anthropology
comparison and ethics
language
kinship
ritual
100

Three important methods and tools in social and cultural anthropology

What are ethnographic research, fieldnotes, and participant observation?

100

The answer to the question "Do Muslim women really need saving?""

What is "no."

100

Any observable thing (including a sound, word, object, gesture, placement…) that carries a meaning or meanings

What is a sign?

100

The most common kinship system in the U.S.

what is bilineal?

100

the author of the essay "Betwixt and Between"

Who is Victor Turner?

200

The four fields of anthropology

What are cultural or social anthropology; physical or biological anthropology; archaeology; linguistic anthropology?

200

The organization that authored anthropology's "Code of Ethics" in the U.S.

What is the American Anthropological Association?

200

Language does not simply mirror or reflect reality, but also shapes it.

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

200
some topics covered in "New kinship studies"

what are adoption, technological changes, queer family-making?

200

Some features of the liminal stage in rites of passage

what are: same clothing, no clothing, obedience, symbolic death, equality, "breaking down to build back up?"

300

Four characteristics of social or cultural anthropology

What are ethnographic, holistic, comparative, critical?

300

A distinction drawn by Renato Rosaldo, between a modest doctrine that allows you to make ethical judgements, as long as you engage people whose behavior you disagree with, and a much broader "anything goes" philosophy.

what is cultural vs. ethical relativism?

300

The process by which a given sign changes meaning because of time, place, proximity to other signs, or other factors.

What is resignification?

300
an example is "compadrazgo"

what is "fictive" kinship?

300

the two aspects of a ritual object.

what are sensory and ideological?
400

4 big ideas that anthropology can help us understand

What are:

People are very different all over the world and in different times and situations…and they are also basically the same.

Believing that your specific way of doing things is the natural/good/moral/right/only way to do them, is a human universal.

Humans create the worlds they live in, and then they are also created by them.

People’s most fundamental and important beliefs about the world show up in the tiniest  everyday behaviors—often when they are not aware of it.


400

An rticle that we have read that uses comparison in explicit or implicit ways.

What are (here almost any article we have read will count, but examples are): articles by Miner, Lee, , Gibbs, Basso...?

400

According to Keith Basso, the conditions under which Western Apache may choose to remain silent.

What are conditions of ambiguity?

400

The kinship system described in Goldstein's "When Brothers Share a Wife."

What is "fraternal polyandry?"

400

Three features of a ritual

 What are: (any among these): organized action, historical continuity, set sequence, ritual objects, seen as not instrumental, objects and actions stand for something beyond themselves?

500

the central concept in social or cultural anthropology and its definition in this course

what is the culture concept, which is defined as

an approach to studying collective groups of humans, focusing on systems of meaning and action that are:patterned; learned; shared; and also contested?

500
Two rituals compared by Mark Auslander in is article "How Families Work"

What are the mugeniso ritual in West Africa

and U.S. December holiday rituals
500

The two domains of language analyzed by Janet McIntosh in "Crybabies and Snowflakes"

What are the language of the U.S. right and the language used in basic training in the military?

500

Type of cousins that used to be preferred as marriage partners in South India.

What are "cross-cousins?" (mother's brother's or father's sisters)

500

features of Red Solo cups, according to D'Costa

What are convenience, casualness, and "equalizing"