ANTH 1102 1st EditionExam # 1 Study GuideWhat is Anthropology?Roots of the word "Anthropology": anthropos means man/human and logos means studyDefinition: not merely the study of human beings but especially the study of human beings' ancestors through time time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental, andsocial relations, and culture; broad and holistic*Holistic: mutifacedfor example- when describing a group of people the anthropologists discusses the history of the area where the people live, the physical environment, the organization of family life, the general features of their language, the groups settlement patterns, political/economic systems, religion, and styles of art and dress. What is Culture?Definition: total way of life of any society; set of learned behaviors and ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values, and ideals) that are characteristic of a particular society or other social group. People come to share behaviors and ideas because they communicate with and observe each other.*Behaviors can also produce material culture (things like houses, musical instruments,and tools that are the products of customary behavior)Society: a group of people who occupy a particular territory and speak a common language not generally understood by neighboring peoples*societies may or may not correspond to countries*countries are composed of many different societies and therefore many cultures*some societies may even include more than one countryCultural change: the modification of a society through innovation, invention, discovery, or contact with other societies*When enough individuals change their bhaviors and beliefs, we say that culture has changed. Therefor, cultural change occurs more rapidly than genetic change*Example of cultural change: adoption and later elimination of sepade among the Redille, a pastoral population. According to sepade tradiotion, women have to wait until all theirbrothers are married until they can marry Revolution: the most drastic and rapid way a culture can change; replaement, usually violent, of a country's rulersGlobalization: "the massive flow of goods, people, information, and capital across huges areas of earth's surface" *process of globalization has led to the worldwide spread of cultural features, particularly in the domain of economics and international trade*Example: we can eat pizza, curry, sushi, and hamburgers often in the same urban area Subcultures: commonly shared customs of a group within a society*not excactly an ethnic groupCultural Relativism: the anthropological attitude that a society's customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of the society's problems and opportunities*one society is not superior to another you have to takeeverything into account*idea that sprung because Franz Boas and his students challenged the attitude that western cultures were obviously superiorEthnocentrism; opposite of culture relativism; the idea that your own culture is superior to a different culture*Ethnocentric (adj)Ethnography: a detailed description of customary behaviors and though*basically the "data" of enthnographers that usually spend a year or so living with, talking to, and observing the people whose customs they are studying Cultual diffusion: the process by which cultural elements are borrowed from one society and inorporate it into the culture of the recipient group.*borrowing sometimes enables a group to bypass stages or mistakes in the developmentof a process or institution*Example: Germany was able to accelerate its programs of indudstrialization in the 19th entury because it was able to avoid some of the errors its English and Belgian competitors madeby taking advantage of technological borrowing.Acculturation: the changes that occur when different cultural groups come in contact/ often compared to cultural diffusion*the difference between cultural diffusion and acculturation is that acculturation is seen "as a process of extensive cultural borrowing in the context of superordinate-suboridnate relations between societies. There is probably always some borrowing both ways, but generally the subordinate or less powerful society borrows the most."Primatology; the study of primates*studied by anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists that specialize in primatology are primatologistsFossils: impressions of an insect or leaf on a muddy surface that is now stone, actual hardened remains of an animal's skeletal structuresArtifacts: An object produced or shaped by human craft, especially a tool, weapon, or ornament of archaeological or historical interest.Example: stone tools Features: a type of artifact that cannot be removed from the site Example: Hearths (areas where humans build fires, eventually the soils texture and colorchanges), pits (holes in the ground that contain human garbage:soil also changes texture and color), living floors (areas where humans lived and worked)Sites: area where artifacts are foundContext: basically the way everything found relates to each other! SUBFIELDS OF ANTHROPOLOGY*Socio-culture Anthropology: traditionally dealt with kinship, political economy and other social dimensions of non-literate, non-western and often isolated communities, which could be observed in their totality.*Biological Anthropology: deals with biological or physical characteristics of humans 1. emergence of humans and their evolution2. how and why contemporary human populations vary*Linguistic Anthropology: studying changes over time and the different variations of languages * The scientific method: HUMAN VARIATIONRace: a tricky concept in anthropology*an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based onany or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groupsBiological Variation: the basic way humans vary as one biological species -human traits such as hair texture, skin color, heightCline: the gradual increasing (or decresing) frequency of a gene from one end of a region to another- height, skin color, etcGenetic Flow: the way one gene passes from the gene pool of one population to that of anotherthrough mating and reproduction-decreases differences between populations Genetic drift: the various random processes that affect gene frequencies in small, relatively isolated populationsAKA Wright effect because Sewall wright first