A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
From A History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition and Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition (Paul A. Erickson and Liam D. Murphy).
A
abnormal behaviour
Behaviour of the sort that, according to Ruth Benedict, is defined differently in different cultures, there being no behaviour that is defined as abnormal in all cultures.
accountability
According to George E. Marcus, mainly accountability to the public, a major theoretical and ethical precept of American anthropology since the 1980s.
acculturation
The process of acquiring characteristics of another culture.
adaptation
In cultural ecology, the result of cultures adjusting to environments, or in Darwinian evolution, the result of natural selection.
adhesions
Edward Burnett Tylor’s name for cultural traits that are statistically significantly associated.
adolescence
The phase of human development transitioning from childhood into adulthood, studied by Margaret Mead.
agency
In recent anthropological theory, creative acts of intentioned individuals that generate social form and meaning.
AK-47
A personal armament that, according to Arjun Appadurai, figures in the global cultural economic flows among ethnoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, and technoscapes.
allopathic
The treatment of illness and disease using the knowledge and techniques of Western biomedicine.
altruism
In sociobiology, “self-sacrificing” behaviour explained by kin selection.
American Anthropologist
The flagship professional journal of the American Anthropological Association.
anal eroticism
According to Sigmund Freud, the infantile interest in excretory functions that in adults is rechannelled into useful civilized traits.
ancestor worship
The veneration of departed relatives; in classical cultural evolutionism, a religious phase.
ancient transmission
The doctrine that current psychological states are inherited from the ancient past of humanity, criticized by Franz Boas.
androcentrism
The deeply held cultural bias to view the male as intellectually, spiritually, and physically superior to the female.
anglocentrism
A privileging of the Anglo-American English language as a global medium of communication and patterns of cultural practice and consumption, tending to marginalize other languages and those who use them.
anima
An invisible and diffuse supernatural force that can take the form of souls and ghosts.
animism
The belief that both animate and inanimate objects have souls, a concept explored by Edward Burnett Tylor.
anomie
According to Émile Durkheim, the sense of personal alienation caused by the absence of familiar social norms.
anthropo-geography
The study of relationships among geographically contiguous cultures, as practised by Friedrich Ratzel.
anthropological feminism
The perspective that feminist views should remain relatively autonomous in anthropology.
anthropological political economy
The view that peoples exposed to the global expansion of capitalism experience and modify it in different and creative ways.
anthropologies and colonialism
A term calling attention to the fact that different national traditions of anthropology have had different interactions with colonialism.
anthropology of short-time consultancies
According to Aleksandar Bošković and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the circumstance of anthropology in peripheral nations brought about by the relative lack of academic and full-time professional jobs.
antipodes
Opposites, or peoples on opposite sides of the world.
anti-structure
According to Victor Turner, the side of culture expressed through ritual “chaos,” as during liminal states.
anything people do
Sherry B. Ortner’s broad definition of what practice, or praxis, theory encompasses.
a posteriori
After the fact, or based on experience, contrasted with a priori.
applied anthropology
Anthropology conducted by anthropologists working outside traditional academic settings such as universities.
apriorists
Philosophers who favour a priori logic over experience as the source of human mental categories, synonymous with rationalists.
armchair anthropologist
An anthropologist who has done little or no fieldwork.
Aryan nations
According to Lewis Henry Morgan, past and present speakers of Indo-European languages, customarily regarded as the high point of European civilization.
asking questions
According to Sally Slocum, the primary activity of anthropologists, calling attention to the cultural context of anthropological inquiry.
at home and abroad
Two different foci of anthropological interest, manifest differently in different national traditions of anthropology.
Augustinian Christianity
The theology of Saint Augustine, which became the state religion of Rome and prevailed during the first part of the Middle Ages.
australopiths
Primitive, ape-like human ancestors known from fossils found in Africa.
authoritative knowledge
The idea that one body of knowledge is privileged over other bodies in that it has greater access to ultimate reality or the “Truth.”
B
Balfour, Arthur James (1848–1930)
British Conservative prime minister with Orientalist views on British colonial relations with Africa.
band
The simplest form of human social organization, placed in evolutionary sequence before the tribe, chiefdom, and state.
barbarism
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Lewis Henry Morgan, the stage of culture from the invention of pottery to the invention of writing.
basic colour terms
A reported finding that basic colour distinctions are universal across languages.
basic personality structure
In psycho-dynamic anthropology, core personality, shaped by primary cultural institutions and projected onto secondary cultural institutions.
beauty
According to Sigmund Freud, the unnatural demand of civilization that people revere the impractical.
Bedouin poetry
As interpreted by Susan Gal, poetry that expresses resistance to symbolic domination by Bedouin men.
behavioural domain
In the theory of cultural materialism, what people do contrasted with what people think.
behavioural genetics
The branch of genetics that investigates inherited contributions to behavioural differences.
The Bell Curve
A 1994 book that purported to demonstrate the scientific basis for a genetic meritocracy in the United States, subject to much public controversy and criticism by anthropologists.
berdache
In certain Native American cultures, men who perform roles that elsewhere would be performed by women.
Bicêtre
A venerable Parisian hospital, orphanage, asylum, and prison studied by Michel Foucault.
binary oppositions
In French structural anthropology, the universal logic of dualities.
binomial nomenclature
The hierarchical system of classifying living things into named scientific groups, with one name for genus and a second name for species.
biocultural anthropology
Anthropology aimed at exploring interactions between human biology and culture, usually according to ecology.
biogenetic law
The principle that ontogeny, the growth of the individual, recapitulates phylogeny, the growth of the species.
bio-logic
A term used by anthropologist Oyèrónké Oyewùmí to describe the basic assumption of biological determinism that underlies Western scientific knowledge of sex and gender.
biologized
Regarded as caused by heredity more than environment.
biology of nepotism
A colloquial label for sociobiology focusing on the preferential treatment of kin.
biomedicine
The science-based form of ethnomedical knowledge and practice dominant in Western societies.
blurred genres
Clifford Geertz’s term for ethnographic writing that freely borrows literary ideas and methods from other disciplines.
Boasian paradigm
The intellectual framework for American anthropology promoted by Franz Boas, including a strong emphasis on nurture over nature.
body image
According to Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the representations an individual entertains about his or her body or other bodies in relation to the natural and cultural environment.
body language
A colloquial term for non-verbal communication.
body politic
According to Herbert Spencer, society organized like an organism; according to Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the political surveillance and regulation of bodies in matters such as reproduction, sexuality, and illness.
body-reasoning
A term used by anthropologist Oyèrónké Oyewùmí to describe Western science’s assumption that the human body is a universal foundation for objective knowledge of identity.
bourgeoisie
In Marxism, the middle class.
British empiricism
The scientific epistemology of induction fashioned by philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke.
British occupation of Egypt
Beginning in 1882, a British colonial venture launched to quell an Egyptian nationalist rebellion.
British social anthropology
The school of structuralism and functionalism led by Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski.
bureaucratic structures
According to Max Weber, governing social structures that are permanent institutions of daily routine, contrasted with charismatic governance.
C
Calvinist Protestantism
The Christian doctrines and practices traced to John Calvin that oppose Roman Catholicism on the basis of scripture and justification by faith.
Cambridge School
A group of early-twentieth-century British social anthropologists who pioneered the “genealogical method” of fieldwork.
capital
In Marxist theory, the accumulated wealth of the bourgeoisie, derived mainly from profit.
capitalism
The political economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production and unfettered exchange of commodities in the marketplace, yielding profit.
capitalist world-economy
The global network of capitalist relations investigated by theorists such as André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.
cargo cults
Melanesian religious revitalization movements that anticipate and celebrate the future return of material affluence.
Cartesian duality
The idea of philosopher René Descartes that mind and matter constitute distinct realms knowable by distinct means.
catastrophism
The geological doctrine that agents of geological change have been more dramatic in the past than in the present; contrasted with uniformitarianism.
catharsis
The socially safe release of feelings of social resentment, for Max Gluckman achieved through rituals of rebellion.
causation
See correlation and causation
centre and margins
Applied to national anthropologies, the dominating anthropologies of the United States, Britain, and France at the centre, with the anthropologies of most of the rest of the world at the margins.
cephalic index
The measured ratio of head breadth to head length, used in nineteenth-century racial classifications.
charisma
According to Max Weber, social governance through powerful persuasive personality, contrasted with bureaucratic governance.
charismatic authority
According to Max Weber, authority exercised through charisma, that is through powerful, persuasive personality, contrasted with bureaucratic authority.
charismatic kingship
According to Max Weber, kingship evolved from the charismatic heroism of warlords, contrasted with the divine right of kings.
charismatic prophets
As identified by Max Weber, individuals who experience a revelation that mandates the establishment of a new social order based on new ethical ideals.
child psychology
The psychological study of children, according to Margaret Mead inadequate to account for childhood across cultures.
Chomsky, Noam (b. 1928)
Influential linguist who promotes the theory that grammaticality is innate in the human mind.
chromatic intervals
Intervals along a musical scale, such as the interval between the notes C and C-sharp.
civilization
According to Edward Burnett Tylor, a synonym for culture; according to Lewis Henry Morgan, the period of human history following savagery and barbarism; according to Sigmund Freud, a synonym for culture opposed to human nature and based significantly on sublimated libidinous desires.
civitas
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Lewis Henry Morgan, the kind of society based on territory and property, contrasted with societas.
clam siphons and goat horns
In Claude Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of Northwest Coast Native American myths, two structurally opposing means that lead to two structurally opposing ends.
classical cultural evolutionism
The theoretical orientation of nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists who used the comparative method.
classificatory
A type of kinship, contrasted with the descriptive type, that merges kinship categories.
cleanliness
According to Sigmund Freud, an ideal of civilization based on sublimation of natural human instincts to the contrary.
cognitive ability
The comprehensive mental capability whose variation is purported to be measured by quantitative tests such as IQ tests.
cognitive anthropology
The school concerned with folk taxonomies and semantic domains as practised in ethnolinguistics and by ethnoscientists in the New Ethnography.
collective consciousness
According to Émile Durkheim, the source of collective representations of social facts, sometimes called the group mind.
collective representations
According to Émile Durkheim, manifestations of the collective consciousness, or group mind.
colonial encounter
The historical encounter between European colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the world, who were then often marginalized or oppressed by colonialism.
colonial rule
A British doctrine linked to, promoted by, and following from the concept of Orientalism, according to Edward W. Said.
