Shared Flashcard Set

Details

ANT204 Anthropology of the Contemporary World
Flashcards for the exam
45
Anthropology
Undergraduate 2
04/16/2012

Additional Anthropology Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
Anarchist Style Organizing
Definition
o calls for a system of public ownership of means of production, a system of consensus with no more cohesion
o social anarchism rejects private property,
o Values that a society should be organized on a purely voluntary basis without any form of cohesion.
o Comes from the Greek meaning “without hierarchy”
o Organization without force or someone above giving orders.
o A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder).
Term
Significance: Anarchist Style Organizing
Definition
o Anarchism asks you to reject government and all forms of authority, to question their very existence and legitimacy.
o To see the real possibilities and potentials for mankind you need to be able to think outside the “box” completely. In a sense anarchism gives you an objective view of political potentialities; it calls for the complete freedom of man from all forms of authority and oppression. If we cannot dream of such then we have forsaken the potential (and perhaps goal) of the future already.
o Thomas Jefferson said, “Question everything with boldness, even the very existence of god.” One could say there are many things in society that appear as gods: government, two parties, necessity of a military, crony capitalism, etc. As Herbert Marcuse explains in One-Dimensional Man, the problem with man today is that he no longer looks at what ought, but what is. Too often what is is seen as rational, not what ought to be. These modern day gods, like the idea of a deity are left unquestioned because they are a given assumption. If we are to escape this prison of our own thoughts, anarchism provides a possible way by breaking all assumptions, even if viewed as a somewhat romanticized ideal from another time and place when things appeared less under control and people dared to dream big.
Term
Examples: Anarchist Style Organizing
Definition
o “Revolutionary Catalonia” in the late 20’s was a part of Catalonia Spain controlled by anarchists and socialist trade unions/parties during the Spanish Civil War. During this revolution workers gained control of businesses and factories , collectivization of farmland from nationalists and the catholic clergy
o An epic example in our time, an anarchic act would be the pulling down of the Suddam Hussain statue during the “war in Iraq”. Though there is speculation that the press did it, it is an example of dismantling (literally) an established hierarchy and the rejection of rules that the people were forced to believe would keep the weak alive.
Term
Anthropocentrism
Definition
o The idea that humans are the most important being in the universe.
o Interpreting the world in terms of human values and experiences
o Term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism: the tendency for humans to regard themselves as being the most prominent being in the universe
Term
Significance: Anthropocentrism
Definition
o This ideology promoted the idea of the great chain of being (proposed that animals, plants, and all non-living things lack a mortal soul and awareness, therefore they are at our disposal and ultimately won’t suffer), which became the basic ideology of western moral thought
o Influences ethical judgments about interactions with other organisms. These ethics are often used to legitimize treating other species in ways that would be considered morally unacceptable if humans were similarly treated. For example, animals are often treated very cruelly during the normal course of events in medical research and agriculture. This prejudiced treatment of other species has been labeled "speciesism” by ethicists.
o Another implication of the anthropocentric view is the belief that humans rank at the acme of the natural evolutionary progression of species and of life. This belief is in contrast to the modern biological interpretation of evolution, which suggests that no species are "higher" than any others, although some clearly have a more ancient evolutionary lineage, or may occur as relatively
Term
Examples: Anthropocentrism
Definition
o Any species that are of potential use to humans can be a "resource" to be exploited. This use often occurs in an unsustainable fashion that results in degradation, sometimes to the point of extinction of the biological resource, as has occurred with the dodo, great auk, and other animals. If man believed that animals were equally important in ecology, then protecting them would take a higher priority.
o Christian Evangelicals often hold anthropocentric views when it comes to natural resources and the debate on climate change. Many evangelicals neglect the facts when it comes to climate change and the human influence on our ecology, for they hold high the belief that natural resources such as fuel, water, trees, etc., are on earth purely for human disposal and we should not commit any effort in preserving these resources, for they were made by god for us to exploit.
Term
Climate Ethnography
Definition
a methodology that positively addresses how local groups can inform the global community about taking action in response to climate change.
Term
Significance: Climate Ethnography
Definition
Susan Crate describes this methodology as urgent, reflexive and critically collaborative. What she can mean by urgency is that this issue needs to be addressed now rather than later and that direct action needs to be taken. As Professor Bickford mentioned in lecture, it is more cost effective to conserve the Earth now than later. Reflexivity refers to how anthropologists relate their field of research to themselves and the social constructs that they take for granted. Again, climate ethnography is about addressing the global community through research from local groups. To be reflexive means that how can we use what we have learned from different cultural groups and relate it to issues of power and hegemony in our own societies. Lastly, to be critically collaborative is for anthropologists to work together and engage in discussion of how climate change can be addressed, which also has moral implications of their role in society.
