AN101 Midterm #2
Chapter 5: CULTURE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND IDENTITY
Perception: Organizing and experiencing information
- Anthropologists are interested in the way people learn, see and make sense of the world
- Language, thought and perception are linked to this
- Reality vs. expectations, natural vs. supernatural, real vs. illusion
- Seeing/experiencing through cultural expectations
- Schemas: patterned, repetitive experiences (ex. Christmas, birthdays, weddings,
funerals etc.)
- Schemas become Prototypes: Examples of a typical instance, element, relation, or
experience within a culturally relevant sematic domain – context helps us to
understand/interpret prototypes. Illusion-perception is cultural
Visuality
- Learning to look and see by cultural rules – Abstract Art vs Garbage, Mona Lisa: Big
deal?
- Baule and looking, cultural variations and subtleties
o The noun nian – “to watch”, the noun nyin – “a stare”, nyin kpa “a real stare”, the
noun kanngle – “evil looks from the corner of the eye”, Nian Klekle “to cast a
rapid glance”
Cognition: Cognitive capacities and intelligence
- The mental process by which humans can gain knowledge and the “meeting place of
relations between the mind at work and the world in which it works”.
- How people systematically Classify Cultural Knowledge
o Ethnobotany, Ethnozoology, Ethnoscience, Maps, geography, medicine,
supernatural forces
- Taxonomies: a system that sorts groups of things (taxonomic units) into subgroups
(taxa) in a way subgroups are mutually exclusive – all subgroups share a defining
characteristic but at least one characteristic makes them exclusive to their own
subgroup - Savages-Barbarians-Civilized: Ethnocentric, moral judgement, a line of progress,
materialist assumptions, racist evaluations of humans
- Elementary cognitive process: Mental tasks common to all humans without
intellectual cognitive impairment – all humans demonstrate them
- Functional Cognitive Systems: the cultural organization of elementary cognitive
processes – culturally linked sets that guide perception, conception, reason, and
emotion that work in a given cultural context
- Two Styles of perceptual and intellectual activities
o (Global Style) Field-dependent: way of viewing the world that first sees it as
a bundle of relationships and only later sees the bits involved in these
relationships (life)
o (Articulate Style) Field-independent: way of viewing that it breaks up into
smaller and smaller pieces, which can be organized into larger chunks
(school)
Reason and the Reasoning Process
- Thinking: Distinct remembering or learning
- Syllogistic Reasoning - culture and logic: a series of three statements in which
the first two are the premise and the last is the conclusion which must follow from the
premise
o Reasoning styles differ from culture to culture
Culture and Logic
- How we understand a cognitive task, encode information presented to us and what
transformation the information undergoes as we think – reasoning styles differ
between cultures as well as contexts
Emotion: Bodily arousal/cognitive interpretation – compromise of states, values and arousal
- Cole and Scribner describe emotion in terms of functional cognitive systems (ie. Gut
feeling, fear, creepy, positive feelings)
Motivation: setting/accomplishing goals
- Socialization: the process by which humans learn to become members of a
group, both by interacting with others in the right way and coping with their
behavioural rules that the group has established - Enculturation: the process where humans live with one another and must learn to
come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling (culture) that are
considered appropriate
- The two are intimately connected and inseparable
Personality/Self/Subjectivity: Variables of culture and personality
- Self: the result of the process of socialization and enculturation for an individual –
not always an autonomous independent self
- Personality: “The relative integration of an individual’s perceptions, motives,
cognitions, and behaviour within a socio-cultural matrix”
- Subjectivity: an individual’s awareness of his or her own agency and position as a
subject
Subject positions of sexuality and gender: Gender roles and sex
- Gender Roles: sets of behaviours that are commonly perceived as masculine or
feminine within a specific culture
- Sexuality: an individual’s sense of his or her own sexual orientation and preferences
- Sex: The biological distinction between male and female
- Gender: The cultural constructions of beliefs and behaviours considered appropriate
for each sex
- Sexual Practices: Cultural variation and norms
Structural Violence and Social Trauma: The dark side of life
- Structural Violence: Violence that results from the way that political and economic
forces structure risk for various forms of suffering within a population
- Social Trauma: Individual and group experience of negative, physical, mental and
emotional effects resulting from powerfully disturbing occurrences caused by forces
external to the person or group – P.T.S.D.
- Paul Farmer “AIDS and Accusations”
Chapter 6: SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Marriage - An institution that usually involves a man and a woman, but could also be same sex
couples, transforms the status of participation carries implications about sexual
access, and economic ties – connection of the kins of both husband and wife
- Legitimizes offspring, creates a new social group
Marriage as a Social Process
- Bridewealth: The transfer of certain important goods from the families on both sides
representing compensation to the wife’s lineage for the loss of her labour and for
child-bearing capacities – common in groups where the bride goes to live near or
with the grooms kin (Brideservice is similar but implies that the groom will work for
bride’s family)
- Dowry: opposite of Bridewealth – what women bring into a marriage, often attract a
good mate, start a household or maintain some independence
- Endogamy: marriage within a defined social group (must marry a member within
that culture, race or religion)
- Exogamy: marriage outside of a defined social group
Monogamy and Polygamy
- Monogamy: A marriage pattern in which a person may be married to only one
person at the same time – divorce and remarriage more than once is called “serial
monogamy”
- Polygamy: A marriage pattern in which a person may be married to more than one
person at a time (Male or female)
o Polygyny: Marriage of one man to two or more women
o Polyandry: Marriage of one woman to two or more men
Family Structure
- Non-conjugal Family: A woman and her children; the husband/father may
occasionally be present or completely absent – could also be the man and his
children where the wife/mother occasionally visits or is completely absent – fits with
single parent families
- Conjugal Family: A family based on marriage; at minimum, a spousal pair and their
children
- Nuclear Family: Two generations: One or more parents and their unmarried children
– Mobile cultures (Foragers, modern workers, etc.) - Extended Family: Three generations living together: Parents, married children and
grandchildren – farm family’s value this form, more settles, and persists over time (ie.
Mennonites, Amish)
- Joint Family: Brothers and their wives (or vice versa) along with kids all living
together
- Blended Family: Created when previously divorced/widowed people marry, bringing
with them children from their previous marriages
- Families of Choice: Often common law/informal, gay/lesbian – created over time by
new kin as friends and lovers demonstrate their genuine commitment to one another
Kinship and Systems of Relatedness
- Kinship carries out the recruiting of group members
- Providing residence rules
- Provides intergenerational links
- Helps to de
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