularized form of reciprocity. ́ The value of the items exchanged is more carefully scrutinized, and reciprocal exchanges are expected in short order. For example, if you buy your friend a drink, you expect that he or she will buy you a drink later in the evening. if you buy your friend a drink, you expect that he or she will buy you a drink later in the evening. ́ Balanced reciprocity involves higher levels of expected return than generalized reciprocity. ́ Reciprocal exchanges are expected, and considerable social penalties can occur if they are not received. ́ Next time your friend buys you a drink, try refusing to buy one for him or her later in the evening and see what happens. ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Reciprocity - Negative ́ Negative reciprocity involves the idea of attempting to get more than you give in an exchange. ́ In short, you are out for economic benefit and not social benefit. ́ Think of this as that moocher who lives in your dorm and gets rides and free drinks but never gives anything back. ́ Negative reciprocity becomes more common in cultures when economic benefits can be separated from social benefits. ́ Thus in a monetary economy like ours, if you get your hands on money, it doesn't really matter how you got your hands on it. ́ You can still use it to buy all of the same things. ́ ́ What Is an Economy, and What Is Its Purpose? ́ Distribution and Exchange ́ Redistribution ́ Our final form of distribution and exchange is redistribution. ́ Redistribution involves the collection of goods by a central authority (usually a chief or other kind of ruler). ́ Once collected these goods are later redistributed back to the people.

Transgender:

a category for people who transition from one sex to another, either male-to-female or female-to-male.

Rite of passage

a ceremony designed to transition individuals between life stages

World system:

a complex economic system through which goods circulate around the globe. The world system for food is characterized by a separation of the producers of goods from the consumers.

Gender ideology

a complex set of beliefs about gender and gendered capacities, propensities, preferences, identities and socially expected behaviors and interactions that apply to males, females, and other gender categories. Gender ideology can differ among cultures and is acquired through enculturation. Also known as a cultural model of gender

Big man

a form of temporary or situational leadership; influence results from acquiring followers

Structural violence:

a form of violence in which a social structure or institution harms people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Third gender:

a gender identity that exists in non-binary gender systems offering one or more gender roles separate from male or female.

Segmentary lineage

a hierarchy of lineages that contains both close and relatively distant family members.

Matrilineal descent

a kinship group created through the maternal line (mothers and their children).

Patrilineal descent:

a kinship group created through the paternal line (fathers and their children).

Creole:

a language that develops from a pidgin when the pidgin becomes so widely used that children acquire it as one of their first languages. Creoles are more fully complex than pidgins.

Patrilocal:

a male-centered kinship group where living arrangements after marriage often center around households containing related men.

Bilateral cross-cousin marriage

a man marries a woman who is both his mother's brother's daughter and his father's sister's daughter.

Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage

a man marries a woman who is his mother's brother's daughter.

Restricted exchange

a marriage system in which only two extended families can engage in this exchange.

Carrying capacity

a measurement of the number of calories that can be extracted from a particular unit of land in order to support a human population.

General purpose money:

a medium of exchange that can be used in all economic transactions

Inductive:

a type of reasoning that uses specific information to draw general conclusions. In an inductive approach, the researcher seeks to collect evidence without trying to definitively prove or disprove a hypothesis. The researcher usually first spends time in the field to become familiar with the people before identifying a hypothesis or research question. Inductive research usually is not generalizable to other settings.

Bound morpheme:

a unit of meaning that cannot stand alone; it must be attached to another morpheme.

Dialect:

a variety of speech. The term is often applied to a subordinate variety of a language. Speakers of two dialects of the same language do not necessarily always understand each other.

Stem family

a version of an extended family that includes an older couple and one of their adult children with a spouse (or spouses) and children

Joint family

a very large extended family that includes multiple generations.

Area studies

a way of organizing research and academic programs around world regions such as Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, China, Latin America, and Europe.

Matrilocal:

a woman-centered kinship group where living arrangements after marriage often center around households containing related women.

Rite of intensification:

actions designed to bring a community together, often following a period of crisis.

Salvage anthropology

activities such as gathering artifacts, or recording cultural rituals with the belief that a culture is about to disappear

Functionalist:

an approach developed in British anthropology that emphasized the ways that the parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

Political economy

an approach in anthropology that investigates the historical evolution of economic relationships as well as the contemporary political processes and social structures that contribute to differences in income and wealth.

Functionalism:

an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

Structuralism:

an approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

Kinship:

blood ties, common ancestry, and social relationships that form families within human groups.

Paralanguage:

characteristics of speech beyond the actual words spoken, such as pitch, loudness, tempo.

Language universals:

characteristics shared by all linguists.

Kinship diagrams

charts used by anthropologists to visually represent relationships between members of a kinship group

Socially constructed:

concept developed by society that is maintained over time through social interactions that make the idea seem "real."

Binary model of gender

cultural definitions of gender that include only two identities--male and female.

Androgyny

cultural definitions of gender that recognize some gender differentiation, but also accept "gender bending" and role-crossing according to individual capacities and preferences.

Staple crops

foods that form the backbone of the subsistence system by providing the majority of the calories a society consumes

Codified law:

formal legal systems in which damages, crimes, remedies, and punishments are specified.

Priests:

full-time religious practitioners

Semantics:

how meaning is conveyed at the word and phrase level.

Land tenure

how property rights to land are allocated within societies, including how permissions are granted to access, use, control, and transfer land.

Pragmatics:

how social context contributes to meaning in an interaction

Cultural determinism:

idea that behavioral differences are a result of cultural not racial or genetic causes.

Ideologies:

ideas designed to reinforce the right of powerholders to rule.

Redistribution:

the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person or institution for the purpose of dispersal at a later date

Cultural appropriation

the act of copying an idea from another culture and in the process distorting its meaning.

Phonemes:

the basic meaningless sounds of a language.

Agriculture:

the cultivation of domesticated plants and animals using technologies that allow for intensive use of the land.

Foodways:

the cultural norms and attitudes surrounding food and eating.

Social classes:

the division of society into groups based on wealth and status

Caste system

the division of society into hierarchical levels; one's position is determined by birth and remains fixed for life

Undocumented:

the preferred term for immigrants who live in a country without formal authorization from the state. Undocumented refers to the fact that these people lack the official documents that would legally permit them to reside in the country. Other terms such as illegal immigrant and illegal alien are often used to refer to this population. Anthropologists consider those terms to be discriminatory and dehumanizing. The word undocumented acknowledges the human dignity and cultural and political ties immigrants have developed in their country of residence despite their inability to establish formal residence permissions.

Reified:

the process by which an inaccurate concept or idea is accepted as "truth."

Cultural transmission

the process by which aspects of culture are passed from person to person; often generation to generation; a feature of some species' communication systems.

Consumption:

the process of buying, eating, or using a resource, food, commodity, or service.

Racial formation

the process of defining and redefining racial categories in a society.

Enculturation:

the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group

Arbitrariness:

the relationship between a symbol and its referent (meaning), in which there is no obvious connection between them.

Mono-cropping:

the reliance on a single plant species as a food source. Mono-cropping leads to decreased dietary diversity and carries the risk of malnutrition compared to a more diverse diet.

Means of production:

the resources used to produce goods in a society such as land for farming or factories.