Comedy
See Romance
commodity
In Marxist theory, something bought and sold in capitalist exchange, including human labour.
communist revolution
In Marxist theory, the replacement of bourgeois by proletarian ownership of the means of production, ushering in socialism and ultimately communism.
communitas
A term employed by Victor Turner to refer to the ritual fusion of individuals into a collective identity.
comparative method
The use of extant primitive peoples to represent extinct primitive peoples, as in classical cultural evolutionism.
complicated civilizations
According to Margaret Mead, Western and some Eastern cultures that are too complicated for anthropologists to be able to understand in a relatively brief period of time.
componential analysis
A research technique of cognitive anthropologists used to generate folk taxonomies of semantic domains.
condensation
According to Victor Turner, the property of ritual symbols whereby they represent many objects and actions in a single formulation.
configurationalism
The search for cultural patterns, often in the idiom of psychology.
consanguine
A family type based on group marriage between brothers and sisters.
contextual
Pertaining to post-processual archaeologists critical of the nomothetic New Archaeology.
contract societies
In the schema of Henry Maine, societies that stress individualism, hold property in private, and maintain control by legal sanctions; contrasted with status societies.
controlled experiment
The type of scientific laboratory experiment in which experimental conditions can be manipulated and controlled, according to Margaret Mead unable to be replicated in anthropological fieldwork.
convergent evolution
A form of cultural evolution in which two or more different evolutionary pathways lead to the same outcome.
Cook, Captain (1728–79)
Captain James Cook, a famous English explorer killed in an encounter with native Hawaiians.
core
In world-system theory, Western nations and regions that expropriate and control resources of non-Western nations and regions; contrasted with periphery.
correlation and causation
Two kinds of relationship between scientific variables, commonly conflated but in fact distinct.
cosmological order
A phrase describing the nature of otherworldly deities or powers and their relationships to human beings.
cosmology
The branch of philosophy concerned with the origin and structure of the universe.
counterinsurgency (COIN)
An American military counterinsurgency program designed to protect local populations and gain their support, analyzed by David B. Edwards.
creationism
The view that biological species are divinely created and do not evolve.
creolization
An anthropological term borrowed from linguistics suggesting the fusion of divergent cultural concepts and practices, particularly in the context of postcolonial and globalization studies.
crisis of representation
George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer’s term for the self-reflection and self-doubt brought about by the postmodern realization that no single ethnographic representation can be authoritative.
criterion of form
The criterion used by anthropo-geographers to determine that similar cultural forms are the result of diffusion.
critical anthropologists
Anthropologists who self-reflect and share criticisms of positivism.
critical-interpretive medical anthropology
According to Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the investigation of how knowledge relating to the human body, health, and illness is culturally constructed and negotiated.
cross-cousins
Cousins related through parents of the opposite sex.
cross-cultural analysis
Analysis of cultural similarities and differences.
cultural construction of language
As referred to by Susan Gal, the idea that language categories, including categories of masculine and feminine, are culturally constructed as a means of creating identities.
cultural eclectics
Anthropological theorists who on different occasions attach causal priority to the domain of thought rather than behaviour or behaviour rather than thought.
cultural ecology
The examination of interactions between cultural and environmental variables.
cultural idealists
Anthropological theorists who attach causal priority to the domain of thought rather than behaviour.
cultural materialism
The theory of Marvin Harris that distinguishes emic from etic perspectives and mental from behavioural domains, and that advocates infrastructural determinism.
cultural neo-evolutionism
Twentieth-century cultural evolutionism, a revival and reformulation of classical cultural evolutionism.
cultural poesis
A cultural or artistic creation or fiction, thought by some postmodern theorists to characterize ethnographic writing.
cultural relativism
The proposition that cultural differences should not be judged by absolute standards.
cultural resource management (CRM)
Activities that share the practical goal of protecting and preserving objects and places deemed to be of cultural significance.
cultural strength
As referred to by Edward W. Said, the broad context from which the concept of Orientalism draws its power.
culture
Defined many ways; with reference to the Enlightenment, the accumulated way of living created by people and transmitted from one generation to the next extrasomatically rather than through genes.
culture area
A geographical area associated with a culture.
culture-at-a-distance
The study of cultures without the benefit of fieldwork, practised by American psychological anthropologists in the era of World War II.
culture circle
In German, kulturkreis, a concept used to represent the process of cultural diffusion.
culture from killing
Sally Slocum’s label for the Man the Hunter concept that represents present-day human behaviour as the evolutionary legacy of ancestral males killing animals.
culture-historical archaeology
Archaeology as practised in the era of Franz Boas’s historical particularism.
culture history
The theoretical approach of Franz Boas and his followers, sometimes called historical particularism.
culture like a language
As used by Edmund Leach, a phrase that refers to the structural similarities between culture and language.
culturology
Leslie White’s name for the nomothetic study of culture.
D
Darwinism
A general label for ideas associated with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
decolonization
An historical process that according to Aleksandar Bošković and Thomas Hylland Eriksen has led to increased awareness of non-central national traditions of anthropology.
deconstructionism
A term describing the ambition of postmodernism to understand the political and cultural contexts “hidden” behind the writing, or “construction,” of narratives.
deduction
In scientific epistemology, the use of logic to reason from general to particular statements; contrasted with induction.
deistic
Pertaining to deism, the view that God created the universe but remains relatively uninvolved in its day-to-day operations; contrasted with theistic.
depth psychology
A psychology, such as Freudian psychology, that presupposes unconscious hidden meanings for actions at variance with their surface meanings.
descent group
Individuals who perceive themselves to be descended in a lineage from a real or hypothetical common ancestor.
descriptive
A type of kinship system, contrasted with the classificatory type, that splits kinship categories.
deterritorialization
In an era of globalization, the disjuncture between geography and culture brought about by international diasporas and movements of people.
development and underdevelopment theory
André Gunder Frank’s theory about the systematic exploitation of underdeveloped nation-states and regions by developed nation-states and regions.
diachronic
Historically oriented, or concerned with the past; contrasted with synchronic.
diachronic law
A law pertaining to events through time, or an historical law.
dialectical materialism
The philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commonly called Marxism.
diary disease
Pierre Bourdieu’s tongue-in-cheek label for the radical deconstruction of some postmodern theorists, particularly those preoccupied with second-guessing their own analyses.
dictatorship of the proletariat
In the theory of dialectical materialism, the temporary phase of political organization leading to permanent communism.
didn’t and couldn’t
A pair of words that capture the essence of Jonathan Marks’s observation that just because a culture did not invent something does not imply that it could not have invented it.
difference and domination
According to Susan Gal, two feminist approaches to characterizing the relationships between women and men.
diffusionism
The doctrine that cultural innovations evolve once and are then acquired through borrowing or immigration; contrasted with independent invention.
Dionysian
Pertaining to the Greek god Dionysus, known for his extravagant expression of emotion, a term used by Ruth Benedict to characterize certain whole cultures; contrasted with Apollonian, pertaining to the Greek god Apollo, known for his emotional restraint, a term used by Benedict to characterize certain other whole cultures.
discourses of power
Michel Foucault’s phrase for the spectrum of institutions, rhetorics, and strategies employed by one group to dominate another group.
divine right of kings
According to Max Weber, authority of kings derived from bureaucratic-like theology, contrasted with charismatic kingship.
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid, the biochemical substance of heredity.
Dobu
See Pueblo
doing anthropology in the present
According to George E. Marcus, the priority for American anthropology required for the effective pursuit of public anthropology.
domestication of plants and animals
Or the Neolithic Revolution, according to Leslie White the second of three energy-capturing revolutions in human history.
domestic cattle of India
Sacred Hindu cattle whose existence and sex ratio Marvin Harris explains in terms of cultural materialism.
dominant symbol
Victor Turner’s term for a symbol with multiple, and sometimes contradictory, meanings.
doxa
Pierre Bourdieu’s term for a psychological state in which all members of a community consider relations natural, including relations of social, economic, and political inequality.
E
East is East and West is West
A phrase that according to Eric R.Wolf evokes an historically inaccurate vision of Eastern and Western cultures as separate and distinct.
education
As defined by Margaret Mead, the totality of cultural experiences that influence how children become adults.
ego
Translated “I,” according to Sigmund Freud, the part of the psyche that interacts with the outside world.
ego-gratification
According to Ruth Benedict, the norm of behavior in American culture, disapproved of as abnormal in other cultures.
Electra complex
According to Sigmund Freud, a troublesome psychological state of girls induced by their sexual desire for their fathers; contrasted with the Oedipus complex.
elementary forms
For Émile Durkheim, the equivalent of collective representations, similar to elementary structures.
elementary structures
In French structural anthropology, universal mental logics and their cultural manifestations.
embedded social scientists
As reported by David B. Edwards, social scientists, notably ethnographers, working with American military personnel as part of the Human Terrain Systems (HTS) program.
emic
In the theory of cultural materialism, the epistemological perspective of the investigated, or “the insider point of view”; contrasted with etic.
emotion the mediatrix
According to Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, feelings and cognitions that affect relations among the individual body, social body, and body politic.
empirical science
The foundation of Marvin Harris’s theory of cultural materialism.
empiricism
The position that human mental categories derive from experience, not a priori mental logic.
emplotment
The construction of literary plots, characteristic of some postmodern writing.
empowerment
See welfare and empowerment
enculturation
The process of an individual acquiring culture, usually while growing up.
energy
According to Leslie White, the universal basis of organic existence and the prime mover of the thermodynamic law of cultural development.
