Cultural Anthropology Final
Cultural Anthropology terms and concepts
Terms
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- Rite of Passage
- rituals that mark a persons passage from one identity status to another; coined by Arnold van Gennep
- Ethnographic Method
- scientist participant observation, ethnographic fieldwork, full immersion into lives and cultures of that being studied in order to understand and comprehend
- Nuclear Family
- the family group consisting of a father, mother, and their own or adopted children
- Ethnocentric Fallacy
- judging other cultures by the standards of your own, which you believe to be superior, to an ignorant extent where your views become fallacious.
- Key Metaphors
- a term coined by Sherry Ortner to identify metaphors that dominate the meanings that other people in a specific culture attribute to their experience
- Family of Procreation
- family group that consists of a husband, a wife, and their children
- Polygyny
- a form of marriage in which a person is permitted to have more than one spouse, consecutively or presently
- Egocentric
- a view of the self that defines each person as a replica of all humanity, the locus of motivations and drives, capable of acting independently from others.
- Totemism
- the use of symbol, generally an animal or plant, as a physical representation for a group, generally a clan
- Negative Reciprocity
- a form of exchange in which the object is to get something for nothing or to make a profit
- Negative Identity
- the attribution of personal characteristics believed to be undesireable
- Generalized Reciprocity
- a form of exchange in which persons share what they have with others but expect them to reciprocate later
- Cultural Text
- a way of thinking about culture as a text of significant symbols, words, gestures, drawings, and natural objects that carries meaning
- Interpersonal Theory of Disease
- illness is caused by tensions or conflicts in social relations
- Social Construct
- any idea or pattern of behavior that is created and sustained by human beings in the course of social interaction
- Family of Orientation
- family group that consists of ego and ego's father, mother and siblings
- Domain of Experience
- an area of human experience (business, war, science, family life) from which people borrow meaning to apply to other areas
- Incest Taboo
- a rule that prohibits sexual relations among certain categories of kin, such as brothers or sisters, parents and children, or, in some cases, cousins.
- Culture of Poverty
- a phrase coined by Oscar Lewis to describe the life-style and world view of people who inhabit urban and rural slums
- Race
- a scientific concept of 19th century anthropologists, to create ways of classifying people according to inherited physical characteristics. As a technical concept it has be largely abandoned, although it remains a socially powerful means of building social hierarchies
- Phallocentricism
- a term coined by Peggy Sanday that refers to the deployment of the penis as a symbol of masculine power and dominance
- Patrilineal Kinship
- a system of descent in which persons are related to their kin through their father only
- Participant Observation
- the active participation of a researcher or observer in the lives of those being studied; ethnographic fieldwork
- Balanced Reciprocity
- the term suggested by Marshall D. Sahlins for a form of exchange in which items of equal or non-equal value are exchanged on the spot
- Ethnocentricism
- judging other cultures by the standards of your own, which you believe to be superior.
- Key Scenarios
- dominant stories or myths that portray the values and beliefs of a specific society
- Matrilineal Kinship
- a system of descent in which persons are related to their kin through the mother only
- Interpretive Drift
- the slow, often unaknowledged shift in someone's manner of interpreting events as he or she becomes involved with a particular activity
- Exploitative Theory of Social Stratification
- a theory based on the assumption that social stratification and hierarchy exist because one group of individuals seeks to take advantage of another group for economic purposes
- Progress
- the idea that human history is the story of a steady advance from a life dependent on nature to a life of control and domination over nature
- Bilateral Kinship
- a system in which individuals trace their descent through both parents
- Relativistic Fallacy
- the idea that it is impossible to make moral judgments about the beliefs and behaviors of members of other cultures
- Culture Change
- the change in the meanings that a people ascribe to experience and changes in their way of life
- Integrative Theory of Social Stratification
- a theory based on the assumption that social hierarchy is necessary for the smooth functioning of society
- Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
- the idea that the nature of a particular language influences the habitual thought of its speakers; different language patterns yield different patterns of thought.
- Polyandry
- a form of marriage in which a woman is permitted to have more than one husband
- Ethnographic Present
- a description of a culture as it was prior to contact.
- Secondary Elaboration
- a term for attempts by people to explain away inconsistencies or contradictions in their beliefs
- Identity Struggle
- interaction in which there is a discrepancy between the identity a person claims to possess and the identity attributed to that person by others; coined by Anthony F.C. Wallace and Raymond D. Fogelson
- Myth
- a story or narrative that portrays the meanings people give their experience
- Selective Perception
- the tendency of people to see and recognize only those things they expect to see or those that confirm their world views