Cultural Anthropology

1. Anthropology in a Global Age

1.1. Ethnocentrism

1.1.1. "The belief that one's own culture or way of life is normal and natural; using one's own culture to evaluate or judge the practices and ideals of others." (Guest,9)

1.2. Holism

1.2.1. "...anthropology's commitment to look at the whole picture of human life..." (Guest, 12)

1.3. Anthropology

1.3.1. Physical Anthropology: "...sometimes called biological anthropology, is the study of humans from a biological perspective..." (Guest, 12)

1.3.1.1. Paleoanthropology

1.3.1.2. Primatology

1.3.2. Achaeology: "The investigation of the human past by means of excavation and analyzing artifacts." (Guest, 14)

1.3.2.1. Pre-historic Archaeology: Distant past.

1.3.2.2. Historic Archaeology: More recent past.

1.3.3. Linguistic Anthropology

1.3.4. Cultural Anthropology

1.4. Time-space compression

1.4.1. "...the rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies... [and how it has]... transformed the way we think about space (distance) and time." (Guest, 18)

2. Culture

2.1. Norms

2.1.1. "...idea's or rules abou thow people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people..." (Guest, 37)

2.2. Symbols

2.2.1. "...is something that stands for something else." (Guest, 39)

2.3. Mental Maps of Reality

2.3.1. "These are 'maps' that humans construct of what kinds of people and what kinds of things exist" (Guest, 42)

2.4. Stratification

2.4.1. "...uneven distribution of resources and privileges..." (Guest, 48)

2.5. Nature vs. Nurture

2.5.1. "Popular American discourse often assigns biology-and usually genes-the primary role is determining who we are. Anthripological research, however, consistently reveals the powerful role culture and environment play in shaping our lives and bodies." (Guest, 53)

2.6. Hegemony

2.6.1. "The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force." (Guest, 50)

2.7. Agency

2.7.1. "The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power." (Guest, 52)

3. Human Origins

3.1. Deep Time

3.1.1. "A framework for considering the same span of human history within the much larger age of the universe and planet Earth" (Guest, 155)

3.2. Fossils

3.2.1. A fossil is "...the remains of the organisms that have been preserved through the natural chemical process that turns them partially or wholly into rock..." (Guest, 158)

3.3. Theory of Evolution

3.3.1. "The theory that biological adaptions in organisms occur in response to changes in the natural environment and develop in populations and over generations." (Guest, 161)

3.4. Creationism

3.4.1. Intelligent Design is "...an updated version of creationsim that claims to propose an evidence-based argument to contradict the theory of evolution." (Guest, 163)

3.5. How Does Evolution Work?

3.5.1. Natural Selection: "...occurs when individuals within a population have certain characteristics that provide an advantage that enables them to survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other in the population." (Guest, 165)

3.5.2. Mutation: "A deviation from the standard DNA code." (Guest, 167)

3.5.3. Gene Flow: "The movement of genetic material within a population and among diverse populations." (Guest, 167)

3.5.4. Genetic Drift: "...the fourth force of evolution, is the random, unpredictable changes in gene frequencies in a population from one generation to the next." (Guest, 168)

3.6. Bipedalism

3.6.1. "...(walking on two feet rather than all four limbs)..." (Guest, 170)

3.7. Human Ancestory

3.7.1. Pre-Australopithecus

3.7.1.1. Ardipithecus Kadabba (5.8 mya)

3.7.1.2. Ardipithecus Ramidus (4.4 mya)

3.7.2. Australopithecus (Between 4-1 mya)

3.7.3. Homo Habilis (2.5 mya)

3.7.4. Homo Erectus (Between 1.8 mya-300,000 yBP)

3.7.5. Homo Sapiens (Between 500,000-350,000 yBP)

3.8. "Out of Africa" or Replacement Theory

3.8.1. "The theory that modern Homo sapiens evolved first in Africa, migrated outward, and eventually replaced the archaic Homo sapiens." (Guest, 176)