Term
Examples: Climate Ethnography
Definition
If we tie these terms together, one can see that climate ethnography is a response to the hegemonic neoliberalist resistance discussed in lecture. In order to sustain capitalist structure of society, politicians deny the validity of concerns regarding climate change. For instance, Harper denies such concerns because of his fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
c.) Examples:
From lecture, La Via Campesina movement which demonstrates how climate change can lead to loss of jobs and homes; Aboriginal movement to shut down Alberta oil sands/Douglas Channel; All of these examples demonstrate how climate change can be addressed from a local front to the global community
Term
Colonialism
Definition
o The establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory.
o Powers massed far flung colonies through the world, increasing nations land by swallowing up neighboring regions and forcing them into the nation
o social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole
o Colonies fall into 2 categories: Colonies that are established primarily as a new homeland for settlers from the mother country, or colonies that are procured for the enrichment of the mother country, especially through the exploitation of natural resources and labour.
Term
Significance: Colonialism
Definition
o Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population.[1]
o The current impoverished conditions of the global south was result of colonialism by the European powers
o Neocolonialism has now been set in place to do the exact same things that colonialism was used for: acquiring wealth
Term
Examples: Colonialism
Definition
o The British Empire colonizing during Pax Britannica. (see pg. 8 of course reader) as well as Ireland, India and China (pg. 14 of course reader)
o Belgium - King Leopold’s Congo (pg. 12-13 of course reader)
o French - West Africa and Indochina (pg. 13-14 of course reader)
o The African railroad map indicates that railroad tracks were all designed near the coasts of the African continent and this is likely for the purpose of speeding up exportation
o The slave trade gave a huge boost to the western countries at the same time it damaged the economies of Africa, which lost not only its natural resources, but also its workers in return for nothing
Term
Colonial Tropes
Definition
o Colonialism rationalized through the use of tropes (allegories/metaphors)
o Includes: Animalization, Infantilization, Eroticization, Naturalization, and Idealization
Term
Significance: Colonial Tropes
Definition
o Display, when analyzed, the deeply rooted repetition of discursive patterns which are evident in the way we see and speak about things (whether via things like commercials, TV shows, movies, or even fashion)
o The five different tropes allow us to identify the ways in which colonial ideology packages groups of people via different ways of proving incompetence .
Term
Examples: Colonial Tropes
Definition
o Animalization is used when one associates certain people with the instinctual realm (unsentimental, irrational) rather than the cultural realm, deeming them creatures more of the body than the mind – unconstrained to social convention and opposed to modern civilization (ex. Hottentot Venus)
o Eroticization is used when the colonized world is represented as feminine: to justify invading it, penetrating, conquering the lands own desire to be possessed. Virginia is named after the Virgin Queen, and uncolonized land was thought as “virgin lands”. (Ex. Verpucci Painting – Colonizers represent invention/toolmakers (compass, sword, ships), clothing, standing ups straight. Natives represent nakedness, females, cannibalism, lounging in a hammock – infantilization in a way because a person is seen in a crib, surrounded by animals who run wild)
Term
Coy Female
Definition
o a sexually restrained, passive female reluctant to mate until choosing the single best suitor (monandrous* - one mate)
o this idea of the Coy female has been an argument structured culturally and socially stemming from the the Batemen study and hypothesis of fruit flies and sexuality , where the fruit fly experiment has been generalized in relation to humans, deeming women are selective while men are created to spread their seed (androcentric * male centred view)
Term
Significance: Coy Female
Definition
o The “coy female” has been normalized  females are rather seen more attractive by males when they are acting coy
Term
Examples: Coy Female
Definition
o Hooters Waitress: receive a booklet on how to be coy, during their training component, with the ideology that coyness is attractive and complimentary to the male customer.
o Purity Balls exemplify the coy female ideology in their approach that girls are compelled to hand over virginity for the dad to control. Sexual activity is deemed to be shameful for girls who are part of purity balls, and is something purely for the purpose of procreation.