English plural
The pattern by which plurality is expressed in the English language, used by Edward Sapir to exemplify how language patterns are unconscious.
entropy
Disorder in the universe, increasing according to the second law of thermodynamics.
environment
In the theoretical framework of Leslie White, the natural setting for culture, relatively unimportant in cultural evolution.
epiphenomenon
A phenomenon resulting from another phenomenon.
epistemology
The branch of philosophy that explores the nature of knowledge.
ethical
Pertaining to prescriptions for correct behaviour that put the individual in accordance with a metaphysical order.
ethnical periods
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Lewis Henry Morgan, past stages of cultural evolution.
ethnocentric
Pertaining to ethnocentrism, or cultural bias.
ethnographic method
A method of conducting fieldwork, for Bronislaw Malinowski “participant observation.”
ethnographic present
An anthropologically constructed time for Native peoples before their contact with Europeans.
ethnographic writing
The ethnographic activity most subject to postmodern scrutiny, owing to the postmodern dictum that ethnographic writing is literary text.
ethnography
The anthropological study of other cultures, usually involving fieldwork.
ethnohistory
The ethnographic study of non-literate people with reference to historical records, according to Eric R.Wolf promoting the proper view that non-literate and literate peoples share a common history.
ethnolinguistics
The name for linguistically oriented research methods of cognitive anthropology.
ethnomedical
Pertaining to ethnomedicine, the anthropological study of non-Western medical systems.
ethnoscape/financescape/ideoscape/mediascape/technoscape
According to Arjun Appadurai, five disjoined dimensions of commodity flow in the global cultural economy.
ethnoscience
A term for the collection of methods used in cognitive anthropology.
ethology
The study of animal behaviour in the understanding that it sheds light on the innateness of certain human behaviours.
ethos
A term meaning spiritual character, used by some anthropologists to characterize a whole culture.
etic
According to cultural materialism, the epistemological perspective of the investigator, or “the outsider point of view”; contrasted with emic.
eugenicist
Pertaining to eugenics, the now-discredited science that endeavoured to “improve” humanity through selective breeding.
Eurocentric
The rating of non-European cultures according to a generalized European scale of norms and values.
evolution
Whether in the realm of culture or biology, the transformation of one form into another.
evolution of culture
The theoretical concern with constructing past stages of cultural development based on analogies with extant cultures thought to be primitive.
evolutionary psychology
An outgrowth of sociobiology that uses Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to explain aspects of human mentality and behaviour as adaptations from the past.
evolutionist fancies
Alfred Louis Kroeber’s term for the mistaken conflation of organic and social evolution, leading to views that are overly hereditarian.
exogamy
The practice of marrying or mating outside one’s kinship group; contrasted with endogamy.
experience
The philosophical exercise of accumulated empirical observation, transcending reason, as the guide for human thought and action.
experimental moment
A term used by George E. Marcus to characterize American anthropological theory in the 1980s and, more broadly, a post-modern idea that anthropological theory is in constant flux and poised to turn in unpredictable new directions.
F
false consciousness
In the theories of Marxism and cultural materialism, the capability of people to misrepresent the meaning of their behaviour to themselves and others.
fantasy phone lines
The adult message industry in which, according to Susan Gal, women often work from positions of power rather than powerlessness.
father figures
In the psychology of Sigmund Freud, totems that represent culturally ambivalent attitudes toward adult men.
female infanticide
The practice of treating male children more favourably than female children, resulting in more female deaths.
feminist anthropology
The view that feminist perspectives should be integrated into anthropology.
feudal society
In Marxist theory, the agrarian phase of history preceding the industrial phase, characterized by classes of lords and serfs.
fictions
According to Clifford Geertz, things made, not discovered, notably anthropological writing and interpretations.
fields
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the dynamic configuration, or network, of objective relationships among social agents and positions.
first-fruits
The first fruits to be harvested in a season, focus of Swazi ceremonies analyzed by Max Gluckman as rituals of rebellion.
fixed action pattern
As conceived by human ethologists, an innate sequence of behaviour released by a key stimulus of an innate releasing mechanism.
“floor”
A form of college faculty meeting analyzed by Susan Gal to illustrate patterns of symbolic domination and resistance among women and men.
folk taxonomies
According to cognitive anthropologists, culturally conditioned maps of semantic domains.
force protection
The American military imperative of protecting American military personnel, according to David B. Edwards an impediment to establishing a relationship of respect for Afghan culture.
formalists
Economic anthropologists who maintained that Western economic concepts apply to non-Western economies; contrasted with substantivists.
four-field approach
The traditional approach of American anthropology that divides the study of anthropology into the four fields of archaeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology.
Frazer, James (1854–1941)
British classical cultural evolutionist who studied the African first-fruits ceremonies restudied by Max Gluckman.
free terror of madness and stifling anguish of responsibility
Michel Foucault’s terms for the existential dimensions of mental illness before and, in turn, after the therapeutic approach of physician Samuel Tuke.
free will
The idea that people think and act of their own volition, unmotivated by culture.
French rationalism
The intellectual tradition associated with René Descartes and the scientific epistemology of deduction.
French structural anthropology
The theoretical orientation of Claude Lévi-Strauss and his followers, invoking elementary mental structures, reciprocity, and binary oppositions.
Freudian anthropology
The school of psychological anthropology incorporating certain elements of the psychology of Sigmund Freud, also called psychodynamic anthropology.
functionalism
In British social anthropology, either Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s theory of how parts of a society contribute to the whole of society or Bronislaw Malinowski’s theory of how culture responds to biological needs in a hierarchically organized way.
G
geisteswissenschaften
Translated “human sciences,” including anthropology; contrasted with naturwissenschaften.
gender
The various social roles and identities attributed to individuals and groups on the basis of their biological sex.
genealogical method
The method of focusing ethnographic fieldwork on kinship, pioneered by British social anthropologists, notably William H.R. Rivers.
general evolution
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service, the study of long-range evolutionary progress and trends.
generalized exchange
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the exchange of women among more than two kinship groups, promoting greater social solidarity than restricted exchange.
general systems theory
A cybernetic model for culture used in the New Archaeology.
general theory of cultural interpretation
According to Clifford Geertz, something challenging to formulate, because theory can be neither very abstract nor very predictive.
gestalt
A psychological configuration, attributed by some psychological anthropologists to an entire culture.
gesture
According to Edward Sapir, a patterned body motion performed and understood unconsciously.
ghost of Marx
According to Eric R.Wolf, the historical context in which the social sciences developed with the political-economic theories of Karl Marx in the background.
G.I. Bill
Technically, the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, the General Infantry Bill implemented in the United States in 1944 in order to provide various benefits to veterans of World War II, including subsidized tuition and living expenses for veterans wishing to attend college or vocational school.
global cultural economy
Arjun Appadurai’s term for the disjoined global flow of commodified culture, generating new cultural combinations and forms.
global disjuncture
Arjun Appadurai’s term for the global movement of commodified culture in multiple dimensions separately, generating new cultural combinations and forms.
global village
Marshall McLuhan’s term for an increasingly interconnected global society.
globalization
The expansion of Western institutions and lifeways into non-Western cultures and the emergence of new forms of cultural practice that are global in scope.
glocalization
A term popularized by Roland Robertson to describe the coexistence of globalizing and particularizing tendencies in a society.
God
According to Charles Darwin, a supernatural, beneficent creator widely believed by people, but not animals, to exist; according to Sigmund Freud, a supernatural entity on whom people project their unattainable and forbidden wishes as cultural ideals.
grand theory
According to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, the type of anthropological macro-theory that in postmodern times is being superseded by theories more micro-focused on context and indeterminacy.
Great Chain of Being
A medieval philosophical schema that ranked all cosmic and earthly elements, including people, in a single ascending line of importance.
great man theory of history
The theory that individuals affect the course of history more than do historical circumstances.
great tradition
Robert Redfield’s term for cultures characterized by literacy, industrialization, and rational religions; contrasted with little tradition.
group mind
According to Émile Durkheim, the source of collective representations of social facts, sometimes called collective consciousness.
group selection
A form of natural selection in which individuals behave altruistically, helping their group, and thereby helping themselves; contrasted with kin selection.
H
habitus
Pierre Bourdieu’s term for the capacity of individuals to innovate cultural forms based on their personal histories and positions within the community.
half-species evolution
Sally Slocum’s characterization of the Man the Hunter concept, which suggests that much of evolved human behaviour derives from only the male half of humanity.
happiness
A desirable state that according to Sigmund Freud is impossible to achieve because civilization thwarts the expression of libidinous desires.
hegemony
A term for the capacity of one social group to impose particular beliefs or political and economic conditions upon another group.
heliocentrism
Literally sun-centredness, the diffusionist view that world civilizations arose from sun worship in Egypt and then spread elsewhere.
hereditarian
Pertaining to the idea that differences among human beings can be accounted for primarily in terms of differential gene distribution.
hereditarianism
The idea that differences among human beings can be accounted for in terms of differential gene distribution to an extent greater than most twenty-first-century biological anthropologists would accept.
heritability
A genetics statistic defined as the percentage of variation in a trait, including a behavioural trait, caused by variation in genes rather than environments.
hermeneutics
The study of meaning, especially in literary texts, applied by interpretive and postmodern anthropologists to the study of culture.
Hinduism
An umbrella term for the many local and regional religions of India, most of which emphasize the concept of dharma (loosely defined as cosmic law or ultimate truth, toward which Hindus aspire with the goal of salvation), together with their associated myths, rituals, and ascetic practices.
historical laws
According to Robert Lowie, another term for social or cultural evolution.
historical linguistics
The study of language consisting of the reconstruction and descriptive tracking of language genealogies over time.
historical particularism
The theoretical orientation of Franz Boas and many of his students who focused on the particular histories of particular cultures.
holistic
Pertaining to an overarching or integrated outlook, often associated with the broad scope of anthropological inquiry.
horde
As described by Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, a politically autonomous social structure divided into families and under the authority of elder men.
hospitality
Or melmastia, an Afghan cultural institution that according to David B. Edwards is of great help in establishing a relationship of trust between an anthropologist and local people.
human biogram
A term used in human ethology to describe the alleged suite of inherited predispositions of Homo sapiens.
human degradation
The view that human history comprises a decline from an original higher state, derived from the biblical book of Genesis.
human subjects and human objects
A phrase describing the circumstance wherein people can be both scientific investigators and scientifically investigated, according to Marvin Harris necessitating the theoretical distinctions between emics and etics and mental and behavioural realms.
