BASICS
The tendency to view one's own culture as most important and correct.
Ethnocentrism
A type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which their informant is engaged.
Participant-observation
An idealized form of speech, usually referred to as the standard variety.
Language
The cultivation of domesticated plants and animals using technologies that allow for intensive use of land.
Agriculture
The smallest group of individuals who see themselves as connected to one another.
Family
The idea that we should seek to understand another person's beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.
Cultural relativism
The in-depth study of the everyday practices and lives of a people.
Ethnography
Using two or more language varieties in a particular interaction.
Code-switching
A subsistence system that relies on wild plant and animal food resources.
Foraging OR hunting and gathering
The term used to described culturally recognized ties between members of a family, the social statuses used to define family members, and the expected behaviors associated with these statuses.
Kinship
Refers to the human capacity to learn any language or culture.
Plasticity
A description of the studied culture from the perspective of a member of the culture or insider.
Emic
A variety of speech. The term is often applied to a subordinated variety of a language.
Dialect
A subsistence system based on the small-scale cultivation of crops intended primarily for the direct consumption of the household or immediate community.
Horticulture
Describes when married individuals established a household with or near the wife's mother's family.
Matrilocal
Taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.
Holism
A description of a studied culture from the perspective of an outside observer or outsider.
Etic
The ability to communicate about things that are outside of the here and now.
Displacement
The series of steps a food takes from the location where it is produced to the store where it is sold to consumers.
Commodity chain
A term describing expectations that individuals must marry outside a particular group.
Exogamy
An approach to social science and history that involves examination of the development and functioning of the world economic system.
World Systems Theory
A term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz to describe a detailed description of a studied group that explains not only the behavior or cultural event but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it.
Thick description
Kinesics
A measurement of the number of calories that can be extracted from a particular unit of land in order to support a human population.
Carrying capacity
A term that describes when married individuals live with or near an uncle.
Avunculocal