1. Chapter 1: Anthropology in the Global Age
1.1. Anthropology: the study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another's culture and connections
1.1.1. Cultural Anthropology: the study of people's communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together
1.1.2. "Our work cover the whole world and is not constrained by geographic boundaries" (Guest, 10)
1.2. Lenses Used in Anthropology
1.2.1. Four-Field Approach- The use of four interrelated disciplines to study humanity: physical anthropology, archaeological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology
1.2.2. Holism: Similar to the four-field approach learning about the full scope of human life, including culture, biology, history, and language, across space and time.
1.3. 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
1.3.1. Participant Observation: a key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied
1.3.2. Ethnographic: "Walking in their shoes" (Guest,10)
2. Culture
2.1. Learned and Taught: culture can learned (enculturation) and taught in an informal or formal situation
2.1.1. Informal: unconscious learning and teaching through family, friends, and social events (like a birthday party)
2.1.2. Formal: cultural institutions like schools, medical systems, media, police/military, and religious institutions
2.2. Culture is "A system of knowledge, beliefs, and institutions that are created, learned, shared and contested by a group of people" (Guest, 35)
2.3. Franz Boas
2.3.1. He rejected the idea of unilineal cultural evolution: all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages
2.3.1.1. Savagery (early)--> Barbarism (middle)--> Civilization (later states)
2.4. Nature vs Nurture: the idea that people learn and develop based on their environment or genetics
2.4.1. Nature entitles the determination of gender differences, racial categories, ethnic divisions, and sexuality (debatable)
2.4.2. Nurture involves culture, values, and experiences that shape a person's behavior
3. Human Origins
3.1. Dating: Scientists use the process to determine how old fossil or rock is which can be beneficial for a lot of information
3.1.1. Relative Dating: is based on material found near the object getting dated. This could be a stone, artifact, or any other fossilized object
3.1.2. Absolute Dating: uses more precise tools. Example, using carbon-14's half life, carbon dating has become popular in dating how long ago the bodies of the fossils existed
3.2. Evolution: (Darwinism) every living thing is representative of multiple biological adaptations over thousands of generations. This happens in response to changes in a natural environment.
3.2.1. Natural Selection: is the process by which organisms with features that are adaptable to the environment survive and reproduce and increase frequency (like the blue dodo bird or the month)
3.2.2. Positive Selection: process in which advantageous genetics variants quickly increase in frequency in a population
3.3. Human Ancestors: humanity has evolved from varies species of hominid; from the Australopithecus, homo habilis, homo erectus, homo florensiensis, Neanderthals to the now existing homo sapiens
3.3.1. Bipedalism: the ability to habitually walk on two legs; ancestors spent a lot of time on the ground. With this hands and arms were free which were able to create tools to survive and hunt
3.3.2. Skulls: over time, as humanity gained more resources, skulls evolved to fit new diets and a larger brain
3.3.3. Fossils: the remains of an organism that have been preserved by a natural chemical process that turns them partially or wholly into rock.
3.4. Genetics: affected the evolution process through mutations in human DNA, gene flow, and genetic drift
3.4.1. Gene Flow: the movement of genetic material within a population and among diverse populations
3.4.2. Genetic drift "is more rapid in smaller more isolated populations as a small number of changes can have a statistically more significant influence" (Guest, 168)
3.4.2.1. Random and unpredictable changes in DNA
3.4.2.2. The process whereby one segment of a population is removed from the larger pool, thereby limiting the flow of genetic material between the two groups.
4. Language and Culture
4.1. "Language is a system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information." (Guest, 113)
4.1.1. "Kinesics: The study of the relationship between body movements and communication." (Guest, 117)
4.1.2. "Paralanguage: An extensive set of noises (such as laughs, cries, sighs, and yells) and tones of voice that convey significant information about the speaker." (Guest, 117)
4.1.3. Human Language is complex, adaptable, and symbolic.
4.2. We are born with the ability to learn language and use language to communicate. under different culture people use different way to describe things. Language and culture can not be separated.