3.9. Adaptions

3.9.1. Developmental Adaptions "...begin in the womb and continue through the human growth cycle, influenced by nutrition, disease, and other environemntal factors." (Guest, 180)

3.9.2. Genetic Adaption "...occurs at the populatio nlevel as a result of natural selection." (Guest, 180)

3.9.3. Acclimatization occurs "...every day as our bodies make temporary adjustments to changes in the environment." (Guest, 181)

3.9.4. Cultural Adaption is "...complex innovation, such as fans, furnaces, and lights, that allows humans to cope with their environment." (Guest, 182)

4. Language

4.1. Language: "...a system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information..." (Guest, 113)

4.2. "...nonehuman primates lack the physical apperatus to create human sounds and human speech..." (Guest, 113)

4.2.1. "...Viki...[a chimpanzee]...raised by researchers...was only able to master four words: mama, papa, up, and cup...[but]... a chimoanzee named Washoe...was the first to use sign language, mastering more than 130 different signs..." (Hayes 1951/Guest, 114)

4.3. Descriptive Linguistics

4.3.1. "...the study of the sounds, symbols, and gestures of language, and their combination into forms that communicate meaning..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.1. Phonemes : "...the smallest units of sound that can make a difference in meaning..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.2. Phonology: "...the study of what sounds exist and which onces are important in a particular language..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.3. Morphemes: "...the smallest units of sound that carry meaning on their own..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.4. Morphology: "...The study of patterns and rules of how sounds combine to make morphemes..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.5. Syntax: "...the specific patterns and rules for combining morphemes to construct phrases and sentences..." (Guest, 116)

4.3.1.6. Grammar: "...the combined set of observations about the rules governing the formation of morphemes and syntax that guide language use..." (Guest, 116)

4.4. Kinesics and Paralanguage

4.4.1. Kinesics is "...the study of the relationship between body movements and communication..." (Guest, 117)

4.4.2. Paralanguage is "...an extensive set of noises...and tones of voice that convey significant information about the speaker..." (Guest, 117)

4.5. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

4.5.1. "...the idea that different languages create different ways of thinking..." (Guest, 118)

4.6. Lexicon

4.6.1. "...all the words for names, ideas, and events that make up a language's dictionary..." (Guest, 121)

4.7. Focal Vocabulary

4.7.1. "...the words and terminology that develop with the particualr sophistication to discribe the unique cultural realities experienced by a group od people..." (Guest, 121)

4.8. Sociolinguistics

4.8.1. "...the study of the ways culture shapes language and language shaped culture, particularly the intersection of language with cultural categories and the systems of power such as age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class..." (Guest, 122)

4.9. Dialect

4.9.1. "...a nonstandard variation of language..." (Guest, 126)

4.10. Prestige Language

4.10.1. "...a particular language varitation of way of speaking that is associated with wealth, success, education, and power..." (Guest, 126)

4.11. Code Switching

4.11.1. "...switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another depending on the cultural context..." (Guest, 129)

4.12. Language Continuum

4.12.1. "...the idea that the variation in languages appears gradually over distance so that the groups of people who live near one other speak in a way that is mutually intelligible..." (Guest, 134)

4.13. Historical Linguistics

4.13.1. "...the study of the development of language over time, including its changes and variation..." (Guest, 134)

4.14. Language Loss

4.14.1. "...the extinction of languages that have very few speakers..." (Guest, 138)

4.15. Digital Natives

4.15.1. "...a generation of people born after 1980 who have been raised in the digital age..." (Guest, 141)

5. Gender

5.1. Gender Studies

5.1.1. "...research into masculinity and feminity as flexible, complex, and historically and culturally constructed categories..." (Guest, 272)

5.2. Sex and Gender

5.2.1. Sex is "...the observable physical differences between male and female, especially biological differences related to human reproduction..." (Guest, 273)

