Unit 6 Key terms

• • biocultural approach

  The idea that some human behaviours are shaped by a combination of cultural factors and biological ones, such as genetics.
• • commodities

  Traditionally, commodities are items that involve a transfer of value and a counter-transfer: A sells something to B, and the transaction is finished. As is typical with capitalist market-exchange systems, a long-standing personal relationship between buyer and seller is not established.
• • egocentric

  A view of the self that defines each person as a replica of all humanity, as the location of motivations and drives, and as capable of acting independently from others.
• • enculturation

  The process through which individuals learn an identity. It can encompass parental socialization, the influence of peers, the mass media, government, and other forces.
• • ethnic identity

  When a group of people perceive themselves as a cohesive, unified, and distinctive group of people due to the fact that they have a real or imagined common history and that they may share a common language, religion, racial background, or other factors.
• • imagined community

  A term coined by Benedict Anderson in 1983. It refers to the fact that even in the absence of face-to-face interactions, a sense of community (e.g., nationalism) is culturally constructed by forces such as the mass media.
• • Indigenous peoples

  Groups of people whose ancestors predate the arrival of European or other forms of colonialism, who share a culture and/or way of life that they often identify as distinct from “mainstream” society, and who often feel that they have a right to self-government. In Canada, this includes individuals who identify as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit.
• • nature versus nurture

  A phrase, coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1874, that references a long-standing scholarly debate concerning whether human behaviours and identities are the result of nature (biological and genetic factors) or nurture (learned and cultural factors).
• • potlatch

  A celebration, usually involving elaborate feasting and the redistribution of gifts, found among many Indigenous Northwest Coast groups, such as the Tsimshian. The potlatch is a means of creating a new identity or of reinforcing social status within a group.
• • principle of reciprocity

  According to Marcel Mauss, gift-giving involves reciprocity. The idea is that the exchange of gifts creates a feeling of obligation, in that the gift must be repaid.
• • social identity

  The view that people have of their own and others’ positions in society. These learned personal and social affiliations may include gender, sexuality, race, class, nationalism, and ethnicity. Individuals seek confirmation from others that they occupy the positions on the social landscape that they claim to occupy.
• • sociocentric

  A context-dependent view of self. The self exists as an entity only within the concrete situations or roles occupied by the person.
• • kula ring

  A system of inter-island gift exchange documented by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands. It involves the exchange of shell necklaces and armbands. According to Malinowski, the kula ring serves, among other things, to create alliances and social ties among individuals living on different islands.
• • rites of passage

  The term coined in 1908 by Arnold van Gennep to refer to the category of rituals that accompany changes in status, such as the transition from boyhood to manhood, living to dead, or student to graduate.