Anthro 101

The term serves in contrast the term emic; both of which are used to describe the way anthropologists go about studying a particular people or idea. An emic approach is related to participant-observation and lets the subject define and categorize their own experiences and the way they view the world around them. It is used when a researcher uses their own definitions and categories to describe what is going on from the researcher's perspective. The researcher strives to remain neutral and objective. It can also refer to the study of one specific concept across cultures. On example of an etic approach is the Sapir-Whorf analysis of language. They sought to use objective standards about language to study that concept across cultures. The complexity of language was reduced into one hypothesis that \"claimed to prove\" something. Today, cultural anthropology strives to take an emic approach to avoid ethnocentrism.

is a sequence of activities that consist of words, gestures, and objects performed in a special place and according to specific sequences based on specific communities, traditions, and/or religion. A specific example of a \"ritual\" could best be shown in a professional baseball player. Many baseball players in general have specific rituals they do before stepping into the batters box to hit or on the mound to throw a pitch. For example, before stepping into the batters box to hit, former Dodgers outfielder Nomar Garciaparra would take the velcro straps of his batting gloves and mess with them in a very specific and ritualistic way. He did this every single time before stepping into the batter's box. This term is important in the context of the issue of magic and religion that we have recently discussed in class. Some people believe that magic and religion are both related and unrelated. A baseball player, for instance, believes magic and religion are related in the sense that baseball as a sport has baseball gods that control various events/outcomes of a baseball game... much like God himself is believed to control life and death or the path that each person takes in their own lives.

In order to engage in the most authentic ethnographic research; researchers arrive on the scene strangers to whatever group they are studying. Therefore, they have to create trust relationships with people in the group the called informants. They usually have to grappel with ethical dilemmas becuase they are prying into the lives of others. Key Respondents help researchers become more part of whatever culture or group they want to understand. Anthropologists develop rapport with their informants and discover things about them that they might not share with others; therefore integrity on the part of the researcher is imperative. Sterk was the researcher who studied prostitutes and she had key respondents with whom she worked with and she worked with these women by devleoping relationships and trust with them.

In Chapter 10 of Conformity and Conflict, Richard Nelson writes in his article \"Eskimo Science\" about the anthropological theory of unilineal evolution, the idea that societies could be sorted into cultural development stages named savagery, barbarism, and ultimately civilization. Nelson argues that the theory of unilineal evolution is disproven by the way that the Koyukon people of Alaska interact with their surrounding environment. Despite the Koyukon people representing the \"savagery\" state of development in their societal interactions, through their use of \"hunter-gatherer\" methods of self-sustainment, Nelson believes his research shows that the Koyukon people are still able to observe their natural environment in detail and through experience, develop theories about animal behavior and unique ways to hunt their prey. These are features of society that under unilineal evolution, would only exist in a society that has reached the stage of \"civilization\". In short the mental capacity of the Koyukon people and other hunter-gatherers are a \"feature of all members of our species no matter how they live and adapt to their environments\"(Conformity and Conflict, 87).

Dubisch shares the example of the journey of Vietnam veterans, and family members of veterans, across the country from California to Washington DC. This group of veterans and family members travel on motorcycle for ten days to the site of the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day weekend. This is an example of a pilgrimage or ritual journey. Though pilgrimages are often thought of as religious in nature, such as the journey of Muslims to the Mecca or Christians to Lourdes. This is not always the case. These journeys are taken with a purpose to reach a location with special meaning or significance to the pilgrim. The locations can gain significance through both divine or human events l, meaning pilgrimages can occur that are non-religious in nature as well as religious in nature. Pilgrims are removed from their lives to take their journey allowing them to also experience altered consciousness and perhaps a transformation regardless, of the type of site they visit, whether divine or secular. These pilgrimages serve as a right of passage through the transformation afforded by the experience of separation from the everyday world for the journey regardless of the final destination.

ideas and cultural conceptions are true as far as a society is concerned. This heavily relates to the idea of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar because these conceptions will vary between societies.

