Anthro 1-4
Terms
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- cultural pluralism
- describes a stratified society that contains many diverse cultural groups who ideally live together equally and harmoniously
- material culture
- the tools, utensils, clothing, housing and other objects that people make of use
- cultural integration
- the observation that people's practices and beliefs form a relatively coherent and consistent system
- cultural relativism
- try to analyze a culture in that culture's own terms, rather than in terms of their own culture
- ethical relativism
- acceptance of all ethical systems as equivalent
- social darwinsim
- claimed that the wealth and power of Western societies were due to their natural and cultural superiority rather than to the consequences of historical processes
- subculture
- group of people who think of themselves, and are though of by others, as different in some significant way from the majority of people living in the society
- societies
- interconnected groups of peopl
- globalization
- the spread of economic influences throughout a very large geographic area or a great number of different societies
- symbol
- sound or object that represents or stands for an idea
- ethnography
- study of groups through observation, interview, and participation
- holistic perspective
- view culture as an integrated whole, no part of which can be completely understood in isolation
- syncretism
- process by which a cultural product is created when people adapt a cultural item selectively borrowed from another culture to fit their existing culture
- contract archaeology
- archaeologists contract themselves out for research
- societal norms
- sets of commonly held expectations and attitudes that people have about appropriate behavior
- culture change
- cultures change over time
- anthropology
- the study of humanity from its evolutionary origins millions of years ago to its present great numbers and worldwide diversity
- ethnocentrism
- the widespread human tendency for people to see themselves as being at the center of the universe
- taboos
- preferences or prohibitions
- forensic anthropologists
- applying their knowledge of human anatomy to help solve crimes
- linguistic anthropology
- the study of language and communication and the relationship between language and other aspects of culture and society
- cultural anthropology
- the study of culture -- any cultural behavior and especially people's way of life
- ethnology
- theories to explain cultural processes based on the comparative study of societies throughout the world
- cultural models
- assumptions
- biological anthropology
- the study of human origins and contemporary biological diversity
- historical linguistics
- the study of changes in language and communication over time and between peoples in contact
- naturalized concepts
- ideas thought to be essential and to exist in nature
- cultural knowledge
- information people havce that enables them to function in their social and physical environments
- medical anthropology
- bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and biological anthropology in its focus on health and disease in human populations
- comparative perspective
- an approach in anthropology that uses data about the behaviors and beliefs in many societies to document both cultural universals and cultural diversity
- symbolic culture
- people's ideas and means of communicating those ideas
- cultural core
- the tools and practices that enable people to satisfy their survival and adaptation
- counterculture
- an alternative culture model
- enculturation
- learning one's culture through informal observation and formal instruction, beginning in earliest childhood
- paleoanthropology
- the study of human origins
- applied anthropology
- an area of anthropology that intersects with and draws from the four major subfields
- archaeology
- the study of material culture
- indigenous societies
- peoples who were once independent and have occupied their territories for a long time but are now usually minority groups in large, state societies