Human Terrain System (HTS)
Initiated in 2007, a United States army program in which servicepersons trained across a range of social-scientific fields study civilian populations in regions where the army is deployed, in order to advise military leaders on how best to engage and communicate with these populations, broadly supporting the goals of counterinsurgency and overlapping (but not being isomorphic with) US military operations.
humanism
A system of thought that prioritizes people contrasted with nature and with a divine or metaphysical order.
hypothetico-deductive model
A philosophical model for scientific explanation used in the New Archaeology.
hysteria
The clinical condition of calm hallucination that got Sigmund Freud interested in psychology.
I
id
Or libido, according to Sigmund Freud, the part of the human psyche that expresses natural desires.
idealist
Pertaining to idealism, the view that ideas more than material existence cause culture change.
ideational
A term describing the view of Max Weber and others that the holistic individual is central to the creation, maintenance, and change of culture.
ideology
A term used by Karl Marx and Marxist scholars denoting a system of beliefs that influences the outlooks of individuals and groups.
ideoscape
See ethnoscape
idiographic
Pertaining to a particularizing approach to description and explanation; contrasted with nomothetic.
imagined worlds
Benedict Anderson’s term for the post-medieval social construction of nation-states brought about by the invention and influence of print media.
Imperial Synthesis
A name for the nineteenth-century synthesis of archaeology, racism, and colonialism.
imponderabilia of actual life
According to Bronislaw Malinowski, routine aspects of a culture that an ethnographic fieldworker can only understand first-hand, at close range, and over time.
incest
Culturally proscribed inbreeding that, according to Sigmund Freud, is an act that led to the primal patricide.
inclusive fitness
In sociobiology, the measure, or result, of kin selection.
incwala
Swazi name for the first-fruits ceremonies analyzed by Max Gluckman as rituals of rebellion.
independent development
Or independent or parallel evolution, the circumstance where two or more similar evolutionary pathways lead to similar outcomes.
independent invention
The doctrine, linked to psychic unity, that cultural innovation can occur independently in more than one place; contrasted with diffusionism.
indirect rule
The British colonial policy of co-opting Native leaders in order to avoid having to govern by force.
individual and social behaviour
According to Edward Sapir, the behaviour of individuals and the behaviour of individuals with reference to cultural patterns.
individual body
In the critical-interpretive medical anthropology of Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the lived experience of the body-self.
induction
In scientific epistemology, the process of arriving at generalizations about particular facts; contrasted with deduction.
industrial society
In Marxist terms, the kind of society characterized by the economic system of capitalism.
informant
In anthropological fieldwork, someone who provides information.
infrastructural determinism
In Marvin Harris’s theory of cultural materialism, the name for the belief that culture change usually begins in the etic infrastructure.
inheritance of acquired characteristics
The mechanism of biological evolution proposed by Jean Lamarck whereby traits acquired in one generation can be transmitted to subsequent generations.
innate releasing mechanism
As conceived by human ethologists, the mechanism that, when triggered by a key stimulus, releases a fixed action pattern.
inner-worldly asceticism
According to Max Weber, the ethical demand of Calvinist Protestantism that Christians not retreat from the world in order to live piously.
inorganic aggregate/organic aggregate
Herbert Spencer’s distinction between nonliving and living entities.
institution
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, a social structure that maintains the form of society, while the matter, or individuals, change.
instrumental symbols
Victor Turner’s term for those symbols that can be consciously wielded in ritual as a form of technology in order to achieve particular ends.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
An Indian program for indigent women and children characterized by Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma as run by a paternalistic welfare state.
intellect
According to Charles Darwin, the evolved mental powers of people, attributed significantly to language.
interpretive anthropology
The anthropological school, associated with Clifford Geertz, espousing the view that culture is lived experience integrated into a coherent, public system of symbols that renders the world intelligible.
interpretive theory of culture
Clifford Geertz’s semiotic theory of culture based on the ethnographic practice of thick description.
intuition
According to Edward Sapir, the unconscious motivation of individuals to engage in social behaviour.
invented tradition
A phrase describing the modern invention of historical events and personages, often with the goal of legitimizing contemporary political or religious ideologies by linking them directly to antiquity.
invention of cultures
The insight, popular among postmodernists, that ethnographers do not so much record and report cultures, but, through ethnographic writing, construct them.
IQ
Abbreviation for Intelligence Quotient, a ratio of measured intellectual to chronological age, figuring prominently in public and anthropological debates about nature versus nurture.
ironic mode
A self-conscious literary mode signalling that an author does not necessarily believe his or her own statements, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, characteristic of some postmodern ethnographic writing.
ivory tower
A euphemistic and usually pejorative term for the academy, or universities.
J
jeeps
Transportation vehicles that according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma figure differently in the routines of two kinds of Indian social programs.
Jensenism
The label attached to the view of behavioural geneticist Arthur Jensen that IQ is highly heritable and differs among human races.
jeweler’s-eye view of the world
A microscopic view, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, needed as an antidote to the macroscopic view of grand theory.
John the Baptist and Jesus Christ
As analyzed by Edmund Leach, two famous historical figures related by structural similarities and differences.
K
Kadi-justice
Justice derived from rulings of Islamic judges.
key stimulus
As conceived by human ethologists, the device that triggers an innate releasing mechanism, thus releasing a fixed action pattern.
kinesics
The scientific study of human body motion.
kin selection
In sociobiology, reproductive success via genes shared with relatives; sometimes called the biology of nepotism.
kinship system
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and others, the social structure and organization of so-called primitive societies.
Kissinger, Henry (b. 1923)
American statesman and foreign policy expert, according to Edward W. Said with a world view similar to that of the Orientalist.
knowledge
According to Michel Foucault, information linked to social discourses of power.
knowledge and power
According to Edward W. Said, two properties of a relationship wherein knowledge is, or creates, power, notably in the context of colonial rule.
Kokomo
A city in Indiana where, according to Margaret Mead, fieldwork would be easier to conduct and communicate than in Samoa.
kula ring
A cultural and economic exchange network among inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands, studied by Bronislaw Malinowski.
kulturkreis
Translated “culture circle”; according to certain theorists, the pattern of diffusion of cultural traits.
L
labour theory of value
The proposition of Karl Marx that commodities should be valued in terms of the human labour required to produce them.
Lamarckism
The evolutionary philosophy of Jean Lamarck, notably his mechanism of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
landscape archaeology
Archaeology that considers artifacts and features to be expressions of culture, both incorporating and modifying elements of the natural world.
langue
In Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, reference to language as an abstract system that can be studied independently of actual speech, or parole.
law of cultural development
According to Leslie White, E x T > P, or energy times technology yields cultural product.
law of universal gravitation
Isaac Newton’s scientific explanation of universal planetary and earthly motion.
layer-cake model of culture
Leslie White’s model of culture, with technology and economy at the bottom, ideology at the top, and social and political organization in between.
legitimate language
According to Pierre Bourdieu, language deemed to be official and correct and thereby occupying a position of symbolic domination.
liberation of the insane
Michel Foucault’s term for the stated goal of physician Samuel Tuke, according to Foucault actually a justification for having mentally ill patients internalize guilt.
libidinal
According to Sigmund Freud, pertaining to the libido, the basis of natural human instincts.
liminal
An ephemeral psychosocial space in which social arrangements are subject to transformation, inversion, and affirmation.
lineages
Multi-generational kinship groups with membership determined by ties to common ancestors.
linguistic capital
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the body of meanings, representations, and objects held to be prestigious or valuable to a linguistic group.
linguistic distinction
According to Pierre Bourdieu, along with correctness, one of two properties that characterize the perceived excellence of legitimate language.
linguistic field
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the dynamic configuration, or network, of objective relations between linguistic agents.
linguistic market
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the arena, or field, in which linguistic groups exchange linguistic capital.
literature as a transient category
The postmodern concept that literature, including ethnographic writing, is not grounded in a single truth but instead expresses partial truths that change from time to time and place to place.
little tradition
According to Robert Redfield, cultures characterized by illiteracy, preindustrial economies, and “irrational” supernatural beliefs; contrasted with great tradition.
Louisiana Negro
Alfred Louis Kroeber’s fictive exemplar of the important difference between organic and superorganic evolution.
M
madness
According to Michel Foucault, a cognitive and emotive condition defined by people in power, the definitions changing over time.
Mahila Samakhya
An Indian program for indigent women and children characterized by Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma as embodying the neoliberal philosophy of empowerment.
maintenance systems
In the psychological anthropological model of John Whiting and Irvin Child, the equivalent of Abram Kardiner’s primary cultural institutions without Freudian components.
male bias
According to Sally Slocum, anthropology characterized by a preponderance of questions about male activities asked and answered by male anthropologists.
male-female pair bonding
A purportedly evolved attribute of human nature that according to Sally Slocum is contradicted by anthropological evidence.
Man the Hunter
An influential concept developed in the 1960s stating that key attributes of human behaviour are the evolutionary legacy of hunting by ancestral males.
Manchester school
A coterie of anthropologists trained under Max Gluckman at Manchester University in the 1950s and 1960s.
Marxism
A collection of views derived from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their theory of dialectical materialism.
Marxist label
A description of diverse anthropological theories that claim a legacy of Marxism, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer a grand theory out of favour in postmodern times.
material culture
Cultural meaning expressed in the products of human artifice, or artifacts.
materialism
In dialectical materialism, the belief that human existence determines human consciousness; in cultural materialism, the equivalent of the principle of infrastructural determinism.
matrilateral cross-cousin marriage
Marriage to a child of one’s mother’s brother; contrasted with patrilateral cross-cousin marriage.
matrilineal
Unilineal kinship systems reckoned through the female line.
