culture
A system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a group of people.
enculturation
The process of learning culture.
norms
Ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people.
values
Fundamental beliefs about what is important true, or beautiful, and what makes a good life.
symbol
Anything that signifies something else.
mental maps of reality
Cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications.
cultural relativism
Understanding a group's beliefs and practices within their own cultural context
gender studies
Research into the cultural construction of masculinity and femininity across cultures as flexible, complex, and historically and culturally constructed categories.
sex
The observable physical differences between M and F, especially biological expressions related to human reproduction.
gender
The expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes.
sexual dimorphism
The phenotypic differences between males and females of the same species.
cultural construction of gender
The ways humans learn to behave as a man or woman and to recognize behaviors as masculine or feminine within their cultural context.
gender performance
The way gender identity is expressed through action.
intersexual
An individual who is born with a combination of male and female genitalia, gonads, and/or chromosomes.
transgender
A gender identity or performance that does not fit with cultural norms related to one's assigned sex at birth.
gender stratification
An unequal distribution of power and access to a group's resources, opportunities, rights, and privileges based on gender.
gender ideology
A set of cultural ideas, usually stereotypical, about the essential character of different genders that functions to promote and justify gender stratification.
gender violence
Forms of violence shaped by the gender identities of the people involved.
structural gender violence
Gendered societal patterns of unequal access to wealth, power, and basic resources such as food, shelter, and health care that differentially affect women in particular.
ethnocentrism
The belief that one's own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using one's own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others.
ethnographic fieldwork
A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology involving living with a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives.
four-field approach
The use of four interrelated disciplines to study humanity: physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.
holism
The anthropological commitment to consider the full scope of human life, including culture, biology, history, and language, across space and time.
physical anthropology
The study of humans from a biological perspective and evolution.
paleoanthropology
The study of the history of human evolution through the fossil record.
primatology
The study of living nonhuman primates as well as primate fossils to better understand human evolution and early human behavior.
archaeology
The investigation of the human past by extracting and analyzing artifacts.
prehistoric archaeology
The reconstruction of human behavior in the distant past (before written records) through the examination of artifacts.
historic archaeology
The exploration of the more recent past through an examination of physical remains and artifacts as well as written or oral records.
linguistic anthropology
The study of human language in the past and present.
descriptive linguists
Those who analyze languages and their component parts.
historic linguists
Those who study how language changes over time within a culture and how languages travel across cultures.
sociolinguists
Those who study language in its social and cultural contexts.
participant observation
A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied.
ethnology
The analysis and comparison of ethnographic data across cultures.
globalization
The worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods, and ideas within and across national borders.
time-space compression
The rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space and time.
unilineal cultural evolution
The theory proposed by nineteenth century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex.
historical particularism
The idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories.
structural functionalism
A conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium.
interpretivist approach
A conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning.
stratification
The uneven distribution of resources and privileges among participants in a group or culture.
hegemony
The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of forces.
agency
The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality, institutions, and structures of power.
cosmopolitanism
A global outlook emerging in response to increasing globalization.