Palate:

the roof of the mouth.

Syntax:

the rules by which a language combines morphemes into larger units

Diaspora:

the scattering of a group of people who have left their original homeland and now live in various locations. Examples of people living in the diaspora are Salvadoran immigrants in the United States and Europe, Somalian refugees in various countries, and Jewish people living around the world.

Commodity chain:

the series of steps a food takes from location where it is produced to the store where it is sold to consumers

Role:

the set of behaviors expected of an individual who occupies a particular status

Gender:

the set of culturally and historically invented beliefs and expectations about gender that one learns and performs. Gender is an "identity" one can choose in some societies, but there is pressure in all societies to conform to expected gender roles and identities.

Subsistence system:

the set of skills, practices, and technologies used by members of a society to acquire and distribute food.

Family:

the smallest group of individuals who see themselves as connected to one another. Family of orientation: the family in which an individual is raised.

Band

the smallest unit of political organization, consisting of only a few families and no formal leadership positions

Mode of production

the social relations through which human labor is used to transform energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.

Kinesics:

the study of all forms of human body language.

Dyads:

two people in a socially approved pairing. One example is a married couple.

What Is Language and Where Does It Come From?

u Defining Language - u Language is a system of communication that uses symbols — such as words, sounds, and gestures — organized according to certain rules, to convey any kind of information. u u The Origins of Human Language u Anatomy of humans is specific for speech u Great Apes can learn ASL but not speak like humans u The left frontal lobe of the brain associated with speech. u FOXP2 Gene in humans associated with speech u Open vs. Closed systems u Apes use Gesture - Call system u Non - verbal communication of humans includes: u Kinesics (body language) u u Proxemics (use of space) u u Paralanguage (background features of speech or sounds that convey meaning u Nonverbal Communication: Kinesics and Paralanguage u Kinesics is the study of how body movements are used in communication. Everything from eye contact to the position of our arms help to convey our thoughts and emotions. u Paralanguage, on the other hand, is the study of the variety of sounds that accompany language, everything from laughter and grunts, to crying and screaming u Descriptive Linguistics u describe the essential elements and rules of a particular language . u Phonemes represent the smallest unit of sound, English letters B and P represent sounds that are very similar, and yet they distinguish meaning, the words "big" and "pig," after all, are quite different. u The term "phonology" has been developed to describe the study of phonemes within a language, and different languages can have different sets of phonemes! u Morphemes represent the smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own. Thus, while B and P can distinguish meaning in some languages, they have no inherent meaning of themselves. Typically morphemes often form what we more regularly refer to as words, such as "big" and "pig." Both have specific meanings to them that cannot be changed as long as we stay in the same language

How Do Systems of Power Intersect with Language and Communication?

u Language and Gender u Language use by different genders can also be extremely different and caught up in symbols of power. u Men and women use language differently. u Gendered communication strategies are drawn into the dynamics of cultural power. u In large part, there is a longstanding conflict of gender in power within our own culture. Throughout Western cultural history, women have faced an uphill battle to enjoy the same rights as men. u u Everything from the right to own property to the right to vote has had to be fought for. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that language has been sucked into the battle over cultural power and gender. u u Language and Dialect u Language dialects represent another point of intersection between power and language. u A dialect is defined as a "nonstandard variation of a language." u In order to have a dialect, you must first have a standard version of a language. This may seem like a strange point to raise. u We live in a world where language has been heavily standardized. This has not always been so. u Everything from spelling, pronunciation, and grammar have been codified into books (i.e., dictionaries and grammar manuals) but only quite recently in human history, BUT It is more common to find greater variations within a language.

Can Language Shape Our Ways of Thinking?

u Language, Thought, and Culture u Two Theories u Noam Chomsky, "Universal Grammar" u Humans have similar language ability and thus ways of thinking, so this hardwiring leads to a "universal grammar." u He essentially argues that all human languages are ultimately (despite their surface differences) built on similar principles. u As evidence supporting this position, Chomsky cites the wide ability to translate thoughts and sentiments from one language to another. u Language, Thought, and Culture u Two Theories ...second theory u Sapir - Whorf Hypothesis (Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf) u This hypothesis holds that different languages create different ways of thinking. If different languages make use of different classifications, then they fundamentally change how we understand the world. u In support of this hypothesis, Whorf cites his experience working with the Native American language Hopi. u English is generally considered to have three tenses: the past, present, and future, but Whorf found that Hopi used only two tenses: a combined tense used for both the past and the present, and a separate tense for the future. u Whorf argued this fundamentally changes the way the Hopi think, arguing that the Hopi have a different conceptualization of time. Past and present reflect a lived reality. The future is only hypothetical or a potential reality. u The Role of Focal Vocabulary u Focal vocabulary represents a detailed and well - developed vocabulary for a particular topic (or focus). u u Typically this focus represents something of deep importance to a culture. u u For example, Evans - Pritchard found that the Nuer, who are dependent on cattle for their well - being, have over 400 words to differentiate types of cattle.

The Biological Basis of Language

u Larynx (voice box or Adam's apple) is lower in humans than in Great Apes u Pharynx (throat cavity) is longer u Tongue and palate (roof of mouth) are rounded u Brain structures for language are unique to humans

Code-switching

using two or more language varieties in a particular interaction.

Are There More than Two Sexes?

§ A Theory of Five Sexes § With the possible interplay of the three primary biological factors that create what we think of as biological sex, there is a broad range of possibilities between what is male and what is female. § § Medical data from 1955 to 2000 suggests that approximately 1.7 percent of children born in the United States did not neatly fit into our idealized notions of male and female. § § These individuals who fall in between have been referred to by a variety of terms, many of them not so pleasant. § § To d a y t h e s e i n d i v i d u a l s a r e g e n e r a l l y r e f e r r e d t o a s " i n t e r s e x . " T h i s suggests they are between male and female. § § Alternate Sexes, Alternate Genders § Cultures outside of western European/American culture are in some instances far more receptive to the concept of intersex individuals. § § The rarity of such biological conditions can be seen as a sign of supernatural power. § § In some cases the existence of such people has been worked into cultural theology, rather than simply being ignored. § § In such cultures the existence of an intersex individual can thus be more openly accepted and understood. § § Although, as we will see, problems may still abound for such individuals. § Alternate Sexes, Alternate Genders § Hijras in Hindu Ritual § Hijra" is the term in India for followers of the Hindu Mother Goddess Bahuchara Mata. § Bahuchara Mata is traditionally depicted as transgender. § "Transgender" refers to individuals whose gender identities or performances don't fit with the cultural norms related to their assigned sex at birth. § Most Hijra are transgender women who were assigned a male sex at birth, though some may be intersex. § In the past many Hijra underwent surgeries to remove their genitalia. § This was seen as an act of devotion, of willingness to devote one's life to the deity and become more like that deity. § Such surgeries are technically illegal in modern India, but their continued practice is still a concern in some quarters. § Alternate Sexes, Alternate Genders § Two - Spirits in Native North America § Moving to Native North America, anthropologists have found that many Native American cultures have incorporated multiple gender identities. § The name "Two - Spirits" comes from the Ojibwa language. § Ojibwa was spoken by a variety of native cultures located around the Great Lakes region of the modern nations of the United States and Canada. § The term "Two - Spirits" referred to people who had both feminine and masculine spirits. § Some native cultures even considered that people in such a position had supernatural powers. § Two - Spirits has become the generic identifier for Native American transgender people. Many similar terms existed in other Native American languages.