McDonaldization
A tag phrase for the perceived homogenization and Americanization of the world’s cultures brought about by globalization.
means of production
In dialectical materialism, how people make a living in the material world.
mechanical philosophy
The philosophy inspired by the law of universal gravitation, portraying the universe as a complex machine with fine-tuned, interacting parts.
mechanical solidarity
According to Émile Durkheim, social cohesion maintained by similarities among individuals; contrasted with organic solidarity.
mechanics
The medieval science of motion.
medical anthropology
The cross-cultural, pan-historical study of sickness and health.
medical personage
A member of the medical profession, who, according to Michel Foucault, is thereby an instrument of power and control over those in need of medical attention.
mental and behavioural fields
In Marvin Harris’s theory of cultural materialism, the realms of thought and action, either of the scientific observer or of the scientifically observed.
mental domain
In the theory of cultural materialism, what people think contrasted with what people do.
mentalism
As understood by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the view that structures of thought cause culture, a view that Lévi-Strauss himself denies.
microcosmic study of populations
According to Eric R.Wolf, the study of one culture with the intent of having that culture represent all cultures of the same sort.
microscopic ethnographic description
The small-scale, concrete focus that according to Clifford Geertz should be the basis of ethnographic interpretation.
Midwestern Taxonomic Method
The archaeological classification used in culture-historical archaeology.
military mindset and purpose
According to David B. Edwards, the American military preoccupation with fulfilling missions that is at loggerheads with the open-ended and opportunistic nature of traditional ethnographic fieldwork.
milk tree
For Victor Turner, a dominant ritual symbol of the Ndembu people of Zambia.
misplaced concreteness
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s term for treating abstractions, such as society, as if they were concrete realities.
missing links
Perceived gaps in the evolutionary record.
mission
A part of the American military mindset and preoccupation that according to David B. Edwards is at loggerheads with the open-ended and opportunistic nature of traditional ethnographic fieldwork.
modernity
According to postmodern theorists, the Enlightenment-inspired, invented tradition of dispassionate scientific inquiry.
modernization
The Western practice of transforming non-capitalist, preindustrial economies into capitalist, industrial economies.
modernization theory
According to Eric R.Wolf, sociological theory favouring societies considered to be modern and being critical of societies thought to be not-yet modern.
monogenesis
The doctrine that human races constitute a single biological species with a common origin and with differences produced over time; contrasted with polygenesis.
monotheism
The belief in a single deity; contrasted with polytheism.
moral content of religion
The dimension of religion that according to Michel Foucault makes religion an instrument of social domination and control.
moral qualities
According to Charles Darwin, the evolved qualities of people and animals that allow them to reflect on past actions and approve or disapprove of those actions.
Moroccan drama (1912)
An event, recounted in 1968, that Clifford Geertz uses to illustrate the need for a thick description of culture.
Mosaic cosmogony
The time scale of human history derived from biblical Old Testament genealogies.
mother-infant bond
The pair bond that Sally Slocum considers to be more basic to human nature than the male-female pair bond.
Moundbuilder Myth
The myth that a mysterious people other than Native Americans built impressive earthen mounds throughout the American Midwest.
moving ground
According to James Clifford, the constantly shifting vantage point that makes it difficult to maintain a single framework for evaluating ethnographic representations.
multiculturalism
Descriptively, a term that refers to the coexistence of a multiplicity of cultures, adopted by many nation-states, including Canada and India, as a formal aspect of public policy, seeking to promote and deepen it as a social and political attribute.
multilineal
According to Max Weber, culture change occurring in fits and starts in different historical contexts; according to Julian Steward, “branching” cultural evolution; contrasted with universal and unilineal cultural evolution.
multivocal
The quality of having more than one possible meaning or interpretation.
museological
Pertaining to museology, the academic discipline focusing on museum organization, management, and cultural representation.
myth and moral offence
A phrase representing Edmund Leach’s view that myths are about moral offence and can be analyzed accordingly.
mythological sets
A term used by Edmund Leach to describe his view that myths do not occur in iso¬lation but instead are structural transformations of one another.
N
naked apery
A disparaging term used to describe unfounded assertions about the inheritance of human behaviour.
Napoleonic adventure
Edward W. Said’s term for Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.
national character
According to certain psychological anthropologists, the dominant personality of a nation.
nation-state
A sovereign territorial entity, according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma a product of transnational cultural forces threatening that sovereignty.
native point of view
The view of culture sought by Bronislaw Malinowski through his ethnographic method of participant-observation.
natural children
The early theological conception of “primitive” peoples as capable of “improvement” and conversion to Christianity.
natural selection
Charles Darwin’s mechanism for biological evolution, involving struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.
natural slaves
The early theological conception of “primitive” peoples as innately imperfect and subservient to European Christians.
nature
In the context of the nature versus nurture debate, the source of human behaviour from heredity rather than environment.
nature and culture
Core binary opposites in the structuralist theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss.
naturwissenschaften
Translated “natural sciences”; contrasted with geisteswissenschaften.
Ndembu women
Key participants in the dominant milk-tree ritual analyzed by Victor Turner.
negative entropy
According to Leslie White, the opposite of entropy, or the creation of universal order in the organic realm.
neo-evolutionists
Twentieth-century anthropologists who revived and reformulated nineteenth-century classical cultural evolutionism.
neoliberal economics
A form of political-economic ideology in which governments promote competition among businesses within a capitalist market theoretically free of state oversight.
neolithic
Or New Stone Age, the period of prehistory characterized by polished stone tools and the domestication of animals and plants.
Neptunists
Geologists who proposed that the principal agent of major geological change was the subsidence of water; contrasted with Vulcanists.
neuroses
According to Sigmund Freud, disturbed psychological states resulting from maladjustment to the demands of civilization.
New Archaeology
The nomothetic archaeology advocated by Lewis Binford; also called processual archaeology.
New Ethnography
A name for cognitive anthropology focusing on the methodologies of ethnoscience and ethnolinguistics.
New Physical Anthropology
The name for physical anthropology committed to the synthetic theory of evolution.
New Stone Age
See Neolithic
nihilism
The perspective that traditional values and beliefs are fundamentally uncertain and that existence is at base nonsensical.
no crisis in anthropology
According to Aleksandar Bošković and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the attitude of anthropologists in peripheral nations, contrasted with the postmodern angst characteristic of anthropologists in the core nations of the United States, Britain, and France.
noble savagery
The romanticization of “primitive” life.
nominalism/realism
The philosophical doctrine that general concepts are not real but exist only as names (nominalism), contrasted with the philosophical doctrine that general concepts are real and not merely names (realism).
Nomkubulwana
A Zulu domestic ritual analyzed by Max Gluckman as a ritual of rebellion.
nomothetic
Generalizing; contrasted with idiographic.
normal science
According to Thomas Kuhn, science conducted within a scientific paradigm.
norms of conduct
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, the behavioural expectations of people in specified social relationships.
Northwest Coast
See Pueblo
Not Marx
Sherry B. Ortner’s term for various anthropological theories united primarily by their wish to be seen as non-Marxist.
nurture
In the context of the nature versus nurture debate, the source of human behaviour from environment rather than heredity.
O
obscurantism
Deliberate obfuscation or vagueness aimed at preventing facts or details about something from becoming known.
Oedipus complex
According to Sigmund Freud, the troublesome psychological state of boys induced by their sexual desire for their mothers; contrasted with the Electra complex.
Old Stone Age
See Paleolithic
onomatopoeia
The circumstance when a spoken word sounds like what it represents.
ontogeny
The biological growth of an individual.
order
According to Sigmund Freud, an ideal of civilization based on sublimation of natural human instincts to the contrary.
organic (or organismic) analogy
Likening society to an organism, a conceptual device of numerous anthropological theorists.
organic solidarity
According to Émile Durkheim, social cohesion maintained by differences and interdependence among individuals; contrasted with mechanical solidarity.
Oriental
Broadly, pertaining to the geographical and cultural East, or Orient, contrasted with the geographical and cultural West, or Occident.
Orientalism
Edward W. Said’s term for the culturally constructed characterization of British colonies, notably Egypt, as incapable of functioning properly without colonial oversight.
original sin
The Christian idea that early sin resulted in the expulsion of humanity from the Garden of Eden.
orthogenesis
The idea that biological evolution operates in one direction, usually leading to Homo sapiens.
oscillating equilibrium
Edmund Leach’s term for the continuing existence of social structure, even against the backdrop of constant social change.
Other
A postmodern-era label for the people anthropologists study, anthropologists being labelled Self.
other people’s anthropologies
Alexandar Bošković and Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s term for national traditions of anthropology other than those of the core nations of the United States, Britain, and France.
P
Paleolithic
Or Old Stone Age, the period of prehistory characterized by chipped and flaked stone tools and hunting and gathering.
paradigm
According to Thomas Kuhn, an intellectual framework for “normal” science, which is superseded by another paradigm in a scientific “revolution.”
parallelisms
In some schemas of cultural evolution, similarities that evolve independently in different locations.
parole
In Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, reference to language as actually used in speech, often deviating from the abstract structural system of language, or langue.