5.2.2. Gender is "...composed of the expectations of thought and behaviour that each culture assigns to people of different sexes..." (Guest, 273)

5.3. Sexual Dimorphism

5.3.1. "...the phenotypic differences between males and females of the same species..." (Guest, 273)

5.4. Cultural Construction of Gender

5.4.1. "...the ways humans learn to behave as a man or a woman and to recognize behaviors as masculine or feminine within their cultural context..." (Guest 275)

5.4.1.1. Masculinity refers to "...the ideas and practices associated with manhood..."(Guest, 275)

5.4.1.2. Femininity refers t "...the ideas and practices associated with womanhood..." (Guest, 275)

5.4.1.3. Gender Stereotypes "...are widely held preconceived notions about the attributes of, differences between, and proper roles for men and women in culture..." (Guest, 295)

5.4.1.4. Gender Ideology is "...a set of cultural ideas, usually stereotypical, about the essential character of different genders that functions to promote and justify gender stratification..." (Guest, 395)

5.5. Gender Performance

5.5.1. "...the way gender identity is expressed through action..." (Guest, 282)

5.6. Intersex

5.6.1. "...the state of being born with a combination of male and female genitalia, gonads, and/or chromosomes..." (Guest, 286)

5.7. Hijras

5.7.1. "...are religious followers of the Hindu Mother Goddess, Bahuchara Mata, who is often depicted and described as transgender...[but]... culturally they are viewed as neither man or woman..." (Guest, 288)

5.8. Two-Spirit

5.8.1. In Northern Native American Culture, transgender "...men and women...[adopt]...roles and behaviors of the opposite gender...[and in some cases]...people...[consider]...them to have both feminine and masculine spirits..." (Guest, 288)

5.9. Gender Stratification

5.9.1. "...an unequal distribution of power in which gender shapes who has access to a group's resources, opportunities, rights, and privileges..." (Guest, 295)

6. Sexuality

6.1. Sexuality

6.1.1. "...the complex range of desires, beliefs, and behaviors that are related to erotic physical contact and the cultural arena within which people debate about what kinds of physical desires and behaviors are right, appropriate, and natural..." (Guest, 314)

6.2. Mati

6.2.1. Mati are "...women who form intimate spiritual, emotional, and sexual relationships with other women..." who can have sexual relationships with either men or women. (Guest, 319)

6.3. Sexuality in the United States

6.3.1. Heterosexuality is the "...attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the opposite sex..." (Guest, 322)

6.3.2. Homosexuality is the "...attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the same sex..." (Guest, 322)

6.3.3. Bisexuality is the "...attraction to and sexual relations with members of both sexes..." (Guest, 322)

6.3.4. Asexuality is the "...lack of erotic attraction towards others..." (Guest, 322)

6.4. Sex Tourism

6.4.1. "...travle usually organized through the tourism sector, to facilitate commercial sexual relations between tourists and local residents in destinations around the world..." (Guest, 338

7. Class and Inequality

7.1. Class

7.1.1. "...a system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society's resources..." (Guest, 388)

7.2. Egalitarian Society

7.2.1. "...a group based on the sharing of resoursed to ensure success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violence..." (Guest, 390)

7.3. Reciprocity

7.3.1. "...the exchange of resources, goods, and services amoung people of relatively equal status; meant to create and reinforce social ties..." (Guest, 390)

7.4. Ranked Society

7.4.1. "...a group in which wealth is not stratified but prestige and status are..." (Guest, 391)

7.5. Redistribution

7.5.1. "...a form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different pattern..." (Guest, 391)

7.6. Potlatch

7.6.1. "...elaborate redistribution ceremony practices amoung the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest..." (Guest, 391)

7.7. Bourgeoisie

7.7.1. "...Marxist term for the capitalist class that owns the means of production..." (Guest, 394)

7.8. Means of Production

7.8.1. "...the factories, machines, tools, raw materials, land, and financial capital needed to make things..." (Guest, 394)

