| 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.
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| achieved status | Social status that comes through talents, actions, efforts, activities, and accomplishments, rather than ascription.
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| adaptation | The process by which organisms cope with environmental stresses.
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| African-American English Vernacular (AAEV) | See Black English Vernacular.
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| age set | Group uniting all men or women (usually men) born during a certain time span; this group controls property and often has political and military functions.
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| agnates | Members of the same patrilineal descent group.
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| agriculture | Nonindustrial system of plant cultivation characterized by continuous and intensive use of land and labor.
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| androgyny | Similarities (e.g., in dress, adornment, or body features) between males and females.
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| animism | Belief in souls or doubles.
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| 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.
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| apical ancestor | In a descent group, the individual who stands at the apex, or top, of the common genealogy.
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| applied anthropology | The application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.
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| archaeological anthropology | The branch of anthropology that reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains; best known for the study of prehistory. Also known as "archaeology."
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| archaic state | Nonindustrial state.
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| ascribed status | Social status (e.g., race or gender) that people have little or no choice about occupying.
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| 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.
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| balanced reciprocity | See generalized reciprocity.
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| band | Basic unit of social organization among foragers. A band includes fewer than one hundred people; it often splits up seasonally.
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| berdaches | Among the Crow Indians, members of a third gender, for whom certain ritual duties were reserved.
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| big man | 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.
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| 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.
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| binary opposition | Pairs of opposites, such as good-evil and old-young, produced by converting differences of degree into qualitative distinctions; important in structuralism.
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| biological anthropology | The branch of anthropology that studies human biological diversity in time and space for instance, hominid evolution, human genetics, human biological adaptation; also includes primatology (behavior and evolution of monkeys and apes). Also called physical anthropology.
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| biological determinists | Those who argue that human behavior and social organization are biologically determined.
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| biological kin types | Actual genealogical relationships, designated by letters and symbols (e.g., FB), as opposed to the kin terms (e.g., uncle) used in a particular society.
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| biomedicine | Western medicine, which attributes illness to scientifically demonstrated agents biological organisms (e.g., bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites) or toxic materials.
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| biopsychological equality | The premise that although individuals differ in emotional and intellectual capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture.
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| Black English Vernacular (BEV) | The rule-governed dialect spoken by American black youth, especially in inner-city areas; also spoken in rural areas and used in the casual, intimate speech of many adults; also known as ebonics.
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| blood feud | Feud between families, usually in a nonstate society.
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| bourgeoisie | One of Karl Marx's opposed classes; owners of the means of production (factories, mines, large farms, and other sources of subsistence).
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| brideprice | A customary gift before, at, or after marriage from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin; a misleading term because people with the custom don't usually regard the exchange as a sale; see also progeny price.
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| bridewealth | A customary gift before, at, or after marriage from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin; see also progeny price.
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| call systems | Vocal systems of communication used by nonhuman primates, composed of a limited number of sounds calls which are produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered.
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| candomble | A syncretic "Afro-Brazilian" religion.
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| capital | Wealth or resources invested in business, with the intent of producing a profit.
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| capitalist world economy | The single world system, which emerged in the sixteenth century, committed to production for sale, with the object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.
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| cargo cults | Postcolonial, acculturative, religious movements common in Melanesia that attempt to explain Euopean domination and wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior.
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| 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.
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| ceremonial fund | Resources invested in ceremonial or ritual expenses or activity.
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| chiefdom | Form of sociopolitical organization intermediate between the tribe and the state; kin-based with differential access to resources and a permanent political structure.
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| clan | Unilineal descent group based on stipulated descent.
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| class consciousness | Recognition of collective interests and personal identification with one's economic group (particularly the proletariat); basic to Marx's view of class.
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| close-knit networks | Characteristic of rural communities and nonindustrial societies; many of one's friends, neighbors, and relatives know one another.
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| colonialism | The political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.
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| 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.
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| communitas | Intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness; characteristic of people experiencing liminality together.
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| community study | Anthropological method for studying complex societies. Small communities are studied ethnographically as being (partially) representative of regional culture or particular contrasts in national life.
