Culture
What are the 4 subfields of anthropology and what do each of them do?
-Biological / physical anthropology - the study of human genetic origins, evolution, and variation
-Archaeology – the study of the material evidence left by peoples of the past.
-Linguistic anthropology – the study of human’s symbolic communication and meaning
-Cultural anthropology – the study of human ideas and practices
How does language shape reality?
•Benjamin Lee Whorf and his colleague Edward Sapir argued that words and grammatical structure actually shape one’s reality.
•People can think about only those things that their language can describe or express.
•Without the words or structures with which to articulate a concept, that concept will not occur.
What is armchair anthropology, and what are the problems associated with this kind of study?
-studying other cultures from a far
-relies on other people's accounts rather than on conducting fieldwork
-early armchair anthropologists relied on accounts from travelers, traders, missionaries, colonial government officials, and novelists
-gives the anthropologist a biased perspective shaped by the positionalities of these people
-eg. A missionary's goal is to convert people. As a result, early accounts from missionaries were full of unscientific language and religious interpretations of what they were seeing.
What's the difference between a genotype and a phenotype? How do they interact with one another?
Genotype refers to the inherited genetic factors that provide a framework for an organism's physical form. The genetic makeup of an organism.
Phenotype refers to how genes are expressed in an organism's physical form (skin color, hair texture, eye color, etc.)
Phenotypes are expressed as a result of a genotype's interaction with environmental factors, such as nutrition, disease, and stress.
Under what conditions might someone choose fictive kin?
Chosen families can take on the characteristics of stability, continuity, endurance, and permanence to become "real" when biological families are inadequate or fail (pg. 271)
eg. gay and lesbian families
eg. diaspora communities such as Ghanians working in the United States
Give 3 examples of how people may accept, resist or negotiate the cultural systems they are a part of.
eg. accepting a family role, work expectations, gender expectations.
eg. a student walking into a classroom and sitting in the desk facing the wrong direction.
eg. localized McDonald's menus that reflect local tastes
How might language be used to resist power? Provide an example from lecture or the textbook.
-changing public perceptions of what is considered a 'prestige language' vs. an undesirable dialect/language
eg. Using AAE vs SAE as a symbol of identity and solidarity among the African American community
eg. Spanish speakers using mock Spanish or Inverted Spanglish purposefully to resist marginalization and reclaim public space
What are emic and etic perspectives? What are the strengths of each? Give examples.
■Etic – from the perspective of the observer or outsider. Descriptions that typically arise from the ethnographer and the anthropological community.
■Tend to be based on science and are informed by historical, political, and economic studies and other types of research.
■The etic approach acknowledges that members of a culture are unlikely to view the things they do as noteworthy or unusual.
■They cannot easily stand back and view their own behavior objectively or from another perspective
■But, if we know the broader context, we can more easily identify larger patterns of cultural beliefs and practices.
■Eg. Hurston’s friends can’t understand why their folk tales would be of any interest to anyone.
■The townspeople dismiss them as “lies” – however, the anthropologist, equipped with a theoretical perspective, might attribute some significance to these stories that the people telling them are unaware of.
■Emic – trying to obtain the perspective of the studied culture. Descriptions of behaviors and beliefs in terms that are meaningful to people who belong to the culture. – how people perceive and categorize their culture and experiences, what motivates them, excites them, etc.
■>this way you adopt their common sense/their way of representing the world/their way of knowing
■allows people to give their own narratives, tell their own story > gives them agency in creating their own histories.
■and, if we know what motivates people, why they do the things they do, it contextualizes what we as outsiders might not understand. Breaks down misconceptions and judgments.
■helps us avoid interpreting others according to our own beliefs.
What is racialization? Give two examples of racialization events in U.S. history.
Racialization - the process of categorizing, differentiating, and attributing a particular racial character to a person or group of people
eg. The giving of a racial character of Middle Easterners in U.S. culture after September 11
eg. Italians, Irish, Greeks, and other eastern Europeans becoming absorbed into the white race.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of kinship terminology systems and lineage diagrams?
-Different lineage systems lead to different conceptualizations of who is family and who is not
-Decides how inheritance/land/property/housing is allocated.
-shows us what kind of forces hold people together.
-shows us cultural expectations and if/how people negotiate these expectations
-illuminates people’s economic motivations for marriage
-can show us how/when/why systems change.
eg. changes in family size, the prevalence of divorce, increased number of unmarried adults due to economic pressures, urbanization, migration, etc.
-ignores all the "intimate facts of kinship" (think the Lion King diagram). We don't see all the drama, the long intimate moments of daily life, personal interests, etc.
-We have to be careful about the ethnocentric assumptions of these theories.
-We can’t forget that variation and change are possible.
What is structural functionalism, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of this school of thought?