7.9. Proletariat

7.9.1. "...Marxist term for the class of laborers who own only their labor..." (Guest, 394)

7.10. Prestige

7.10.1. "...the reputation, influence, and deference bestowed on certain people because of their membership in certain groups..." (guest, 395)

7.11. Life Chances

7.11.1. "...an individual's opportunities to improve quality of life and realize life goals..." (Guest, 396)

7.12. Social Mobility

7.12.1. "...the movement of one's class position, upward or downward, in stratified societies..." (Guest, 396)

7.13. Social Reproduction

7.13.1. "...the phenomenon whereby social and class relations of prestige or lack of prestige are passed from one generation to the next..." (Guest, 396)

7.14. Habitus

7.14.1. "...Bourdieu's term to describe the self-perceptions, sensibilities, and tastes developed in response to external influences over a lifetime that shapes one's conceptions of the world and where one fits in..." (Guest, 396)

7.15. Cultural Capital

7.15.1. "...the knowledge, habits, and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources in society..." (Guest, 398)

7.16. Intersectionality

7.16.1. "...an analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification..." (Guest, 399)

7.17. Income

7.17.1. "...what people earn from work, plus dividends and interest on investments, along with rents and royalties..." (Guest, 411)

7.18. Wealth

7.18.1. "...the total value of what someone owns, minus any debt..." (Guest, 412)

7.19. Caste

7.19.1. "...a system of stratification most prominently found in India..." (Guest, 420)

7.20. Dalits

7.20.1. "...members of India's 'lowest' caste; literally, 'broken people'. Also called 'untouchables'..." (Guest, 421)

7.21. Karl Marx (1801-1882)

7.21.1. Marx was "...perhaps the most widely read theorist of class...[who]...wrote against a background of economic change and social upheaval..." (Guest, 394)

8. The Global Economy

8.1. Economy

8.1.1. "...a cultural adaption to the environment that enables a group of humans to use the available land, resources, and labor the satisfy their needs and to thrive..." (Guest, 440)

8.2. Food Foragers

8.2.1. "...humans who subsist by hunting, fishing, and gathering plants to eat..." (Guest, 440)

8.3. Pastoralism

8.3.1. "...a strategy for food production involving the domestication of animals..." (Guest, 442)

8.4. Horticulture

8.4.1. "...the cultivation of plants for the substances through nonintensive use of land and labor..." (Guest, 442)

8.5. Agriculture

8.5.1. "...and intensive farming strategy for food production involving permanently cultivated land..." (Guest, 442)

8.6. Industrial Agriculture

8.6.1. "...intensive farming practices involving mechanization and mass production of foodstuff..." (Guest, 443)

8.7. Carying Capacity

8.7.1. "...the number of people who can be supported by resources of the surrounding region..." (Guest, 444)

8.8. Barter

8.8.1. "...the exchange of goods and services one for the other..." (Guest, 445)

8.9. Reciprocity

8.9.1. "...the exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status, meant to create and reinforce social ties..." (Guest, 445)

8.10. Redistribution

8.10.1. "...a form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different pattern..." (Guest, 446)

8.11. Leveling Mechanisms

8.11.1. "...practices and organizations that reallocate resources among a group maximize the collective good..." (Guest, 447)

8.12. Traingle Trade

8.12.1. "...the extensive exchange of slaves, sugar, cotton, and furs between Europe, Africa, and the Americas that transformed economic, political, and social life on both sides of the Atlantic..." (Guest, 451)

8.13. Industrial Revolution

8.13.1. "...the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shift from agriculture and artisanal skill craft to machine-based manufacturing..." (Guest, 454)

8.14. Modernization Theories

8.14.1. "...post-World War II economic theories that predicted that with the end of colonialism, less-developed countries would follow the same trajectory toward modernization as the industrialized countries..." (Guest, 458)

8.15. Development

8.15.1. "....post-World War II strategy of the wealthy nations to spur global economic growth, alleviate poverty, and raise living standards through strategic investment in national economies of former colonies..." (Guest, 458)