Clan

§ A descent group formed by members who believe they have a common (sometimes mythical) ancestor, even if they cannot specify the genealogical links.

Joint Family

§ A family pattern made up of brothers and their wives or sisters and their husbands (along with their children) living together.

Extended Families

§ A family pattern made up of three generations living together: parents, married children, and grandchildren.

Status

§ Adoption allows people to transform relationships based on nurturance into relations of kinship. § Ascribed statuses § Social positions people are assigned at birth. § Achieved statuses § Social positions people may attain later in life, often as the result of their own (or other people's) efforts.

Marriage as Social Process

§ Affinal relationships: connections through marriage. § Consanguineal relationships: connections based on descent § Endogamy: marriage within a defined social group. § Exogamy: marriage outside a defined social group.

What Is the Role of Descent in Kinship?

§ Bilateral descent § The principle that a descent group is formed by people who believe they are related to one another by connections made through their mothers and fathers equally. § Bilateral kindred § A kinship group that consists of the relatives of one person or group of siblings. § Unilineal descent § The principle that a descent group is formed by people who believe they are related to one another by links made through a father or a mother only. § Lineage § The consanguineal members of descent groups who believe they can trace their descent from known ancestors. § Patrilineage § A social group formed by people connected by father‒child links. § Matrilineage § A social group formed by people connected by mother‒child links. §

Fraternal Polyandry

§ Bridewealth § Most common in patrilineal societies that combine agriculture, pastoralism, and patrilocal marriage. § Transfer of symbolically important goods from family of groom to family of bride on occasion of marriage.

Families by Choice, Families of Affiliation

§ By the 1980s, some North American gays and lesbians had reached the following conclusions: § Blood ties cannot guarantee the "enduring diffuse solidarity" at the core of North American kinship. § New kin can be created through commitment to "families of choice."

Blended Families

§ Created when previously divorced or widowed people marry, bringing with them children from their previous marriages. § The internal dynamics of blended families may sometimes resemble those of polygynous families.

Descent and Adoption

§ Descent § The kinship principle based on culturally recognized parent‒child connections that define the social categories to which people belong. § Adoption § Kinship relationships based on nurturance, often in the absence of other connections based on mating or birth.

Marriage and Economic Exchange

§ Dowry § A transfer of family wealth, usually from parents to their daughter at the time of her marriage. § Sometimes regarded as the way women receive their inheritance. § Often considered the wife's contribution to the establishment of a new household. § In stratified societies, dowry can ensure that a woman will continue to enjoy her accustomed style of life. § The dowry may be reclaimed by the woman in the event of a divorce. § The practice of dowry is controversial in India today.

An Introduction to Gender

§ Gender Studies § An Important Subdiscipline of Anthropology § Gender studies (as a subfield of anthropology) is the field of research that investigates who we are as men and women. § It also investigates how gender categories intersect with other aspects of human culture, such as sexuality, health, family, religions, economics, politics, sports, and more

Residence Rules in the United States

§ In the United States, people often believe that we have no residence rules; however . . . § Where is the last place that a newly married American couple would want to set up residence? § In the household of their parents! § This is an example of neolocal residence.

Polygynous Family

§ Internal dynamics distinctive. § Co - wives have relationships with one another. § Co - wives have relationships with co - wives' children. § Children have relationships with full - and half - siblings. § Children have relationships with co - mothers. § Can be much jealousy and conflict.

Kinship Terminology (2)

• Croatia - Uncles: Father's brother ( stric ) is an authority figure, while mother's brother ( ujak ) is nurturing • China - Different names for family statuses reflect different roles • Navajo - People are "born to" their mother's clan • United States - Bilateral, equally related socially and legally

Kinship System Organizational Goals

§ Kinship systems need coherent selective principles to achieve the following social organizational goals: § 1. To provide for legitimate reproduction of group members. § This can be accomplished by means of marriage rules and rituals or by means of adoption. § 2. To decide where group members will live. § These kinship principles are called residence rules. They vary widely from society to society. § 3. To establish links between the generations. § Links between generations are called descent. § Descent can be established via birth or adoption. § 4. To determine how to pass on: § a. Positions in society (succession); b. Material goods (inheritance).

Family

§ Minimum definition: a woman and her dependent children. § Conjugal family: husband, wife, and their children. § Nonconjugal family: woman and her children. § Types of Family include: § Families of Orientation - Family you are born into § Family of Procreation - Family you create § Family of Affiliation - Family you choose

Single and Plural Spouses

§ Monogamy: § Married to one spouse at a time. § Polygamy: § Married to more than one spouse at a time.

Divorce

§ Most societies permit a marriage to be terminated. § Grounds for divorce vary, but in almost every society, childlessness is considered a cause for divorce.

European American Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies

§ New reproductive technologies (e.g., in vitro fertilization, sperm banks, surrogate motherhood). § Biological parenthood and legal parenthood. § "Biological facts were called into judicial play only . . . when they justified the preservation of traditional families." § — Dolgin, 1995

Forms of Polygamy

§ Polygyny § A man may be married to more than one woman at a time. § Polyandry § A woman may be married to more than one man at a time.

Bridewealth

§ Represents compensation for loss of woman's labor and childbearing capacities. § In some societies, bridewealth received for a woman is used to permit a brother to marry. § This gives the woman power over that brother because her marriage made his possible, allowing their lineage to continue.

Residence Rules

§ Residence rules typically are concerned with where newly married couples will live: § Patrilocal residence: The couple lives near or in the household of the groom's father. § Matrilocal residence: The couple lives near or in the household of the bride's mother. § Avunculocal residence: The couple lives near the bride's mother's brother. §

Kinship

§ Social relationships that are prototypically derived from the universal human experiences of mating, birth, and nurturance. § Relationships based on mating are called marriage; relationships based on birth are called descent; relationships based on nurturance alone are called adoption.

Kinship as Social Idiom

§ Some kinds of imagined communities use kin ties as resources out of which to construct new forms of relatedness at a broader social scale.

Kinship Principals

§ Taken together, kinship principles: § Define social groups. § Locate people within those groups. § Position the people and the groups in relation to one another, both in geographical space and over time . § Once again, kinship and relatedness have no necessary connection to biology or genetics

Incest Taboos

§ Virtually all cultures around the world have some form of incest taboo. § Incest is generally regarded as sexual relations with a close relative, but precisely what qualifies as incest varies. § A majority of cultures around the world regard any sexual contact within the nuclear family (parents and their children) as incest.However , there are notable exceptions to this rule. § Many royal families in cultures around the world have favored brother - sister marriages. This pattern of brother - sister marriage tends to be found in cultures where members of the royal house are viewed as divine or holy in some way. Thus, the marriage within the family is seen as a method to preserve that divinity and not dilute it.

