Key Terms
This concept is the opposite of cultural relativism
What is Ethnocentrism?
The anthropologist associated with Cultural-Social Evolutionary Theory.
Who is Lewis Henry Morgan?
The intense feeling of shared experience and unity among equals that often occurs in the liminal phase
What is Communitas?
The difference between marrying within your group versus marrying outside your group
What is Endogamy vs. Exogamy?
The Mexican federal agency that assists and protects migrants along the border
What is Grupo Beta?
The practice of examining one’s own role and influence during fieldwork
What is Reflexivity?
His work on Thick Description emphasized the interpretation of cultural meaning.
Clifford Geertz
The final stage of a ritual, where the person is re-incorporated into society with a new status.
What is the Post-liminality Stage?
While genetic ties are biological, this term describes people considered kin through social and cultural practices, such as godparents or adoptive parents.
What is fictive kin?
This is the state where laws are suspended, reducing certain individuals to bare life.
What is the State of Exception?
The anthropological method where the researcher lives with the community and participates in their daily life
What is Participant Observation?
This school of thought broke with British Structural Functionalism by focusing on meaning, symbols, and interpretation
Symbolic Anthropology?
This anthropologist was most concerned with studying ritual as a process composed of distinct stages of transition and transformation.
Who is Victor Turner?
The practice of one woman marrying multiple husbands
What is Polyandry?
The policy of making the Mexico-US border increasingly dangerous to discourage crossing.
What is Prevention through Deterrence?
The stage of ritual defined by Victor Turner as "betwixt and between"
What is the Liminality Stage?
The theory posed by Franz Boas as an alternative to Lewis Henry Morgan
What is cultural relativism?
This phenomenon can be applied to both people moving around cities and to social mobility.
What is Liminality?
The primary reason cultural-social anthropologists take issue with works like A Story of Us.
What are the reasons why cultural-social anthropologists take issue with A Story of Us and biological anthropology in general?
The concept that recognizes the entanglement of humans, technology, nature, and infrastructure in the borderlands.
What is Hybrid Collectif?
The concept from the Ghannam article that refers to a system of durable dispositions structuring perception, thought, and action.
What is Habitus?
This anthropologist is noted for her use of Autoethnography as a research method
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
A social function Turner said rituals perform in the world.
What is its social function (eg. managing social change)
This concept, discussed in the Pashigian article on IVF in Vietnam, refers to the womb as the central site of belonging
What is Womb Centrism?
The application of this method to contemporary spaces, like documenting migrant paths and sites, is utilized in engaged anthropology.
What is archeology?