Basic Concept Review

Here's a page that reminds you of some (but not all) of the basic concepts from this course. These concepts are sure to appear in the "learning objective" questions on your final. However, those questions will not count in your grade.

These concepts may also appear in the regular test in questions that do affect your grade. In any event, the information represents some of the basic take-away knowledge from the course, so reviewing it is probably a good idea.

Anthropology is a complex field consisting of subdisciplines including cultural anthropology, which includes the study of current day societies; biological anthropology, which includes the study of human evolutionary history; archaeology, which includes the study of past societies based on material remains; and linguistics, which includes the study of the acquisition, history, and performance of language. Because anthropology considers many different aspects of humanity, we refer to it as a holistic field.

Since the days of Franz Boas, who is often considered the "father" of American anthropology, fieldwork (spending an extended time gathering first hand data by living in another society) has been a key defining aspect of cultural anthropology. Virtually all cultural anthropologists do it. The key fieldwork method of anthropology is called "participant observation."

Boas promoted the idea of "cultural relativism." Cultural relativism is the idea that cultures must be understood in their own context and with regard to their own traditions and experiences. No culture is intrinsically better or worse than another and we must understand cultures before we judge them. Cultural relativism is essential to fieldwork and there are many ways to develop it. The opposite of cultural relativism is ethnocentrism. It is the idea that one's own culture is superior to others, and that people not sharing ones' own culture are uncivilized and ignorant.

Language is a fundamental distinguishing characteristic of humanity. All humans have language and no language is better or worse than any other. No non-human creature really has language like human beings.

Anthropologists have often pondered the relationship between culture, language, and thought. Sapir and Whorf were two American anthropologists who are particularly connected with this issue. Although we do use words to guide our thought and present our best case to others, there is no evidence that the structure of language has a meaningful affect on thought.

Culture is a characteristic of a group of people. No one can have a culture of their own. It's always shared. However, there's no scientific way of determining how many people it takes to make a culture.

Culture consists of learned and shared ways of thinking and behaving. Virtually all of human behavior is in some way learned. Even very basic things like eating or defacating have learned elements.

Anthropologists often differentiate societies based around the ways in which they produce their livelihoods. A society in which people eat only food that they acquire through hunting and gathering is usually called a foraging society. Other forms of production include swidden gardening, pastoralism (animal herding), traditional agriculture, and industrial agriculture.

Large scale societies are almost always supported by traditional or industrial agriculture. This kind of society is always characterized by the division of people into social groups with different access to wealth and power. Agricultural societies are generally state societies and state societies are hierarchical.

Economics in small scale societies is often based around "gift" exchange. We can talk about gift exchange in terms of reciprocity. And reciprocity can be generalized, balanced, or negative. In generalized reciprocity, in principal, people keep no account of what is given and received. In balanced reciprocity, people exchange gifts of equal value. In negative reciprocity, people attempt to get the better of a deal.

The US idea of race is based around a series of commonly held beliefs that are, in fact, in a scientific sense, incorrect. One of these is the idea that races are based around homogenous biological traits, shared by all members of the group.

Different societies have different ways of understanding family and kinship. There are patrilineal societies, where people trace their kinship through their father's line and consider themselves members of their father's but not their mothers families. There are matrilineal societies, where people trace their kinship through their mother's line and consider themselves part of their mother's but not their father's families. And, there are bilateral societies in which people trace their kinship through both their mother's and father's lines and consider themselves part of both families. In our society, for most people, last names follow patrilineal customs but we are actually bilateral, considering ourselves members of both mother's and father's families. One implication of the different ways in which people understand their families is that kinship terms such as aunt and uncle mean very different things in different societies.

Anthropologists differentiate between sex and gender. Sex is a condition of biology. With rare exception, people are born visibly male or female. Gender is the cultural, social, and historical roles and performances associated with different sex groups. It includes the beliefs and behaviors that are thought appropriate for member of different biologically based sex groups.