Glossary

acculturation	The exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct.



achieved status	Social status that comes through talents, choices, actions, efforts, activities, and accomplishments, rather than ascription.



advocacy view	of applied anthropology; the belief that precisely because anthropologists are experts on human problems and social change, and because they study, understand, and respect cultural values, they should make policy affecting people.



aesthetics	Appreciation of the qualities perceived in works of art; the mind and emotions in relation to a sense of beauty.



affinals	Relatives by marriage, whether of lineals (e.g., son's wife) or collaterals (e.g., sister's husband).



age set	Group uniting all men or women born during a certain time span; this group controls property and often has political and military functions.



agriculture	Nonindustrial systems of plant cultivation characterized by continuous and intensive use of land and labor.



ambilineal	Principle of descent that does not automatically exclude the children of either sons or daughters.



animism	Belief in souls or doubles.



anthropology	The study of the human species and its immediate ancestors.



anthropology and education	Anthropological research in classrooms, homes, and neighborhoods, viewing students as total cultural creatures whose enculturation and attitudes toward education belong to a larger context that includes family, peers, and society.



applied anthropology	The application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.



archaeological anthropology (prehistoric archaeology)	The study of human behavior and cultural patterns and processes through the culture's material remains.



art	An object or event that evokes an aesthetic reaction-a sense of beauty, appreciation, harmony, and/or pleasure; the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance; the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.



arts	The arts include the visual arts, literature (written and oral), music, and theater arts.



ascribed status	Social status (e.g., race or gender) that people have little or no choice about occupying.



assimilation	The process of change that a minority group may experience when it moves to a country where another culture dominates; the minority is incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.



balanced reciprocity	See generalized reciprocity.



band	Basic unit of social organization among foragers. A band includes fewer than 100 people; it often splits up seasonally.



bifurcate collateral kinship terminology	Kinship terminology employing separate terms for M, F, MB, MZ, FB, and FZ.



big man	Regional figure often found among tribal horticulturalists and pastoralists. The big man occupies no office but creates his reputation through entrepreneurship and generosity to others. Neither his wealth nor his position passes to his heirs.



bilateral kinship calculation	A system in which kinship ties are calculated equally through both sexes: mother and father, sister and brother, daughter and son, and so on.



biological anthropology	The study of human biological variation in time and space; includes evolution, genetics, growth and development, and primatology.



biological determinists	Those who argue that human behavior and social organization are biologically determined.



Black English Vernacular (BEV)	A rule-governed dialect of American English with roots in southern English. BEV is spoken by African-American youth and by many adults in their casual, intimate speech-sometimes called "ebonics."



bourgeoisie	One of Marx's opposed classes; owners of the means of production (factories, mines, large farms, and other sources of subsistence).



bridewealth	See progeny price.



call systems	Systems of communication among nonhuman primates, composed of a limited number of sounds that vary in intensity and duration. Tied to environmental stimuli. cultural transmission-A basic feature of language; transmission through learning.



capital	Wealth or resources invested in business, with the intent of producing a profit.



capitalist world economy	The single world system, which emerged in the 16th century, committed to production for sale, with the object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.



cargo cults	Postcolonial, acculturative religious movements, common in Melanesia, that attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior.



caste system	Closed, hereditary system of stratification, often dictated by religion; hierarchical social status is ascribed at birth, so that people are locked into their parents' social position.



catharsis	Intense emotional release.



chiefdom	Form of sociopolitical organization intermediate between the tribe and the state; kin-based with differential access to resources and a permanent political structure. A rank society in which relations among villages as well as among individuals are unequal, with smaller villages under the authority of leaders in larger villages; has a two-level settlement hierarchy.



clan	Unilineal descent group based on stipulated descent.



cline	A gradual shift in gene frequencies between neighboring populations.



collateral household	Type of expanded family household including siblings and their spouses and children.



colonialism	The political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.



communal religions	In Wallace's typology, these religions have, in addition to shamanic cults, communal cults in which people organize community rituals such as harvest ceremonies and rites of passage.



communitas	Intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness; characteristic of people experiencing liminality together.



complex societies	Nations; large and populous, with social stratification and central governments.



