culture
The taken for granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group
Cultural Relativism
The moral and intellectual principle that one should seek to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgement about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs or practices
Human Diversity
the sheer variety of ways of being human around the world.
Holism
efforts to synthesize distinct approaches and findings into a single comprehensive interpretation
Participant Observation
The standard research method used by cultural anthropologists that requires the researcher to live in the community he or she is studying to observe and participate in day to day activities
Interviews
any systematic conversation with an informant to collect field research data, ranging from a highly structured set of questions to the most open-ended ones
Structured Interview
interviewer has a clear goal for the interview and writes down the informant's answers or tape records the interview. Often used for survey collection. Researcher has decided ahead of time what is important to ask.
Unstructured Interview
casual conversations. Includes informal/open ended, conversations, and hanging out (participant observation)
Ethnohistory
The study of cultural change in societies and periods for which the community had no written histories or historical documents, usually relying heavily on oral history for data. May also refer to a view of history form a cultural insiders point of view
Gender
the complex and fluid intersections of biological sex, internal sense of self, outward expressions of identity, and cultural expectations about how to perform that identity in appropriate ways
sex
understood in western cultures as the reproductive forms and functions of the body
third gender
a category found in many societies that acknowledge three or more gender categories
kinship
the social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage which is patterned in culturally specific and dynamic ways
natal family
the family in which a person is born and in which he or she is usually raised
nuclear family
the family formed by a married couple and their children
Extended family
larger groups of relatives beyond the nuclear family, often living in the same household
lineage
a group composed of relatives who are directly descended from known ancestors
clan
a group of relatives who claim to be descended from a single ancestor
patrilineal
reckoning descent through males from the same ancestors
Matrilineal
reckoning descent though women who are descended from an ancestral woman
cognac
reckoning descent through either men or women from some ancestor
monogamy
Marriage to only one person at a time
Polygyny
when a man is simultaneously married to more than one woman.
polygamy
any form of plural marriage
Polyandry
a form of marriage in which women have more than one husband
emic perspective
A cultural insider's perspective on his or her culture
etic perspective
an outside observers perspective on a culture
enculturation
the process of learning the cultural rules and logic of a society
Shamanism/Ecstatic religion
religions where people enter a different state in order to communicate with the gods
polytheism
Belief in many gods
monotheism
Belief in one God
magic
an explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at a distance without direct physical contact
law of similarity
some point of similarity between an aspect of the magical rite and the desired goal. A good illustration is a voodoo doll which is an image that represents the makers enemy
Law of contagion
magical rite in which things that had once been in contact with one another could have an effect even when they are no longer in contact. According to the law of contact, mundane objects we've touched or produced as individuals, such as a cigarette butt or a piece of hair carry a part of our essence and harmful things done to them by an ill-intentioned magician can by extension hurt us.
structuralism
people make sense of their worlds though binary oppositions like hot-cold, culture-nature, male-female, and raw-cooked. These binaries are expressed in social institutions and cultural practices like kinship, myth, and language.
Interpretive Anthropology
culture is a shared system of meaning. People make sense of their worlds though the use of symbols and symbolic activities like myth and ritual (interpreting symbols)
Cultural Materialism
the material world, especially its economic and ecological conditions, shapes people's customs and beliefs
Cultural Landscapes
the culturally specific images, knowledge, and concepts of the physical landscape that shape human relations with that landscape. The key is understanding metaphors between the environment and social behavior, thought, and organization
ethnoscience
The study of how people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings.
Anthropologic landscapes
landscapes that are a product of human shaping
Fortress Conservation
an approach to conservation that assumes that people are threatening to nature, and that for nature to be pristine, people who live there must be evicted.
Appropriation
the unilateral decision of one social group to take control over the symbols, practices, or objects of another.
repatriation
the return of human remains or cultural artifacts to the communities of descendants of the people to whom they originally belonged.
Commodity Fetish
View of Karl Marx that commodities exercise a strange kind of power over people, controlling their attention and becoming objects of obsessive desire and worship