Parsonian sociology
The grand, synthetic, and abstract theory of sociologist Talcott Parsons, out of favour in postmodern times.
partial truths
James Clifford’s characterization of ethnographic truth, owing to his view that ethnographies are inherently incomplete.
participant-observation
The style of anthropological fieldwork requiring the fieldworker to see things from both the “native” and the fieldworker’s points of view.
patois
An unofficial, provincial, non-prestigious, or marginal language variant.
patriarchal structures
According to Max Weber, social structures that generate authority based on normal economic routine, similar to bureaucratic structures and contrasted with charismatic governance.
patriarchy
A social group governed exclusively by males or groups of males.
patrilateral cross-cousin marriage
Marriage to a child of one’s father’s sister; contrasted with matrilateral cross-cousin marriage.
patrilineal
Unilineal kinship systems reckoned through the male line.
pattern of wealth
As described by Edward Sapir, the unconscious organization of the distribution of economic resources that differ from culture to culture.
peacock theory of primitive man
Robert Lowie’s term for acknowledging that so-called primitive cultures value individuality more than is commonly supposed.
people without history
Eric R.Wolf’s phrase for non-literate people studied as if they had no history of political-economic involvement with Western colonial powers or global capitalism.
perfectibility
The idea that humankind is capable of progressing or evolving into some desired end point.
peripheral anthropology
One of several terms for national traditions of anthropology outside the core nations of the United States, Britain, and France.
periphery
In world-system theory, non-Western regions dominated economically and politically by Western regions; contrasted with core.
perpetual judgment
Michel Foucault’s term for the condition wherein, through internalized guilt and shame, insane people are always disapproved of both by themselves and by others.
personality variables
In the psychological anthropological model of John Whiting and Irvin Child, the equivalent of Abram Kardiner’s basic personality structure without Freudian components.
phenotype
The product of gene action, often affected by environment.
philosophical anarchist
Following Paul Feyerabend, someone who believes that all scientific paradigms are logically equivalent, with no logical way to choose among them.
phonemes
Minimally contrasting pairs of sounds that create linguistic meaning.
phonemics
The study of linguistic meaning created by sounds.
phonetics
The study of linguistic sounds that create meaning.
phylogeny
The evolutionary growth of a species.
physical anthropology
The branch of anthropology that investigates the organic, or biological, dimensions of humanity.
pietistic
Pertaining to piety, or religious reverence and devotion.
Pinel, Philippe (1745–1826) and La Salpêtrière
French physician Philippe Pinel and the hospital, La Salpêtrière, where he supervised mentally ill patients, studied by Michel Foucault.
Pioneer Fund
A philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing the “scientific study of heredity and human differences,” said by its detractors to be tinged with biological determinism and racism.
pleasure principle
According to Sigmund Freud, living libidinously, as directed by the id; contrasted with reality principle.
polarization of meaning
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they possess both ideological and sensory, or emotional, meanings, which can vary.
political economy
An anthropological perspective viewing sociocultural form at the local level as penetrated and influenced by global capitalism.
political unification
As referred to by Pierre Bourdieu, a vehicle for the creation of legitimate language.
politically correct body
According to Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a body that conforms to a dominant cultural norm, such as a lean and muscular body in a culture that values achievement and hard work.
pollution
According to Mary Douglas, aspects of the world unexplained by a society’s basic categories of understanding, thereby threatening the social order; contrasted with purity.
polyandry
Mating or marriage involving one woman and more than one man.
polygenesis
The doctrine that human races constitute separate species with separate origins and innate differences; contrasted with monogenesis.
polygenic
Variation in phenotype affected by the action of many genes.
Polynesian theory of divine kingship
A theory that according to Marshall Sahlins is part of the structural explanation of the killing of Captain James Cook by Native Hawaiians.
polysemous
Having more than one meaning or significance.
polytheism
The belief in multiple deities; contrasted with monotheism.
positivism
The view that science is objective and value-free.
Positivism
The scientific philosophy of Auguste Comte.
postcolonial states
States that have participated in the network of historical and cultural interconnections between colonizers and the colonized.
postcolonialism
The anthropological study of how the legacy of colonialism has altered both the former colonizing and the former colonized states.
postmodern
Pertaining to postmodernism, the intellectual stance that experience is subjective and no one version of it can be authoritative.
postmodernity and globalization
According to George E. Marcus, the two sequential foci of anthropological theory since the 1980s.
post-processual archaeology
Postmodern-era archaeology critical of the New Archaeology; also called contextual archaeology.
post-structural
An adjective that expresses disenchantment with static, mechanistic, and controlling models of culture, with a consequent interest in social process and agency.
potlatch
A Pacific Northwest Native ceremony characterized by conspicuous exchange and consumption of goods.
PowerPoint
The computer program widely used to format presentations, according to David B. Edwards the centrepiece of military briefs and incompatible with the presentation of anthropological insights.
practice (or praxis)
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the concept that society is constructed by purposeful, creative agents who bring society to life through talk and action.
practice-system interaction
According to Sherry B. Ortner, the critical nexus by which different practice, or praxis, theories can be evaluated.
Prague School
A school of linguists based in Prague that pioneered the analysis of phonemes.
preconceived ideas
According to Bronislaw Malinowski, undesirable bias, not to be confused with theoretical preparation, an important guide to ethnographic fieldwork.
prehistory
The period of human existence before writing.
prescriptive and performative structures
According to Marshall Sahlins, two different ways that structures are realized in culture, the prescriptive more by form and the performative more by action.
primal patricide
In Sigmund Freud’s hypothetical primeval family, the killing of the father by his sons.
primary cultural institutions
In psycho-dynamic anthropology, institutions that affect how children are raised and that shape basic personality structure.
primeval family
In Sigmund Freud’s reconstruction of human history, the first family form—monogamous, nuclear, and patriarchal.
primitive communism
In some versions of Marxism, the view that past primitive peoples lived in a state to which future communism will, in a fashion, return.
primitive religion
According to Émile Durkheim, a religion found in a simply organized society that can be explained without reference to other religions.
print capitalism
Benedict Anderson’s term for the power unleashed by the invention of print media, which led to mass literacy and a global trade in ethnic identities.
processual archaeology
A name post-processual archaeologists use for the nomothetic New Archaeology.
production fetishism and fetishism of the consumer
According to Arjun Appadurai, in a globalized world, the illusion that production is local (production fetishism), and the illusion that the consumer is an agent of consumer demand rather than a chooser of what culture has to offer (fetishism of the consumer).
profane
According to Émile Durkheim, that which is routine, mundane, impure, and “of the world”; contrasted with the sacred.
progress
The movement of humanity from a perceived inferior toward a perceived superior state.
projective systems
In the psychological anthropological model of John Whiting and Irvin Child, the equivalent of Abram Kardiner’s secondary cultural institutions without Freudian components.
proletarian revolution
In Marxist theory, when workers appropriate the bourgeois means of production for themselves, ushering in socialism and ultimately communism.
proletariat
In the lexicon of Marxism, the working class.
proxemics
The scientific study of posture as a form of non-verbal communication, sometimes called “body language.”
psyche
According to Sigmund Freud, the subconscious, comprising the id, ego, and superego.
psychiatry
The medical profession that treats abnormal behaviour, thought by Ruth Benedict to be ethnocentric in its definition of abnormal and by Michel Foucault to be an instrument of social control and conformity.
psychic unity
The doctrine that all peoples have the same fundamental capacity for change.
psychoanalysis
The analytic method of Sigmund Freud by which the social behaviour of adults is traced back to early childhood experience, according to Franz Boas of limited analytic value.
psychodynamic
Pertaining to the school of psychological anthropology that adopted certain elements of the psychology of Sigmund Freud; often called Freudian anthropology.
psychological anthropology
Anthropology concerned with the relationship between cultures and personalities.
psychopathic toll
According to Ruth Benedict, the toll on individuals suffering in cultures that consider their behaviour abnormal.
public anthropology
An anthropology primarily and directly engaged with public issues.
public controversies about anthropology
Instances where the ethical conduct of anthropologists has been scrutinized in ways that have engaged the public, four of which are identified by George E. Marcus.
public culture
According to Clifford Geertz, all culture, whose prime characteristic is that it is acted out in public.
publishing in English
An anthropological trend increasing with globalization, according to Aleksander Bošković and Thomas Hylland Eriksen an impediment to anthropologists in peripheral nations engaging with their own publics.
Pueblo/Northwest Coast/Dobu
Three cultures whose normative personality configurations were contrasted by Ruth Benedict in Patterns of Culture.
pundit
A person deemed to be authoritative who renders opinions publicly, frequently by way of the mass and electronic media.
purity
According to Mary Douglas, the ideal of a seamless social order symbolically excluding that which threatens a society’s basic categories of understanding; contrasted with pollution.
Q
quadruped
A four-legged animal, such as the primate thought by Charles Darwin to have been ancestral to people.
R
races
According to Charles Darwin, distinctive groups of humanity thought to have been evolved primarily by sexual selection.
racial memory
According to Sigmund Freud, the subconscious awareness of the history of the human psyche.
racism
A variously defined label for views that differences among human races are relatively fixed by nature and can be ranked from inferior to superior.
rationalists
Philosophers who favour a priori logic over experience as the source of human mental categories, synonymous with apriorists.
rationalized
According to Max Weber, evolved through the systematization of ideas, corresponding norms of behaviours, and motivational commitment to those norms.
reality principle
According to Sigmund Freud, the principle of realizing that acting on the pleasure principle is dangerous and immature.
reason
The exercise of human cognitive functions independent or semi-independent of experience.
rebellion and revolution
Max Gluckman’s distinction between cathartic protest against a political authority’s inappropriate behaviour (rebellion), and a protest against the position of authority itself (revolution).
reciprocal altruism
In sociobiology, the “Biological Golden Rule,” said to account for altruistic behaviour among non-relatives.
reciprocity
According to Marcel Mauss, the elementary principle of exchanging gifts; according to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the elementary principle of exchanging women.
reflexivity
A popular postmodern analytical strategy of reflecting on the biases and assumptions that inform one’s own theories and perspectives.
relations of production
In Marxist theory, the class-based social organization of how people make a living in the material world.
relatively non-privileged
A phrase coined by Max Weber to describe those socio-economic classes in complex societies most prone to the creation of new social forms.
religion
An integrated system of meanings and practices that seeks to connect humankind and nature with a divine or metaphysical order.
restricted exchange
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the exchange of women between two kinship groups.
revitalization movement
A term coined by Anthony F.C. Wallace to describe the spontaneous evolution of culture that occurs when communities experience conditions of extreme social and economic duress or marginalization.
rhetoric
The literary device of argument and persuasion, thought by some postmodern theorists to characterize ethnographic writing.