core	Dominant structural position in the world system; consists of the strongest and most powerful states with advanced systems of production



core values	Key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and help distinguish it from others.



correlation	An association between two or more variables such that when one changes (varies), the other(s) also change(s) (covaries); for example, temperature and sweating.



cross cousins	Children of a brother and a sister.



cultivation continuum	A continuum based on the comparative study of nonindustrial cultivating societies in which labor intensity increases and fallowing decreases.



cultural anthropology	The study of human society and culture; describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.



cultural consultants	Subjects in ethnographic research; people the ethnographer gets to know in the field, who teach him or her about their culture.



cultural determinists	Those who relate behavior and social organization to cultural or environmental factors. This view focuses on variation rather than universals and stresses learning and the role of culture in human adaptation.



cultural imperialism	The rapid spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures, which it modifies, replaces, or destroys-usually because of differential economic or political influence.



cultural relativism	The position that the values and standards of cultures differ and deserve respect. Extreme relativism argues that cultures should be judged solely by their own standards.



cultural resource management (CRM)	The branch of applied archaeology aimed at preserving sites threatened by dams, highways, and other projects.



cultural rights	Doctrine that certain rights are vested not in individuals but in identifiable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. Cultural rights include a group's ability to preserve its culture, to raise its children in the ways of its forebears, to continue its language, and not to be deprived of its economic base by the nation-state in which it is located.



culture	Distinctly human; transmitted through learning; traditions and customs that govern behavior and beliefs.



curer	Specialized role acquired through a culturally appropriate process of selection, training, certification, and acquisition of a professional image; the curer is consulted by patients, who believe in his or her special powers, and receives some form of special consideration; a cultural universal.



daughter languages	Languages developing out of the same parent language; for example, French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin.



descent group	A permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry; fundamental to tribal society.



development anthropology	The branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development.



diaspora	The offspring of an area who have spread to many lands.



differential access	Unequal access to resources; basic attribute of chiefdoms and states. Superordinates have favored access to such resources, while the access of subordinates is limited by superordinates.



diffusion	Borrowing of cultural traits between societies, either directly or through intermediaries.



diglossia	The existence of "high" (formal) and "low" (informal, familial) dialects of a single language, such as German.



discrimination	Policies and practices that harm a group and its members.



disease	A scientifically identified health threat caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus, parasite, or other pathogen.



displacement	A basic feature of language; the ability to speak of things and events that are not present.



domestic	public dichotomy-Contrast between women's role in the home and men's role in public life, with a corresponding social devaluation of women's work and worth.



dowry	A marital exchange in which the wife's group provides substantial gifts to the husband's family.



economizing	The rational allocation of scarce means (or resources) to alternative ends (or uses); often considered the subject matter of economics.



economy	A population's system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.



ego	Latin for I. In kinship charts, the point from which one views an egocentric genealogy.



emic	The research strategy that focuses on native explanations and criteria of significance.



emotionalistic disease theories	Theories that assume that illness is caused by intense emotional experiences.



enculturation	The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations. ethnocentrism-The tendency to view one's own culture as best and to judge the behavior and beliefs of culturally different people by one's own standards.



endogamy	Marriage between people of the same social group.



equity, increased	A reduction in absolute poverty and a fairer (more even) distribution of wealth.



ethnic group	Group distinguished by cultural similarities (shared among members of that group) and differences (between that group and others); ethnic group members share beliefs, values, habits, customs, and norms, and a common language, religion, history, geography, kinship, and/or race.



ethnicity	Identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group, and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation.



ethnography	Field work in a particular culture.



ethnology	Cross-cultural comparison; the comparative study of ethnographic data, of society, and of culture.



ethnomusicology	The comparative study of the musics of the world and of music as an aspect of culture and society.



ethnosemantics	The study of lexical (vocabulary) contrasts and classifications in various languages.



etic	The research strategy that emphasizes the observer's rather than the natives' explanations, categories, and criteria of significance.



excavation	Digging through the layers of deposits that make up an archaeological site.



exogamy	Rule requiring people to marry outside their own group.



expressive culture	The arts; people express themselves creatively in dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, pottery, cloth, storytelling, verse, prose, drama, and comedy.



extended family	Expanded household including three or more generations.