In one article, this intense topic of the demale underside of globalization was discussed. As a result of the globalization of the world's economy and other industrial developments, many are migrating to first world cities from third world countries. Women have a different set of challenges when compared to men in this situation. For instance, coming from less developed parts of the world, women may have assumed different roles in places where they came from and may not able to immediately adapt to the new cultures. Secondly, there is often a lot of discrimination against women in the work place, even in developed countries. It is common for women to receive less pay for the same work or run into other problems and unfair treatments.

This term refers to the decision to take AAVE into account when teaching young black students reading and writing in Standard English. According to Rickford, this was a good decision on the park of the Oakland School Board, because after the decision was implemented, students taught using methods that made them more aware of the differences between their own dialet and Standard English performed much better than peers who were taught using the standard curriculum. What makes this significant to the study of anthropology is that the decision reflects a respect for the different English dialects. It is important in anthropology to be aware of cultural differences, especially in the context of the classroom. Many people view AAVE as indicative that the speaker is uneducated, crude, and other stereotypical traits assigned to black people. As this decision by the Oakland School Board shows, it is beneficial to everyone to be aware of and to respect cultural differences.

Redistribution is an economic function where some kind of resource is collected (usually by a governing body or leader) from members of society, and then directly or indirectly shared back with society in a more or less equal way. One common example of this is taxation; in most countries, the government collects taxes from its citizens without giving them anything back immediately in exchange (like we might expect to happen if we give a store our money). Instead, the money is used to make purchases/investments that benefit everyone, such as roads, schools, and welfare programs. Redistribution is an important anthropological concept because many cultures and groups engage heavily in redistribution, and it is important to understand the exchange that is occuring when resources are collected and then redistributed.

is the transfer of goods and services between two people or groups based on role obligations. The concept of reciprocity can be observed in many contexts, particularly when exchanging holiday gifts with others. Generally, it is considered polite to, when someone gives you a holiday gift, give them something back, even if you are not particularly close. It is a sign of generosity, something that is held in high regard in our society. In addition to the social norms associated with gift-giving, being able to give someone a gift conveys power and status. Not reciprocating in our society shows someone that you are either not interested in pursuing the relationship, or that you simply lack the means to do so. As Lee Cronk argues in \"Reciprocity and the Power of Giving,\" this concept is applicable to many forms of social interaction, and can take on a number of different functions. Some people give gifts simply to present themselves in a good light when meeting new people, or becoming closer with acquaintances. Others use gift giving to intimidate the other party, showing their superior wealth and \"generosity.\" This is important because in our society, givers like to think that they are acting purely out of kindness when giving others gifts, but in making the familiar strange, giving gifts may just be a materialistic way of showing power, strength, and control.

The termrefers to infants dying \"of neglect.\" Used by Brazilian mothers, it can be used in reference to mortal selective neglect, also known as passive infanticide. As Nancy Scheper-Hughes explains in her piece \"Mother's Love: Death without Weeping,\" Brazilian mothers will treat their newborns differently, depending on whether they are seen as \"thrivers and survivors\" or \"born already 'wanting to die.'\" If the infant is strong and healthy, the mother will nurture the baby and put effort into it's survival. On the other hand, if the infant is weak and ill-fated, the mother will disregard the child and allow nature to \"take it's course.\" Throughout the semester, we have discussed norms and how they vary depending on culture. The norm of neglecting your newborn and allowing it to die would not fit into American culture. Scheper-Hughes writes that if the mother cries, her tears will \"dampen the wings of her little angel so that she cannot fly up to her heavenly home.\" This quote illustrates the acceptance that these Brazilian mothers must have when their children die, and the guilt they may feel if they do express emotion. Because of this, the norm in their culture is, when a baby dies, to suppress sadness. In America, if your child dies, you are definitely allowed, and maybe even encouraged, to cry. Cultural norms act as a mold, shaping beliefs, customs, and lifestyles around what is accepted in their culture.

