anthropology terms

• Acculturation: Cultural change related to contact with another culture
• Agency: The capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class, gender, religion and social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events
• Authority: Power is exercised with the consent of others
• Biopsychological model: Interactions between biological, psychological and social factors determine the cause, manifestation, and outcome of wellness and disease
• Capitalism: An economic and political system in which a society's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state
• Class: Division of people in a society based on social and economic status
• Commodification: turning the body into something of value
• Community: A group of people who share a common interest, or a common ecology and locality, or a common social system or structure.
• Conflict: Disagreements between individual's , groups, cultures or societies may result from differences in interests, values or actions. Conflict theory presents a lens, or framework, which can give anthropologists insight into the social impact pf disharmony
• Consensus: Theories around the concept if consensus assume that cultural values and beliefs are learned and shared into a significant extent across a society and that there is a general level of agreement about these values and beliefs
• Consumption: The meaningful use that people make of the objects that are associated with them. The use can be mental or material; the objects can be things, ideas or relationships
• Cosmology: Social groups perceive the universe and describe their relationship with it in different ways.
• Cultural relativsim: Not making value judgements about cultural differences; understanding a different culture in its context
• Embodiment: The process by which people incorporate biologically the social and material world in which they live. A person knows, feels, and thinks about the social world through the body.
• Enculturation: The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group. The transmission of culture from one generation to the next
• Environment: Communities or societies may have a complex relationship with the physical setting in which they live
• Ethics: The principles of conduct governing an individual or group; concerns for what is right or wrong, good or bad
• Ethnicity: A social group is connected by a shared understanding of cultural identity
• Ethnocentrism: The tendency to view the world from the perspective of one's own culture; the inability to understand cultures different from one's own
• Exchange: The transfer of things between social factors. The things can be human or animal, material or immaterial. Exchange is central to all people's lives, but its consequences and elaborations are more marked in some cultures
• Fieldwork: When an anthropologist becomes immersed in the local life of a group of people for the purpose of learning about their culture
• Gender: The culturally constructed distinctions between males and females
• Globalisation: The tendancy towards increasing global interconnection in culture, economy, and social life, The transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations.
• Governmentality: The process of making people do what they are told, and the process of making people think what they are told
• Habitus: socialised norms guide people's behaviour and thinking. These become lasting tendencies to think, feel and act in certain ways or particular social situations
• Hegemony: The cultural or political dominance of one social group over others; cultural processes through which the ruling classes maintain their power
• Ideology: The system of social and moral ideas of a group of people; a commitment to central views
• Localisation: A social group's specific adaptation of the influences of globalisation
• Marginalisation: Relegating specific groups of people to the edge of society, economically, politically, culturally and socially; limiting their access to productive resources and avenues for the realisation of their productive human potential
• Marginality: Human dimensions used as a basis for social exclusion (class, ethnicity, gender)
• Mechanized body: The body may be percieved as a machine consisting of organc arts, surgical implants of mechanical parts means re-thinking the concept of "the body"
• Modernisation: The adoption of characteristics of more developed societies by less developed societies, generally including the abandonment of some traditional practices
• Modified body: The human body is deliberately altered for cultural reasons (right's of passage, group membership) or aesthetic, reasons (body art, self-expressions)
• Participant Observation: Researcher observes the behaviour of the participants in their natural environment.
• Personhood: Culturally constructed concept of the individual human being the "self"
• Post-colonialism: Study of the legacy of the colonial era and the residual political, cultural, socio-economic, and psychological effects
• Qualitative research: Research methods that rely on ther researcher's interpretive skills to understand the often complex and detailed data gathered
• Quantitative research: Research methods that involve the numerative collection of data, which can then be collated and tabled or graphed
• Race: A socially constructed category of identification of people based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture. In colonial times this term was used to support ethnocentric, prejudical views
• Reciprocity: Mutual exchange of obligation between people, generalised (no expectation of return); balanced (exchange of equal value); negative (one party seeks to benefit at the expense of the other)