4.2.1. "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The idea that different languages create different ways of thinking." (Guest, 118)
4.2.2. "Sociolinguistics: The study of the ways culture shapes language and language shapes culture, particularly the intersection of language with cultural categories and systems of power such as age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class." (Guest, 122)
4.2.3. Page 143, "As soon as you study another language, even a little tiny bit, you stop being a prisoner of your own cultural point of view"
4.3. What do all languages have in common? - Cameron Morin
5. Gender
5.1. Gender Studies- research into understanding who we are as men and women.
5.1.1. This study has become an important part of anthropology because gender is constructed to be an important part of culture
5.2. "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)
5.2.1. Sex (from an anthropological viewpoint) is about the observable physical differences from male and female, especially the reproduction differences
5.2.1.1. "Gender is composed of the expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes." (Guest, 273)
5.3. Although human are born with biological sex, we learn to be men and women.
5.4. 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.
5.4.1. These very from culture to culture, but some may look the same when viewed through a global lens.
5.5. Gender- The expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes.
5.6. Sex vs Gender vs Orientation
6. Sexuality
6.1. Sexuality- the complex range of desires, beliefs, and behaviors that are related to erotic physical contact, intimacy, and pleasure.
6.1.1. "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)
6.2. Humans have developed a different idea of a sex life. Behaviors that are found in nature are not normal to us humans anymore.
6.3. Even, people, and physical and cultural environment can shape our sexual desires and behaviors.
6.3.1. "Culture shapes what people think is natural, normal, and even possible." (Guest, 318)
6.3.2. "Constructionists also trace the ways in which, through culture, human groups arrange a diversity of human sexuality into a limited number categories..." (Guest, 318)
6.4. Machismo creates a division between aggression and passivity.
6.4.1. Masculine men, or "real" men should be aggressive and machismo must be preformed to maintain social status.
6.5. Sexuality entails more than making personal decisions about who we want to be our sexual partners and how we want to spend our time with them.
6.5.1. Heterosexuality- Attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the opposite sex.
6.5.2. Homosexuality- Attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the same sex.
6.5.3. Bisexuality- Attraction to and sex-ual relations with members of both sexes.
6.5.4. Asexuality- a lack of erotic attraction to others.
7. Class and Inequality
7.1. Class: A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society's resources (Guest 338).
7.1.1. Social Mobility: The movement of one's class position, upward or downward, in
7.2. Cultural Capital: 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).
7.2.1. "In the United States one's life chances are heavily influenced by the class position of one's family - the financial and cultural resources passed from generation to generation" (Guest 404).
7.3. "Each society develops its own patterns of stratification that differentiate people into groups or classes." (Guest, 389)
7.3.1. These categories exist and provide unequal access to wealth, resources, and even power. Status and privilege is also included.
7.4. Reciprocity: The exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status; meant to create and reinforce social ties. (Guest, 390)
7.4.1. There is evidence that shows that humans use to rely mostly in sharing food, hunting-and-gathering, and not violence.
7.5. Egalitarian societies: "a group based on the sharing of resources to ensure success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violence" (Guest 390)
7.5.1. Using a system of reciprocity that is based on balanced, generalized, and negative
7.5.2. Create a network of sharing and caring
7.5.3. The largest part of our species history has been spent in egalitarian society...longer than we have been socially stratified
7.6. Karl Marx (1801-1882) : Bourgeoisie and Proletariat...in regards to the transition away from egalitarian societies
7.6.1. Bourgeoisie: "Marxist term for the capitalist class that owns the mean of production" (Guest 394).
7.6.2. Proletariat: "Marxist term for the class of laborers who own only their labor" (Guest 394).
8. Global Economy
8.1. Economy- A cultural adaptation to the environment that enables a group of humans to use the available land, resources, and labor to satisfy their needs to and to thrive (Guest 440).
8.1.1. Food Foragers: Humans who subsist by hunting, fishing, and gathering plants to eat (Guest 440).
8.1.2. Pastoralism: a strategy for food production involving the domestication of animals (Guest 442).
8.1.3. Horticulture: The cultivation of plants for subsistence through nonintensive use of land and labor (Guest 442).
8.1.4. Agriculture: An intensive farming strategy for food production involving permanently cultivated land (Guest 442).
8.2. Modern World Economic System
8.2.1. Development-post-WWII strategy of wealthy nations to spur: Global economic growth ; alleviate poverty; raise living standards through strategic investment in national economies of former colonies
8.2.1.1. Modernization theories: 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).
8.3. Patterns of Distribution
8.3.1. Negative reciprocity : Gift giving where one of the parties attempts to exploit the gift giver
8.3.2. Redistribution : "form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different pattern" (Guest 391)
8.4. Colonialism : when nation-state extends political, economic and military power beyond own borders. And have access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets
8.4.1. Triangle Trade : Sugar was introduced to the Americas by Columbus; furs became an important trade item; soon the Caribbean was filled with sugar cane plantations. "Extensive exchange of slaves, sugar, furs, and cotton...transformed economic, political, and social life..." (Guest 451).
