Brief Descriptions
of Key Terms
Society:organized
life in groups
Culture:traditions,
customs, practices, rules that are learned as one grows up in society
Ethnologist:A
cultural anthropologist who studies cultures from a comparative or historical
point of view.
Ethnography:The
systematic description of a culture based on first-hand observation.
Participant-Observation:The
hallmark method of cultural anthropology characterized by long stays with
a community, participating in and carefully observing their lives.
Ethnocentrism:The
belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.
Relativist
Fallacy:The
belief that it is wrong to judge the practices of another culture--that
because it is usually possible to see how all practices make sense in their
cultural context, it is wrong to subject them to an outsiders’ moral code.
Four-Fields
of Anthropology:
1.Physical
anthropology:The systematic
study of humans as biological organisms.
2.Cultural
anthropology:The study of the
patterns of life of a society and of societies in comparative perspective.
3.Archaeology:The
study of material remains, usually from the past, to describe and explain
human behavior.
4.Linguistic
anthropology:The study of human
languages, particularly in relation to human societies and cultures.
Anthropology’s Fifth Sub-field:Applied anthropology is the use of anthropological methods (by anthropologists) to seek solutions to problems facing contemporary societies, and to evaluate programs that cause, or are instrumental in causing, social change.