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| complex societies | Nations; large and populous, with social stratification and central governments.
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| convergent cultural evolution | See cultural convergence.
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| copula deletion | Absence of the verb to be; featured in BEV and in diverse languages, including Hebrew and Russian.
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| core | Dominant structural position in the world system; consists of the strongest and most powerful states with advanced systems of production.
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| core values | Key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and help distinguish it from others.
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| 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.
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| creative opposition | Process in which people change their behavior as they consciously and actively avoid or spurn an external image or practice.
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| cultural anthropologist | (sociocultural anthropologist) A student of social life and culture, a practitioner of cultural anthropology, whether ethnology or ethnography.
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| cultural colonialism | Within a nation or empire, domination by one ethnic group or nationality and its culture/ideology over others e.g., the dominance of Russian people, language, and culture in the former Soviet Union.
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| cultural consultant | Someone the ethnographer gets to know in the field, who teaches him or her about their society and culture.
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| cultural convergence | Development of similar traits, institutions, or behavior patterns as a result of adaptation to similar environments; parallel development without contact or mutual influence.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| cultural learning | Learning based on the human capacity to think symbolically.
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| 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.
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| cultural rights | Doctrine that certain rights are vested not in individuals but in identifiable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies.
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| culturally compatible economic development projects | Projects that harness traditional organizations and locally perceived needs for change and that have a culturally appropriate design and implementation strategy.
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| culture | Traditions and customs that govern behavior and beliefs; distinctly human; transmitted through learning.
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| 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.
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| daughter languages | Languages developing out of the same parent language; for example, French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin.
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| demonstrated descent | Basis of the lineage; descent-group members cite the names of their forebears in each generation from the apical ancestor through the present.
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| descent | Rule assigning social identity on the basis of some aspect of one's ancestry.
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| descent group | A permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry; fundamental to tribal society.
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| development anthropology | The branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development.
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| diaspora | The offspring of an area who have spread to many lands.
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| 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.
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| diffusion | Borrowing between cultures either directly or through intermediaries.
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| diglossia | The existence of "high" (formal) and "low" (familial) dialects of a single language, such as German.
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| discourse | Talk, speeches, gestures, and actions.
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| discrimination | Policies and practices that harm a group and its members.
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| disease | An etic or scientifically identified health threat caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus, parasite, or other pathogen.
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| displacement | A basic feature of language; the ability to speak of things and events that are not present.
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| domestic | Within or pertaining to the home.
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| domestic system (of manufacture) | Also known as "home handicraft production"; preindustrial manufacturing system in which organizer-entrepreneurs supplied raw materials to people who worked at home and collected finished products from them.
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| 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.
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| dowry | A marital exchange in which the wife's group provides substantial gifts to the husband's family.
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| ebonics | Another name for Black English Vernacular; derived from "ebony" and "phonics."
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| ecocide | Destruction of local ecosystems.
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| economic typology | Classification of societies based on their adaptive strategies, such as foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture.
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| economizing | The rational allocation of scarce means (or resources) to alternative ends (or uses); often considered the subject matter of economics.
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| economy | A population's system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.
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| ego | Latin for "I". In kinship charts, the point from which one views an egocentric genealogy.
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| emic | The research strategy that focuses on native explanations and criteria of significance.
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| emotionalistic disease theories | Theories that assume that illness is caused by intense emotional experiences.
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| enculturation | The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations.
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| endogamy | Marriage between people of the same social group.
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| environmentalists | See nurturists.
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| equity, increased | A reduction in absolute poverty and a fairer (more even) distribution of wealth.
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| ethnic expulsion | A policy aimed at removing groups who are culturally different from a country.
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| 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.
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| ethnicity | Identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group, and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation.
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| 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.
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| ethnocide | Destruction by a dominant group of the culture of an ethnic group.
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| ethnography | Field work in a particular culture.
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| ethnology | The theoretical, comparative study of society and culture; compares cultures in time and space.
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| ethnoscience | See ethnosemantics.