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute
A research institute in Zambia that conducted much ethnographic research in the final years of British colonialism, later called the Zambian National Research Institute.
ritual
Any form of prescribed behaviour that is periodically repeated and links the actions of the individual or group to a metaphysical order of existence.
ritual process
Arnold van Gennep’s term for the tripartite nature of ritual, involving separation from society, transition to a new social status, and a new incorporation into society.
ritual symbols
According to Victor Turner, the smallest units of rituals defined as formal behaviours for occasions not connected with technological routine that retain the essential properties of those rituals.
rituals of rebellion
A phrase coined by Max Gluckman to describe the socially constructive role of ritual in helping to avoid real conflict.
rituals of resistance
A concept associated with Pierre Bourdieu and referring to individuals’ symbolic resistance to symbolic domination, used by Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes to characterize some expressions of illness and distress.
Romance/Tragedy/Comedy
According to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, three strategies of literary emplotment designed to circumvent the ironic mode characteristic of some postmodern ethnographic writing.
ruling class
In the theory of dialectical materialism, the class that controls the means of production.
Rushton, J. Philippe (1943–2012)
Canadian researcher known for his hereditarian views on human races, criticized by Jonathan Marks.
Russian social anthropology
A term now used by some Russian anthropologists to distinguish current social and cultural research in the region from the outmoded Soviet ethnology, which imposed a framework of dialectical materialism on all research.
S
sacred
According to Émile Durkheim, that which is pure, powerful, and supernatural; contrasted with the profane.
salvage ethnography
Ethnography motivated by the need to obtain information about cultures threatened with extinction or assimilation.
salvation
According to Max Weber, escape from worldly capriciousness and evil through social arrangements rationalized in accordance with a divine plan, typically revealed by charismatic prophets.
Samoa
The Polynesian island where Margaret Mead conducted her first, famous, and later controversial fieldwork.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The proposition of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf that the structure of language conditions the nature of cultural meaning.
Saussurean synchrony
A term, used by Marshall Sahlins, referring to Ferdinand de Saussure’s focus on synchronic rather than diachronic linguistic regularities.
savagery/barbarism/and civilization
Lewis Henry Morgan’s tripartite schema for the universal evolution of humanity.
savages
A formerly common, unflattering label for Native people that, according to Bronislaw Malinowski, has been superseded by more respectful terms based on understanding achieved through ethnographic fieldwork.
science
A system of thought that prioritizes nature contrasted with humankind and with a divine or metaphysical order.
science of culture
According to Edward Burnett Tylor, the idea that culture evolves regularly and predictably in ways that condition human thoughts and actions.
science of man
Alfred Louis Kroeber’s definition of anthropology.
scientific dressing
Jonathan Marks’s term for ideas presented with a scientific gloss that either misrepresent science or do not hold up to closer scientific scrutiny.
scientific racism
Improper or incorrect science that actively or passively supports racism.
scientific revolution
According to Thomas Kuhn, the replacement of one scientific paradigm with another.
secondary cultural institutions
In psychodynamic anthropology, social institutions that are projections of basic personality structure and help people cope with the world.
second law of thermodynamics
The scientific proposition that the universe is running down, thereby increasing disorder, or entropy.
secularization theory
A body of research and theory within sociology and political science that assumes the demise of religion in a modernizing world.
self and other
The distinction between an anthropologist (self), and the people an anthropologist investigates (other), defined differently in different national traditions of anthropology.
semantic
Pertaining to semantics, the study of linguistic meaning.
semantic domain
A mental domain of cultural meaning that is the focus of inquiry in cognitive anthropology.
semiotic
Pertaining to the relationship between symbols and what they represent.
seriationally
According to the archaeological principle of seriation, or relative dating by the evolution of artifact style.
sexual selection
Charles Darwin’s evolutionary mechanism whereby members of one sex compete for the attention of members of the opposite sex.
shamanistic ecstasy
According to Max Weber, the extraordinary, trance-like behaviour of shamans that is a basis for their claim to charismatic authority.
shamans
Magico-religious specialists who communicate with ancestral ghosts and other spirits.
shreds and patches
Robert Lowie’s enigmatic characterization of culture to be found in the final paragraph of Primitive Culture.
sign
In Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, the pair formed in the relation of a signifier to a signified, the essence of relations among meaningful units in a language.
signified
In Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, one of two units making up the sign, the concept generated in our minds when represented by a sound or image, the signifier.
signifier
In Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, one of two units making up the sign, the word or image that represents a concept, the signified.
silence
According to Susan Gal, a condition that in relations between women and men can represent power or resistance to symbolic domination.
simple peoples
Margaret Mead’s term for so-called primitive cultures that an anthropologist can expect to be able to understand in a relatively brief period of time.
situational suppression of conflict
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they keep feelings of social dissatisfaction from coming to the surface and causing real social conflict.
social anthropology
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, the study of social structure and organization.
social body
In the critical-interpretive medical anthropology of Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the use of the body to symbolize nature, society, and culture.
social constructionism
The theory that sociocultural phenomena are products of historically situated interpersonal negotiation accomplished through patterned language and activity.
Social Darwinism
A loosely used term referring to social philosophies based on Darwinian evolutionism, especially the mechanism of natural selection.
social dynamics
In Positivism, the study of social change.
social evolution
According to Herbert Spencer, the evolution of society conceptualized as analogous to the evolution of organisms; according to Robert Lowie, the concept of the evolution of society, opposed to the concept of diffusion.
social facts
Émile Durkheim’s name for social phenomena, his units of sociological analysis.
social function
In British social anthropology, the contribution of a part of society to the whole of society; sometimes called social physiology.
social instincts
According to Charles Darwin, the evolved capability of people and animals to feel love and sympathy for their own kind.
social morphology
In British social anthropology, according to the organismic analogy, the study of social structure.
social organism
Herbert Spencer’s term for society conceptualized as analogous to an organism.
social organization
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, an arrangement of social activities related to one another through a larger social entity.
social physiology
In British social anthropology, according to the organismic analogy, the study of social function.
social process
According to late structural-functionalism, social change as the ongoing creation of a fluid, dynamic social structure.
social progress
According to Robert Lowie, the mistaken idea that social evolution can be seen to be progressive.
social statics
In Positivism, the study of social stability.
social structure
In British social anthropology, the social matrix of behaviour; sometimes called social morphology.
social unconsciousness
According to Edward Sapir, unconsciousness ascribed to groups of individuals, all with essentially the same mental functions.
social unity
According to Max Gluckman, what is achieved when rituals of rebellion relieve social threats brought on by the perception that social unity is absent.
societas
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Lewis Henry Morgan, the kind of society based on personal relations, contrasted with civitas.
society
According to Herbert Spencer, a real entity comprising a collection of individuals, analogous to a real organism comprising a collection of body parts; according to Alfred Louis Kroeber, an aggregation of individuals, including people, with culture.
society/individual dualism
According to Ruth Benedict, a false dualism, because culture provides the raw material from which people make up their lives.
sociobiology
An investigation of the biological basis of social behaviour using the evolutionary principles of kin selection and inclusive fitness.
sociocultural anthropology
According to Alfred Louis Kroeber, the branch of anthropology that investi¬gates the supeorganic dimension of humanity.
sociology
According to Eric R.Wolf, the study of social relations without reference to their political-economic context.
sociology of language and sociology of education
According to Pierre Bourdieu, two inseparable sociologies pertaining to legitimate language.
solipsism
The idea that the individual self is the only reality and that the external world exists only in one’s imagination.
Solomonic arbitration
According to Max Weber, the process by which charismatic authorities settle disputes based on their perceived wisdom, like that of King Solomon of ancient Israel.
Sophistry
An ancient Greek school of thought that attached greater importance to practical skills and social effectiveness than to the search for objective knowledge and absolute truth.
Southwest School
A group of German philosophers who differentiated human sciences, or geisteswissenschaften, and natural sciences, or naturwissenschaften.
species
A group of organisms whose members can reproduce only with one another.
specific evolution
In the cultural evolutionary schema of Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service, the study of how cultures differentiate by adapting to local environments.
specification of discourses
The concern in post-modern ethnographic writing to specify who is writing the ethnography, when, where, and under what historical and institutional constraints.
speech acts
According to Marvin Harris, acts that can be regarded either emically or etically, depending on the circumstances.
state
A variously defined geopolitical entity traditionally linked to the nation, according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, in the era of globalization, challenging the territorial sovereignty of the nation-state.
state in transnational context
In the postcolonial analytic framework of Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, the state viewed in the context of neoliberal, globalizing forces that threaten nation-state sovereignty.
statistics
According to Edward Burnett Tylor, the correlation of cultural events and attributes, demonstrating that the study of culture can be scientific.
status societies
In the schema of Henry Maine, societies that are family-oriented, hold property in common, and maintain control by social sanctions; contrasted with contract societies.
Stoicism
An ancient school of thought that believed that nature and society are intrinsically orderly, allowing particular societies to be compared and contrasted in accordance with universal principles.
Stone Age
The Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic, and the New Stone Age, or Neolithic.
stratigraphy
The archaeological dating of artifacts relative to their placement in systematically layered earth.