are a social unit discussed by David W. McCurdy in chapter 18 (Family and Kinship in Village India) of Conformity and Conflict. It is the Bhil word for clan, and it denotes a unit of patrilineal family within a certain village area. It cover a small geographic area but connect members of the same arak by a family bond. The name is used by its members as a surname. Members of a certain arak treat other members as close family members, and help one another in times of financial or family crisis, making strangers into relatives and friends. It is also used for making sure that incest is not propagated in small village communities such as the one discussed in the chapter. Men of a certain arak do not marry into their mother's or their paternal grandmother's arak to ensure nonincestuous marriage, as well as to further spread their clan identity. The arak is also an identifier as well as a social designator. People of a certain arak also have a certain identity associated with that arak, and can trace their blood lineage back to a common ancestor as those of the same arak. If I, a man of the arak Vriezelaar, marry a woman of basically any other arak, she would adopt my arak as her own and become a part of the arak Vriezelaar. Likewise, I would not be able to marry a woman of the arak Shyken or Conrey, seeing as those are my mother's and paternal grandmother's araks, respectively. Araks are important from an anthropological standpoint by working as a cultural example of family. The closeness of arak members, whether or not they are related by blood closely, makes them kin and establishes a common bond. In cultures which value familial exchange, which includes American culture, the establishing of a family unit is important for both cataloguing history as well as establishing kinship, closeness, and identity with current family members.

In chapter 8 of Conformity and Conflict, Deborah Tannen discusses how differences in conversation style between men and women in the workplace can lead to miscommunication and misguided evaluations. For example, she cites an instance of a female manager who has to tell her male employee that the report he compiled is inadequate. While she attempted to be diplomatic and soften the bad news with friendly rhetoric, he took it to mean that his report was actually fine. The assumptions that individuals bring to conversations about the meaning behind words can often cause confusion, mistrust, and frustration. To alleviate this, individuals should be open about their biases and presumptions towards others in conversation.

is \"the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values.\" A specific example of enculturation would include parents or peers. Parents and peers, or other adults, act as influences that guide and individual and shape their way of life. These could be deliberate acts, but this is not always the case. Enculturation relates to class because it acts as an agent of socialization for citizens who are developing their skills and habits in order to fully participate in their society.

is when one judges another culture based solely on the values and priorities of one's own culture. It takes root more in traditional anthropology, but modern anthropology takes an approach that seeks to minimize ethnocentrism. In order to understand a culture, one must try to understand the perspective of its people, as opposed to imposing values from an outsider perspective. Think back to the Eating Christmas in Kalahari article. Richard Borshay Lee was unaware of a specific difference in culture between Americans and the !Kung. He assumed that the !Kung would accept an act of generaosity with gratitude in accordance with his own cultural practice. Instead, they demeaned his gift. This hunter-gatherer community instills humility as a social control by belittling accomplishments and showmanship. Lee's ethnocentric assumption caused him much anxiety over the quality of ox he bought to feast on with the !Kung Bushmen. Learning about ethnocentrism highlights how one should remain wary of misjudging a people or a culture from an outsider perspective. Analogous to peering through a limiting window, ethnocentrism perpetuates the risk of presuming false assumptions about a culture based on one's own culture.

(as described in the essay in Taking Sides by Steven Pinker) is the 'language of thought'; that is, some language that's all in our brain that is then translated into English or French or whatever language we speak when we want to communicate. He gives the example that we sometimes say something that isn't 'what we meant to say', implying that there must be something that we did mean to say for which we don't have words, something that is in our mind as a thought that can't be translated into speech or writing perfectly. He also talks about 'gist' and asserts that this means there must be a way we remember words that's not just an exact list of the words that we read or heard; we must, he thinks, take them in and translate them into our 'mentalese' and then re-translate them back when we recall them later for others. It goes in opposition to the hotly-debated claim in Anthropology that our language shapes how we think: rather, Pinker thinks we all think the same but must translate that thought into the language we know. If this were true it would mean that the language we use wouldn't shape our thought but rather just constrain our ability to express it.