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| ethnosemantics | The study of lexical (vocabulary) contrasts and classifications in various languages.
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| etic | The research strategy that emphasizes the observer's rather than the natives' explanations, categories, and criteria of significance.
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| Etoro | Papua New Guinea culture in which males are culturally trained to prefer homosexuality.
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| exogamy | Mating or marriage outside one's kin group; a cultural universal.
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| extended family | Expanded household including three or more generations.
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| extradomestic | Outside the home; within or pertaining to the public domain.
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| family of orientation | Nuclear family in which one is born and grows up.
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| family of procreation | Nuclear family established when one marries and has children.
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| fictive kinship | Personal relationships modeled on kinship, such as that between godparents and godchildren.
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| First World | The "democratic west" traditionally conceived in opposition to a "Second World" ruled by "communism."
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| fiscal | Pertaining to finances and taxation.
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| 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.
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| food production | Plant cultivation and animal domestication.
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| foraging | Hunting and gathering.
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| forced assimilation | Use of force by a dominant group to compel a minority to adopt the dominant culture for example, penalizing or banning the language and customs of an ethnic group.
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| gender roles | The tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.
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| gender stereotypes | Oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics of males and females.
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| 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.
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| genealogical method | Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols.
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| general anthropology | The field of anthropology as a whole, consisting of cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology.
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| generality | Culture pattern or trait that exists in some but not all societies.
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| generalized reciprocity | Principle that characterizes exchanges between closely related individuals: As social distance increases, reciprocity becomes balanced and finally negative.
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| genocide | The deliberate elimination of a group, e.g., through mass murder, warfare, or introduced diseases.
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| globalization | The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems.
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| green revolution | Agricultural development based on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, twentieth-century cultivation techniques, and new crop varieties such as IR-8 ("miracle rice").
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| head, village | A local leader in a tribal society who has limited authority, leads by example and persuasion, and must be generous.
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| health care systems | Beliefs, customs, and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal.
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| hegemonic reading (of a "text") | The reading or meaning that the creators intended, or the one the elites consider to be the intended or correct meaning.
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| hegemony | As used by Antonio Gramsci, a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing its values and accepting its "naturalness."
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| 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.
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| historical linguistics | Subdivision of linguistics that studies languages over time.
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| holistic | Interested in the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.
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| homeostasis | Equilibrium, or a stable relationship, between a population and its resource base.
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| hominids | Members of the zoological family (Hominidae) that includes fossil and living humans.
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| homonyms | Words that sound the same but have different meanings; for example, bare and bear.
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| horticulture | Nonindustrial system of plant cultivation in which plots lie fallow for varying lengths of time.
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| 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 not to be enslaved.
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| hypodescent | A rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less privileged group.
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| ideal types | Labels that make contrasts seem more extreme than they really are (e.g., big and little). Instead of discrete categories, there is actually a continuum from one type to the next.
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| identity politics | Sociopolitical identities based on the perception of sharing a common culture, language, religion, or "race," rather than citizenship in a nation-state, which may contain diverse social groups.
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| illness | An emic condition of poor health felt by individual.
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| imperialism | A policy of extewnding the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations and of taking and holding foreign colonies.
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| incest | Sexual relations with a close relative.
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| incest taboo | Universal prohibition against marrying or mating with a close relative.
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| income | Earnings from wages and salaries.
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| independent invention | Development of the same culture trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs and circumstances.
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| indigenized | Modified to fit the local culture.
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| 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.
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| individual situational learning | Type of learning in which animals learn from and base their future behavior on personal experience.
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| Industrial Revolution | The historical transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of "traditional" into "modern" societies through industrialization of the economy.
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| infanticide | Killing a baby; a form of population control in some societies.
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| informed consent | An agreement sought by ethnographers from community members to take part in research.
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| international culture | Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries.
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| intervention philosophy | Guiding principle of colonialism, conquest, missionization, or development; an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific directions.
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| 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 and records people's answers.
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| IPR (intellectual property rights) | 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.
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| Iroquois | Confederation of tribes in aboriginal New York State; matrilineal with communal longhouses and a prominent political, religious, and economic role for women.
