ASSEB HS Anthropology flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Ethnography

Long-term fieldwork using participant observation and interviews to describe a community's practices and meanings in depth, producing a written account rather than a survey snapshot.

Emic versus etic

Emic analysis uses insiders' own categories and meanings; etic analysis applies the researcher's external, comparative categories. Good ethnography usually reports both perspectives.

Cultural relativism

The methodological principle that beliefs and practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than judged by outsiders' standards; it does not require approving every practice.

Participant observation

A fieldwork method in which the anthropologist lives among people, joins daily activities, and records observations over time to learn tacit knowledge that interviews alone miss.

Natural selection

The process by which heritable traits associated with greater reproductive success become more common in a population over generations, driven by differential survival and reproduction.

Bipedalism indicators

Skeletal markers of habitual upright walking include a forward-placed foramen magnum, valgus knee, short broad pelvis, and a non-opposable big toe.

Radiocarbon dating

A radiometric method measuring decay of carbon-14 in organic remains such as bone, charcoal, or shell, useful for roughly the last 50,000 years after calibration.

Clinal variation

The gradual geographic change in a trait or gene frequency across space. Human biological variation is clinal, so discrete racial categories do not map onto genetic clusters.

Stratigraphy

The study of layered deposits, applying superposition so that lower layers are generally older; disturbances such as pits must be identified before a sequence is dated.

Archaeological context

An artifact's matrix, provenience, and association with other finds. Context supplies meaning and dating; removing objects without recording it destroys irreplaceable information.

Seriation

A relative dating technique ordering assemblages by gradual change in artifact style frequencies over time, producing a sequence without calendar ages.

Formation processes

Natural and cultural events that create and alter the archaeological record, including discard, decay, erosion, and bioturbation, which must be reconstructed before interpretation.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The claim that language shapes thought. The strong deterministic version is rejected; the weak version holds that language influences perception, memory, and categorization.

Code-switching

Rule-governed alternation between languages, dialects, or registers within a conversation, often signaling identity, group membership, topic, or social stance.

Pidgin and creole

A pidgin is a simplified contact language without native speakers; a creole develops when a pidgin becomes the first language of a community and gains full grammar.

Communicative competence

Hymes's concept that speakers need not only grammar but knowledge of when, to whom, and how to speak appropriately in a given community.

Thick description

Geertz's term for ethnographic writing that records the layers of meaning behind behavior, distinguishing, for example, a wink from an involuntary blink.

Habitus

Bourdieu's concept for durable, embodied dispositions acquired through socialization that generate practices appearing natural while reproducing social structure.

Syncretism

The blending of elements from different cultural or religious traditions into a new integrated form, common in colonial and mission contexts.

Structuralism

Lévi-Strauss's approach analyzing underlying binary oppositions and mental structures that organize myth, kinship, and classification across cultures.

Bridewealth

Goods or wealth transferred from the groom's family to the bride's family at marriage, often compensating for loss of a member's labor.

Dowry

Property or goods brought by the bride or her family into the marriage, frequently tied to inheritance and sometimes to status competition.

Unilineal descent

Descent traced through only one parent's line, either patrilineal or matrilineal; such groups often hold corporate property and political roles.

Rites of passage

Rituals marking status transitions, analyzed by van Gennep and Turner as three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation into the new status.

Generalized reciprocity

Exchange with no expectation of immediate or equivalent return, typical among close kin and associated with strong social obligations and trust.

Redistribution

A mode of exchange in which goods flow to a central authority or institution and are then reallocated, often through feasts, tribute, or taxation.

Charismatic authority

Weberian legitimacy resting on perceived extraordinary personal qualities of a leader; it is unstable and typically requires routinization to persist.

Shaman

A part-time religious specialist who enters altered states to contact spirits, often for healing or divination, typically in foraging and horticultural societies.

Informed consent

Participants' voluntary agreement after being told the study's purpose, methods, risks, and right to withdraw, central to anthropological research ethics.

Cultural resource management

Applied archaeology ensuring compliance with heritage law, surveying and mitigating impacts of construction on archaeological sites; the largest archaeology employment sector.

Participatory action research

An applied approach in which community members help design, conduct, and use research, sharing authority with outside researchers and aiming at local change.

Glocalization

The adaptation of globally circulating goods, media, and practices to local meanings and institutions, producing hybridization rather than uniform homogenization.