is a set of rules based on how people think language should be spoken. According to prescriptive grammar, there is a right language and a wrong language. If you don't follow the prescriptive rammar rules, you are incorrect. An example of a prescriptive grammar rule is: it is correct to say \"I am older than she\" and incorrect to say \"I am older than her\". This term is important when analyzing the language of a different group. It is important to distinguish between whether we are studing a group's prescriptive grammar od their descriptive grammar. This can make a significant difference in how you view the society. For example, in the United States, we have a lot of prescriptive grammar rules that we learn in school, but when we actually speak, we use descriptive grammar. There are a lot of slang terms and colloquialisms that we use that we don't even realize are incorrect. If anthropologists were to study Americans, they would get two different impressions if they studied our prescriptive grammar or descriptive grammar. Therefore, it is important for anthropologists to be able to recognize and distinguish prescriptive grammar.

is a custom by which children come to be seen as adult individuals that are a part of and can contribute to the community. These rites many times involve some form of ritual by way of which the child becomes an adult in the eyes of the community. One good example of a rite of passage is graduating from either highschool or college in American society. School is know as a method by which children of American culture become working contributing adults. There is even considerable ritual present in the graduation ceremony and celebration. Some other examples of rites of passage is the act of circumcision which is many times used as a rite of passage for young boys in many cultures. Understanding rites of passage in different cultures can give archeologies a large amount of insite into a cultures values and norms. Because rites of passage are usually a method of indoctrinating children into the community, they often revolve around and involve things that are considered important to the individuals of said culture. There is often also a link to religion involved in rites of passage that can be studied in that context. Gender roles often also play a very important role in rites of passage as different genders tend to undergo different rites.

are the children of one's mother's brother or father's sister. This is in contrast to parallel cousins, which are the children of one's mother's sister or father's brother. The difference between the two types of cousin becomes important in societies that look favorably on first cousin marriages. These unions have been practiced all over the world, but today are most commonly found in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Though rules differ between cultures, cross cousins are often seen as ideal partners, while parallel cousins fall into the category of direct family, making a union with them incestuous. These marriages often serve to unite families, especially when they bring together two branches of a family that are geographically separate. Such alliances are usually beneficial for both sides. Women especially benefit from cross cousin marriages because their new family already knows and values them.

is a topic discussed by Jared Diamond, in \"Domestication and the Evolution of Disease.\" They are diseases that thrive in large groups of people because the diseases infect a large number of people, and when the people finally acclimate to the infection, the strand of disease changes. The biggest occurance of crowd diseases came from Europeans coming to the Americas, where the diseases they brought accounted for killing 95 percent of the American population. The Bubonic plague is another example of a crowd disease. However, crowd diseases cannot survive in a small, spread out population. They would wipe out the population and then have no way of traveling to another group of people.

Guugu Yimithirr is an Australian aboriginal language spoken by a native people residing in north Queensland. Guy Deutsher describes the language as absent of the egocentrism the is prevalent among western languages. Guugu Yimithirr uses cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) instead of referring to the placement of objects, people, or locations based on the location of the speaker. This language is an example of how a culture's language can reflect certain cultural values and also how a language can affect the way the speakers of said language think. That being said, in order to avoid the same mistakes originally made by Worf, it must be noted that while language can affect thought and thought can affect language, neither completely restricts the other. So just because a language might not have a future tense does not mean that the people who speak that language have no concept of future.

is a theory developed by Marshall Sahlins in 1966 suggesting that hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society, and were not in fact a people always on the brink of starvation, as was previously believed. An example of this was depicted in the Richard Borshay Lee article \"The Hunters: Scarce Resources in the Kalahari.\" In this article, Lee showed that the !Kung people actually spent little time on food procuration and processing, and lived long healthy lives with plenty of leisure time, despite living in the Kalahari Desert. This was in contrast to the belief held by many anthropologists that hunter-gatherers lived a precarious life of constant struggle for survival. This theory is quite significant in the growth of anthropology as a field. It runs directly counter to the vision of hunter-gatherers as primitive, and points out the importance of not analyzing a society from an ethnocentric point of view. Hunter-gatherers are affluent not by producing much, like Western societis, but by desiring little. They simply meet their required ends and do not require surplus or many material possessions. Moving away from a Western definition of affluence, we are able to see hunter-gatherer societies as the affluent ones they can be. It is of course a generalization to say that all hunter-gatherer societies are affluent or that none struggle for survival, but it is a definite step forward in the making-the-strange-familiar we are always striving for to see the benefits of this type of society.