8.16. Dependency Theory

8.16.1. "...a critique of modernization theory arguing that despite the end of colonialism, the underlying economic relations of the modern world economic system had not changed..." (Guest, 459

8.17. Neocolonialism

8.17.1. A continued pattern of unequal economic relations despite the formal end of colonial political and military control..." (Guest, 459)

8.18. Underdevelopment

8.18.1. "...the term used to suggest that poor countries are poor as a result of their relationship to an unbalanced global economic system..." (Guest, 459)

8.19. Core Countries

8.19.1. "...industrialized former colonial states that dominate the world economic system..." (Guest, 459)

8.20. Periphery Countries

8.20.1. "...the lease-developed and least powerful nations, often exploited by the core countries as the sources of raw materials, cheap labor, and markets..." (Guest, 459)

8.21. Sermiperiphery Countries

8.21.1. "...nations ranking in between the core and periphery countries, with some attributes of the core countries but with less of a central role in the global economy..." (Guest, 459)

8.22. Fordism

8.22.1. "...the dominant model of industrial production for much of the twentieth century, based on a social compact between labor, corporations, and government..." (Guest, 462)

8.23. Flexible Accumulation

8.23.1. "...the increasingly flexible strategies that corporations use to accumulate profits in an era of globalization, enabled by innovative communication and transportation..." (Guest, 463)

8.24. Global Cities

8.24.1. "...Former industrial centers that have reinvented themselves as command centers for global production..." (Guest, 464)

8.25. Neoliberlism

8.25.1. "...an economic and political worldview that sees the free market as the main mechanism for ensuring economic growth, with a severely restricted role for government..." (Guest, 466)

8.26. Commodity Chains

8.26.1. "...the hands an item passes through between producer and consumer...) (Guest, 472)

9. Religion

9.1. Religion

9.1.1. "...a list 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 the community..." (Guest, 573)

9.2. Martyr

9.2.1. "...A person who sacrifices his or her life for the sake of his or her religion..." (Guest, 575)

9.3. Saint

9.3.1. "...an individual considered exceptionally close to God and who is then exalted after death..." (Guest, 575)

9.4. Sacred and Profane

9.4.1. Sacred is "...anything that is considered holy..." while profane is "...anything that is considered unholy..." (Guest, 578)

9.5. Ritual

9.5.1. "...an act or series of acts regularly repeated over years or generations that embody the beliefs of a group of people and create a sense of continuity and belonging..." (Guest, 578)

9.6. Rites of Passage

9.6.1. "...a category of ritual that enacts a change of status from one life stage to another, either for an individual or for a group..." (Guest, 579)

9.6.1.1. Liminality

9.6.1.1.1. "...one stage in a rite of passage during which ritual participant experiences a period of outsiderhood, set apart from normal society, that is a key to achieving a new perspective on the past, future, and current community..." (Guest, 280)

9.6.1.2. Communitas

9.6.1.2.1. "...a sense of camaraderie, a common vision of what constitutes a good life, and a commitment to take a social action to move toward achieving this vision that is shaped by the common experience of rites of passage..." (Guest, 580)

9.7. Pilgrimage

9.7.1. "...a religious journey to a sacred place as a sign of devotion and in search of transformation and enlightenment..." (Guest, 581)

9.8. Cultural Materialism

9.8.1. "...a theory that argues that material conditions, including technology, determine patterns of social organization, including religious principles..." (Guest, 584)

9.9. Shamans

9.9.1. "...part-time religious practitioners with special abilities to connect individuals with supernatural powers or beings..." (Guest, 587)

9.10. Magic

9.10.1. "...the use of spells incantations, words, and actions in an attempt to compel supernatural forces to act in certain ways, whether for good or evil..." (Guest, 588)

9.10.1.1. Imitative Magic

9.10.1.1.1. "...a ritual performance that achieves efficacy by imitating the desired magical result..." (Guest, 588)