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| key cultural consultant | An expert on a particular aspect of local life who helps the ethnographer understand that aspect.
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| kin terms | The words used for different relatives in a particular language, as opposed to actual genealogical relationships (biological kin types).
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| kin-based | Characteristic of many nonindustrial societies. People spend their lives almost exclusively with their relatives; principles of kinship, descent, and marriage organize social life.
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| kinesics | The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions.
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| kinship calculation | The system by which people in a particular society reckon kin relationships.
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| Kwakiutl | A potlatching society on the North Pacific Coast of North America.
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| lactation | Milk production.
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| language | Spoken (speech) and written (writing which has existed for about 6,000 years); the primary human means of communication; key features of language include cultural transmission, displacement, and productivity.
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| law | A legal code, including trial and enforcement; characteristic of state-organized societies.
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| law of supply and demand | See supply and demand, law of.
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| LDC | A less developed country; by contrast with an industrial nation.
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| leveling mechanisms | Customs and social actions that operate to reduce differences in wealth and thus to bring standouts in line with community norms.
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| levirate | Custom by which a widow marries the brother of her deceased husband.
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| lexicon | Vocabulary; a dictionary containing all the morphemes in a language and their meaning.
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| life history | Of a cultural consultant; provides a personal cultural portrait of existence or change in a culture.
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| liminality | The critically important marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage.
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| lineage | Unilineal descent group based on demonstrated descent.
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| linguistic anthropology | The branch of anthropology that studies linguistic variation in time and space, including interrelations between language and culture; includes historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.
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| linguistic relativity | Notion that all languages and dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.
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| linguistic uniformitarianism | The idea that the same forces that have produced large-scale linguistic changes over the centuries, working gradually, are still at work and can be observed in linguistic events (language use) taking place today.
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| linkages | Interconnections between small-scale and large-scale units and systems; political, economic, informational, and other cultural links between village, region, nation, and world.
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| liturgical order | A set sequence of words and actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in which it occurs.
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| local descent group | All the members of a particular descent group who live in the same place, such as the same village.
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| longitudinal research | Long-term study of a community, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.
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| loose-knit networks | Characteristic of urban and complex societies; people who know each other often don't know each other's friends, neighbors, and relatives.
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| magic | Use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims.
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| majority groups | Superordinate, dominant, or controlling groups in a social-political hierarchy.
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| maladaptive | Harmful to survival and reproduction.
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| mana | Sacred impersonal force in Melanesian and Polynesian religions.
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| 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.
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| marriage | Socially approved relationship between a socially recognized male (the husband) and a socially recognized female (the wife) such that the children born to the wife are accepted as the offspring of both husband and wife.
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| massification | Production and marketing aimed at a relatively undifferentiated mass market or audience (e.g., the advertising of McDonald's).
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| matriarchy | A society ruled by women; unknown to ethnography.
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| matrifocal | Mother-centered; often refers to a household with no resident husband-father.
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| matrilateral skewing | A preference for relatives on the mother's side.
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| matrilineal descent | Unilineal descent rule in which people join the mother's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
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| matrilocality | Customary residence with the wife's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their mother's community.
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| matrons | Senior women, as among the Iroquois.
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| means (or factors) of production | Land, labor, technology, and capital major productive resources.
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| medical anthropology | Unites biological and cultural anthropologists in the study of disease, health problems, health care systems, and theories about illness in different cultures and ethnic groups.
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| mestizo | Mixed. In Latin America, having a combination of European, African, and Native American ancestors. Mestizos speak the national language.
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| microenculturation | The process by which people learn particular roles in a limited social system; creates microcultures.
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| minimal pairs | Words that resemble each other in all but one sound; used to discover phonemes.
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| minority groups | Subordinate groups in a social-political hierarchy, with inferior power and less secure access to resources than majority groups have.
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| 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.
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| monocrop production | System of production, often on plantations, based on the cultivation of a single cash crop.
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| monograph | A report based on ethnographic field work.
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| monotheism | Worship of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being.