is a form of polygamy where a woman takes more than one husband. A specific example is that of the Tibetans in Northern Nepal. They practice a form called fraternal polyandry where two, three, four or more brothers jointly take a wife. It is relevant and important because it is one of the practices of polygamy that is not as well understood in regards to the reasons it occurs. It occurs mainly due to the economic reasons and religious reasons. Marriage systems seem to be reasoned as alliances between families and as stated before, usually economic in nature. On a basic level, marriages are greatly influential in social interactions and of course economic dealings. In particular with polyandry as explained in \"Polyandry: When Brother Take a Wife\", it keeps the family land intact because otherwise their would be either be a lot of fragmentation of the land or many landless males. The system of polyandry keeps the land intact and allows for more wealth kept within the family.

focused around the concept of whether or not race and ethnicty was a human construction. In Brazil, race is determined by one's appearance. In one of the texts we read, an anthropologist which supported the idea of a race believed that people originating from particular reigons will have distinct external and skeletal features which make it easier to identify human remains. However, the following are arguments against the idea of race. First, race focuses on certin traits but these traits can differ between people of the same population, such as skin color. Second, due to independent assortment, genetics will cause differences in these physical traits. Third, human variation is patterned in clines. Fourth, we all have the same human origins. Fifth, continent do not constitute as perfect boundaries which can determine race. Sixth, there is varitions between people of the same population. Seventh, we should focus on populations rather than race which is broad.

Ethnography is \"the study and systematic recording of human cultures; a descriptive work produced from such research\" (Marriam-Webster). In anthropology, researchers in the field spend a year or more with their culture of interest. They completely submerge themselves in the culture, language and customs of the people. The anthropologists often have informants, people within the culture, whom they interview. During these interviews, notes are taken using traditional paper and pen note taking, video recording, or voice recording. The interviews are then condensed into a paper, which is considered an ethnography. The majority of the readings in Conformity and Conflict are ethnographies.

The term refers to a marriage pattern in which the couple lives with the wife's family. Since the female offspring of a mother remain living in the mother's house, large clan-families are often formed, which results in several generations living together. It is commonly practiced among the Moso people, who live in the Yunnan and Schuan regions of China. The Chinese government encourages this residence in order to balance out the \"male-majority sex ratio caused by the abortion, infanticide and abandonment of girls.\" Women are often seen as undesirable because in many cultures, they live with the husband's family once they are married, and are thought of by his family as another mouth to feed. It is significant in regard to our course material because, like fraternal polyandry and other marriage/family related social structures we discussed, it is a practiced system of kinship among particular cultures - even if it is not widespread. From our reading on the Tibetans in Northern Nepal practicing fraternal polyandry, we learned that cultural customs are in place because of advantages particular cultures get by living a certain way. The Tibetans practiced fraternal polyandry because they believed it would lower the risk of family tension, at least economically. Brothers could continue living together and jointly working their family's land, resulting in a higher standard of living. It is advantageous for the Moso people in China because it decreases the view that women are a waste of resources, thus cutting back the amount of brutalities towards young girls and helping to balance out the male-majority population

The term is the belief that one sees reality as it really is - objectively and without bias. An example of naïve realism can be found in Issue 14 of Taking Sides which discusses supernatural elements of society and whether that belief is legitimate versus illegitimate. Just because one person's culture does not have elements of supernaturalism does not mean that supernaturalism cannot be acceptable. Naïve realism deals with making the familiar strange. It is easy to believe that what we experience and know to be true is what all humans experience as well. But this is false, and anthropology strives to take something seemingly common and question it.

