Final Exam: Anth 203

• The Key anthropological concepts are culture, evolutionary theory, cross-cultural studies, and cultural relativism.
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency of people to consider their own behavior not only right but also natural compared to others.
• Nomadic pastoralism is a herding-based subsistence strategy in which the entire population moves with the animals throughout the year, and there are no permanent villages.
• Transhumant pastoralism is a herding-based subsistence strategy in which men and boys move the animals while women, children, and some men live at a permanent village site.
• Ethnography is the description of society or culture.
• Cultural relativism is the anthropological practice of attempting to understand cultures within their context, including environment and history.
• Functionalism is an anthropological perspective that looks for laws of cultural behavior in the relationships between areas of culture such as kinship, religion, and politics.
• Haptics is the study and analysis of touch.
• An emic is an ethnography that attempts to capture what ideas and practices mean to members of a culture.
• An etic is an ethnography that describes and analyzes culture according to principles and theories drawn from Western scientific methods.
• A class is a power, wealth, and prestige group based on achieved status.
• A caste is a power, wealth, and prestige group based on ascribed status.
• Bridewealth is a marriage exchange in which cash or goods are given by the husband's family to the wife's family to seal the marriage.
• Dowry is a marriage exchange in which goods and money are given by the wife's family to the husband's family.
• An ascribed status is based on aspects of identity that society understands to be the result of biology and birth and thus as permanent and unchanging.
• An achieved status is based on aspects of identity that society understands as changeable during one's lifetime, such as education, wealth, marital status, and job title.
• Polyandry is the marriage of one wife to several husbands.
• Polygyny is the marriage of one husband to several wives.
• A descent group is a group of kin who are lineal descendants of common ancestor extending beyond two generations.
• Postmodernism is a theoretical position that holds all knowledge is influenced by the observer's culture and social position and thus objective reality cannot be accurately described.
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that perceptions and understandings of time, space, and matter are conditioned by the vocabulary and structure of language.
• Animism is the belief that all living and nonliving objects are imbued with spirits.
• Communitas is a state of equality and oneness experienced during liminality.
• Na members in China don't practice marriage. Families center on a core of women and include brothers and sons but not husbands and fathers.
• The general characteristics of culture are it's learned, it's symbolic, it's shared, it's organized into a system, there is human adaptation, and it's always changing.
• Cultural universals are shared by all cultures, regardless of their location or time period (e.g., tattoos, religion, dancing, humor, etc.)
• The ethnographic techniques are participant observation, interviews, collecting genealogies, finding a key consultant, taking life histories, or doing a survey.
• The Image of the Limited God is the idea that God is limited by the laws of nature and the laws of the universe (this is an example of a Little Tradition).
• The Kinship terminology is the manner in which kin are classified (named) is associated with their role. We personally use the Eskimo terminology to describe our family relationships.
• A social status is a position in an institution and society.
• A social role is the expected behaviors and mental attributes of the person.
• Roma is another word for Gypsies, which is a derogatory term for them.
• The rule of Hypodescent is children of a racially mixed couple are racially classified with the parent who has the least social status (minority group).
• Burakumin is a social race in Japan, they are considered to be the lowest class in Japanese society.
• Xenophobic is the fear of strangers/strangeness.
• Group markers serve as a way to organize and label components in various contexts (e.g., language, norms, religion, sports, etc.)
• Multiculturalism is the idea that ethnic/racial diversity is desirable.
• The four core aspects of religion are the non-empirical world, their mythologies/sacred text, rituals, and leading practitioners.
• A myth is a traditional or sacred story that is rich in symbolism and often portrays events or beings of the past and future.
• A ritual is a ceremony that is often the enactment of a mythology. The symbols of the governing myth become real.