Midterm 1

• Cultural anthropology: The study of human societies, especially in a cross-cultural context.
• Linguistic anthropology: The study of language, its history and use
• Archaeology: The study of the material culture of past peoples
• Biological anthropology: Any scientist studying evolution as it relates to the human species
• Applied anthropology: The use of information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical problems within and between cultures.
• Dualism: view two different but equal parts (body-mind, good-evil)
• Idealism:  Reduces human nature to ideas or the mind that produces them.
• Determinism: reduction of complex events to single forces.
• Materialism: Reduces human nature to genes.
• Holism: Assumes that mind and body, nature and culture, individual and society and the individual and environment define one another.
• Culture: Sets of learned behaviours and ideas that humans acquire as members of society
• Co-evolution: Emphasizes the mutual evolution of biology, culture, and environment
• Ethnocentrism: The belief ones own way of life is the most natural, correct, or fully human way of life.
• Cultural relativism: Approaching the cultures of other peoples with a sympathy such that applying your own beliefs, values, and practices does not become the standard for the basis of understanding.
• Habitus: Routine activities rooted in habitual behaviours that are learned (what to eat, how you dress, or where to sleep)
• Social darwinism: human cultures evolve from simple to complex. Thus, humans culturally evolve from savage to civilized.
• Coevolution: The relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes.
• basic, foundational elements of culture:

  • Transmission: Ability to copy information
  • Memory: Ability to remember new behaviours
  • Reiterations: Ability to reproduce behaviors
  • Innovation: Ability to invent and modify behavior.
  • Selection: Ability to select what to keep/discard.
  • Symbolic coding/ representation: The ability to use symbols to represent reality.
  • Complex symbolic representation: we can construct complex sentences and think about thinking
  • Institutional development: The ability to create complex and variable forms of social organizations.
• Human agency: The ability to make decisions
• Colonization: The oppressive cultural domination of a people by larger, wealthier powers. Colonialism is best understood as an enduring structure, rather than a historical event.
• Reflexivity: Critically thinking about the way one thinks; reflecting on ones own experience.
• Situated subjectivity: Ones unique perspective
• Positionality: A persons uniquely situated social position such as gender, nationality, political views, previous experiences, etc.
• Situated knowledge: Knowledge set within, or specific to a precise context or situation.
• Subjective meaning: Meaning that seems true to a particular person, based on personal values, beliefs, opinions, and assumptions.
• Intersubjective meaning: Meanings achieved through dialogue and negotiation between researcher and informant.
• Dialectic of fieldwork: The process of building a bridge of understanding between anthropologist and informant so that each can begin to understand the other
• Multi-sited ethnography

  • Site to site
  • Relies on methods of survey and interviews
• Limitations of multi-sited:

  • May dilute the intensity of involvement and the depth of understanding fieldworkers develop with their informants.
  • May weaken researchers commitment to their primary informants
• Effects of fieldwork on informants

  • Code of ethics
  • Do no harm
  • Informed consent
• Effects of fieldwork on researcher

  • Culture shock
• Culture shock: Feeling of physical and mental dislocation a person experiences when in a new or strange cultural setting
• Effects of fieldwork on humanity

  • Provides answers about human nature, human society, human history
• ethnography: Documenting one story
• Ethnology: Comparing two stories
• "White man's burden" presents a eurocentric view of the world. Addressed to a colonizing nation.
• AAA code of ethics

  • Responsibility to people and animals being studied
  • Responsibility to scholarship and science
  • Responsibility to the public
  • Responsibility to students and trainees
• 2012 AAA statement

  • Do no harm
  • Be open and honest regarding work
  • Obtain informed consent and necessary permissions
  • Weigh competing ethical obligations due collaborators and affected parties
  • Make results accessible
  • Protect and preserve your records
  • Maintain respectful and ethical professional relationships