are a Native American group of people that we discussed and learned about in the article \"Body Ritual Among the Nacirema\", by Horace Miner. In this article the body rituals and use of magic potions and charms by the Nacirema people are depicted and interpreted by Miner. In Miner's article, he takes a look at the special shrines of the Nacirema in which they conduct private and secret body rituals daily. In addition, Miner describes how the Nacirema make yearly visits to the holy-mouth-man and confide in the magic of the latipso, a temple where the Nacirema go to be healed. Miner makes an interesting point, saying that most of the Nacirema that go to the latipso to heal end up dying, but the people still believe in the magic healing powers they receive in the latipso. To conclude his article, Miner speaks of the many rituals the Nacirema have to change the appearance of their bodies. They have rituals to make fat people thin and thin people fat. In addition, procedures exist to make women's breasts larger and smaller, showing the general dissatisfaction the Nacirema have with their bodies. After dissecting and discussing the article, we find the Native American group that Miner was describing was in fact us, Americans. Nacirema, or American spelled backwards, are the focus of Miner's article. In his article, Miner takes an outside approach to the American culture and our weird body rituals. Miner's article gives us a perspective of our own culture from an outsider's eyes. Someone of different culture and upbringing can look at our culture and describe our common rituals as weird and extraordinary. Take for example the way in which Miner describes the common medicine cabinet. \"In this chest are kept many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live.\" Miner's perspective on the American culture shows us a side of \"making the familiar strange\". By dissecting our own culture, we can understand how outsiders may view us. Just like American anthropologists view outside cultural practices as strange, we must first make the familiar strange in order to make the strange familiar.

was (and still is) a form of representative government practiced by Native American tribes. Over time, it has consisted of 5-6 predominant tribes in North America, particularly the United States of America. It was formed through a non-aggression pact between the five founding tribes, and it was made to address concerns shared between the tribes. It served as a structure to make important decisions that affected all participating tribes. Many anthropologists believe it influenced the formation of the government of the United States. If you look at certain practices and regulations in our government, you can see common threads in it. One of these influences is the distinction between military and government. In our government, military leaders must give up their positions if they wish to be elected. This is also true for the League of the Iroquois. If a member of the League wanted to return to fight for his tribe in times of war, he had to leave it. Since members of British government were often military leaders, the basis for this aspect of United States government must have come from somewhere else, like the League of the Iroquois.

is a research method employed commonly amongst cultural anthropologists across the globe. The aim of it is to develop close relationships with members of a particular group, and to study them while participating in the group's life. The observer acts as a regular member of the social group or culture during activities or observances normally conducted by group members. An example is Claire E. Sterk's Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS. Sterk spent several weeks on streets, in hotels, and other settings known for prostitution activity, and in drug-use settings. In her time there, she conducted candid interviews and recorded notes on nightly routine. She developed friendships with key respondents, or individuals central to the social structure, which allowed her to meet more people and further her research. The importance of it is that it allows researchers to observe their subjects in a natural setting, granting the observer intuitive understanding of the context of social situations, as well as reducing the sense of constant observation on behalf of the researcher.

In the text, \"Cocaine and the Economic Deterioration of Bolivia\" Jack Weatherford discusses the effects the world market, especially the cocaine demand in Europe and the United States, has on the Bolivian culture and community. The people of Pocona consist of women with young children because once males reach a certain age they are sent to the Chapare, which are the coca plantations. There, some workers have the job of stomping on the leaves to create pasta (a substance of kerosene, salt, acetone and sulfuric acid), which eats away at their hands and feet. \"The women are left alone to plant, work, harvest the fields...\" which has caused a lack of food resources (138). Among many problems, the cocaine demand has also created severe inflation within the country and has often led coca laborers to cocaine addiction.