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| morpheme | Minimal linguistic form (usually a word) with meaning.
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| 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.
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| multicentric exchange system | Economy organized into different categories or spheres.
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| multiculturalism | The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable; a multi- cultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture, but also into an ethnic culture.
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| namesakes | People who share the same name; a form of fictive kinship among the San, who have a limited number of personal names.
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| 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."
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| nation-state | An autonomous political entity, a country like the United States or Canada.
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| national culture | Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.
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| nationalities | Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country).
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| naturalistic disease theories | Includes scientific medicine; theories that explain illness in impersonal systemic terms.
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| naturists | Those who argue that human behavior and social organization are biologically determined.
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| negative reciprocity | See generalized reciprocity.
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| negritude | African identity developed by African intellectuals in Francophone (French-speaking) West Africa.
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| neocolonialism | A revival, or a new form, of colonialism the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power, often justified by the assertion that foreigners are more enlightened at governing than are natives of the colonial area.
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| neolocality | Postmarital residence pattern in which a couple establishes a new place of residence rather than living with or near either set of parents.
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| network analysis | Technique developed by anthropologists to adapt ethnographic procedures to modern cities and nations. Focuses on types of contacts (networks of relationships) between people.
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| NGOS | Nongovernmental organizations.
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| Nilotic populations | Populations, including the Nuer, that inhabit the Upper Nile region of eastern Africa.
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| 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.
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| nuclear family | Kinship group consisting of parents and children.
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| nurturists | Those who link behavior and social organization to environmental factors. Nurturists focus on variation rather than universals and stress learning and the role of culture in human adaptation.
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| office | Permanent political position.
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| Olympian religions | In Wallace's typology, develop with state organization; have full-time religious specialists professional priesthoods.
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| open class system | Stratification system that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank.
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| overinnovation | Characteristic of development projects that require major changes in people's daily lives, especially ones that interfere with customary subsistence pursuits.
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| pantheon | A collection of supernatural beings in a particular religion.
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| pantribal sodality | A non-kin-based group that exists throughout a tribe, spanning several villages.
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| participant observation | A characteristic ethnographic technique; taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing.
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| particularity | Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.
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| pastoralists | People who use a food-producing strategy of adaptation based on care of herds of domesticated animals.
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| patriarchy | Political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.
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| patrilineal descent | Unilineal descent rule in which people join the father's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
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| patrilineal-patrilocal complex | An interrelated constellation of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy.
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| patrilocality | Customary residence with the husband's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their father's community.
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| peasant | Small-scale agriculturist living in a state, with rent fund obligations.
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| periphery | Weakest structural position in the world system.
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| personal network | Each person's particular set of relationships (economic, social, political, religious) with all others.
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| personalistic disease theories | Theories that attribute illness to sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits.
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| phenotype | An organism's evident traits, its "manifest biology" anatomy and physiology.
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| phone | Any speech sound.
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| phoneme | Significant sound contrast in a language that serves to distinguish meaning, as in minimal pairs.
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| phonemics | The study of the sound contrasts (phonemes) of a particular language.
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| phonetics | The study of speech sounds in general; what people actually say in various languages.
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| phonology | The study of sounds used in speech.
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| physical anthropology | See biological anthropology.
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| pidgins | Mixed languages that develop to ease communication between members of different cultures in contact, usually in situations of trade or colonial domination.
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| plural marriage | Marriage of a man to two or more women (polygyny) or marriage of a woman to two or more men (polyandry) at the same time; see also polygamy.
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| plural society | A society that combines ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization (i.e., use of different environmental resources by each ethnic group), and the economic interdependence of those groups.
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| polity | The political order.
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| polyandry | Variety of plural marriage in which a woman has more than one husband.
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| polygamy | Marriage with three or more spouses, at the same time; see also plural marriage.
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| polygyny | Variety of plural marriage in which a man has more than one wife.
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| polytheism | Belief in several deities who control aspects of nature.
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| postmodern | In its most general sense, describes the blurring and breakdown of established canons (rules, standards), categories, distinctions, and boundaries.
