1. Language (Chapter Four)
1.1. Quote: "Human language involves sounds and gestures along with myraid symbols that have deep historical and cultural meaning. It is remarkably flexible and creative, rapildy adapting to changes in human life and the environment" (Guest 113).
1.2. This chapter talks about the important role language has in people's lives and communities. How diverse language can be and the impacts it has on people way to think about how they think about the world, perceive it, and engage with the world.
1.3. Langauge: A system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information (Guest 113).
2. Sexuality Chapter Nine
2.1. Quote: "Sexuality involves more than personal choices about who our sexual partners are and what we do with them. It is also a cultural arena within which our desires are expressed, socialized, and even thwarted" (Guest 312).
2.2. This chapter demonstrates how complex sexuality is from someone's desires, beliefs, and behaviors, which one expresses through physical contact. Cultural aspects also impact what is considered right, appropriate, and natural. Humans are considered outlier mammals since they have developed a sex life outside of their biological framework. There can be many sexualities to help someone understand their desires, beliefs, and behaviors through physical contact.
2.3. Important Definitions:
2.3.1. heterosexuality: attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the opposite sex.
2.3.2. homosexuality: attraction to and sexual relations between individuals of the same sex.
2.3.3. bisexuality: attraction to and sexual relations with members of both sexes.
3. Religion Chapter Fifteen
3.1. Quote: "Religion offers a rich vein of material for exploring the complexity of human culture, including systems of belief and systems of power" (Guest 570).
3.2. This chapter illustrates the many religions in the world and how essential religions are to how someone sees the world. From rituals, a rite of passage, liminality, symbols, magic, and other beliefs. There can also be supernatural factors to help someone understand how to live in the community/world. It shows how humans' experience through the religious aspect is demonstrated through their actions to help them understand their significance in life from the community they act upon.
3.3. Important Definition
3.3.1. 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. (Guest 573).
4. Gender (Chapter Eight)
4.1. Quote: "In so doing, gender can be seen less as naturally limiting framework and more as a set of fluid constructs that can be changed over time" (Guest 284).
4.2. This chapter illustrates the complexity of how different sex and gender are. Gender revolves around expectations and behavior across cultures to construct masculinity and femininity. How the cultural construction of gender helps humans learn to behave as a man or woman but also recognize the behaviors of masculinity or femininity. Someone doesn't need to identify themselves as a man or woman, but there can be many other identities; there are many factors, powers, and unequal access that impact someone's gender and how they fit into society and their standards.
4.3. The Origin of Gender Video
4.4. Important Definitions:
4.4.1. Sex: The observable physical differences between male and female, especially biological differences related to human reproduction (Guest 273).
4.4.2. Gender: The expectations of thought and behavior that each culture assigns to people of different sexes (Guest 273).
5. Our Origins (Chapter Five)
5.1. Quote: "To understand the process through which life on Earth has emerged and evolved requires stretching your imagination even farther" (Guest 156).
5.2. Chapter Five illustrates how the Earth has been around for millions of years and the evolution of humans from generations of species. The evolution theory helps one understand Earth's diversity and where we truly come from in our past life. While keeping an open mind to other evidence factors, rather its evolution or creationism, to gather our understanding of where we came from.
5.3. Important Definition
5.3.1. Theory of Evolution: The theory that biological adaptations in organisms occur in response to changes in the natural enivornment and develop in populations over generations.
5.4. Seven Million Years of Human Evolution Video
6. Anthropology in a Global Age (Chapter One)
6.1. Quote: "Anthropologists believe that all humans share connections that are biological, cultural,economic, and ecological" (Guest 11).
6.2. Understanding where we come from, the differences & similarities between human culture, and our evolution to grasp the potential of human life. Anthropologists use perspectives, plans, and tools to help them understand how the world is rapidly changing. This chapter helps understand the diversity of human life and gives an insight into how one's life experiences connect to others.
6.3. Four Field Approach: physical anthropology, archaeology, inguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology.
6.4. Important Definition
6.4.1. Anthropology: the study of full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another.
7. Culture (Chapter Two)
7.1. Quote:"But ultimately, the culture that we learn has the potential to shape our ideas of what is normal and natural, what we say and do, and even what we can think" (Guest 36).
