Midterm 1 Study

• • Archaeology:
  • A branch of anthropology that studies human history and its artifacts
• • Biological Anthropology:
  • A subdiscipline of anthropology that focuses on the evolution, function and health of the human body and those of our closest primate ancestors.
• • Critical cultural relativism:
  • Alternative perspective of cultural relativism that poses questions about cultural beliefs and practices.
• • Cultural relativism:
  • The effort to understand the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures in terms of the culture in which they are found.
• • Cultural text:
  • A way of thinking about culture as a text of significant symbols, such as words, gestures, drawings, and natural objects, all of which carry meaning.
• • Culture:
  • The system of meanings about the nature of experience that are shared by a people and passed on from one generation to another, including the meanings that people give things, events, activities and people.
• • Ethnocentric fallacy:
  • The mistaken notion that the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures can be judged from the perspective of one's own culture.
• • Ethnocentrism:
  • The tendency to judge the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures from the perspective of one's own culture.
• • Linguistic anthropology:
  • A study of the relationship between language and culture
• • Relativistic fallacy:
  • The idea that it is impossible to make moral judgements about the beliefs and behaviours of members of other cultures.
• • Society:
  • The social structures and organization of group comprised of people who share a territory and culture
• • Sociocultural anthropology:

  A comparative approach to the study of societies and cultures that focuses on differences and similarities in the ways that societies are structured and cultural meanings are created.
• • Armchair anthropology:
  • Involves the collection, study, and analysis of writings of the missionaries , explorers and colonist who has sustained contact with non-western peoples. They use these documents to make comparisons and generalizations about the ways of life of various groups.
• • Culture shock:
  • The feeling of disorientation in the initial stages of fieldwork when an anthropologist is adjusting to a new language, beliefs, food or even climate.
• • Emic perspective:
  • "insider's perspective" To understand the view of the informants.
• • Essentialism:
  • The act of creating generalizations or stereotypes about the behaviour or culture of a group of people.
• • Ethnographic fieldwork:
  • A research method, the anthropologist have a long term engagements with a group of people.
• • Ethnography:
  • A written description and analysis of a particular group of people, usually based upon anthropological fieldwork.
• • Etic perspective:
  • The analysis of an aspect of culture using comparative categories, explanations, and interpretation from the perspective of an outside observer.
• • Informed consent:
  • The process where the research participants understand the goals, methods and potential outcomes of the research process and give permission for the researcher to conduct said research.
• • Multi-sited fieldwork:
  • The process of connecting localized experiences of fieldwork with broader, global processes. It necessitates understanding various issues from multiple "sites" or perspective.
• • Participation observation:
  • An element of fieldwork that can involve participating in daily tasks and observing daily interactions among a particular group.
• • Qualitative research:
  • Aim to explore rather than measure, various phenomena, often through forms of observation such as interviews, focus groups, and direct participant observation.
• • Quantitative research:
  • Involves the generation of statistical data. Surveys and censuses.
• • Rapport:
  • A feeling of affinity, friendship, and responsibility between an anthropologist and an informant. It is often developed through the use of long-term ethnographic fieldwork.
• • Representation:
  • The way people are depicted in writing or through images. Anthropologist should be conscious of the fact that when they write about a group of people they are constructing particular representation that may have a positive or negative long-term effects for a group of people.
• • Salvage anthropology:
  • An approach to anthropology where the anthropologist witness the extinction or assimilation of indigenous people in the world, so they rapidly document the oral stories, songs, histories and other traditions of indigenous peoples before they disappeared.
• • Bands:
  • A term used by anthropologists to refer to egalitarian units of social org
• • Biomedical model:
  • Also known as Western medicine, scientific medicine, or modern medicine, the model combines biology with the diagnosis and treatment of illness and views the body as a machine, independent of social context, that must be repaired periodically.
• • Clans:
  • Unilineal descent groups whose members claim descent from a common ancestor.
• • Colonialism:
  • Refers to the acquisition of new territories throughout the world by European powers from 1492 until approximately 1945. Colonizers often imposed new forms of politics, economics, and religion upon colonized Indigenous or other cultures, and frequently exploited local populations for their labour.
• • Culture change:
  • The changes in meanings that a people ascribe to experience and changes in their way of life.
• • Economic development:
  • he term used to identify an increase in level of technology, and by some, standard of living of a population. Others view it as an ideology based on three key assumptions:
  • (-1) that economic growth and development is the solution to national as well as global problems;
  • (2) that global economic integration will contribute to solving global ecological and social problems; and
  • (3) that foreign assistance to undeveloped countries will make things better.
• • Factory system:
  • A system of production characterized by the concentration of labour and machines in specific places. It is associated with the Industrial Revolution.
• • Foragers:
  • A term used by anthropologists to refer to societies that make their livelihood through gathering plants, hunting, or fishing.
• • Industrial revolution:
  • A period of European history, generally identified as occurring in the late eighteenth century, marked by a shift in production from agriculture to industrial goods, urbanization, and the factory system.
• • International monetary fund (IMF):
  • Created as an outcome of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference to regulate currency transactions among countries. The IMF now makes loans and regulates the economies of lending countries.
• • Interpersonal theory of disease:
  • A view of disease in which it is assumed that illness is caused by tensions or conflicts in social relations.
• • Irrigation agriculture:
  • A form of cultivation in which water is used to deliver nutrients to growing plants.
• • Natural selection:
  • Refers to Darwin’s idea that the survival of different species of organisms is partly contingent upon how well adapted they are to their physical environments. Those with favourable physical traits are more likely to survive to reproduce.