Cultural Anthropology

• Cross Cultural Perspective 


  analyzing a human social phenomenon by comparing that phenomenon is manifested in different cultures
• Cultural Construction


  The meanings concepts and practices that people build out of their shared and collective experiences
• Cutural determanism


  The idea that all human actions are the product of culture which denies the influence of other factors, like physical environment and human biology on human action
• Customs


  Long established norms that have a codified and law like aspect
• Enculturation


  The process of learning, the cultural rules and logic of a society
• Functionalism


  A perspective that assumes that cultural practices and beliefs, serve social purposes in any society
• Holistic Perspective 


  A perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole, that is the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions rather than the individual parts
• Interpretive theory of culture


  A theory that culture is embodied and transmitted through symbols
• Norms


  typical patterns of actual behavior, as well as the rules about how things should be done
• Social Institutions 


  organize sets of social relationships that link individuals to each other in a structured way in a particular society,
• Social Sanction


  A reaction or measure intended to enforce norms, and punish their violation
• action anthropology


  an approach to anthropological research that seeks to study and at the same tim, improve community welfare
• Applied anthropology 


  anthropological research commissioned to serve an organizations needs
• Cultural Relativism


  the moral and intellectual principle that one should se to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgement about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices
• empirical 


  verifiable through observation rather than through logic or theory alone
• ethnographic method


  a research method that involves prolonged and intensive observation of and participation in the life of a community
• emic perspective 


  a cultural insiders perspective on their culture
• ethnohistory


  the study of cultural change in societies and periods for which the community had no written histories or historical document, usually relying heavily on oral history for data.
• etic perspective


  an outside observers perspective on a culture
• genealogical method


  a systematic methodology for recording kinship relations and how kin terms are used in different societies
• Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)


  A comparative anthropological database that allows easy reference to coded information about sev hundred cultural traits for more than 350 societies. the HRAF facilitat statistical analysis of the relationship between the presence of one trait and the occurrence of other trait.
• intersubjectivity


  the realisation that knowledge about oth people emerges out of relationships and perceptions individuals have with each other
• primary materials 


  original sources such as fieldnotes that are prepared by someone who is directly involved in the research project and has direct personal knowledge of the research subjects
• rapid appraisal 


  short term focused ethnographic research typically lasting no more than a few weeks, about narrow research questions or problems
• secondary materials


  sources such as censuses, regional surveys, or historical reports that are compiled from data collected by someone other than the field researcher
• The antagonistic detachment between workers and the commodities they produce, as well as between these workers, and the buyers of the goods


  Alienation
• The most prominent, and one of the earliest American Indian activist groups founded in 1968

  American Indian movement
• The view of Carl Marx, that commodities exercise is Stange kind of power power over people, controlling their attention, and becoming objects of obsessive, desire and worship

  commodity fetish
• research and planning aimed, identifying, interpreting, and protecting sites and artifacts of historic or prehistoric significance

  Cultural resource management (CRM)
• The cultural perspectives and social processes that shape, and are shaped by how goods and services are bought sold and used in contemporary capitalism

  culture of mass consumption
• The objects made, and used in any society. traditionally The term referred to technology simple objects made in pre-industrial societies, but material cultures may refer to all of the objects or commodities of modern life as well.

  Material culture
• The 1990 law that established the ownership of human remains grave goods an important cultural objects as belonging to the native Americans, whose ancestors once owned them

  Native American graves protection and repatriation act
• They return a few remains or cultural artifacts to the communities of descendants of the people to whom they originally belong


  repatriation
• A UNESCO-run program that provides financial support to maintain sites of importance to humanity


  World heritage sites program
• The field of study with an anthropology concerned with understanding the cultural conditions for proper development or alternatively the negative impacts of development projects

  anthropology of development
• The promotion of one culture over others, through formal policy or less formal means like the spread of technology and material culture

  Cultural Imperialism
• The cultural attitudes, perceptions and symbolic values that shape decision making processes around an experiences of migration

  Culture of migration
• The application of anthropological knowledge and research methods to the practical aspects of shaping and implementing development projects

  Development anthropology
• early 20th century, Boasian anthropologists who held that cultural characteristics result from either internal historical dynamism or spread of cultural attributes from other societies

  diffusionists
• people who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries

  exiles