ANTH 195 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Thick Description, Structural Violence, Max Weber
ANTH 195
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Political organization and political systems
• Negative Reciprocity -- expectation that both parties attempt to gain what they can while giving as little as
possible
o Ufriedl Ex: bartering
• Making Moka – Series of feasts
o Point is gathering as many pigs from your community and giving them away
o Gai prestige → Big Ma
o Ogka’s skill is speeh-giving
• Redistribution -- collection of goods/money from group and reallocation via central authority
o Ex: taxes, tithing, Potlatch chief
o The more wealth distributed, the greater the prestige
o Theory: differenes i produtio allo alae
• Market Exchange -- products are sold for money
o Value is reduced to money instead of history
• Early 20th century – British anthropology used as mechanism of colonialism
o Administrators interested in how a society was ordered to institute better controls
o Anthropologists interested in how different structures within society worked to maintain social
order
o The terms state, band, etc. not used today
o Typologies dealing with production systems
▪ Non-centralized or centralized
o Non-centralized Systems – power is fragmented/fragmentary
Kinship
• Lineage – a group of people who trace their ancestry to a common individual
o Nor is to hoose a side
o Can perform political functions
• Bilateral Cross-Cousin Marriage – resolving disputes, joint control, form alliances
o 2nd generation is what matters
o Woman A + Man B have son + daughter; daughter marries son from Woman B and Man A
• Segmentary Lineages – when one segment faces aggression with another, defending segment joins with
closely-related segments to defend themselves or to negotiate
o Function: create larger groups according to need that can disband quickly
Power and its variations
• Power – ability to bring about change through action
o Interpersonal, institutional, or structural
o Aspect of all human relationships
o Deeply embedded in culture
o Reflects stratification among participants; uneven distribution of resources/privileges
• Culture – system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns, objects that are created, learned, and shared by group of
people
o Assumptions: everyone in group has same culture
• Big Men – no means to coerce
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Language and its properties
• Language – systematic set of symbols/signs with learned and shared meanings
o Conventional/Arbitrary
▪ Absence of intrinsic relation b/w communication element and things or event to which it
refers
▪ Words arbitrarily connected to what they stand for
▪ What is said is ot arried to soethig
▪ Evidence of arbitrariness: diverse languages
o Displacement-ability to refer to things/events not present, intangible
o Productivity – few elements generating unlimited combinations
• We a represet usee parts of orld to oeie a desig ee if ou do’t hae it
o Makes us good at adaption
Communication + Nonverbal
• Communication – process of sending/receiving messages
• Follows rules + patterns
• Varies cross-culturally and within a language
• Posture, eye contact, paralanguage
• Touch, physiological responses (Blushing, sweating, and swallowing)
Language parts (syntax/morphemes/phonemes)
• Sounds – phones (Only use 38 in English)
• Morphemes – minimal use of meaning in a language; Think prefix, suffix, + infix
• Syntax – sentence structure; interpret sentence based on context
Speech Communities
• Speech communities – group of people who share a set of norms+rules for the use of language
• Learning to produce speech = biology; Learning to be in a speech community = culture
• Accents – no unique vocab or grammar use; differs from a dialect
Language as it relates to social position/differentiation
• What language lets us do:
o Build relationships, spread culture
o Primary medium encoding culture
o Helps us think and plan for future
• Sociolinguists – study of how cultural and social position shape meaning of a language
• Language shapes Culture AND Culture shapes Language
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• Language by providing haitual grooes of epressio predisposes people to see orld i a ertai a
guides thinking/behavior
• Sapir: language constructs how we act/think in the world
• Whorf (Hopi): conception of time as processes, not units (days/hours/etc.)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Power and its variations: power ability to bring about change through action. Communication + nonverbal: communication process of sending/receiving messages, follows rules + patterns, varies cross-culturally and within a language, posture, eye contact, paralanguage, touch, physiological responses (blushing, sweating, and swallowing) Language parts (syntax/morphemes/phonemes: sounds phones (only use 38 in english, morphemes minimal use of meaning in a language; think prefix, suffix, + infix, syntax sentence structure; interpret sentence based on context. If different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think about, but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about. Ethnicity/nationality: ethnicity shared blood, you are raised that way and it is about lineage, nationality shared heritage and experience. Semiotics/signs: semiotics study of how meaning gets made, sign, signifier the word, signified the thing the signifier represents. Icon literal sign: physically resembles thing in the world.