8.4.2. Slavery : forced to work sugar cane plantations ; slave labor subsidized European expansion; financed the American Colonies
8.4.3. Industrial Revolution A major period of social and economic change around the world; European expansion, urbanization, development of technology’s and factory system
9. Religion
9.1. Religion is "a set of beliefs based on a unique vision of how the world ought to be, often revealed through insights into a supernatural power and lived out in a community" (Guest 573)
9.1.1. Symbols used in religious rituals, that represent key aspects of the religion for its followers
9.1.1.1. Anthropologists use certain tools or concepts to understand religion
9.1.1.1.1. Sacred : anything that is considered holy (Guest 578)
9.1.1.1.2. Profane : anything that is considered not (Guest 578)
9.1.1.1.3. Ritual : an act or series of act 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)
9.1.2. Ritual activities that reinforces, recall, instill, and explore collective beliefs like weekly mass, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah , weddings, funerals, pilgrimages
9.1.2.1. "Ritual: 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).
9.1.3. Specialists who assist the average believer to bridge everyday life experiences and the religion’s ideals and supernatural aspects like priests, imams, shamans, gurus, medicine men and women
9.1.4. People make many life decisions and can base their life around their own religious beliefs.
9.1.4.1. "Religious worlds are real, meaningful and powerful to those who live in them" (Guest, 573).
9.1.5. Religion gives people a spiritual dimension to their lives and guides them to have the right values in life. The different stages of life are celebrated through rituals
9.2. Rites of Passage : a category of ritual that enacts a change of status from one life stage to another either for an individual or a group (Guest 579)
9.2.1. 1) separation of existing identity
9.2.2. 2) phase of transition or liminality
9.2.3. 3) incorporation/reincorporation with new identity
9.3. Anthropology in 10 or Less: 109: Religion Part 1: An Anthropology of Religion
10. Race and Racism
10.1. 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)
10.2. 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)
10.2.1. "Race is a deeply influential system of thinking that affects people and institutions." (Guest, 197)
10.2.2. Individual Racism: Personal prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions based on race (Guest 223).
10.2.3. Institutional Racism: Patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems (Guest 223).
10.2.4. Racial ideology : set of popular ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal
10.3. 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)
10.3.1. Colonialism lead to the construction of race
10.4. Constructing whiteness in US society
10.4.1. White Supremacy: The belief that whites are biologically different from and superior to people of other races (Guest 216).
10.4.2. Jim Crow Laws were implemented after the US Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South, after the end of slavery
10.5. Do Biologically Separate Races Exist?
10.5.1. "humans are almost identical, sharing more than 99.9 percent of our DNA. The small differences that do exist are not distributed in any way that would correspond with popular or scientific notions of separate races" (Guest 198)
10.5.2. "genotype: The inherited genetic factors that provide the framework for an organism’s physical form"(Guest 200).
10.5.3. "phenotype: The way genes are expressed in an organism’s physical form as a result of genotype inter- action with environmental factors) (Guest 200).
10.6. Race & Ethnicity: Crash Course Sociology #34
11. Ethnicity and Nationalism
11.1. "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).
11.1.1. "Ethnicity is one of the strongest sources of solidarity available" (Guest 241).
11.1.2. "ethnic boundary marker: A practice or belief, such as food, clothing, language, shared name, or religion, used to signify who is in a group and who is not"( Guest 242).
11.1.3. "situational negotiation of identity: An individual’s self-identification with a particular group that can shift according to social location"(Guest 242).
11.1.3.1. "ethnicity is not biologically fixed, self-identification with a particular ethnic group can change according to one’s social location"(Guest 242)
11.2. How and Why Is Ethnicity Created, Mobilized, and Contested?
11.2.1. "it can be activated when power relationships undergo negotiation in a community or a nation" (Guest 244)
11.2.2. "Ethnicity can also be activated by charismatic entrepreneurs of ethnicity who seek support from co-ethnics in their fight for political, economic, or military power against real or perceived enemies"(Guest 244).
11.3. The existence of ethnicity leads to the sense of nationalism
11.3.1. Nationalism: the desire of an ethnic community to create and/or maintain a nation-state
11.3.2. Imagined community: the invented sense of connection and shared traditions that underlies identification with a particular ethnic group or nation whose members likely will never all meet