ISAS 55

• Lavenda and Schultz: 'Anthropology explores what it means to be human'
• Anthropology


  The study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialize with one another
• Ethnocentrism


  Your own way of doing things: the things that you eat, the people that you marry, the language that you use, the technology that you have, is the correct way of being human
• 4 Fields of Anthropology

  • Physical/Biological Anthropology
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Linguistic Anthropology
  • Archaeology
• Physical/Biological Anthropology


  A systematic study of humans as biological organisms
• Cultural Anthropology


  A study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought and feelings. It focuses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures
• Linguistic Anthropology


  A study of human languages- looking at their structures, history, and relation to social and cultural contexts
• Archaeology


  Studies human culture through the recovery and analysis of material remains and environmental data
• Important Schools of Anthropological Theories

  • Evolutionism
  • Diffusionism
  • Historical Particularism
  • Functionalist School
  • Culture and Personality School
  • Structuralism
  • Cultural Materialism and Marxist Anthropology
  • Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology
  • Feminist Anthropology
• Evolutionism


  The process through which simple things, over the time, become complex
• Diffusionism


  The spread of certain ideas, customs, or practices from one culture to another
• Historical Particularism


  Each culture of each society has its own uniqueness and the society has its own distinctive historical development, that's why he introduced the concept of 'cultural relativism'
• Functionalist School


  Functionalism looks for the part that some aspects of culture or social life plays in maintaining a cultural system. The society also has different parts that are interrelated and each of these parts has some specific functions to be performed
• Culture and Personality School


  Highlighted that personality patterns are dependent on different socialization practices
• Structuralism


  A way of thinking that works to find the fundamental basic units or elements of which anything is made; things cannot be understood in isolation- they have to be seen in a larger context of the larger structures they are part of
• Cultural Materialism and Marxist Anthropology


  Incorporates ideas from Marxism, cultural evolution, and cultural ecology. Materialism contends that the physical world impacts and sets constraints on human behavior
• Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology


  Studies the way people understand their surroundings, as well as the actions and utterances of the other members of their society. Symbolic anthropology studies symbols and the processes, such as myth and ritual, by which humans assign meanings to these symbols to address fundamental questions about human social life
• Feminist Anthropology


  A four-field approach to anthropology (archaeological, biological, cultural, linguistic) that seeks to reduce male bias in research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge
• Culture


  The learned and shared knowledge of that people use to generate behavior and interpret experiences. It is a kind of knowledge, not behavior
• Interpretation


  Interpret the different things/situation base on you as a person
• 2 Basic Kinds of Culture

  • Explicit Culture
  • Tacit Culture
• Explicit Culture


  Culture that has specific term. It is a cultural knowledge that people can talk about
• Tacit Culture


  Culture that has no specific term. It is a cultural knowledge that people lack words for
• 4 Speaking Distances for Middle-class Americans

  • Intimate Speaking
  • Personal Speaking
  • Social Speaking
  • Public Speaking
• Tacit Culture


  Can only be discovered through behavioral observation
• 3 Fundamental Aspects of Culture

  • Cultural Behavior
  • Cultural Artifacts
  • Cultural Knowledge
• Ethnography


  The process of discovering and describing a particular culture. It is a study of anthropology; learning from people. It involves personal and intimate activity to see one's culture
• Microculture


  Systems of cultural knowledge characteristic of subgroups with larger society. They share much of what they know but possess a special cultural knowledge unique to the subgroup
• Informant


  The 'teacher' who has to teach the culture to the ethnographers. Informant doesn't have to be a professional. It could be a child, an ordinary person
• Naive realism


  The belief that people everywhere see the world in the same way
• Culture shock


  A state of anxiety that results from cross-cultural misunderstanding
• Symbol


  Anything that we can perceive with our senses that stands for something else. It can communicate the immense variety of human experience, whether past or present, tangible or intangible, good or bad
• Language


  The most highly developed communication system which uses the channel of sound (for deaf people, sight). It is a system of cultural knowledge used to generate and interpret speech
• Speech


  Refers to the behavior that produces vocal sounds. It is the behavior generated and interpreted by language
• 3 Subsystems for Dealing with Vocal Sounds

  • Phonology
  • Grammar
  • Semantics
• Phonology


  It consists of the categories and rules for forming vocal sounds. It is concerned not directly with meaning but with the formation and recognition of the vocal sounds to which we assign meanings
• Phonemes


  The minimal categories of speech sounds that serve to keep utterances apart; are arbitrarily constructed
• Grammar


  Refers to the categories and rules for combining vocal symbols. Every grammar deals with categories of symbols, such as the ones we call nouns and verbs
• Morphemes


  Categories in any language that carry meaning. They are minimal units of meaning that cannot be subdivided
• Semantics


  Categories and rules for relating vocal symbols to their referrents. It is the study of meaning; message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context