anthrocult
Terms
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- Aspects of Culture
- LEARNED (both consciously & unconsciously), SHARED (among members of a group), SYMBOLIC (eg language), INTEGRATED (not a haphazard assortment), CHANGING (adaptive, malleable)
- Cultural Relativism
- The position that the customs and values should not be judged by standards of another culture
- Ethnocentrism
- The opinion that one's own way of life is best, natural, or correct, and the tendency to judge others culture against your own
- Culture Shock
- Experiencing the vast differences among culture, comparing a cultures differences to one's own
- Creationism
- Belief in Biblical creation as the source of biological diversity
- Independent invention
- Development of the same culture trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs and circumstances.
- Diffusion
- Cultural borrowing that can occur without first hand contact.
- Indigenization
- When something form the outside is modified to fit the local culture
- Imperialism
- A policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations and of taking and holding foreign colonies
- Colonialism
- The political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time
- Hegemony
- When subordinates internalize and accept the naturalness of their own domination in a stratified social order (One way to curb resistance)
- Cultural Imperialism
- The spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other societies, which it modifies, replaces, or destroys- usually because of differential economic or political influence
- Uniformitarianism
- Belief that explanations for past events should be sought in ordinary forces that continue to work today
- Acculturation
- Changes that result when groups come into continuous first contact (may be forced or voluntary)
- Enculturation
- The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations
- Westernization
- The acculturative influence of Western expansion on other cultures
- Ndebele People
- African tribe, women spend whole lives painting houses distinctively and elaborately
- Natural Selection
- The process by which nature selects the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment do so in greater numbers than others in the same population
- Adaptive/Maladaptive Trait
- Adaptive- favored by natural selection in a particular environment, continues on...
- Mendelian Genetics
- Studies ways in which chromosomes transmit genes across the generations
- Population Genetics
- Field that studies causes of genetic variation, maintenance, and change in breeding populations
- Recessive/Dominant Genes
- Genetic trait that is masked by a dominant trait/Allele that masks another allele in a heterozygote
- Gene flow
- Exchange of genetic material between populations of the same species through direct or indirect interbreeding
- Genetic Drift
- Change in gene frequency that results not from natural selection but from chance; most common in small populations
- Meiosis
- Special process by which sex cells are produced; four cells are produced from one, each with half the genetic material of the original cell
- Mitosis
- Ordinary cell division; DNA molecules copy themselves, creating two identical cells out of one
- Phenotype
- An organism's evident traits; its "manifest biology"- anatomy and physiology
- Genotype
- An organism's hereditary makeup
- Phenotypical adaptation
- Adaptive biological changes that occur during the individual's lifetime, made possible by biological plasticity
- Polymorphism (Balanced)
- Two or more forms, such as alleles of the same gene, that maintain a constant frequency in a population from generation to generation
- Law of independent assortment
- MENDEL; Genes are inherited independently from each other (short plant & long plant)
- Homologies
- Traits that organisms have jointly inherited from their common ancestor
- Analogies
- Similarities arising as a result of similar selective forces; traits produced by convergent evolution
- Convergent evolution
- Independent operation of similar selective forces; process by which analogies are produced
- Punctuated equilibrium
- Model of evolution; long periods of equilibrium, during which species change little, are interrupted by sudden changes- evolutionary jumps
- Bipedalism
- Upright two legged locomotion, the key feature differentiating early hominins from the apes
- Foramen magnum
- Where spinal cord exits head, centered underneath skull indicates bipedalism, further back is all fours
- "Out of Africa" hypothesis
- Hom erectus; replacement model where Homo moved out of Africa and replaced colonies other places
- Multi-regional hypothesis
- Regional populations connected by recurrent gene flow (Importance of Africa in Mitochrondrial Analysis)
- Participant Observation
- Taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing
- Anthropological Methods
- Ethnography, Longitudinal research (ability to really witness change over time), Survey research (Sampling, impersonal data collection)
- Ethnography
- The 1st hand study of a local setting; research process in which the anthropologist closely observes, records, and engages in the daily life of another culture and then writes accounts of the field study
- Fieldwork
- Going to the field and observing, recording, engaging in daily life of another culture
- Holism
- An approach that studies the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture
- Comparative Approach
- Anthropology examines all societies, ancient and modern, small and large
- Key Cultural Consultants
- An expert on a particular aspect of local life who helps the ethnographer understand that aspect. Also called key informant.
- Potassium-Argon
- Dating of only inorganic material, volcanic rock. The older the specimen, the more reliable the dating.
- Globalization
- The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems
- Ethnology
- The theoretical, comparative study of society and culture; compares cultures in time and space
- Bioculturalism
- Referring to the inclusion and combination (to solve a problem) of both biological and cultural approaches- one of anthro's hallmarks
- Stratigraphy
- Science that examines the ways in which earth sediments are deposited in demarcated layers known as strata
- Genealogy
- A line of descent traced continuously from one ancestor
- Paleoanthropology
- The study of human life and immediate ancestors through the fossil record
- Carbon-14
- Absolute dating of only organic substances through measure of radioactive decay
- Thermoluminescence
- Absolute dating technique for rocks and minerals, especially fossils that measure the electrons that are constantly being trapped in rocks and minerals.