Traditional Ethnographic Approaches

• "Armchair" Anthropology - relying on the stories of others and selecting those that fit pre - conceived ideas • Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of The Western Pacific (1922) pioneered the field method of participant observation • Salvage ethnography - sought to preserve, document, and collect artifacts of "primitive" and "disappearing" cultures - Flaherty's film Nanook of the North (1922) - Catlin and Curtis painted and photographed romanticized and curated scenes of Native Americans, creating the image of the "Noble Savage" • Holism - integrating all aspects of culture in order to understand the world's cultures • In anthropology in the United States, this resulted in the General or Four - Fields Approach: Cultural, Biological, Linguistic and Archaeological anthropology - Emphasized links between fields, such as language and cognition (Sapir - Whorf hypothesis)

Ethnicity in the United States

• "Hispanics," "Latinos," and "Latinas" in the United States do not fit neatly into preexisting American racial categories. • • The term Latino/Latina tries to encompass a huge diversity of national origins — tied together by geography and language, if not homogeneous culture.

Text Box 3: Gender and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

• 2016 - first female candidate to represent a political party in the U.S.: Hillary Clinton • Author Mukhopadhyay observed - Her opponent did not step down after evidence of inappropriate non - consensual sexual behavior - Double standard for criteria: as a woman, she was scrutinized for "likeability," "warmth" - She represented the intersection of change in the U.S. and drew hate from those afraid of changing demographics and social realities

What Is Culture?

• A set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. To g e t h e r, t h e y f o r m a n a ll - encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways . • Beliefs - all mental aspects of culture • Practices - behaviors and actions • Symbols - meanings of cultural objects and ideas • Humans have the capacity to learn any culture • Culture changes in response to internal and external factors • Humans are not bound by culture, can choose to resist or change it • Culture is symbolic • Our reliance on culture distinguishes us from other animals and shaped our evolution • Culture and biology are interrelated

Ethical Issues in Truth Telling

• American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics - Do no harm - Be open and honest regarding your work - Obtain informed consent and necessary permissions • Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands - "Went native" - Posthumously published diary exposed his (mostly negative) personal feelings about his study participants • • Chagnon and Neel in the Amazon of Brazil and Venezuela - Accused of deliberately starting a measles epidemic and sowing violent discord to study violence

Ethical Considerations

• American Anthropological Association's Code of Ethics - Do no harm - Obtain informed consent - Maintain anonymity/privacy if needed - Make results accessible

Belief in the Supernatural

• Animatism - belief in an impersonal supernatural force (Ex: mana ) • Animism - belief in supernatural beings, spirits, or aspects of humans (the soul) - Spirits generally make demands on the living - Ex: Filial piety in China; Japanese Shintoism • Gods - powerful non - human spirits - Monotheistic (single deity) or Polytheistic (multiple deities)

Is Anthropology the "Science of Race?"

• Anthropologists in the 18 th and 19 th centuries sought a biological basis for race • Since the mid - 20 th century, it is clear that race is not a biological category, but a socially and culturally defined one • People continue to think of race as a biological category because the idea has been reified - when an inaccurate concept is so heavily promoted that it seems to be an unquestioned "truth"

The Development of the Theories of Culture

• Anthropology in Europe - Functionalism - cultural traditions developed as a response to basic human needs - Structural - functionalism - in addition, social structures such as family serve to create social stability - However, these theories do not explain social change • Anthropology in the US - Franz Boas redirected the field away from cultural evolutionism and towards cultural relativism and participant - observation fieldwork • Cultural Relativism - the principle that a culture must be understood on its own terms rather than compared to an outsider's standard • Benedict, Mead and Kroeber also important in this movement, added enculturation and holism

Politics in Anthropology

• Anthropology looks at political systems more broadly than political science — • • From Western democracy to every form of political organization and practice that have been tried.

What Is the Relationship among Politics , the State, Violence, and War?

• Are Humans Naturally Violent or Peaceful? • Arguments around this question tend to fall into three generalizations: 1 Humans are indeed naturally violent; it must be some form of instinct acquired on our evolutionary trajectory 2 Humans are not violent, but violence arises through cultural practices that overwhelm our natural instincts. 3 The roots of violent behavior lie somewhere between nature and culture — that is both nature and culture influence our behaviors. Challenging the Myth of Killer Apes and Aggressive Humans • Primatologist Frans de Waal has sought to come to a better understanding of the issue of violence among humans by studying violence among our closest relatives. de Waal has worked with a variety of primates, including chimpanzees and bonobos, both of which are great apes and thus closely related to humans . • • He has also worked with Macaques, a species of Old World monkey .He has observed that primates are inherently social creatures . • While conflicts do break out from time to time, they have more to lose than gain by maintaining a state of perpetual violence. The State and War • We can imagine genetic origins for violence in terms of a personal conflict over immediate resources — that is , the heat of the moment. • • If someone steals your food , you might need to become violent so that you can retrieve that food and survive to the next day . • • But warfare is a planned act , something that involves the calculated action of thousands of people. • • It thus does not remotely compare to a spur - of - the - moment, unplanned action of anger .• Militarization • The concept of militarization refers to the preparation of a society for an ongoing state of warfare . • • This preparation involves not only the production the objects of war (i.e., weapons such as guns, bullets , tanks, planes, and so on) but also the creation of consent among the population for undertaking a war . • • To be effective, a state of militarization must employ both of these strategies :• 1 The production of the objects of war • • 2 The creation of consent

Melting Pot or a Salad Bowl?

• Assimilation - Members of ethnic minority groups must abandon their native customs and traditions and adopt those of the mainstream culture • Multiculturalism - Encouraging respect of ethnic and cultural diversity as a quality that enriches society • Amalgamation - Creation of new hybrid identities as groups mix

Family and Marriage: A Cultural Construct and Social Invention

• Beyond biological reality of biological mother and father, culture defines the family • Kinship is a set of social roles, legal relationships, meaning and expectations constructed by human cultures in specific contexts • Societal regulation of relationships and who "owns" children - main reasons for marriage • Marriages based on free choice and romantic love are relatively recent and unusual

The (Other) Subfields of Anthropology

• Biological Anthropology - study of human origins, evolution, and variation • Archaeology - study of the material past, using excavation • Linguistic Anthropology - study of human language • Applied Anthropology - application of anthropological theories, methods and findings to solve practical problems

Early Signs of Religious Thought

• Burials with stone tools, shells, animal bones • Cave paintings with animals and abstract images • Venus figurine sculptures

Text Box 2: Does Black Matriarchy Exist in Brazil?