Regarding Anthropology, it relates to family ties. It is the bond created by those who wish to define themselves as family, but are not blood related and are lacking legal ties (like marriage). Families of affinity can occur in the US due to the current ban of gay marriages. Currently, same sex marriage is banned in 33 of the 50 US states. Although people in these states are not technically allowed to marry their same sex partners, they may act and operate as families in many ways. In recent years, in western culture, the idea of what family means is evolving to become more fluid and inclusive. This progressive shift and acceptance affinity is important to note.

is a people's way of using non-scientific method of classification for items of importance, or their peers. It's the naming or referencing of something in a way that isn't by it's scientific name, like calling a puffy plant a fluff-ball, or like calling a mammoth a \"wooly mammoth\". In this case, race is a also considered this term, as it's classifying someone merely off of physical/surface attributes much of the time without any real scientific reason for doing so. The concept of tipos is somewhat similar. In Brazil, tipos is a folk classification system based off of number of physical traits. Tipos seem to traverse a scale that goes from blackest to whitest. One such tipo classification is that of a Loura, which is someone who is regarded as incredibly white (very far down on the scale of whiteness). However, the classification of a Loura also typically refers to someone with very light colored hair, and bright colored eyes, not just the color of their skin. The classification gets even more specific with tipo classifications such as a branca, which is a white person with any hair color or eye color, but their hair cannot be curly, and their noses must be a certain shape. People of this tipo are typically considered Hispanic in the united states. There are further classifications for other skin tones, body types which have other names like morena and mulatas. The scale of what is regard is white or black is also different than it is in the united states. The difference between tipo classifications and racial classification the United States often causes discomfort among Brazilian's that visit the country and they are often reclassified as white or black or something else based on entirely different qualifications than they are used to.

is a way of dressing practiced by women in many Muslim countries to preserve their respectability and modesty when they are outside the home. One specific example is the burqa worn in Afganistan, as described by Lila Abu-Lughod in her article \"Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?\" Abu-Lughod explains how the burqa is like a \"mobile home\" for the wearer because it allows her to travel outside of her traditional place, the home, without forsaking separation from strange men. However, many Westerners see Muslim veiling as a symbol of the extreme oppression of women, and therefore they want to end the practice (211). This distinction in viewpoint demonstrates a case of ethnocentrism—that is, a case of one culture believing that it has the only \"right\" way of viewing the world, and in many cases, trying to impose its worldview on others. As a broader discipline, anthropology works to dispel the ethnocentrism that permeates the example of the veil and many other cases like it.

The term refers to a group of people related to the _____ movement, an African-based spiritual movement which rose to prominence in Jamaica during the early 1900s. The founder of the movement, Marcus Garvey, advocated self-reliance for black Americans and encouraged active consciousness of their African heritage. These people are known for their distinctive characteristics, such as wearing long dreadlocks, caps, and red, green, and black colors, for their rejection of Western practices/ medicine, the smoking of marijuana, and etc. In the reading, \"Nice Girls Don't Talk to Rastas,\" an American student studying abroad in Barbados alienates herself by interacting with the undesirable people, an action that causes the villagers to turn against her. The student's experience exemplifies the idea of \"naive realism,\" a theory that the world exists as it's perceived. Her upbringing in the States shaped the way she viewed society and the world, and thus, when entering this new setting, she imposed her views on the workings of an entirely different society. The disaster caused by her assumptions show the importance of understanding that the world is not limited to our own perceptions and ideas, within every society comes a different set of cultural knowledge and understandings.

An approach to doing ethnographic research is marked by the importance it places on trying to observe a specific culture with as little judgment as possible. This approach is usually used when studying only one culture versus many. Anthropologists using the emic approach use research participants' statements in their ethnographic research, and they try to understand the behaviors and beliefs of those who live in the culture. Through their participation in the culture, anthropologists begin to deduce the major beliefs and actions that make up that culture. In \"Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS,\" Claire E. Sterk takes this approach to her research by immersing herself in the prostitution cultures in New York City and Atlanta; she tries not to judge the subjects in her interviews, and her openness allows her to better understand the cultures. In this class, this approach has demonstrated how assumptions about other cultures are usually wrong and that only by truly understanding a culture and its knowledge and beliefs can one understand why certain actions, traditions, and practices are performed.