extradomestic	Outside the home; within or pertaining to the public domain.



family of orientation	Nuclear family in which one is born and grows up.



family of procreation	Nuclear family established when one marries and has children.



fiscal	Pertaining to finances and taxation.



focal vocabulary	A set of words and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups (those with particular foci of experience or activity), such as types of snow to Eskimos or skiers.



folk	Of the people; originally coined for European peasants; refers to the art, music, and lore of ordinary people, as contrasted with the "high" art or "classic" art of the European elites.



food production	Cultivation of plants and domestication (stockbreeding) of animals; first developed in the Middle East 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.



functional explanation	Explanation that establishes a correlation or interrelationship between social customs. When customs are functionally interrelated, if one changes, the others also change.



gender roles	The tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.



gender stereotypes	Oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics of males and females.



gender stratification	Unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom) between men and women, reflecting their different positions in a social hierarchy.



genealogical method	Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols.



general anthropology	The field of anthropology as a whole, consisting of cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology.



generality	Culture pattern or trait that exists in some but not all societies.



generalized reciprocity	Principle that characterizes exchanges between closely related individuals. As social distance increases, reciprocity becomes balanced and finally negative.



generational kinship terminology	Kinship terminology with only two terms for the parental generation, one designating M, MZ, and FZ and the other designating F, FB, and MB.



genitor	Biological father of a child.



globalization	The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems.



green revolution	Agricultural development based on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, 20th-century cultivation techniques, and new crop varieties such as IR-8 ("miracle rice").



head, village	A local leader in a tribal society who has limited authority, leads by example and persuasion, and must be generous.



health-care systems	Beliefs, customs, and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal.



hegemony	As used by Antonio Gramsci, a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing its values and accepting its "naturalness."



hidden transcript	As used by James Scott, the critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage-in private-where the power holders can't see it.



historical linguistics	Subdivision of linguistics that studies languages over time.



holistic	Interested in the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.



horticulture	Nonindustrial system of plant cultivation in which plots lie fallow for varying lengths of time.



human rights	Doctrine that invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. Human rights, usually seen as vested in individuals, would include the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and to not be enslaved, or imprisoned without charge.



hypervitaminosis D	Condition caused by an excess of vitamin D; calcium deposits build up on the body's soft tissues and the kidneys may fail; symptoms include gallstones and joint and circulation problems; may affect unprotected light-skinned individuals in the tropics.



hypodescent	Rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less-privileged group.



illness	A condition of poor health perceived or felt by an individual.



imperialism	A policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations or of taking and holding foreign colonies.



incest	Forbidden sexual relations with a close relative.



income	Earnings from wages and salaries.



independent invention	Development of the same cultural trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs and circumstances.



indigenized	Modified to fit the local culture.



indigenous peoples	The original inhabitants of particular territories; often descendants of tribespeople who live on as culturally distinct colonized peoples, many of whom aspire to autonomy.



Industrial Revolution	The historical transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of-"traditional" into "modern" societies through industrialization of the economy.



international culture	Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries.



intervention philosophy	Guiding principle of colonialism, conquest, missionization, or development; an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific directions.



interview schedule	Ethnographic tool for structuring a formal interview. A prepared form (usually printed or mimeographed) that guides interviews with households or individuals being compared systematically. Contrasts with a questionnaire because the researcher has personal contact with the local people and records their answers.



IPR	Intellectual property rights, consisting of each society's cultural base-its core beliefs and principles. IPR is claimed as a group right-a cultural right, allowing indigenous groups to control who may know and use their collective knowledge and its applications.



ivory tower view	of applied anthropology; the belief that anthropologists should avoid practical matters and concentrate on research, publication, and teaching.



key cultural consultant	Person who is an expert on a particular aspect of native life.



kinesics	The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions.



kinship calculation	The system by which people in a particular society reckon kin relationships.



language	Human beings' primary means of communication; may be spoken or written; features productivity and displacement and is culturally transmitted.



law	A legal code, including trial and enforcement; characteristic of state-organized societies.



leveling mechanisms	Customs and social actions that operate to reduce differences in wealth and thus to bring standouts in line with community norms.



levirate	Custom by which a widow marries the brother of her deceased husband.