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| 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, and visual art.
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| 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.
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| potlatch | Competitive feast among Indians on the North Pacific Coast of North America.
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| power | The ability to exercise one's will over others to do what one wants; the basis of political status.
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| prejudice | Devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes.
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| prestige | Esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary.
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| productivity | A basic feature of language; the ability to use the rules of one's language to create new expressions comprehensible to other native speakers.
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| 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.
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| proletarianization | Separation of workers from the means of production through industrialism.
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| protolanguage | Language ancestral to several daughter languages.
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| public transcript | As used by James Scott, the open, public interactions between dominators and oppressed the outer shell of power relations.
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| 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.
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| race | An ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
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| racism | Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
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| random sample | A sample in which all members of the population have an equal statistical chance of being included.
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| reciprocity | One of the three principles of exchange. Governs exchange between social equals; major exchange mode in band and tribal societies.
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| redistribution | Major exchange mode of chiefdoms, many archaic states, and some states with managed economies.
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| refugees | People who have been forced (involuntary refugees) or who have chosen (voluntary refugees) to flee a country, to escape persecution or war.
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| regulation | The management of variables within a system of related and interacting variables. Regulation assures that variables stay within their normal ranges, corrects deviations from the norm, and thus maintains the system's integrity.
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| religion | Beliefs and rituals concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces.
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| rent fund | Scarce resources that a social inferior is required to render to an individual or agency that is superior politically or economically.
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| replacement fund | Scarce resources invested in technology and other items essential to production.
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| respondents | Subjects in survey research; people who answer or fill in questionnaires.
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| revitalization movements | Movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society.
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| rites of passage | Culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another.
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| 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.
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| role | A set of expected (culturally "proper") behaviors, attitudes, rights, and obligations attached to a particular status.
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| sample | A smaller study group chosen to represent a larger population.
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| San | Foragers of southern Africa, also known as Bushmen; speakers of San languages.
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| Sapir-Whorf hypothesis | Theory that different languages produce different ways of thinking.
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| schistosomiasis | Disease caused by liver flukes transmitted by snails inhabiting ponds, lakes, and waterways, often created by irrigation projects.
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| 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.
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| Second World | The Warsaw Pact nations, including the former Soviet Union, the Socialist and once-Socialist countries of eastern Europe and Asia.
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| secret societies | Sodalities, usually all-male or all-female, with secret initiation ceremonies.
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| segmental appeal | Production or marketing aimed at specific audiences, rather than at a mass audience. Also called "targeting."
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| semantics | A language's meaning system.
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| semiperiphery | Structural position in the world system intermediate between core and periphery.
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| serial monogamy | Marriage of a given individual to several spouses, but not at the same time.
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| settlement hierarchy | A ranked series of communities differing in size, function, and type of building.
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| sexual dimorphism | Marked differences in male and female biology besides the contrasts in breasts and genitals.
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| 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.
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| shaman | A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between ordinary people and supernatural beings and forces.
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| slash and burn | Form of horticulture in which the forest cover of a plot is cut down and burned before planting to allow the ashes to fertilize the soil.
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| slavery | The most extreme, coercive, abusive, and inhumane form of legalized inequality; people are treated as property.
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| social fund | Scarce resources invested to assist friends, relatives, in-laws, and neighbors.
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| 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.
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| society | Organized life in groups; typical of humans and other animals.
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| sociolinguistics | Study of relationships between social and linguistic variation; study of language in its social context.
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| sociopolitical typology | Classification scheme based on the scale and complexity of social organization and the effectiveness of political regulation; includes band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.
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| sodality | See pantribal sodality.
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| sororate | Custom by which a widower marries the sister of the deceased wife.
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| 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.
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| status | Any position that determines where someone fits in society; may be ascribed or achieved.
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| stereotypes | Fixed ideas often unfavorable about what members of a group are like.
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| stimulus diffusion | The process by which a group modifies a custom by adopting images and behavior associated with an external practice, without borrowing the practice itself.
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| stipulated descent | Basis of the clan; members merely say they descend from their apical ancestor; they don't trace the actual genealogical links between themselves and that ancestor.
