ANT Chapter 1
Cultural Anthropology
Terms
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- moral relativism
- notion that there are no absolute, universal standards by which to evaluate actions in terms such as right and wrong or good and bad
- medical anthropology
- subfield that researches the connections between cultural beliefs and habits and the spread and treatment of diseases and illnesses
- biological/physical anthropology
- major subfield of anthropology that studies the biological dimensions of humans/other primates
- archaeology
- investigates human past through the excavation of material remains
- holistic perspective
- the assumption that any aspect of a culture is integrated with other aspects, so that no dimension of culture can be understood in isolation
- contract archaeology
- companies bid competitively for the privilege of locating, excavating, ad reporting on sites affected or destroyed by construction
- applied anthropology
- subfield whose practitioners use anthropological methods, theories, and concepts to solve practical, real-world problems; practitioners are often employed by a governmental agency or private organization
- cultural relativism
- notion that one should not judge the behavior of other peoples using the standards of one's own culture
- historic archaeology
- field that investigates the past of literate peoples through excavation of sites and analysis of artifacts and other material remains
- 3 perspectives of anthropology
- Relativistic Perspective, Holistic Perspective, Comparative Perspective
- ethnocentrism
- attitude or opinion that the morals, values, and customs of one's own culture are superior to those of other peoples
- prehistoric archaeology
- study of ancient, preliterate cultures
- educational anthropology
- offers jobs in public agencies and private institutions
- cultural anthropology
- subfield that studies the way of life of contemporary/historically recent human populations
- corporate anthropology
- profession employing cultural anthropologists full time or as consultants
- globalization
- the process of integrating the world's peoples economically, socially, politically, and culturally into a single world system or community
- development anthropology
- apply expertise to solution of practical human problems; provide information about communities that helps agencies adapt projects to local conditions and needs
- forensic anthropology
- a specialization of physical anthropology that identifies and analyzes human skeletal remains
- anthropological linguistics
- subfield that focuses on the interrelationships between language and other aspects of a people's culture
- 5 subdivisions of anthropology
- archaeology, biological/physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, anthropological linguistics, applied anthropology
- practicing anthropology
- includes professional anthropologists who hold jobs outside universities or other educational institutions
- human variation
- physical differences among human populations; an interest of physical anthropologists
- comparative perspective
- insistence by anthropologists that valid hypotheses and theories about humanity be tested with information from a wide range of cultures
- primatology
- study evolution, anatomy, adaptation, and social behavior of primates
- cultural resource management
- locate sites of prehistoric and historic significance, evaluate their importance, and make recommendations about total or partial preservation
- fieldwork
- move into community under study to live in close contact with the people
- paleoanthropology
- specialization of physical anthropology that investigates the biological evolution of the human species
- anthropology
- academic discipline that studies all of humanity from a broad perspective
- ethnography
- a written description of the way of life of some human population