Strikes-three-men
A Mountain Crow band member whose complex social relations, according to Robert Lowie, illustrate why theories of social evolution are simplistic.
structural functionalism
In British social anthropology, the synchronic concern with social structure and social function.
structural linguistics
As understood by Edmund Leach, the school of linguistics that views speech as a manifestation of grammatical and phonological structures, not as a simple response to a linguistic stimulus.
structural Marxists
Proponents of a theoretical blend of Marxism, dialectical philosophy, and French structural anthropology.
structural matter and structural form
According to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, the individuals, or matter, and institutions, or form, that constitute society, the matter changing and the form remaining the same.
structuralism
In British social anthropology, the synchronic concern with social structure, sometimes called social morphology; in French structural anthropology, the concern with the elementary forms of minds and cultures.
structure
According to Edmund Leach, a patterning of internally organized relationships, subject to multiple forms of expression and transformation.
structure as historical object
A phrase describing Marshall Sahlins’s idea that cultural structures are rooted in and change through historical events.
structure of the conjuncture
Marshall Sahlins’s phrase describing the space of intersection between different cultural structures, where contingency produces historical change.
struggle for existence
Charles Darwin’s view that evolution by natural selection involves competition for limited resources and results in survival of the fittest.
subconscious
According to Sigmund Freud, the part of the mind that is the seat of the psyche, of which people are aware only unconsciously.
subject races
A condescending colonialist term for people thought to need colonial rule for their own good.
sublimate
According to Sigmund Freud, to rechannel libidinous desires into culturally acceptable thoughts and behaviours.
subsistence
The means by which a people feeds, clothes, and shelters itself.
substantivists
Economic anthropologists who maintained that Western economic concepts do not apply to non-Western economies; contrasted with formalists.
sui generis
In its own realm, or on its own terms.
superego
According to Sigmund Freud, the part of the psyche, sometimes called conscience, that monitors the id and mediates between the ego and the outside world.
superorganic
The idea that culture is distinct from and “above” biology.
survival of the fittest
In Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, the adaptive outcome of the struggle for existence.
survivals
Edward Burnett Tylor’s name for nonfunctional cultural traits that are inherited from past generations.
swamping effect
The observation in Charles Darwin’s time that small variations would always be diluted by heredity and therefore could not increase or intensify through natural selection.
symbolic anthropology
The anthropological school, associated with Victor Turner, espousing the view that social solidarity is a function of the systems of symbolic logic that connect people.
symbolic capital
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the body of meanings, representations, and objects held to be prestigious or valuable to a social group.
symbolic domination
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the tendency of dominant social groups to create and sustain a world view in which all members of a society, including subjugated members, participate.
symbolic interactionism
A sociological theory that focuses on the decision-making strategies of individuals in social situations; similar to transactionalism.
symbolism
According to Franz Boas, the overemphasis by Freudian psychologists on cultural entities as projections of unconscious psychological preoccupations.
symbols and signs
For Victor Turner, the best possible expressions of unknown facts (symbols), and analogous or abbreviated expressions of known facts (signs).
sympathetic magic
Magic that can affect an object through a similar object.
synchronic
Concerned with the present more than the past; contrasted with diachronic.
synchronic law
A law pertaining to contemporaneous events.
syntactical
Pertaining to syntax, the ways in which words form phrases and sentences.
syntagmatic chains and metaphor
According to Edmund Leach, sequential speech sounds that, when combined in other sequences, generate linguistic meaning through metaphor.
synthetic philosophy
The all-encompassing philosophy of Herbert Spencer based on the premise that homogeneity is evolving into heterogeneity everywhere.
Synthetic Theory of Evolution
The twentieth-century theoretical synthesis of Darwinian evolutionism and Mendelian genetics.
T
taboos
Culturally prescribed prohibitions.
tabula rasa
Translated “blank slate,” the idea that the mind acquires knowledge through experience rather than recognizes knowledge that is innate.
Taliban
A group of Islamist Pushtun tribesmen in Afghanistan, formerly in control of the country but ousted in 2001 by an invasion of American and coalition military forces, becoming an insurgent enemy of those forces.
taxonomies
According to Pierre Bourdieu, internalized symbolic representations that make the social world what it is for people who live in it.
technological features of culture
According to Robert Lowie, tools, the evolution of which can be seen to be progressive.
teleology
The idea that biological evolution adheres to a long-term purpose or goal.
text
In the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz, the equivalent of culture, interpreted through a process of thick description.
theistic
Pertaining to theism, the view that God created the universe and remains active in its day-to-day operations; contrasted with deistic.
theodicy
A Christian term used by Max Weber to describe the explanation of evil in the world despite the existence of an omnipotent, just, and loving God.
theory of motivation
According to Sherry B. Ortner, what is needed for a theory of agency, self-interest being the perceived dominant motivation.
thermodynamic law
E × T > P, or energy times technology yields cultural product, the nomothetic basis of Leslie White’s culturology.
thermodynamics
The study of conversion of energy in the universe, a fundamental part of culturology as expressed in the second law of thermodynamics.
thesis-antithesis-synthesis
In dialectical materialism, Friedrich Hegel’s form for dialectical change.
thick description
In the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz, the process of interpreting culture as text.
Thomistic Christianity
The theology of Thomas Aquinas, which unified scientific, humanistic, and religious ways of knowing.
Three Age system
The archaeological ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
tools
Or technology, according to Leslie White the means by which people capture and transform energy, producing culture.
totems
Objects of collective cultural veneration, according to several anthropological theorists, that are central to the maintenance of social stability.
Tragedy
See Romance
transactionalism
The anthropological theory of Fredrik Barth that focuses on the decision-making and economic-maximizing strategies of individuals; similar to symbolic interactionism.
transcendental essences
The concept of ancient Greek philosopher Plato that the pure ideas of objects are more real than the varied individual manifestations of those ideas.
transformational axis
In the structuralist theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the connection between binary opposites that serves as the basis for structural transformations of those opposites.
transformational phonology
The view that a small number of distinctive contrasting features of the sounds of language accounts for all languages, according to Edmund Leach the basis of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary oppositions.
transmigrate
To pass into another body after death, as do spirits and ghosts.
Trickster
In Claude Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of Northwest Coast Native American myths, a figure who is structurally transformed from one myth to another.
Trobriand Islands
The South Pacific islands where Bronislaw Malinowski conducted his pioneering ethnographic fieldwork.
tropes
Embellishing figures of speech sometimes encountered in ethnographic writing.
truthy
A satirical term coined by television personality Stephen Colbert to describe the implicit acceptance of a proposition where logic dictates otherwise or where there is a seeming lack of supporting evidence.
Tuke, Samuel (1784–1857) and the Retreat
Quaker physician Samuel Tuke and the institution, the Retreat, where he treated insane patients, studied by Michel Foucault.
turtles all the way down
The punch line of an Indian story recounted by Clifford Geertz to show that the process of thick description has no final end point.
twitching and winking
Two names for a behaviour that Clifford Geertz uses to illustrate the need for a thick description of culture.
typological thinking
Thinking of biological groups as homogeneous or pure when in fact they are heterogeneous and mixed.
U
Umma
An Arabic word for “community,” often used to designate the global diasporic Islamic “nation,” a community of the faithful.
unconscious pattern
According to Edward Sapir, behaviour in accordance with a generalized mode of conduct that people engage in intuitively and unknowingly.
underdevelopment
A condition that in the opinion of many political economists is actually caused rather than ameliorated by international development initiatives.
unification of disparate significata
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they interconnect disparate meanings by analogy or association.
uniformitarianism
The doctrine that gradual geological agents of change have operated throughout the past; contrasted with catastrophism.
unilineal
Pertaining to the view that cultural evolution proceeds along the same lines everywhere, as in classical cultural evolution; contrasted with multilineal and universal evolution.
unilineal kinship systems
Kinship systems reckoned through one parental line, either matrilineal or patrilineal.
unilinear evolution
The idea that cultural evolution proceeds through the same necessary stages everywhere.
universal
Pertaining to a single schema for global cultural evolution; contrasted with unilineal and multilineal evolution.
universal historians
Enlightenment thinkers who promulgated laws of human history.
universal pattern
In cultural materialism, the levels of culture-infrastructure, structure, and superstructure—with emic and etic and mental and behavioural dimensions.
V
variationist sociolinguistics
As referred to by Susan Gal, the study of linguistic variables correlated with the sex of the speaker.
vitalism
The idea that biological evolution is self-motivated or willed.
volksgeist
Translated “spirit of the people,” according to some early theorists the ethnographic essence of a people.
Vulcanists
Geologists who proposed that major geological changes were caused by the elevation of land brought about by volcanic heat; contrasted with Neptunists.
vulgar materialists
A label for cultural materialists who, according to their critics, ignore dialectical thinking.
W
war lord
According to Max Weber, a chieftain who achieves charismatic authority through heroic acts of hunting and warfare, predecessor of the charismatic king.
weapons of mass destruction
Or WMDs, the euphemistic term for weapon technologies with the potential to cause casualties on a massive scale, for example, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.
welfare and empowerment
In the postcolonial analytic framework of Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, two different approaches to government social programs, one traditional (welfare), and the other neoliberal (empowerment).
Western scientific medicine
Sometimes called biomedicine, the positivistic form of ethnomedical knowledge and practice dominant in Western societies, contrasted by Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes with critical-interpretive medical anthropology.
white cicerone
A white, or European, guide, someone Bronislaw Malinowski recommends that ethnographic fieldworkers avoid as much as possible.
windshield ethnography
David B. Edwards’s term for quick-and-dirty ethnography necessarily conducted by American military personnel in the field.
woman the gatherer
Sally Slocum’s counterproposal to the Man the Hunter concept, lacking male bias and based on scientific reasoning and research.
world anthropologies
A term referring to the existence or potential existence of different forms of anthropological theory and professional practice, rooted in different cultural and linguistic traditions around the world.
world-system
According to political economists, the global expansion of Western capitalism, creating a world-system of unequal commodity exchange.
world-system theory
Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory that core nation-states are engaged in the systematic exploitation of peripheral nation-states for labour and natural resources.
writing culture critique
The postmodern-era critique of ethnographic writing, specifically in the book Writing Culture.
X
xenophobic
Pertaining to xenophobia, the fear and dislike of foreigners.
Y
Yana
A northern California Native American language that uses single words to express thoughts that in English can be expressed only by multiple words, cited by Edward Sapir as an example of unconscious language patterning.
Y chromosome
The human chromosome that largely determines genetic maleness, inherited from father to son.
yin-yang structuralism
Marshall Sahlins’s term for the structuralist concept of paired binary oppositions.
Z
Zulu kings
The focus of certain African rituals of rebellion analyzed by Max Gluckman.
Zulu women
The agents of certain African rituals of rebellion analyzed by Max Gluckman.
Zuñi
A Pueblo Indian settlement in New Mexico, subject to differing ethnographic and psychological characterizations.
