1. Chapter 8: Gender
1.1. Gender studies- research into understanding who we are as men and women.
1.1.1. This study has become an important part of anthropology because gender is constructed to be an important part of culture.
1.2. "Much of what we stereotypically consider to be "natural" male or female behavior -- driven by biology-- might turn out, upon more careful inspection, to be imposed by cultural expectations of how man and women should behave." (Guest, 272)
1.2.1. Sex (from an anthropological viewpoint) is about the observable physical differences from male and female, especially the reproduction differences
1.2.1.1. "Gender is composed of the expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes." (Guest, 273)
1.3. Although human are born with biological sex, we learn to be men and women.
1.4. Gender ideology- a set of cultural ideas-usually stereotypical-about men's and women's essential characters capability, and value that consciously or unconsciously promote and justify gender satisfaction.
1.4.1. These very from culture to culture, but some may look the same when viewed through a global lens.
2. Chapter 9: Sexuality
2.1. Sexuality- the complex range of desires, beliefs, and behaviors that are related to erotic physical contact, intimacy, and pleasure.
2.1.1. "Sexuality is the culture arena within which people debate ideas of what kinds of physical desires and behaviors are morally right, appropriate, and "natural" and use those ideas to create unequal access to status, power, privileges, and resources. " (Guest, 314)
2.2. Humans have developed a different idea of a sex life. Behaviors that are found in nature are not normal to us humans anymore.
2.3. Even, people, and physical and cultural environment can shape our sexual desires and behaviors.
2.3.1. "Culture shapes what people think is natural, normal, and even possible." (Guest, 318)
2.3.2. "constructionists also trace the ways in which, through culture, human groups arrange a diversity of human sexuality into a limited number categories..." (Guest, 318)
2.4. Machismo creates a division between aggression and passivity.
2.4.1. Masculine men, or "real" men should be aggressive and machismo must be performed to maintain social status.
3. Chapter 15: Religion
3.1. People make many life decisions and can base their life around their own religious beliefs.
3.1.1. Religion- a set of beliefs and rituals based on a unique vision of how the world ought to be, often focused on a supernatural power and lived out in community.
3.1.2. "Religious worlds are real, meaningful and powerful to those who live in them." (Guest, 573)
3.2. Across India: martyr: a person who sacrifices his or her life for the for the sake of his or her religion.
3.2.1. Saint: an individual considered exceptionally close to God who is then exalted after death.
3.3. In India there is a woman named Amma who has healing powers. They go to her when they need someone to help with mental, spiritual, and physical illness brought evil spirits and forces.
3.4. Rite of passage: A category of ritual that enacts a change of status from one life stage to another, either for an individual or for a group.
4. Chapter 11: Class and Inequality
4.1. Class: A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of society's resources. (Guest, 388)
4.2. "Each society develops its own patterns of stratification that differentiate people into groups or classes." (Guest, 389)
4.2.1. These categories exist and provide unequal access to wealth, resources, and even power. Status and privilege is also included.
4.3. "This type of structure has promoted egalitarian societies based on the sharing of resources to ensure group success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violence within or among groups." (Guest,390)
4.4. Reciprocity: The exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status; meant to create and reinforce social ties. (Guest, 390)
4.4.1. There is evidence that shows that humans use to rely mostly in sharing food, hunting-and-gathering, and not violence.
5. Chapter 12: The Global Economy
5.1. Food foragers: humans who subsist by hunting, fishing, and gathering plants to eat.
5.1.1. Humans were food foragers about 10,000 years ago before the domestication of plants and animals.
5.2. Fewer than 250,000 now, make their primary living through food foraging.
5.3. Barter- exchange goods and services one for the other. (Guest,445)
5.4. "Although development remains a foundational strategy of powerful international organizations as well as most governments of poor nations, many scholars question its ultimate goals and beneficiaries." (Guest, 461)
5.4.1. Developments has become contentious.
6. Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Nationalism
6.1. Anthropologists see ethnicity as something that was created by cultures rather than something that was just human nature.
6.1.1. Ethnicity: A sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group. (Guest, 240)
6.2. "People create and promote certain ethnic boundary markers in an attempt to signify who is in the group and who is not." (Guest, 242)
6.3. Genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic or religious group. (Guest, 245)
7. Mitochondria DNA has helped us see that there are a lot of things that relate back to Africa. These observations have showed that we are all from Africa originally.
8. Chapter 1: Anthropology in Global Age
8.1. ethnocentrism- the strong human tendency to believe that one's own culture or way of life is normal, natural and superior to the beliefs and practices of others.
8.1.1. In order to better understand where humans come from, we need to kind of know the natural history of earth and the universe, a.k.a, deep time.
8.2. "Our work covers the whole world and is not constrained by geographic boundaries." (Guest, 10)
8.2.1. Anthropology is about studying peoples everyday lives. Anthropologists study the pattern of human life in the communities and then study how their cultures connect with the rest of humanity.
8.2.1.1. Relative dating- dating a fossil in the context in which it was found. "Most often, relative dating relies on stratigraphy- a process that determines the ages of the layers of sediment above and below the fossil." (Guest, 160)
8.2.1.1.1. This process also shows that the deeper something is, the older it is.
8.2.2. Many times anthropologists will live with the communities and adopt their way of living in order to better understand their lives.
8.2.2.1. ethnographic- "walking in their shoes." (Guest,10)
9. Chapter 2: Culture
9.1. "Culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned shared, and contested by a group of people." (Guest, 35)
9.2. On page 34, it says that people create culture in order to live together in groups. Even happy meals are deeply embedded into American cultural life.
9.2.1. We don't just inherit culture, we are taught throughout or lives what our culture is, by the people and things that surround us.
9.2.2. Humans are all "equally capable of learning culture and of learning any culture they are exposed to." (Guest, 36)
9.3. How are culture and power related? pg.48
9.3.1. Power in the cultures shows stratification, which is when there is an uneven distribution of resources and privileges.
10. Chapter 5: Human Origins
10.1. Human continue to adapt to the changes in our world, so even today, we are still evolving.
10.2. DNA has helped in dating events because it basically can give a blueprint for the development of growth.
11. Chapter 6: Race and Racism
11.1. Race is "a flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups." (Guest, 197)
11.2. Racism: individuals' thought and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups. (Guest,197)
11.2.1. "Race is a deeply influential system of thinking that affects people and institutions." (Guest, 197)
11.3. Colonialism: The practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and military power beyond its own borders over an extended period of times to secure access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets in other countries or regions (203)
12. Chapter 14: Politics and Power
12.1. Band: a small kinship-based group of foragers who hunt and gather for a living over a particular territory. (Guest, 529)
12.2. State power is established through hegemony as well.
12.2.1. Hegemony is"the ability of a dominate group to create consent and agreement within a population with-out the use or threat of force." (Guest, 538)
12.2.2. Civil Society Organization : A local nongovernmental organization that challenges state policies and uneven development, and advocates for resources and opportunities for members of its local communities.