ANTHRO 3AC Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Tutuila, Linguistic Anthropology, Anthropometry
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ANTHRO 3AC MID-TERM REVIEW
Concepts
1. Salvage Ethnography
o Mead & the boasians
o Document rich cultures that were disappearing due to colonization
o So much of value of unique human culture was disappearing
o The challenge was how to get a picture of a culture before the diffusion
of western cultural traits, if diffusion had already happened
o historical method: getting a picture of a culture in the recent past before
'Westernization'.
2. “Boasian” Cultural Anthropology
o Lived among Native American communities of the northwest coast
o Definition of culture - Human response to the challenges of living in
particular environments, development of specific forms of life as solutions
to those environments
o Culture is studied through the anthropologist's immersion into different
cultures via fieldwork
o Culture is not only learned by children and passed down
o If the ethnographer immersed themselves in the culture, they can relearn
everything - language, custom, morality, common sense, and bodily
movement
o Needs to be described as carefully as possible - what did people do, what
did people make
o Culture is learned and passed down through parenting, education and
other training i.e. "nurturing"
