ANTH 1002 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Marcel Mauss, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault
ANTH 1002: Midterm
The exam will be split into three parts: Term identification, short answers and an essay. For the
identifications, you will be required to identify 1) where the term is drawn from (author and
book/article titles), 2) its meaning/definition, and 3) its broader significance to the themes of the
class and the discipline of anthropology. An example of how this is done is included on the term
list attached. For the short answers and the essay, you will be required to apply and draw
connections between multiple terms in order to answer specific questions.
Example:
Coeval
A term used by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object to
mean contemporary or of the same time. Fabian advocates for the use of coeval or covealness in
anthropological discourse when describing differences among cultures in order to dispel the
notion that cultural differences can be understood in evolutionary terms, along an imagined,
linear progression toward “development” (with Western/European cultures positioned at the
apex).
Key Terms
1. Unilinear cultural evolution
a.
2. Hegemony
a. A term coined by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), an Italian political philosopher
in 1971
b. Definition: the ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement
within a population with the use or threat of force
c. Cultural institutions shape what people think is normal, natural, and possible →
influences the scope of human action and interaction.
d. A shared belief system causes some thoughts and actions to become unthinkable,
and group members to develop a set of “beliefs” about what is normal and
appropriation that come to be seen as natural “truths.”
e. The French sociologist Michel Foucault (1926-1984), in Discipline and Punish
(1977), described this hegemonic aspect of power as the ability to make people
discipline their own behavior so that they believe and act in certain “normal
ways”––often against their own interests, even without a tangible threat of
punishment for behavior.
3. Agency
a. The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values,
mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power
b. Limits the power of hegemony in dominating people’s thinking
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c. Allows us to see how culture serves as a realm in which people debate, negotiate,
and enforce what is considered normal
4. Reciprocity
a. Marcel Mauss (The Gift) in reference to the North American system of potlatch
and Melanesian Polynesian gift cycles, the total system of gift
a.i. Reciprocity plays an essential role in gift cycles as each gift is a part of
this system of reciprocity, creating an obligation to only reciprocate the
gift and perpetuate the cycle
a.ii. Relates to the larger society in which this idea of reciprocity underlines,
reciprocity is one of the foundations upon which our society is built
5. Power
a. Defined by the textbook as the ability of potential to bring about change through
action or influence
a.i. An aspect of human relationships (eric wolf)
a.ii. Power is present in every relationship and cultural institutions
a.iii. Reflects stratification, the uneven distribution of resources and privileges
among participants in a group or culture
a.iv. Hegemony: the ability of a dominant group to create consent and
agreement within a population without the threat of use of forces
6. Naturalizing social hierarchies
a. In Emily Martin’s “The Egg and the Sperm”
b. Taken from the idea that the egg and sperm interact on mutual terms even though
biology doesn’t seem to portray it that way
b.i. A woman is a dangerous and aggressive threat because they capture and
tether the man’s sperm with their egg → makes the egg active
c. Menstruation is viewed as a failure and men are portrayed as better than women
c.i. Men shed millions of sperm whereas women only shed one gamete
c.ii. Women “waste” hundreds of eggs” when they are shed instead of
becoming babies
c.iii. Sperm tails are strong and empowered and go find the egg → deliver
themselves
c.iv. The egg must be rescued
d. Significant because we are imposing social conventions of gender roles into
biological processes that are really mutual
7. Moka
a. Ongka’s Big Moka
b. Definition: Moka is a ceremony of gift giving that builds status, prestige, and
fame for his tribe and himself. In the movie, Ongka’s Big Moka is a herd of pigs.
c. The Moka is a way of keeping the peace and holding the tribe together through
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peaceful competition of “who gives the best gift”.
8. Kula
a. Significant Figure: Malinowski
b. Definition: The kula is a very extensive and highly complex trading system in
New Guinea and the Trobriand Archipelago.
c. It is important in tribal life of the natives who live within its circuit, and its
importance is fully realized by the tribesmen, whose ideas, ambitions, desires, and
vanities are bound up in the Kula.
9. Inalienable possessions
a. Significant Figure: Annette Weiner
b. Definition: Possessions that are imbued with the intrinsic identities of their
owners, which are not easy to give away. The loss of such a possession
diminishes the self and the group that this person belongs to and retains them for
the future, memories, and the past
c. “Keeping-while-giving” another major idea within her work. It is grounded in the
need to secure permanence in a serial world that is always subject to loss and
decay. What is not traded in the Kula is just as important as the things that are
traded.
d. Also studied the Trobriand Archipelago like Malinowski
10. Use-wear
a. Found in Jason De Leon’s text “Undocumented Migrants” and defined as how
objects are modified as a result of being used
b. Examples given included a shoe held together by a bra strap, water bottles painted
black, and cut hand restraints with signs of wear
c. Significant because the wear suggests how they were used and how heavily and
can be contextualized based on the ethnographic location they were found in
11. Participant-observation
a. Guest defines participant observation as “a key anthropological research strategy
involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people
being studied,” referring to how Malinowski conceptualized it as the
“cornerstone of fieldwork” and put it into practice in “Argonauts of the Western
Pacific”
b. Can also be found in Evans-Pritchard’s article “Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic
Among Azande.”
b.i. Refers to an ethnographic field work practice in which the anthropologist
studies a society and culture through participation in everyday activities
b.ii. Goal is to see life through the eyes of those living in the community being
studied, including seeing complex systems of power and meaning and how
they shape people’s lives
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Document Summary
The exam will be split into three parts: term identification, short answers and an essay. For the identifications, you will be required to identify 1) where the term is drawn from (author and book/article titles), 2) its meaning/definition, and 3) its broader significance to the themes of the class and the discipline of anthropology. An example of how this is done is included on the term list attached. For the short answers and the essay, you will be required to apply and draw connections between multiple terms in order to answer specific questions. A term used by johannes fabian in time and the other: how anthropology makes its object to mean contemporary or of the same time. Reciprocity plays an essential role in gift cycles as each gift is a part of this system of reciprocity, creating an obligation to only reciprocate the gift and perpetuate the cycle. Power is present in every relationship and cultural institutions.