Term
Eurocentrism
Definition
o the idea that the European view is the only and best view – viewing the world from a European perspective (naturalized as “common sense” and rational during the colonial period)
o a form of vestigial thinking that structures current practices and permeates contemporary representations, after the formal end of colonialism
Term
Significance: Eurocentrism
Definition
o This ideology lead to the creation of the deviant “other” who we often presume as those who do not have the European “common sense” ie. natives.
o Europocentrism presented the use of dualistic models of comparison. It helped organize people through reference to the racial superiority of Europeans in the past, and in developed/undeveloped modern groups of today.
o Ultimately Eurocentrism lead to the underlying presumption that superior white western self is a reference of analysis for the rest of the world.
Term
Examples: Eurocentrism
Definition
o Peters Map vs. Mercators Map: The Mercator Map suited Europeans to maintain images of the world with Europe at the centre and larger presentation. The Mercator map is not area accurate (ie. Greenland is as big as China, larger than Africa). The Peter map is area accurate, with equal axis and positioning of all countries .
o The Arts: Europe is thought to be the cultural centre of the world, where “real” art and music has developed. Orchestral music is composed of “european/western” instruments and is thought to be the most civilized music in the world – those that listen to it are assumed to be smart, civilized, respectable people. ie. Orchestral music in Colombia is used to tame children and let them focus on school and the structure of routine, discipline, of the music, than gang participation and violence.
Term
Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism
Definition
o The capacity to expand production faster than the market can absorb it
o First of all, capitalism is an economic system governed by private ownership of businesses, accumulation of capital, expanding division of labour and a competitive market. Because the system is based on competition, wealth will eventually be in the hands of fewer and fewer owners. With competition, there is an expanding division of labour that will function in a limited ownership. These labour workers are paid much less than the value of products they produce, thus they are unable to absorb the supply in the capitalist system.
o Capitalism grows infinitely but our planet has only a finite amount of resources.
Term
Significance: Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism
Definition
o Capitalism is a central aspect of the neoliberal agenda. This calls to privatize all businesses and deregulate corporate such that neoliberals can reap profit without concern.
o Capitalism acts as positive-feedback loop with the addition of a credit system. With credit, people can buy (even if they cannot afford it) at the expense of the future. Thus, capitalism constantly enforces people to pay off their debts and keeps them in for a long period of time.
o Capitalism can also lead to environmental crises in which capitalists will turn environmental assets into wealth without the consideration of climate change and people’s traditions.
o Considering these fundamental crises of capitalism, we need new systems of change and perhaps anarchism can be considered. Anarchism promotes the idea of redistributing wealth, consensus-based democracy where power hierarchies are non-existent. This way, we would not have problems such as the 1% and 99% disparity.
Term
Examples: Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism
Definition
o Britain and outsourcing
o 2008 Inside Job – subprime mortgage collapse
Term
Hottentot Venus
Definition
o Saartjie Baartman was given the nickname “Hottentot Venus” for her presumptive beauty, but was also considered a South African sexual freak by Caucasian culture. In 1810, when she was 20, she was convinced to leave her homeland for fame in England in human zoos. Her traditional Khoikhoi body type was considered freakish in Western Culture and she was put on sexual display.
Term
Significance: Hottentot Venus
Definition
o Was a new way of exhibiting the “other” in society
o Was used as a way to show the intermediate race between man and animal, and the possibility that there are people who have evolutionary lag.
o Staging of a woman who was at once “exotic” and “monstrous” set three important boundaries which would construct the space of the Other in the West: between ‘normal’ and ‘monstrous,’ between ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ and between the ‘superior human races’ and the ‘inferior human races’.
o This time was sufficient for the definitive creation of an invisible line between ‘us’ and ‘them’
Term
Examples: Hottentot Venus
Definition
o Ota Benga who was placed on exhibit in the Bronx Zoo showcasing his “natural” and “primitive” state.
o Josephine Baker on display in a cage; tropes of animalization.
Term
Human Genome
Definition
def
Term
Significance: Human Genome
Definition
sig
Term
Examples: Human Genome
Definition
ex
Term
Jim Crow
Definition
o Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system (whites at the top, black at the bottom) which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s.
o Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens.
Term
Significance: Jim Crow
Definition
o Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-Black racism. The Jim Crow laws and system of etiquette were undergirded by violence, real and threatened. Blacks who violated Jim Crow norms, for example, drinking from the White water fountain or trying to vote, risked their homes, their jobs, even their lives.
o While it is written on government grounds that the Jim Crow laws have been abolished, there are still examples in today’s societies where people suffer injustice and labeling as second class citizens (ie. Blacks and Gays)
Term
Examples: Jim Crow
Definition
o The young black males are shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they're released, they're relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon.
o In a face-palm moment for equality, a new bill up for vote in Iowa would allow businesses to refuse jobs, goods, housing, and services to same-sex couples—and anyone who supports same-sex couples—all based on religious grounds. The outcome of the vote was a determination that “marriage” really does refer to a union between a man and a woman, even in this modern age.
