Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology tests how anthropologists analyze learned, shared, symbolic behavior: fieldwork, kinship, exchange, politics, religion, and identity. The exam asks you to apply concepts to small cases, not merely define terms.
Core concepts
- Culture is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and adaptive. Enculturation transmits it; culture is not static or biologically inherited.
- Ethnocentrism judges others by one's own standards. Cultural relativism suspends that judgment to understand a practice in context; it is a method, not automatic moral approval. Emic views are insider perspectives; etic views are analyst categories.
- Descent systems include unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal), bilateral, and ambilineal rules. Residence rules are separate: patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal, avunculocal.
- Marriage rules include exogamy and endogamy. Bridewealth transfers goods to the bride's family; dowry transfers goods with the bride; brideservice is labor. Polygyny is multiple wives; polyandry is multiple husbands.
- Exchange includes generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.
- Political organization is often compared as band, tribe, chiefdom, and state, but these are typological tools, not a fixed ladder.
Worked example
A society reckons descent through mothers, so a child belongs to the mother's lineage and may inherit lineage rights through her. This is matrilineal descent. It does not mean women hold political dominance; that would be matriarchy, a separate question about power. In many matrilineal systems, the mother's brother has special authority over the child. Reasoning: descent rules allocate group membership and inheritance; residence and political authority must be checked independently.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating matrilineal with matriarchal, or patrilineal with patriarchy.
- Confusing descent with postmarital residence.
- Mixing bridewealth with dowry.
- Treating sex and gender as identical.
- Using cultural relativism as a claim that no practice can ever be criticized.
- Calling small-scale societies 'primitive' or assuming their cultures are unchanging.