7.2. Chapter Two better explains that culture is not in our DNA; one is not born with culture. Instead, it's learned from the people around us that it can include: gender, religion, race, class, age, immigration, ethnicity, and power.
7.3. Important Definition
7.3.1. Culture: a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared and contested by a group of people.
7.4. Definition of Culture Video
8. Global Economy (Chapter Eleven)
8.1. Quote: "Powerful economic forces and corporate actors, on one hand, and real-life individuals, households,communities, and regions, on the other hand, are often awkward,unstable, and unequal. They bring people together across different cultures, social and economic statuses, and worldviews" (Guest 473).
8.2. Chapter eleven illustrates what it means to have an economy. That it's what we're surrounded by to help us survive in our environment. Cultural adaptation helps us know how to use land, labor, food, and resources to satisfy our needs and help us survive. Understanding that money doesn't have value until we give it value. Everything we have in our world is linked to our global world and the economy.
8.3. Important Defintions
8.3.1. Agriculture: An intensive farming strategy for food production involving permanently cultivated land.
8.3.2. Development: Strategy of wealthy nations to spur global economic growth, alleviate poverty, and raise living standards through strategic investment in national economies of former colonies.
9. Class and Inequality (Chapter Ten)
9.1. Quote: "Stratification and inequality became more pronounced in industrialized capitalist economies over recent centuries, and this uneven development appears to be accelerating under the forces of globalization, further concentrating wealth in the hands of the few" (Guest 393).
9.2. This chapter demonstrates how class and inequality are constructed and what the outcomes are from it. Knowing what class is, it can be difficult to understand it and how it has impacted our world throughout the years. Understanding that class is part of a cultural system of power that has been rooted for generations. Knowing what goes into classifying someone from their status in society. Understanding the unequalness that comes from class.
9.3. Important Definitions
9.3.1. Class: A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society's resources.
9.3.2. Ranked Society: A group in which wealth is not stratified but prestige and status are.
9.3.3. Life Chances: An individual's opportunities to improve quality of life and realize life goods.
9.4. Class and Inequality Video
10. Race and Racism (Chapter Five)
10.1. Quote: "Genetically there is only one race- the human race, with all its apparent diversity" (Guest 196).
10.2. Going into more depth in understanding that race isn't something that is built by nature but something that humans made. The impacts come from a system that characterizes the human population based on their physical appearance and labels them into groups that match those same features. Racism from how someone looks causes them to live a life that may mistreat them for their appearance. The power white privilege has against all other people of color demostrating how flawed our society can be based on someone's race.
10.3. Important Definitions:
10.3.1. Race: A flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups.
11. Ethnicity and Nationalism Chapter Seven
11.1. Quote: "When threatened or challenged, people often turn to local alliances for support, safety, and protection. Ethnicity is one of the strongest sources of solidarity available" (Guest 241).
11.2. Chapter Seven mentions what ethnicity means and how it is created and implemented in how ethnicity is activated through power relationships that form an agreement/negotiation within a community—understanding that ethnicity can bring opportunities. Nationalism is essentially a desire of an ethnic community so that its ability to maintain a state-nation or even create one.
11.3. Important Definitions
11.3.1. 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.
11.3.2. Diaspora: A group of people living outside their ancestral homeland yet maintaining emotional and material ties to home.
11.4. Ethnicity and Nationalism Video
12. Politics and Power Chapter Fourteen
12.1. Quote: "Political systems develop through a natural, evolutionary progression from simple to complex and from less integrated to more integrated, with patterns of leadership evolving from weaker to stronger" (Guest 529).
12.2. Diving deeper into understanding what it means to have power and how it can influence change through actions—knowing that State wasn't the only political system, but there are also Bands, Tribes, and Chiefdom. Understanding that the State has hegemony to avoid the threat of force. Seeing if humans are violet or peaceful naturally, or is it built based on the world around them and how people use agency and social movements to mobilize power outside the States' control.
12.3. Important Definitions
12.3.1. State: An autonomous regional structure of political, economic, and military rule with a central government authorized to make laws and use force to maintain order and defend its territory.
12.3.2. Hegemony: The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use of threat of force.
12.3.3. Social Movement: Collective group actions that seek to build institutional networks to transform cultural patterns and government policies.
12.3.4. Agency: The potential power of individuals and groups of contest cultural norms, values mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.