• Candomblé is an Afro - Brazilian spirit possession religion centered in the state of Bahia, with female spiritual leaders • In 1930s, anthropologist Ruth Landes argued this was a matriarchal community in which women held all the power, gay men were allowed to join if they took on "mother" roles • Her conclusions have been disputed

Consumption and Global Capitalism

• Consumption - the process of buying, eating, or using a resource, food, commodity or service • Forms of behavior that connect our economic activity with the cultural symbols that give our lives meaning • Commodity - a good that is produced for sale or exchange for other goods • Objects have a "social life" • In the developing world, worries that Westernization around the world would change values has been challenged • Global supply chains move commodities around the world - Ex: Darjeeling Tea production and consumers

Elements of Religion

• Cosmology - an explanation for the origin or history of the world - Ancient Greeks; Navajo; Book of Genesis • Belief in the supernatural - a realm beyond direct human experience • Rules governing behavior - proper conduct, what is right and wrong • Ritual - practices or ceremonies that serve a religious purpose

Agriculture

• Cultivation of domesticated plants and animals using technologies such as irrigation, draft animals, mechanization, and chemical inputs • Allows for intensive and continuous use of land resources - led to Neolithic Revolution • Reliance on few staple crops, often starches • • Population growth likely need to the need to create larger and more productive farms • Farms also require more labor, encouraging farmers to have more children as laborers • Division of labor and specialization occur, leading to wealth differences • Can be argued that it led to a lower quality of life

Ethnographic Techniques and Perspectives

• Cultural relativism - the idea that we should seek to understand another person's beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture • Ethnocentrism - the tendency to view one's own culture as important and correct and as a stick by which to measure all other cultures • Activist anthropology strives to helps others, not only research their practices objectively • Symbolic and Interpretive anthropology believes there is no objectivity, and that culture is a body of "texts" to be read • Participant observation - Develops rapport with informants • Conversations and Interviews • Life histories • Genealogy • Key informants • Field notes

Writing Ethnography

• Data analysis • Challenging the old idea of "ethnographic authority" • Polyvocality • Reflexivity

Defining Religion

• Difficult to define because so many forms exist - Many societies do not make a distinction between "religious" and daily cultural practices - Some societies see spiritual beings and forces as inhabiting our physical world • A broad definition of religion is "the means by which human society and culture is extended to include the nonhuman"

Modes of Production

• Domestic Production (kin - ordered) - Foragers and small - scale farmers - Egalitarian - Labor organized by kinship relations - Collective ownership of means of production - Lower rates of social domination - Sharing • Tributary Production - Societies with classes of rulers and subjects - Farmers and herders who produce for themselves but also give portion to rulers as tribute - Communities organized by kinship - Tribute is used by ruling class rather than exchanged - Relationships often conflictual - Production is controlled politically • Capitalist Production - Began during 17 th and 18 th Centuries - Private property owned by a capitalist class - Workers sell their labor to others, are separated from the means of production - Keep wages low in order to sell products for more than it costs to produce the products - Generates a surplus • Fair - Trade Coffee Farmers: 21 st Century Peasants - Small - scale, semi - subsistence farmers in highland Guatemala (Maya) • Salaula in Zambia: The Informal Economy - Global clothing recycling business • Tributary Production - Societies with classes of rulers and subjects - Farmers and herders who produce for themselves but also give portion to rulers as tribute - Communities organized by kinship - Tribute is used by ruling class rather than exchanged - Relationships often conflictual - Production is controlled politically

Male Dominance: Universal and Biologically Rooted?

• Dominance is difficult to define and hard to study • Small - scale cultures had gender ideologies imposed on them from colonizers • To s t u d y s t a t u s , o n e m u s t s t u d y e c o n o m i c s , p o w e r / a u t h o r i t y, prestige, autonomy, and gender ideologies/beliefs - with many variables • The state creates patriarchy, yet we have yet to find any true matriarchies in history

A Brief History of Anthropological Thinking

• Early travelers - Zhang Qian (164 - 113 BC) and Ibn Battuta (1304 - 1369) • "Age of Discovery" (1400 - 1700s) - exploration and exploitation • "Age of Enlightenment" (beginning in 1700s) - privileged science and observation • 1800s - development of science, participant - observation, and cultural relativism

Who Can You Marry?

• Endogamy - marriage within a cultural group • Exogamy - marriage outside a cultural group • Marriages have been arranged throughout history and across cultures • If someone dies, then rules dictate how to keep a spouse in the family - Sororate and Levirate

Engaged Anthropology

• Engaged anthropology: • Using strategies and methods of anthropology to critique power, inequality, and address challenges to local communities and the world at large.

The Global Agriculture System

• Enough food production exists to feed all the people on the planet, but it is unequally distributed • Today, food exists in a world system • Each product has a commodity chain, moving items far from their point of origin • Distance and competition replace communal experiences

What Does "Ethnicity" Mean to Anthropologists?

• Ethnicity as Identity • Ethnicity continues to have significant influence in this world. • As a result, ethnicity is of great interest to anthropologists. • Creating Ethnic Identity • Anthropologists specifically view ethnicity as a cultural construction. • • That is to say, it is not biological; it is not physically inherited from one's parents. • • This is the most important way in which the concept of ethnicity differs from the concept of race. • • If ethnicity is not inherited, then it must be taught. Just as people must learn culture, they must learn ethnicity. • Constructing Indian Identity in the United States • India is a country with more than 1.2 billion people, among whom we can find many different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. Within India, these differences are often more salient than the broader joint identity of being "Indian." • When Indians immigrate to the United States, the differences among ethnicities, languages, and religions are no longer as salient.

What Does "Ethnicity" Mean to Anthropologists?

• Ethnicity, class, and caste may be naturalized in much the same way as race to justify social hierarchies. • "Race" and "ethnicity" are sometimes used interchangeably in the United States, but the terms have distinctly different meanings. • • Race is assumed to have some biological reality tied to physical appearance although it is a discredited biological term. • • Ethnicity: a sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group. It may be based on any number of cultural traits: language or dialect, clothing, foodways, etiquette, or bodily modifications such as tattoos or piercings.

Ethnography Today

• Ethnography may be conducted in urban environments and multiple sites, not only in far away or hard - to - reach locations • Using a deductive approach • Qualitative vs. Quantitative • Mixed methods are used more often today

Finding the Field

• Fieldwork - The most important method by which cultural anthropologists gather data - Chapter author Katie Nelson conducted fieldwork among a Brazilian tribe • Ethnography - the in - depth study of everyday practices and lives of a people - "thick description" • Participant Observation - main method of doing ethnography • Emic (insider) and Etic (outsider) perspectives •

What is unique about ethnographic fieldwork, and why do anthropologists conduct this kind of research?

• Fieldwork as a Social Science and as Art • Fieldwork Informs Daily Life

Why Is Anthropology Important?

• Fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem solving • The anthropological perspective fights ethnocentrism and the toxic idea that people are "Other" • Anthony Kwame Harrison, Virginia Tech - Studies the complexities, nuances, and significance of race; how race influences our perceptions of popular music (2009) • Bob Myers, Alfred University - Studies medical anthropology and public health • Lynn Kwiatkowski - Studies gender, malnutrition, and power relations in the Philippines; also gender violence in Vietnam

The Professionalization of Social Scientific Data - Gathering and Analysis

• Franz Boas • His work led to 4 fields of Anthropology • He advocated for "salvage ethnography" • First use of holistic approach to study Native Americans • Vocal proponent of Cultural Relativism! • Bronislaw Malinowski • Made ethnographic fieldwork a standard • Importance of Participant Observation and living with the people who you are trying to understand. • Studied and Lived with the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. • The Father of Fieldwork! • E.E. Evans - Pritchard • Believed culture and ethnography could be approached scientifically • His efforts helped systematize anthropology and make it easi er for anthropologists to compare work with each other. • Margaret Mead • Presented Anthropology to the Public by making it of interest to trhose outside the Academic realm • She helped to shake up long - held beliefs about alleged "biological" restrictions upon what women could and could not do. • The People of Puerto Rico • Ethnographic fieldwork took a new turn with the publication of The People of Puerto Rico (1956) by Julian Steward (1902 - 1972) • First, it represented an anthropological study of a culture already well known to the Western world (unlike the Trobriand Islanders studied by Malinowski) • Second, Steward's work was the result of a team effort, rather than that of a solitary anthropologist living within a foreign culture. • • Annette Weiner • (1933 - 1997): Feminism and Reflexivity • In the 1970s and 1980s, anthropology began to learn an important lesson about reflexivity, or critical self - examination. • The lesson came when Annette Weiner returned to the Trobriand Islands to study the same culture as Malinowski had. • She found that her previous male counterparts had witnessed only part of the culture. • All cultures have gender divisions. • Barbara Myerhoff • the ethnography Number Our Days. • Her work demonstrated the power of anthropology to illuminate not only the lives of others, but our own lives as well.