Term
Neoliberalism
Definition
o new form of liberalism
o A contemporary political movement , during Regan’s era, advocating economic liberalizations, free trade and open markets. Neoliberalism supports the privatization of nationalized industries, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society.
o liberal capitalist believe in formal equality but also believe in inequality of talent
o combines culture, values and ethics with economics.
o Under neoliberalism the rich get richer and the poor remain poor
Term
Significance: Neoliberalism
Definition
o relies heavily on the use of contracts , which are deemed to be more profitable by breaking up one job into many less significant positions for part time, lower pay (which create competition and desperation among workers)
o privatization of industries (healthcare, education etc) allow for political and social control over lower classes
o market forces are intensified by surveillance and assessment (ie. timing of washroom breaks, ie. sick days – employees are pressured to spend less time away due to scare of losing job ie. writing assessment)
o creates a situation where there becomes little distinction between market economy or society – where deregulation takes place to make as much money as possible, whether it destroys the earth (ie. oil drilling/pollution), or killing people (blood diamonds, flooding/climate change).
o It is dangerous unrestrained profit making, where humans exist for the market and there is no way around it.
o Neoliberals also treat you, if you don’t participate, as a moral failure – Moral regulation (idea that this idea of certain ways of being is normal and natural, and other is marginalized as deviant. IN our culture – every human is an entrepreneur who must manage their own life. People who use hobbies, sports, status to impress employers are neolitical.)
Term
Examples: Neoliberalism
Definition
o IQ testing to classify people. Involuntary sterilization of people in Colorado until the 70’s of people who weren’t deemed cognitively intelligent or important to reproduce. There was a great deal of stress on the inheritance of people.
o “Safe Street acts” – pushed in 2000 to keep streets safe – but more that the public space should be one for middle class wealthy people. Park benches are designed now so you can’t sleep on them. Regulations, penalties and policies such as the safe street act to brand the homeless as morally disordered / unfit people (these people are the new “Other”) who illegally act. There are laws about where people can beg… but telemarketing is ok?
o Prison Industrial Complex has allowed for private corporations to exploit the lower class for the economic gain of those in upper class
o Occupy Wall Street movement is one of many that protest the inequality of neoliberalism and the exploitation of the lower class
Term
Prison Industrial Complex
Definition
o Privatization in prisons so corporations can produce commodities at cheaper labour costs.
Term
Significance: Prison Industrial Complex
Definition
o Related to neoliberalism and the growing presence of capitalism leading to corporate growth.
o Decline in restorative justice.
o Corporate media spreads fear among public regarding criminal behaviour. The “War on Crime” causes more people to enter the prison system for lighter crimes with public support based on their fears.
Term
Examples: Prison Industrial Complex
Definition
o C-10 Bill issued by Harper. The recent C-10 budget is $22 bil from $1.6 bil. This increase is going to increase police measures to repress citizens and widen the spectrum of security threats (e.g. radical environmentalists and anti-capitalists).
o Three strikes rule in Texas leading to life imprisonment.
Term
Purity Balls
Definition
.
Term
Significance: Purity Balls
Definition
o Exemplified the Coy female and the whole idea encompassing the Coy Female in today’s society.
Term
Examples: Purity Balls
Definition
.
Term
Racial Episteme
Definition
o Racially looking at things to legitimize attitude.
o Racially saturated field of visibility.
Term
Significance: Racial Episteme
Definition
o Widespread black criminality.
o The idea of an aggressive black man followed after black men were given the right to vote. Traditionally, voting was considered a “manly” activity. Giving black men the right to vote was seen as a violation. The country is usually characterized as a female. Hence, black men’s’ right to vote was seen as a violation of the female country. This originated the racial episteme of a sexually aggressive black man.
Term
Examples: Racial Episteme
Definition
o Rodney King – Despite video footage of King being beaten by over 20 cops, and King pleading for help and mercy, the jury consisting of both coloured and white individuals declared Rodney king to be a threat.
o George Stinney Jr. - Accused of rape and killing two girls by bludgeoning with railway spikes. He was the youngest person to be legally executed in 1944 when he was 13. Stinney’s case was supposedly racially neutral although handled by an all-white jury, but his treatment was very different from white convicts since they did not face the same punishments for similar crimes.
Supporting users have an ad free experience!