Quiz 2

• Biogeography: study of the distribution of species in a specific geographical space.
• Anthropology is a holistic study of human origins, patterns of interactions, culture, and physical and socio-cultural development.
• The expansion of territories among ancient civilizations brought about a convergence of peoples of different characteristics and cultural practices, paving the way for the ancient scholars to take account of the cultures they observed in themselves and other different states, kingdoms, or nations.
• In the Age of Exploration and Colonialism, in the 15th to 19th centuries, European explorers sought new land and paved the way for them to account other societies beyond their known maps, launching forms of labeling that gave the Occident or the “West” primacy compared to the Oriental or the “exotic other”.
• In the 19th century, a stronger move toward pacification happened globally, leading to further encounters of the “native” peoples with the Europeans, with the latter having a stronger sense of primacy.
• Edward Burnett Tylor, an English anthropologist, is considered the “Father of Cultural Anthropology” and posits anthropology as a “science of culture” - culture could be objectively studied with proper methodology and a theoretical framework.
• Edward Burnett Tylor introduced the concept of unilineal cultural evolution or the belief that culture progressed from one stage to another.
• Lewis Henry Morgan, an American anthropologist who believed that socio-cultural evolution has three stages: Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization.
• Lewis Henry Morgan used science to justify racism.
• Franz Boas, a German-American anthropologist, did not use science to justify racism and is considered the “Father of American anthropology”.
• Franz Boas pioneered fieldwork (ethnography) in anthropology.
• Franz Boas' methodology promotes cultural relativism or the belief that people and their ways of life are based on different contexts and should not base on the preconceived notions of the researcher.
• Subdisciplines of anthropology include Biological or physical anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistic anthropology, and Cultural anthropology.
• Research Methods in Anthropology include Participant observation, Interviews, Focus groups, and Surveys.
• Geographic information system (GIS): system of gathering, storing, and sharing geographic data using various technologies, software, and applications
• Eratosthenes (276-149 BCE) first used the term “geography” as “the description of the earth as the abode of human beings”; coined as the “Father of Geography”; invented latitude and longitude to locate places and measure distances.
• Ptolemy, another Roman scholar, wrote about cartography (science of mapping), projections, and calculations of Earth’s dimensions.
• In the Age of Exploration (13th - 17th centuries), the Europeans explored new worlds which led to the immense development of the study of the world.
• Global positioning system (GPS): network of orbiting satellites that send precise details of their position in space back to earth
• Demography is the science of human population: its size, composition, and changes (birth, death, migration).
• Demography is mostly quantitative: demographers obtain data generally from censuses, statistical analyses, and surveys.
• Demography is applicable: it can be used to study or formulate public policies.
• The Tribute of Yu in ancient China was the first recorded to discuss geography which surveys the provinces of ancient China, with information about the soils, rivers, and agricultural products.
• Remote sensing: the science of acquiring information of the earth from a distance, typically from satellites or high-flying aircraft
• Demography is interdisciplinary: it draws concepts from other fields like sociology, biology, economics, history, etc.
• Systematic approach (proposed by German geographer Alexander von Humboldt): studies individual issues or phenomena and examines specific patterns and variations across the globe
• Regional approach (proposed by German geographer Karl Ritter): studies geographical phenomena in a specific region and views the world as composed of regions at various hierarchical levels
• Physical geography: studies the physical features of the earth.
• Human geography: studies the interaction between the physical characteristics of the earth and human societies.
• Strabo, a Roman scholar, wrote Geographica (ca 100 BCE - 100 AD) which describes the world.
• In the 19th century, European colleges and universities offered geography as a separate degree.
• Geography studies the physical aspects of the earth and how it affects mobility, outcomes, and interactions of individuals and societies; the bridge between human and physical sciences.
• Ethnography is the study of a culture or one of its segments based on interviews and through participation and observation of the locals' lifeways and beliefs.
• Auguste Comte, a French sociologist, coined the term “sociology” and believed that sociology had a role to play in the development of society and direct human activity.
• Case study is a research method that focuses on a particular social phenomenon and its effects on a specific group of people or an individual.
• Participant observation method is a research method where the anthropologist's actual daily encounters with the locals are documented.
• The French Revolution in the 18th century paved the way for idealists to inquire about the shifting socioeconomic and political dynamics in Europe.
• The academic journals on sociology started to emerge with the American Journal of Sociology in 1895 being the first to publish.
• Penology is a subdiscipline of sociology that studies how punishment is conducted on the offending members of society.
• Karl Marx, a German sociologist, posits the idea of dialectical materialism or the idea that truth can be found in the observable and knowable world through the contradictions and their solutions caused by material needs (the idea of “thesis + antithesis = synthesis”).