lexicon	Vocabulary; a dictionary containing all the morphemes in a language and their meanings.



life history	Of a key consultant or narrator; provides a personal cultural portrait of existence or change in a culture.



liminality	The critically important marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage.



lineage	Unilineal descent group based on demonstrated descent.



lineal kinship terminology	Parental generation kin terminology with four terms: one for M, one for F, one for FB and MB, and one for MZ and FZ.



lineal relative	Any of ego's ancestors or descendants (e.g., parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren); on the direct line of descent that leads to and from ego.



linguistic anthropology	The descriptive, comparative, and historical study of language and of linguistic similarities and differences in time, space, and society.



longitudinal research	Long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.



magic	Use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims.



mana	Sacred impersonal force in Melanesian and Polynesian religions.



market principle	Profit-oriented principle of exchange that dominates in states, particularly industrial states. Goods and services are bought and sold, and values are determined by supply and demand.



mater	Socially recognized mother of a child.



matriarchy	A society ruled by women; unknown to ethnography.



matrifocal	Mother-centered; often refers to a household with no resident husband-father.



matrilineal descen	-Unilineal descent rule in which people join the mother's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.



matrilocality	Customary residence with the wife's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their mother's community.



means (or factors) of production	Land, labor, technology, and capital-major productive resources.



medical anthropology	Field including biological and cultural, theoretical and applied, anthropologists concerned with the sociocultural context and implications of disease and illness.



melanin	Substance manufactured in specialized cells in the lower layers of the epidermis (outer skin layer); melanin cells in dark skin produce more melanin than do those in light skin.



mode of production	Way of organizing production-a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, and knowledge.



monotheism	Worship of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being.



morphology	The study of form; used in linguistics (the study of morphemes and word construction) and for form in general-for example, biomorphology relates to physical form.



multiculturalism	The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable; a multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture.



nation	Once a synonym for "ethnic group," designating a single culture sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship; now usually a synonym for state or nation-state.



national culture	Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.



nationalities	Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country).



nation-state	An autonomous political entity; a country like the United States or Canada.



naturalistic disease theories	Include scientific medicine; theories that explain illness in impersonal systemic terms.



natural selection	Originally formulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace; the process by which nature selects the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment, such as the tropics.



negative reciprocity	See generalized reciprocity.



négritude	Black association and identity-an idea developed by dark-skinned intellectuals in Francophone (French-speaking) West Africa and the Caribbean.



neolocality	Postmarital residence pattern in which a couple establishes a new place of residence rather than living with or near either set of parents.



nomadism, pastoral	Movement throughout the year by the whole pastoral group (men, women, and children) with their animals; more generally, such constant movement in pursuit of strategic resources.



office	Permanent political position.



Olympian religions	In Wallace's typology, develop with state organization; have full-time religious specialists-professional priesthoods.



open class system	Stratification system that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank.



overinnovation	Characteristic of projects that require major changes in natives' daily lives, especially ones that interfere with customary subsistence pursuits.



parallel cousins	Children of two brothers or two sisters.



particularity	Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.



pastoralists	People who use a food-producing strategy of adaptation based on care of herds of domesticated animals.



pater	Socially recognized father of a child; not necessarily the genitor.



patriarchy	Political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.



patrilineal	patrilocal complex-An interrelated constellation of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy.



patrilineal descent	Unilineal descent rule in which people join the father's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.



patrilocality	Customary residence with the husband's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their father's community.



peasant	Small-scale agriculturalist living in a state with rent fund obligations.



periphery	Weakest structural position in the world system.



personalistic disease theories	Theories that attribute illness to sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits.



phenotype	An organism's evident traits, its "manifest biology"-anatomy and physiology.



phoneme	Significant sound contrast in a language that serves to distinguish meaning, as in minimal pairs.



phonemics	The study of the sound contrasts (phonemes) of a particular language.



phonetics	The study of speech sounds in general; what people actually say in various languages.



phonology	The study of sounds used in speech.



physical anthropology	See biological anthropology.



plural marriage	See polygamy.



plural society	A society that combines ethnic contrasts and economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.



polyandry	Variety of plural marriage in which a woman has more than one husband.



polytheism	Belief in several deities who control aspects of nature.