Theories of Religion

• Functional approach (Malinowski) - religion is born out of the problems of human life • Social approach (Durkheim) - difference between sacred and profane objects • Power (Marx) - religion helps justify inequalities in power and status • Psychological (Freud) - keeps us from acting on our worst instincts • Economic (Harris) - beliefs develop to aid in peoples' survival in their environment • Symbolic (Geertz) - symbols represent cultural ideals and reinforce values

Do Biologically Separate Races Exist?

• Fuzzy Boundaries in a Well - Integrated Gene Pool • Physical anthropologists use the term cline to refer to differences in the traits that occur in populations across a geographical area. • In a cline, a trait may be more common in one geographical area than another, but the variation is gradual and continuous with no sharp breaks. • A prominent example of clinal variation is skin color. Think of it this way: Do all "white" persons who you know actually share the same skin complexion? • Likewise, do all "black" persons who you know share an identical skin complexion? The answer, obviously, is no, since human skin color does not occur in just 3, 5, or even 50 shades. • The reality is that human skin color, as a continuous trait, exists as a spectrum from very light to very dark with every possible hue, shade, and tone in between. The Wild Goose Chase: Linking Phenotype to Genotype • Classification • Since the eighteenth century, European and American scientists have attempted to divide human variability into subspecies or "races," much like zoologists would do with any other animal.` • • Racial typologies share a fundamental flaw: there are no diagnostic genes or genetic traits that belong to only one "racial" group and no others. • Why Not Construct Race on the Basis of Earwax? Humans have two types of earwax: wet, yellow, and sticky or dry, gray, and crumbly.

Gender Ideologies, Biology, and Culture

• Gender ideologies change throughout time and vary widely across cultures • In 19 th and to mid - 20 th Century U.S., gender ideologies were based on biological determinism - the idea that males and females were born fundamentally different and were "naturally" attracted to one another - Also women's sex drive was less developed and reproductively oriented • Sex is biological • Gender is a set of culturally - invented expectations; there is usually great pressure to conform to the gender role linked to one's biologic sex • Gender is not a binary model, but fluid and flexible • Third gender roles include two - spirit people (Native American) and hijras (India)

Heteronormativity

• Heteronormativity (Foucault) - often - unnoticed system of rights and priviliges that accompany normative sexual choices and family formation (also Cisnormativity for gender) • Transgender people are those who experience their gender identity as different from their assigned sex at birth, and who may or may not transition socially or physically - A transgender (or non - binary, gender fluid or genderqueer) identity does not dictate sexuality, only gender identity

Human Language Compared with the Communication Systems of Other Species

• Hockett's Design Features - describe characteristics of all communication systems • Human language shares all characteristics and includes these features: - Discreteness - Duality of patterning - Displacement - Productivity/creativity

Anthropological Perspectives

• Holism - how different aspects of human life influence one another • Cultural Relativism - understanding others from the perspective of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 6 7 8 9 10 2/4/20 3 • Holism - how different aspects of human life influence one another • Cultural Relativism - understanding others from the perspective of their own culture • Comparison - used to learn about similarities and differences • Fieldwork - ethnography based on participant - observation; descriptive accounts of culture with theory • Scientific vs. Humanistic approaches - different approaches are used in different subfields

Thoughts on Culture Over a Cup of Coffee

• How do you define culture? • Anthropologists developed the culture concept • Importance of storytelling and the way anthropology became a social science

Economic Anthropology

• How humans work to obtain the material necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter • How people produce, exchange, and consume material objects • The role that immaterial things such as labor, services, and knowledge play in our livelihood • Economic anthropologists describe what people actually do, why, and don't assume people know what they want or are free to act on it

Race: A Discredited Concept in Human Biology

• Human physical and biological variations are continuous (skin color, eye color, nose shape, hair color and texture, etc.) - Clinal distribution - a gradual variation in traits across a geographic area • Average range of skin color gradually changes over geographic space (with a few notable exceptions based on diet) • Balance between Vitamin D and folate Variations in human physical and genetic traits are nonconcordant - Each trait is inherited independently, not bundled together in a "racial" group • 88 - 92% of genetic diversity is found within people who live on the same continent - Human species has less genetic diversity than U.S. white - tailed deer!

Rules of Behavior

• Important element of social control, define misbehaviors and (supernatural) punishments • Ex: Buddhism uses the idea of karma to guide behavior with the goal of reincarnation

Emergence of Public (Male) vs. Domestic (Female) Spheres

• In large, stratified societies, men dominate the public sphere while women are associated with the domestic sphere (or further divided into male/female spheres) • Emphasizes social separation between males and females social regulation of sexuality and marriage, and male control over females • Extreme example is "honor killings" - in which girls or women are killed if suspicions of dishonorable sexual behaviors arise

Alternate Models of Gender: Complementary and Fluid

• In societies other than stratified, large - scale patriarchal ones, gender may be more equal, non - binary, and fluid • Married couples may work in complementary dyads, such as among the Lahu and Na people of SW China and Thailand •

Kinship and Descent

• Kinship - culturally recognized ties between members of a family - Both blood (consanguineal) and marriage (affinal), as well as "chosen kin" • Descent - how people reckon their kinship - Patrilineal - through the father's line - Matrilineal - through the mother's line - Bilateral - through both lines

Sexuality Outside the U.S.