9.10.1.2. Contagious Magic

9.10.1.2.1. "...ritual words or performances that achieve efficacy as certain materials that come into contact with one person carry a magical connection that allows power to be transferred from person to person..." (Guest, 589)

9.11. Symbol

9.11.1. "...anything that represents something else..." (Guest, 594)

10. Race and Racism

10.1. Race

10.1.1. "...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)

10.2. Racism

10.2.1. "...individuals' thoughts 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)

10.3. "...humans are almost identical, sharing more than 99.9 percent of our DNA..." (Guest, 198)

10.4. Genotype

10.4.1. "...the inherited genetic factors that provide the framework for an organism's physical form...'

10.5. Phenotype

10.5.1. "...the way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form as a result of genotype interaction with environmental factors..." (Guest, 200)

10.6. Colonialism

10.6.1. ...the practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and a military power beyond its own borders, over an extended period of time to secure access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets, in other countries or regions..." (Guest, 203)

10.7. Miscegenation

10.7.1. "...a demeaning historical term for interracial marriage..." (Guest, 207)

10.8. Whiteness and White Supremacy

10.8.1. Whiteness is "...a culturally constructed concept origination in 1691 Virginia designed to establish clear boundaries of who is white and who is not..." which was the foundation of white supremacy, "...the belief that whites are biologically different form and superior to people of other races..." (Guest, 216)

10.9. Jim Crow

10.9.1. "...laws implemented after the U.S. Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South, after the end of slavery..." (Guest, 216)

10.10. Hyperdecent

10.10.1. "...sometimes called the 'one drop of blood rule'; the assignment of children racially 'mixed' unions to the subordinate group..." (Guest, 217)

10.11. Nativism

10.11.1. "...the favoring of certain long-term inhabitants, namely whites, over new immigrants..." (Guest, 218)

10.12. Racialization

10.12.1. "...the process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a peron or group of people..." (Guest, 222)

10.13. Individal Racism

10.13.1. "...personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race..." (Guest, 223)

10.14. Microaggresstions

10.14.1. "...common, everyday verbal or behavioral indignities and slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, and negative messages about someone's race, gender, sexual orientation or religion..." (Guest, 223)

10.15. Institutional Racism

10.15.1. "...patterns by which racial inequality is structered through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems..." (Guest, 223)

10.16. Racial Ideology

10.16.1. "...a set of popular ideals about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal..." (Guest, 225)

11. Politics and Power

11.1. Band

11.1.1. "...a small kinship-based group of forgers who hunt and gather for a living over a particular territory..." (Guest, 529).

11.2. Tribe

11.2.1. "...originally viewed as a culturally distinct, multiband population that imagined itself as one people descended from a common ancestor; currently used to describe an indigenous group with its own set of loyalties and leaders living to some extent outside the control of a centralized authoritative state..." (Guest, 532)

11.3. Cheifdom

11.4. State

11.4.1. "...an autonomous political unit composed of a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief..." (Guest, 352)

11.4.2. "...an automous regional structure of political, economic, and military rule with a central government authorized to make law and use force to maintain order and defend its territory..." (Guest, 536)

11.5. Hegemony

11.5.1. "...the ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreenent within a population without the use or threat of force..." (Guest, 538)

11.6. Civil Society Organizations

11.6.1. "...a local nongovernmental organization that challenges state policies and uneven development, and advocates for resources and opportunities for members of its local communities..." (Guest, 540)

11.7. Militarization

11.7.1. "...the contested social process through which a civil society organizes for the production of military violence..." (Guest, 546)

11.8. Agency

11.8.1. "...the potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power..." (Guest, 555)

11.9. Social Movement

11.9.1. "...collective group actions that seek to build institutional networks to transform cultural patterns and government policies..." (Guest, 555)

11.10. Framing Process

11.10.1. "...the creation of shared meanings and definitions that motivate and justify collective action by social movements..." (Guest, 558)