postcolonial	Referring to interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized (mainly after 1800); more generally, "postcolonial" may be used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism



postmodern	In its most general sense, describes the blurring and breakdown of established canons (rules, standards), categories, distinctions, and boundaries.



postmodernism	A style and movement in architecture that succeeded modernism. Compared with modernism, postmodernism is less geometric, less functional, less austere, more playful, and more willing to include elements from diverse times and cultures; postmodern now describes comparable developments in music, literature, visual art, and anthropology.



postmodernity	Condition of a world in flux, with people on the move, in which established groups, boundaries, identities, contrasts, and standards are reaching out and breaking down.



potlatch	Competitive feast among Indians on the North Pacific Coast of North America.



power	The ability to exercise one's will over others-to do what one wants; the basis of political status.



practicing anthropologists	Used as a synonym for applied anthropology; anthropologists who practice their profession outside of academia.



prejudice	Devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, attitudes, or other attributes.



prestige	Esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary.



productivity	A basic feature of language; the ability to use the rules of one's language to create new expressions comprehensible to other speakers.



progeny price	A gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin before, at, or after marriage; legitimizes children born to the woman as members of the husband's descent group.



protolanguage	Language ancestral to several daughter languages.



public transcript	As used by James Scott, the open, public interactions between dominators and oppressed-the outer shell of power relations.



questionnaire	Form (usually printed) used by sociologists to obtain comparable information from respondents. Often mailed to and filled in by research subjects rather than by the researcher.



random sample	A sample in which all members of the population have an equal statistical chance of being included.



reciprocity	One of the three principles of exchange; governs exchange between social equals; major exchange mode in band and tribal societies.



redistribution	Major exchange mode of chiefdoms, many archaic states, and some states with managed economies.



religion	Belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces.



revitalization movements	Movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society.



rickets	Nutritional disease caused by a shortage of vitamin D; interferes with the absorption of calcium and causes softening and deformation of the bones.



rites of passage	Culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another.



ritual	Behavior that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as a social act; rituals are held at set times and places and have liturgical orders.shaman-A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between ordinary people and supernatural beings and forces.



sample	A smaller study group chosen to represent a larger population.



Sapir	Whorf hypothesis-Theory that different languages produce different ways of thinking.



schizoid view-of applied anthropology	the belief that anthropologists should help carry out, but not make or criticize, policy, and that personal value judgments should be kept strictly separate from scientific investigation in applied anthropology.



science	A systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena, with reference to the material and physical world.



scientific medicine	As distinguished from Western medicine, a health-care system based on scientific knowledge and procedures, encompassing such fields as pathology, microbiology, biochemistry, surgery, diagnostic technology, and applications.



segmentary lineage organization (SLO)	Political organization based on descent, usually patrilineal, with multiple descent segments that form at different genealogical levels and function in different contexts.



semantics	A language's meaning system.



semiperiphery	Structural position in the world system intermediate between core and periphery.



sexual dimorphism	Marked differences in male and female biology, besides the contrasts in breasts and genitals, and temperament.



sexual orientation	A person's habitual sexual attraction to, and activities with: persons of the opposite sex, heterosexuality; the same sex, homosexuality; or both sexes, bisexuality.



shaman	A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between ordinary people and supernatural beings and forces.



slavery	The most extreme, coercive, abusive, and inhumane form of legalized inequality; people are treated as property.



social race	A group assumed to have a biological basis but actually perceived and defined in a social context, by a particular culture rather than by scientific criteria.



sociolinguistics	Study of relationships between social and linguistic variation; study of language (performance) in its social context.



sodality	See pantribal sodality.



sororate	Custom by which a widower marries the sister of the deceased wife.



state (nation-state)	Complex sociopolitical system that administers a territory and populace with substantial contrasts in occupation, wealth, prestige, and power. An independent, centrally organized political unit; a government. A form of social and political organization with a formal, central government and a division of society into classes.



status	Any position that determines where someone fits in society; may be ascribed or achieved.



stratification	Characteristic of a system with socioeconomic strata, sharp social divisions based on unequal access to wealth and power; see stratum.



style shifts	Variations in speech in different contexts.



subcultures	Different cultural traditions associated with subgroups in the same complex society.