• Labels are culturally specific, and not all cultures share our understanding of terms like "lesbian" or "gay" • In many cultures, same - sex sexual behavior is a behavior and not an identity • Examples - To m s a n d D e e s i n T h a i l a n d - Lalas and To n g z h i in China

Language Variation: Sociolinguistics

• Language - standard variety of speech • Dialect - often used for subordinate variety of a language (result of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 7 8 9 10 11 2/9/20 3 • Language - standard variety of speech • Dialect - often used for subordinate variety of a language (result of colonization) • Many reasons for language variation • Registers - formality of speech • Code - switching - use of several varieties of language in a particular interaction Linguistic Relativity (the Whorf Hypothesis) - Whorf found no present, past, future tense in the Hopi lexicon - Language shapes the way we see the world - Metaphors guide our speech

The Importance of Human Language to Human Culture

• Language can be considered a culture's most important feature • Language and culture are inseparable • Relies on symbols - Arbitrariness

Language Change: Historical Linguistics and Globalization

• Language taxonomies - classification systems, create a family tree of languages • Globalization, migration, and urbanization often leads to suppression of local languages • Language extinction/language death • Language shift • Language Revitalization - Use of Internet in language survival • Advanced technology and digital age are also creating a communication gap - Social status - Generation gap - Political activism

The Biological Basis of Language

• Larynx (voice box or Adam's apple) is lower in humans than in Great Apes • Pharynx (throat cavity) is longer • Tongue and palate (roof of mouth) are rounded • Brain structures for language are unique to humans • Larynx (voice box or Adam's apple) is lower in humans than in Great Apes • Pharynx (throat cavity) is longer • Tongue and palate (roof of mouth) are rounded • Brain structures for language are unique to humans • Universal Grammar - innate ability for developing children to acquire language • Critical Age Range Hypothesis - child will gradually lose ability to acquire language naturally • Open vs. Closed systems • Apes use Gesture - Call system • Non - verbal communication of humans includes: - Kinesics (body language) - Proxemics (use of space) - Paralanguage (background features of speech or sounds that convey meaning)

Kinship Diagrams: Matrilineage

• Lineage - descent from a common ancestor • Matrilineage (having to do with descent) does not mean matriarchal (having to do with power) • Example: Nayar of Southern India - Men and women did not live together after marriage - Husbands were not seen as "relatives" since they were not part of the matrilineage Kinship

Marriage Exchanges

• Marriage Exchanges - most often given to the family who is losing a member • Dowry - gifts given by a bride's family to the groom's family or to the new couple • Bridewealth - gifts given from a groom's family to the bride's family

Text Box 1: What Can We Learn From The Na?

• Na people (from foothills of the Himalayas) have several family structures • Some live in patrilineal households • Some live in extended family households in which young adults "try out" relationships from other households • They do not live together or marry officially, and children remain in the mother's home, cared for by extended family

Sports, Race/Ethnicity, and Diversity

• Notions of "natural" or "biological" athletic abilities has been reified in popular sports in U.S. - no scientific basis for this • Socio - economic factors create access and opportunity - Cultural values; a societal infrastructure that supports youth sports; degree of prestige assigned to various sports by different communities

Marriage and Family

• Nuclear family - two generations • Extended family - at least three generations - Stem family or Joint family • Serial monogamy - marriage to a succession of spouses, one at a time • Polygamy - plural marriages of either multiple wives or multiple husbands - Polygyny or Polyandry

How Is Race Constructed around the World?

• Other Racial Classifications • The Dominican Republic • The Dominican Republic forms one half of the island of Hispaniola. • It is a former Spanish colony. The other half of the island, Haiti, is a former French colony. • When the island was first colonized, Europeans put the native Caribbean inhabitants to work, but they began to die off from European diseases • African slaves/workers were brought in, resulting in an island with mixed European, Caribbean, and African biological/cultural ancestry. • Currently in the DR, there is a strong conception of racial hierarchy (light to dark, with light considered better) but many more than three races (or even four to five). Racial "color" terms include coffee, chocolate, cinnamon, wheat, indio , rosy, faded, blond, dark, and ashen. • Traditionally they have avoided the term "black." • Other Racial Classifications • Latin America • Latin America was colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese. They lived among Africans and Native Americans without restrictions on sexual contact (contrary to English policies in the United States). • As a result, historically there have been a much greater number of "races" throughout Latin America, where they were more fluidly constructed. • Attitudes about "whiteness" and "blackness" persist, but these categories may have as much to do with socioeconomic status and behavioral attributes as skin color. • Other Racial Classifications: • Malaysia • Southeastern Asian country that is multiracial, with many different ethnic groups living in the country. These include Malays, Chinese, Indians, and other indigenous Bumiputra groups.

Descriptive Linguistics: Structures of Language

• Phoneme - minimal unit of sound that makes a difference in meaning • Morpheme - minimal unit of meaning • Syntax - rules that govern how to put units of speech together • Semantics - meanings of words • Pragmatics - social and cultural context

Political Economy: Understanding Inequality

• Political economy - contextualizes economic relations within state structures, political processes, social structures, and cultural values • Structural violence - a social structure or institution harms people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs - Ex: the politics of aid to Haiti

Introduction to Race and Racism

• Race and Racism as a Difficult Topic • Race: a concept that organizes people into groups based on specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences. • "Historical research has shown that the idea of 'race' has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them" • • - American Anthropological Association Statement on Race • • Anthropological View of Race • Race does have biological and, most definitely, cultural consequences. • "To say that race is a cultural construct is not to say it does not exist; cultural constructs have an objective reality despite their reliance on human thought" ( Gravlee , 2009, p. 53). • • Race is a social construct, not rooted in biology. • Race is biologically meaningless (but real!) • Race as a Flawed Concept • Racism: the repressive practices, structures, beliefs, and representations that uphold racial categories and social inequality. • • Discrimination: the negative or unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her membership in a particular social group or category.

Race as a Social Concept

• Race is real as a social concept, just not a biological one; it has important effects on people's lives socially • Racial formation - how social, economic, political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories • Formation of the concept of "Whiteness" • Mid - 1800s, Irish were not seen as White • Early 20 th C. Jewish and Italian immigrants not seen as White • Expanded after WWII and veterans' acts (except to African - American veterans) • "White privilege" - unearned benefits and advantages (McIntosh "Invisible Knapsack")

Modes of Exchange

• Reciprocity - Giving gifts create relationships - Generalized - Exact value of the gift and time is not specified (Halloween) - Balanced - Something of equal value and time period is expected (Kula ring) - Negative - attempt to get something for nothing - Ex: Christmas giving • Redistribution - the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person or institution for the purpose of dispersal at a later rate - Requires a centralized political body to coordinate and enforce - Found in all societies - Ex: potlatch • Markets - social institutions with prices or exchange equivalencies - Regulated by supply and demand - Based on transactions, often impersonal but not always - Ex: Maine lobster markets • Money - General purpose money - medium of exchange - tool for storing wealth - way to assign interchangeable values - Increases opportunities for unequal exchange - Ex: Tiv spheres of exchange - Ex: Ithaca HOURS

Race: A Discredited Concept in Human Biology

• Reification of race began in 1700s with Linnaeus's (1735) four races of humans • Blumenbach's (1795) five races • Early 20 th C. three races with further splitting of the European "races" • These are arbitrary divisions, based on subjective criteria ( lumpers and splitters)

Pastoralism

• Relies on herds of domesticated livestock • Nomadic pastoralism moves herds to available grazing fields and water several times a year • Animals are kept alive and fed well to produce dairy products, wool, dung • Trade with neighboring farms for other products • Social life and status revolve around animal herds • Men own cattle, women (and children) tend cattle • Personal property is owned • Act to conserve their environments using land restrictions and regulations • Modern pressures threaten this lifestyle

Horticulture

• Relies on small gardens that move periodically • Simple tools and physical labor • Crops consumed by family units or exchanged with others in the community • Also supplement their diets by raising animals for protein • Use shifting cultivation ("slash and burn") • Multi - cropping and intercropping • Social life revolves around growing crops, which are used as gifts and signs of social status, also imbued with spirits