-cultures/societies should be thought of as organic wholes
-Each aspect of society (kinship, religious, political, and economic structures) fits together and has a unique function within the larger structure.
-Like a living organism, a society works to maintain an internal balance, or equilibrium, that keeps the system working
-Helps us see the boundedness of social structures/institutions
-However, seems to take agency away from people
-Is it deduced by anything observable or is it assumed by pure analogy alone?
-Assumes that our behaviors are biologically structured.
-ignores change, outside influence, history, etc.
What is meant by a language continuum?
-there are not discrete bounded languages as we tend to think (eg. English, Spanish, Chinese, etc.)
-rather there are just an unlimited amount of dialects
-no distinct break where one language ends and another begins
-we can see this in different "official" languages being mutually intelligible, languages having loan words, or border towns having overlap between language communities.
Discuss some of the ethical considerations of representing other cultures.
■The relationships we have with our subjects are necessarily defined by unequal power dynamics
■We are the mediators between the reader and our subjects.
■Because of the academic nature of our work, it is given great authority and wide distribution
■As such, we have a duty to represent them fairly and accurately.
Discuss what anthropologists mean when they say that race is socially constructed and explain how it is socially constructed in different contexts giving three examples.
Omi and Winant argue that racial categories are culturally defined, they can vary from one society to another and change over time - racial formation.
This is because race is a sociohistorical concept – racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical contexts in which they are embedded
The idea of race becomes a useful category for achieving certain political and economic ends
eg.
US - hypodescent
Brazil - tipos
Japan - burakumin
Identify the differences between kinship established by "blood", by marriage, and by choice.
-Kinship is the general way of talking about relatedness.
-Kinship can be by “blood” connections – consanguineal
-Or through marriage ties – affinal
-Kinship can also include “chosen kin” – no formal blood or marriage ties but for practical purposes, function as family.
Eg. adoption, godparents, brotherhoods/sisterhoods, etc.
Define cultural relativism and ethnocentricism
-cultural relativism – the idea that cultures should be considered on their own terms. We ought to reserve our judgments about other people and not assume that our own ways are better than others'
-ethnocentrism - the tendency to view one’s own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.
Define Kinesics and paralanguage and give examples of each.
•Kinesics – all forms of body language. Eg. gestures, body position and movement, facial expressions, and eye contact.
•Paralanguage – characteristics of speech beyond the actual words spoken. Eg. pitch, loudness, tempo, duration, etc. Through paralanguage, we can convey meaning. Eg. questions, sarcasm, defiance, surprise, confidence, impatience, etc.
What are some ways to give fairer representations of other cultures?
■Ways to give fair representations:
■>polyvocality – giving representation to more than one person’s voice or directly quoting instead of paraphrasing.
■>reflexivity – acknowledging one’s position in their research. How one’s background can affect their interpretations.
Explain what is meant by racial formation, hypodescent, and the one-drop rule.
•A racial classification system in which a person of mixed racial heritage is automatically categorized as a member of the less (or least) privileged group.
•Eg. a child born of a black parent and a white parent would automatically be considered to be black (legally or socially)
What do polyandry and other types of family structures tell us about the "naturalness" of the nuclear family?
There is strong ethnographic evidence that shows varying ideas of what a basic family relationship is.
Kinship groups come in a variety of shapes and sizes
Kinship can be selected based on biological connections, can be made through marriage, or can be selected as through adoption and fostering.
Some see kinship as being everyone in their nation
The mother-father-child triad is not necessarily the most "natural" or most common.
Even in the United States, the ideal of the nuclear family is unrealized.
Define hegemony and agency. What is the relationship between the two?
Hegemony - a type of power that creates consent and agreement within a population rather than resorting to violence or coercion.
-maintained through institutions like school, government, religion, and media to shape what people think is normal
Agency - the ability to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.
People have free will, but not under the conditions of their choosing.
What are some consequences of globalization in terms of world languages?
Language loss and diminishing of language diversity
What was Zora Neale-Hurston looking for when she went to Eatonville Florida? What did she find? What does this tell us?
Was looking for "folklore". However, when she arrived, she found that the people of Eatonville didn't believe they were telling folklore. They believed they were just telling 'lies'. Shows us that our terms can only tell us so much about the aims and motivations of our subjects.
What is the difference between indvidual racism and institutional racism?
Individual racism is expressed through prejudiced beliefs and individual discriminatory actions
eg. calling someone a racist slur
Institutional racism or structural racism refers to patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems.
eg. education, health, housing, employment, and media.
Explain how different patterns of kinship and marriage represent rational decisions within cultural contexts giving an example.
Goldstein and others argue that polyandry is economically advantageous.
-allows brothers to hold on to their family land rather than split it
-allows brothers to pool income
-wife can be assured that her children will be provided for
-overall ensures a higher standard of living