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| no single element of the lifeways of a people can be fully understood without considering its other elements. “Holism refers to the study of the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, language and culture (Kottak 2010:2)” |
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| theories of cultural humanity must be framed in comparative perspective, both in geographical and historical terms. |
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| (a) the ways of acting, thinking and feeling of other cultural traditions are as valid as our own. (b) aspects of a culture can be deeply understood by searching for their meanings as embedded within the culture. |
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| the influence of environmental factors, produce the expressed physical differences |
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| thinking in racial terms, a preoccupation with race, or a belief in the importance or validity of race |
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| is the sense of belonging a group of people may share on the basis of such factors as language, religion, history, and (social) race. |
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| The study of the culturally influenced distances people tend to maintain when they interact with each other |
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| the study of bodily communication |
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| rather than invoking the idea of social sophistication (i.e. being “cultured”), the anthropological concept of culture refers to culture as lived in everyday life. |
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| “ the actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities (Kottak 2010:35)”. Important in appreciating that culture may influence but does not determine human practice… |
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| concerned with the ways in which human beings living within a particular social order may influence that social order, given their particular gendered, class-based, racial, ethnic, generational and other kinds of location in that social order. |
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| “the tendency to view of one’s own culture as superior to others and to apply one’s own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures (Kottak 2010:37)”. |
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| others’ cultures should be judged not by the cultural standards of the (anthropological) observer, but rather by the standards of the culture itself. |
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| This adaptive strategy is based on the hunting and gathering of animals and plants. |
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| plant cultivation involving the non-intensive use of such resources as land, labor, capital and machinery. Involves the use of shifting cultivation (planting an area then leaving it fallow for an extended period of time before moving to another area). Can involve slash and burn techniques. |
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| Plant cultivation involving the intensive use of such resources as land, labor, domesticated animals, irrigation and terracing. Land is more continuously used. |
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| An adaptive strategy based primarily on the herding of such domesticated animals as cattle, goats and sheep. |
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| how economic production is socially organized in a given society; “a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of skills, organization and knowledge” (Wolf 1982:75; quoted in Kottak 2010:99) |
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| land, labor and technology and capital mobilized as resources for production |
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| the profit-driven use of money to facilitate exchange of items whose value is determined by the laws of supply and demand |
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| social resources gather at a central point (the chief’s storehouse) then redistributed throughout the society |
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| exchange between social equals or closely related individuals; exists along a reciprocity continuum ranging from generalized reciprocity (exchange in which nothing is expected in return), balanced reciprocity (something is expected in return) and negative reciprocity (relations are more distant and the exchange is primarily economic) |
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| North Pacific Coast (primarily Kwakuitl and Salish) ceremony in which extravagant gifts and food are given away in return for prestige |
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| according to linguist Noam Chomsky, the notion that all languages have a fundamentally common structure |
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| improvised language emerging out of situations of cross-cultural contact… |
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| different languages facilitate different ways of thinking. (The opposite, of course, is also true: changing ideas within a society are reflected in language.) |
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| small, kin-based groups of foragers. Tend to be egalitarian |
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| commonly descended, village based groups whose economic base rests on horticulture and pastoralism and which lack formal government. |
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| a form of social and political organization between the tribe (which is kin-based) and the state (which bears a formal political structure and in which individuals have differential access to resources). |
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| has a formal government and developed degree of class stratification. Today, bands, tribes and chiefdoms all exist under authority of the world’s states. Feature (1) population control, (2) a judiciary, (3) enforcement, and (4) fiscal institutions |
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| fraternity or association across tribes based on descent, but also such factors as gender and age [Masai of Kenya]. Sometimes organized around economic need, such as coming together for seasonal hunts [Central Plains Indians] |
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| a system of social stratification in which facilitates fully mobility, in which one’s rank is primarily determined by personal merit or accomplishment |
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| a closed, hereditary system of social stratification that includes caste (frequently based on religion), slavery (a group of people are coerced as labor in the service of another), and modern class (the means of production are dominated by a social elite). |
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