Foraging

• Relies on wild plant and animal food resources already available in the environment • Hunting, fishing, gathering of wild plant resources - broad spectrum diet • Only immediate return system • Small groups, with low population densities • Egalitarian social structure • Generosity and sharing are social norms and a survival strategy • Work is divided among gender lines • Mostly nomadic groups, although a few sedentary foraging societies have existed • Marshall Sahlins : "the original affluent society" - However, foraging is challenging and leisure time varies by group • Not isolated, but in competition for resources with non - foraging groups throughout history • Historical ecology shows us that even foragers have manipulated the environment

Rituals and Religious Practitioners

• Rites of Passage - a ceremony designed to transition individuals between life stages - Separation, liminality , reincorporation • Rites of Intensification - actions designed to bring a community together ( communitas ) • Revitalization rituals - attempts to solve serious problems through supernatural intervention (Ex: John Frum "cargo cult") • • Priest - full - time religious practitioners - May be of any gender, have authority to set rules and control access to religious rites • Shaman - part - time religious practitioner - Often a calling for those who have personality traits that seem "abnormal" in the context of the community • Prophet - person who claims to have direct communication with the supernatural realm - Ex: David Koresh, Branch Davidians (millenarians)

Language in its Social Settings: Language and Identity

• Social class • Ethnicity • Gender • Culture: Deaf culture

he Hunting Way of Life "Molds Man" (and Woman)

• Starting in 1960s, most popular hypothesis for why male dominance appeared to be universal focused on our primate heritage and "Man the Hunter" • Stereotypes about the differences between women and men arose from this "creation" story, connected to the gender roles of 1950s • A legitimizing ideology - a belief system developed by those in power to rationalize and perpetuate systems of inequality • Primate groups are not all patrifocal • Gathered food, not hunting, was the most stable means of subsistence ("Opportunistic scavenging") • Females have not been economically dependent throughout human history • Pregnancy is not as debilitating as considered to be in Western world; reciprocity helps with childcare

Studying Subsistence Systems

• Subsistence systems - the set of practices used by members of a society to acquire food • Foodways - the cultural norms and attitudes surrounding food and eating • Food is essential for humans, dependent on the carrying capacity of the land • Every person plays a role as a producer, distributor, or consumer of food

Stories as a Reflection on Culture

• The Other - a term to describe people whose customs, beliefs or behaviors are different from one's own • Gulliver's Travels: Gulliver suddenly becomes the Other but the Lilliputians are Othered by Gulliver • Stories are an important part of culture for many reasons • Armchair anthropology - measuring another culture from one's own vantage point, considering one's own culture to be superior • Ethnocentrism - the attitude that one's own group or culture is better than any other • Early explorations and colonialism created ideas of racial superiority • Sir James Frazer - The Golden Bough (1890) - Relied solely on descriptions of others • Sir E.B. Tylor - Primitive Culture (1871) - Also wrote without doing fieldwork - Created first definition of culture - Influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution, and believed human groups went through stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization • The 20 th Century brought fieldwork to anthropology and the importance of participant - observation - traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day - to - day lives - Bronislaw Malinowski was one of the first ethnographers to be fully immersed in another culture for a long period of time to learn about their culture

What Is Anthropology?

• The study of humanity; everything and anything that makes us human • Four academic subfields - Cultural Anthropology - Archaeology - Biological Anthropology - Linguistic Anthropology • One practical subfield - Applied Anthropology

Kinship Terminology

• The terms used in a language to describe relatives • Differences provide insight into how people think about families and the roles people play within them • Example: Hawaiian kinship terminology

What is Cultural Anthropology?

• Through immersive fieldwork, cultural anthropologists study the similarities and differences among living societies and cultural groups • Beyond description, they ask broader questions about humankind • Often study social groups different from their own, but increasingly turn inward to examine subcultures in their own society

What Is Racism?

• Two - Part Definition • Types of Racism • Individual Racism • Microagression • Racial slur • It can be expressed intentionally or unintentionally, actively or passively. • Two - Part Definition • Types of Racism • Institutional Racism • Institutional or structural racism is a form of explicit discrimination and is easy to identify because it makes no effort to hide and is an accepted norm, evident in institutions and laws. • Plessy vs. Ferguson • Segregation in the South • Brown vs. Board of Education • • Disguised discrimination may live on well beyond the "official" end of its explicit source. • Anthropology has a strong history of standing up against discrimination, both explicit and disguised. • Two - Part Definition • Types of Racism • Racial Ideology • Stereotypes introduced rarely describe any actual individual, and they do not characterize whole groups of people. • • Racial thinking assumes that one visible trait (e.g., skin color) correlates with complex behavioral attributes like intelligence, athletic ability, or personal character. • Resisting Racism • Is prejudice (preformed, usually unfavorable opinions about people who are different) an unavoidable result of living in a world of "others"? • Most forms of prejudice (whether based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) are acquired as part of our enculturation — from trusted elders, authority figures, media, and peers. • • Learned behavioral patterns can be unlearned. • Race, Racism, and Whiteness • Perhaps the most disguised, or unrecognized, aspect of discrimination is unearned privilege: an unnoticed and underappreciated lack of discrimination against certain groups. • Anthropologist Peggy McIntosh (1997) sees having relatively light skin pigmentation in the United States as an unearned privilege because light - skinned people may do everyday things without additional attention or judgment directed at them. • Fighting discrimination requires the recognition and efforts of both those who are discriminated against and those who aren't.

Race in Three Nations: The United States, Brazil, and Japan

• U.S. - Race has been seen as mutually exclusive categories; one - drop rule ( hypodescent ); arbitrary Census • Brazil - 5 government categories, but people use hundreds of tipos (types) to classify people on a continuum • Japan - Burakumin are socially stigmatized, even though they are physically and genetically indistinguishable from other Japanese

Anthropology Headlines

• Venezuelan Amazon: A Yanomamo headman scrapes the ground with a machete to shame others to join him in cleaning the village before a feast. • 1930s Italy: Government officials concerned with the problem of declining fertility and reproductive rates among the Italian people introduce a census, social insurance programs, housing projects, and social work to support an increase in the size, growth rate, and "vitality" of the population. • Cameroon: High - ranking government officials use sorcery to undermine their rivals and impress villagers with their immunity from occult forces. • Hawaii: A community leader guides adversaries in a dispute and their immediate family members through a healing process in which everyone is expected to share their feelings and grievances openly.

Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups

• While race attempts to group people based on biological traits, ethnic groups claim a distinct identity based on cultural characteristics and shared ancestry • Ethnicity - identification with and attachment to a particular ethnic group; self - identification can fluctuate over time • Symbolic ethnicity - expressive limited displays of ethnic pride (for public display)

Women in Anthropology

• Women more likely than men to bring families when conducting fieldwork • Discrepancies remain between male and female anthropology professors in rank, job status, and publication rates • Gender studies now encompassing masculinity studies - how boys and men learn to perform manhood ; reinforces culture of violent masculinity in U.S.

Rights, Responsibilities, Statuses and Roles in Families

• Words used to describe family members ("mother" or "cousin") indicate rights and responsibilities of family members both in the family and in the community • Status - a culturally - designated position a person occupies in a particular setting ("father" or "younger brother") • Role - the set of behaviors expected of a person who occupies a particular status