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| strategic resources | Resources necessary for life, such as food and space.
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| stratification | Characteristic of a system with socioeconomic strata; see also stratum.
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| stratified | Class-structured; stratified societies have marked differences in wealth, in prestige, and in power between social classes.
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| stratum | One of two or more groups that contrast in regard to social status and access to strategic resources. Each stratum includes people of both sexes and all ages.
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| structuralism | Structural analysis; technique developed by Levi-Strauss not to explain sociocultural similarities and differences but to uncover themes, relations, and other cross-cultural connections.
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| style shifts | Variations in speech in different contexts.
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| subaltern | Lower in rank; subordinate; traditionally lacking an influential role in decision making.
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| subcultures | Different cultural symbol-based traditions associated with subgroups in the same complex society.
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| subgroups | Languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related.
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| subordinate | The lower, or underprivileged, group in a stratified system.
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| subsistence fund | Scarce resources invested to provide food in order to replace the calories expended in daily activity.
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| sumptuary goods | Items whose consumption is limited to the elite.
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| superordinate | The upper, or privileged, group in a stratified system.
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| supply and demand, law of | Economic rule that things cost more the scarcer they are and the more people want them.
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| survey research | Characteristic research procedure among social scientists other than anthropologists. Studies society through sampling, statistical analysis, and impersonal data collection.
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| symbiosis | An obligatory interaction between groups that is beneficial to each.
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| symbol | Something, verbal or nonverbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no necessary or natural connection.
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| syncretisms | Cultural blends or mixtures that emerge from acculturation, particularly under colonialism, such as African, Native American, and Roman Catholic saints and deities in Caribbean vodun, or "voodoo," cults.
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| syntax | The arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.
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| systemic perspective | View that changes have multiple consequences, some unforeseen.
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| taboo | Prohibition backed by supernatural sanctions.
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| terraforming | From science fiction, the use of technology to make other worlds as much like earth (terra) as possible; applied by analogy to results of political and economic domination on earth.
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| text | Something that is creatively "read," interpreted, and assigned meaning by each person who receives it; includes any media-borne image, such as Carnival.
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| Third World | The "less-developed countries" (LDCs).
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| totem | An animal or plant apical ancestor of a clan.
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| transecting groups | Networks created through direct communication channels between groups that previously had, or otherwise have, trouble communicating for example, physicians and patients.
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| transhumance | One of two variants of pastoralism; part of the population moves seasonally with the herds while the other part remains in home villages.
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| tribe | Form of sociopolitical organization usually based on horticulture or pastoralism. Socioeconomic stratification and centralized rule are absent in tribes, and there is no means of enforcing political decisions.
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| typology, economic | See economic typology.
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| typology, sociopolitical | See sociopolitical typology.
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| underdifferentiation | Planning fallacy of viewing less developed countries as an undifferentiated group; ignoring cultural diversity and adopting a uniform approach (often ethnocentric) for very different types of project beneficiaries.
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| unilineal descent | Matrilineal or patrilineal descent.
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| unilocal | Either patrilocal or matrilocal postmarital residence; requires that a married couple reside with the relatives of either the husband or the wife, depending on the society.
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| universal | Something that exists in every culture.
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| urban anthropology | The anthropological study of cities.
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| variables | Attributes (e.g., sex, age, height, weight) that differ from one person or case to the next.
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| vernacular | Ordinary, casual speech.
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| vertical mobility | Upward or downward change in a person's social status.
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| village head | Leadership position in a village (as among the Yanomami, where the head is always a man); has limited authority; leads by example and persuasion.
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| wealth | All a person's material assets, including income, land, and other types of property; the basis of economic status.
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| Westernization | The acculturative influence of Western expansion on other cultures.
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| working class (or proletariat) | Those who must sell their labor to survive; the antithesis of the bourgeoisie in Marx's class analysis.
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| world-system perspective | Recognition that we live in a single world system, based on a capitalist world economy, which emerged in the sixteenth century, committed to production for sale, with the object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.
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