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Ant 302 Spring 2010 Final
List of Key Terms
35
Anthropology
Undergraduate 1
05/14/2010

Additional Anthropology Flashcards

 


 

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Term
sex
Definition

Physical differences between women and men (e.g. different reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones, body size and type, etc).

Term
gender
Definition

socially constructed norms, ideas, and practices about masculinity and femininity that can change between cultures and within the same culture across time.

Term
Gender assignment
Definition

nSocially constructed norms, ideas, and practices about masculinity and femininity that can change between cultures and within the same culture across time.
nBegins at birth, or in many cases even before birth
nInvolves the daily reiteration of particular gendered behaviors and attributes for males and females

Term
Gender Roles
Definition

The attributes and activities that a society or culture ascribes to a sex
Different from society to society
Can be different from culture to culture within large-scale societies 

Term
Gender Inequality
Definition

Formed and maintained through sex specific arrangements and division of labor across multiple institutions of a social structure

it is political, economic, legal, social, and symbolic

Term
social stratification
Definition

pSocial stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of groups of people within a society.
pIt rests on patterned inequalities that are built into a social system, such as caste, apartheid, and social class.

Term
feminization of poverty
Definition

Over ½ household living in poverty are female-headed: why?
On-going gender disparity in pay
Single-parent female headed households in US have doubled since 1959
Double duties of work and child-care and poorer employment opportunities increase poverty of these households

Term
Integrative theory
Definition

regards social hregards social hierarchy to be inevitable and necessary for social integration and cohesion.

metaphor: Society as ‘a living organism’ functioning with interrelated parts all doing their jobs and regulated by controlling device.

 

Term
division of labor
Definition

nA division of labor follows for effective and efficient organization and coordination of production, distribution and infrastructural requirements. 
As societies grow, they develop more labor-efficient means to produce enough food and other necessities; specialization takes hold.

Term
exploitative theory
Definition

pTheories regards social hierarchy as neither unavoidable, nor necessary; it has nothing to do human nature.
Assumption: Social inequality exists because one group of individuals seek to exert their power and authority onto others in order to further their economic and political interests.

Term
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Definition

 

Most influential proponents of exploitative theories of social stratification are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Max Weber.
Marx and Engels regard social classes as the primary basis of social stratification. (more about this later)

 

Term
egalitarian societies
Definition

o formal system of social stratification:

     Ex: Hunter-gatherer societies do not have social classes, often lack permanent leaders, and actively avoid locating their members into hierarchical power positions.

     Remember Richard Lee’s Christmas Ox

Term
rank societies
Definition

Unequal access to prestige, but not to economic resources. Chiefs and spiritual man have authority and prestige, but no system privilege to access economic resources.
Ex: Horticulturalists and early chiefdoms.

Term
slavery
Definition

A system of inequality in which some people are forced to work for others and owned as property.
Today, legally banned in nearly all countries. 

Term
caste system
Definition

Individuals are assigned at birth to the ranked social and occupational groups of their parents.
A person’s place in the social order is relatively fixed; there is little mobility from one caste to another
Castes are separated from each other by strict rules that forbid intermarriage and other forms of interaction

Term
apartheid
Definition

A system of stratification based on the rigid separation of racial and ethnic groups
Whites who made up only 15% of the population controlled virtually all of the country’s wealth and politics.
Blacks lacked the right to vote and were segregated into ghettos, only allowed out to work for whites.

Term
class system
Definition

A social class is a large group of people who occupy a similar economic position in the wider society.
Most social scientists identify social classes in terms of wealth and income, noting how social class makes a difference in terms of consumption, education, health, and access to political power.

Term
Intersectionality
Definition

Various axes of inequality (such as class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability) constantly interact with each other.
These different forms of social hierarchy and inequality create "intersection”s of multiple forms of discrimination.*
Racial, ethnic, cultural minority groups, and within them women, children, the disabled, etc., tend to disproportionately occupy the lower ranks of the society.

Term
dominant ideaology
Definition

 

Promoting values and beliefs congenial to it
Naturalizing and universalizing these beliefs to render them self-evident facts
Denigrating ideas which might challenge it
Excluding rival forms of thought
Obscuring the social reality in ways convenient to itself

 

Term
race
Definition

A group of people whose perceived characteristics are popularly believed to be  reflecting a more profound biological difference (blood or different genetic make-up).
a folk belief, not a scientific one, since it lumps the full human genetic diversity into a few arbitrary categories based on just superficial physical characteristics.

Race is a social construction that has meaning in our lives because we have invested it with meaning. Even though, race is an illusion in biological terms, because of the history of racism and ongoing forms of racial segregation and discrimination it’s still here with us.  

Term
institutional/structural racism
Definition

Institutional/structural racism is distinguished from the bigotry or racial bias of individuals by the existence of systematic policies and practices within a society’s institutions or structures that have the effect of disadvantaging certain racial groups.

Term
Samuel George Morton
Definition

Viewed brain size as criteria for intelligence (the larger the brain, the more intelligent the person)

Measured cranial capacity of 6,000 skulls to determine brain size
Concluded that Africans and Native Americans were socially and biologically inferior races
Whites divided into three: English and German’s at the top, Jews in the middle, and Hindus at the bottom.
Results fed pro-slavery forces of 19th century
Worked to justify and naturalize racial hierarchies

 

Term
folk taxonomy
Definition

In America, people are classified into racial groups not only in terms of how they look, but also by their heritage. So, you could look white but you are still not considered white if you have a drop of non-white blood.
Brazil...

Term
achievement ideaology
Definition

nTheory of social mobility: If you work hard, you will succeed.
Equality of opportunity
Efficacy of Schooling
In case of failure, it is the person and not the social system which is to blame.
What’s wrong with that?

Term
social reproduction
Definition

Social reproduction theorists:school reinforces inequality & pretends to do opposite.
How are structures of inequality maintained across generations?
How is that process internalized and hidden?

Term
cultural capital
Definition

Habits, experiences, behavior, ways of conceptualizing the world

Term
capitalism
Definition

an economic system in which the means of production (land, labor, and technology) are owned by private persons and operated for profit and where distribution and exchange of goods take place in a MARKET

Term
market
Definition

supplies all or most of the inputs and outputs of production
Inputs- means of production
Outputs- consumer goods, commodities

Term
private property
Definition

Means of production (land, labor and technology) are privately owned.

Term
wage laborer
Definition

-Labor spent not for getting one’s needs for subsistence/survival; but for getting the ‘means’ to meet one’s “need”

Term
alienation
Definition

Separation of worker from the product of her/his labor
Production process is controlled by others and the final product belongs to someone else.

Term
surplus value of labor
Definition

The portion of a person’s labor that is retained as profit by those who own or control the means of production.
In this scenario, the elite class with their control over the means of production set the wages paid to the workers and extract the surplus value of their labor as profit.

Term
globalization
Definition
The intensification of global interconnection resulting from the transnational flow of people, culture, commodities, capital, ideas, information, technologies across national and regional boundaries
Term
economic globalization
Definition

The emergence of a global economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union
Multinational and transnational companies; free movement of capital and goods
Restricted movement of labor
Increased portion of economic activity is carried out across national borders.
Increasing power of the institutions of global finance such as the World Bank and the IMF. 

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