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