is a gypsy term for pollution. It is an important term in \"Cross-Cultural Law: The Case of the Gypsy Offender\" by Anne Sutherland, which discussed the case of a gypsy using the social security number of a nephew to buy a car. Because the United States government sees this as a fraudulent action, he was arrested and put in jail. The stigma surrounding being put in jail is marime, and not only affects this main, but all of the gypsies that he lives and works with. Even though the United States government see this as a crime, in gypsy culture, borrowing an identification is completely acceptable. Gypsies are affected by the behavior of each individual member of their group. These members are completely intertwined and share economic resources, stay in each other's homes, help each other with work, and frequently loan each other information, money, cars, and identification. Along with all these benefits shared, they also share the shame of immoral and incorrect behavior by one member and the stigma that comes with going to jail. This is called marime. The American idea of the individual is in complete contrast to gypsies' beliefs that names, social security numbers, and reputation belong to the group. Marime is important because it highlights the contrasting culture of gypsies and mainstream America.

The term pertains to beings and powers that are believed to lie beyond the realm of natural things. In anthropology, the first anthropological definition of religion is the belief in ______ beings. The importance of supernatural regarding our coursework is that early anthropologists believed that the belief in the supernatural was evident of primitive societies. As societies begin to develop, religion took on more complex forms of the supernatural. Overtime, arguments have been proposed by anthropologists that the term \"supernatural\" is problematic, since it creates a divide between a natural world that is real and a supernatural world that is not as real. Many anthropologists believe that supernatural is a concept that can be observed empirically in all societies and it is not limited to spirits, gods or ghosts. It can also include luck, kharma or the mystical. Thus, as societies develope more, the meaning of _____ changes as well.

This hypothesis states that the structure of your language shapes how you perceive the world, which then determines how you behave/act. In \"Issue 9\" of the book Taking Side, the question \"does language shape the way we think?\" was hotly debated. Steven Pinker was the proponent who argued against this, stating that there were multiple biological examples that contradict the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For example, we have three different types of cones in our eyes, each registering a different pigment that is triggered by light refraction. But with language, we have thousands of words for different shades and colors, while still only using the three types of cones to identify color. The type of language we understand and use do not alter the three different types of cones that we have. Throughout our class we have been discussing how culture affects behavior and actions in a society. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis tries to determine what role language has on individuals, and language as we known is a huge factor in culture. The concept of language and how that may have affected studies has been brought up almost every week in class because anthropologists due seek out different cultures from across the world to research and familiarize, including their language. Language plays a part in a cultures restriction in learning about another's culture because two cultures most likely do not have the exact same words/sounds for the same objects/events.

comes hand in hand with \"making the strange familiar,\" which is the idea that culture is not a set of norms or exceptions; in its distilled form, cultural differences is simply \"variations\". \"Making the familiar strange\" is specifically the case where one should look into his culture and realize that what they consider normal may in fact seem strange in an objective 3rd person's view. In other words, every culture is an \"exception,\" which makes every culture \"normal\" as well. For example, the essay Nacimera puts American health care in a light that ridicules medical practices just by substituting the vocabulary through which it is described, which highlights the possibility that \"norms\" and \"exceptions\" are simply a byproduct of superiority/inferiority generated biases.

as opposed to reciprocity or redistribution, is a system of distribution of goods that puts a specific price and value on goods or services. Often, market exchange occurs in settings that are specifically designated for the purchase of goods, such as markets, stores, or other forums. For example, if the farmer has a bushel of apples, instead of giving them away in the expectation of future return (reciprocity) or turning them into a higher authority so they can be evenly distributed to all in a group (redistribution), the farmer will go to a forum designated for exchange (a farmer's market, a store, a cart or stand, etc). There, he will sell his apples for a mutually agreed upon exchange, either with monetary currency or other goods or services. This term becomes important in the context of anthropological issues of economy in that it defines a system of exchange, allowing one to examine the different systems of exchange that come with different cultures. Most western culture relies on systems of market exchange based on the dollar, euro, or other currency. However, socialist and communist regimes rely on systems of redistribution, and many hunter-gatherer societies rely on systems of reciprocity. The term \"market exchange\" allows us to talk about systems of economy, examine their pros and cons, and analyze their relationship to greater culture.