Cultural Anthropology

1. Anthropology in a Global Age

1.1. Anthropology is 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 another (Guest, 9).

1.2. Anthropology comes in many shapes and forms such as linguistics, cultural and primatology to name a few, however all the different fields of Anthropology share a common goal of understanding human diversity in both the past and current day.

1.3. Branches of Anthropology

2. Culture

2.1. 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, 34).

2.2. It is important to understand that no individual has his or her own culture, culture is a shared experience developed as result of living as a member of a group (Guest, 36).

2.3. It's important to understand what makes up a culture. Understandings cultures norms, values and symbols are key to enculturation. We must learn each others cultures to fully understand each other and widen our perspective.

3. Religion

3.1. Religion is a set of beliefs and rituals based on a vision of how the world ought to be and how life ought to be lived, often focused on a supernatural power and lived out in community (Guest,372).

3.2. Personal Fact: I grew up with the girls of my family being highly religious, practicing the rather strict religion Jehovah Witnesses. My mother gave me the choice of taking part and I chose to not. However something interesting I've noticed is how respectful and kind my parents are compared to the boys of the family. I love how In America you get a choice, this isn't the case everywhere.

3.3. How does globalization change religion? : Information about religion is more widely available and communication technologies enable religious institutions to transform there strategies for cultivating and educating participates (Guest, 394) I've noticed this change In the Jehovas Witnesses as they have a beautiful app with many active users.

4. Globalization, Economy, and inequality

4.1. What is economy and what is its purpose? At the most basic level, an economy is a cultural adaptation to the environment, a set of ideas, activities, and technoligies that enables a group of humans to use the available land, resources, and labor to satisfy their basic needs and, if organized well, to thrive. (Guest,270).

4.2. Something to note: Incone is what people earn from work, plus dividends and interests on investments along with rents and royalities. Wealth: US census bureau 2017 historical income tables, income inequality tables h-1Which of the following consists of wages earned from work, plus dividends and interest on investments along with rents and royalties? wealth is the total value of what someone owns, including stocks, bonds, and real estate minus any debt.

4.3. According to the U.S census beatua 2017 you can see just how unevenly distrubuted our wealth is. (Linked here)

5. Chapter 1: Omnivorousness: Classifying Food

6. Language is a system of communication that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures organized according to certain rules to convey information (Guest,95).

7. Language

7.1. It goes with out saying that language is so incredibly important, however it's just as important to understand why and how it works. Language is used through speech and descriptive linguistics such as phonemes and the rules or syntax.

7.2. Language can also be through non verbal as well. Such as kinetics (body movement) as well as paralanguage which are sets of noises!

7.3. What do all languages have in common? - Cameron Morin

7.4. Jeopardy theme song [10 hours]

8. Gender and Sexuality

8.1. Sex vs Gender vs Orientation

8.2. Gender Studies is Research into understanding how gender identities and expressions are shaped by and affect one's life changes(Guest, 183)

8.3. A very interesting and Incredibly important question in regards to Gender is "Are Men and Women born or made?". To Answer this question you must first understand the differences between Sex and Gender.

8.4. Sex, from an anthropological viewpoint, refers to the observable physical differences between male and female human beings, especially the biological differences (Guest, 184) However Gender is composed of the expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes (Guest, 184)

8.5. fjaslkjl

9. Race and racisim

9.1. Race: A flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups. (Guest, 123). Racisim: Individuals' thoughts and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privileges', resources and opportunities' based on imagined differences among groups.(Guest, 124).

9.2. Do Biologically sperate races exist: The simple answer is not however this common knowledge wasn't shared in the past. Great thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson thought that blacks were of a separate species and that they were inferior. (Notes on the State of Virginia, 122).

9.3. According to the book, humans are almost identical, sharing more than 99.9 percent of our DNA. (Guest, 125).

9.4. Here is a video deconstructing racism

10. Ethnicity, Nationalism, Power, and Politics

10.1. Ethnicity - A sense of history, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group(Guest,158).

10.2. Nationalism: A desire of an ethnic community to create and/or maintain a nation-state(Guest, 174).

10.3. Types of groups: Bands: describes a small, kinship-based groups of food foragers who move over a particular territory while hunting and gathering. Tribes: conflict between groups within a state. Chiefdom: an autonomous political until composed of a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief. State: an autonomous regional structure of political, economic, and military rule and central government authorized to make laws and use force to maintain order and defend its territory.

10.4. A great video explaining the complexities of ethnicity.