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Imaginary Geographies - The ideas and representations that divide the world into spaces and areas with specific meanings and associations. These can exist on different scales e.g. the imaginaries that divide the world into a developed core and less developed peripheries or the imagined divide between the deprived inner city and the affluent suburbs. (Sibley)
Imperialism - A policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations or of taking and holding foreign colonies by forceful conquest.
Incest - Forbidden sexual relations with a close relative. The incest taboo is one of the most common of all taboos as almost all societies have some form of incest avoidance.
Independent Invention - Appearance of the same cultural trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs and circumstances.
Indigenized - Adapted or modified to fit the local culture.
Indigenous Peoples - Those peoples native to a particular territory that was later colonized, particularly by Europeans. Other terms for indigenous peoples include aborigines, native peoples, first peoples, Fourth World, first nations and autochthonous (this last term having a derivation from Greek, meaning "sprung from the earth"). The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates range from 300 million to 350 million as of the start of the 21st century or just under 6% of the total world population. This includes at least 5000 distinct peoples in over 72 countries.
Individualism - Individualism/Collectivism is one of the Hofstede dimensions in intercultural communication studies. He defines this dimension as: "individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family." (Hofstede, 1991, p.51)
Industrial Revolution - The process of historical transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of-"traditional" into "modern" societies through industrialization of the economy by applying new discoveries in science, production methods and distribution of labour.
International Culture - Cultural traditions that extend beyond the boundaries of nation states.
Intervention Philosophy - Guiding principle of colonialism, conquest, missionization, or development; an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific directions. It was the ideological justification for foreign powers to guide native peoples in specific directions, usually of benefit to the intruders.
Integration - The bringing of people of different racial or ethnic groups into unrestricted and equal association, as in society or an organization; desegregation. An individual integrates when s/he becomes a part of the existing society.
IPR - Intellectual Property Rights is a legal concept that includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights, whereby the holder of one these abstract "properties" has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention which is covered by it. Intellectual property rights, consisting of each society's cultural core beliefs and principles is also claimed as a group right, a cultural right, allowing indigenous groups to control who may know and use their collective knowledge and its applications.
Islamophobia - Fear and dread of Islam, which has been increasing particularly since September 11th 2001. The Runnymede Trust in 1997 identified 'closed' and 'open' views of Islam. Closed views see Islam as static and unchanging, as primitive, sexist, aggressive, and threatening. Closed views of Islam see hostility towards Muslims as 'normal' and are used to justify discrimination because no common values with other religions are admitted. Central to closed views, or 'Islamophobia', and propagated by the Western media, is the assumption that all Muslims support all actions taken in the name of Islam. Terrorists are called 'Islamic Fundamentalists' although Muslims see them as breaking Islamic law and they suffer from being associated with terrorists and murderers. Open views see Islam as a diverse and progressive faith with internal differences, debates and developments. Recognising shared values with other faiths and cultures Islam is perceived to be equally worthy of respect. Criticisms by the West are considered and differences and disagreements do not diminish efforts to combat discrimination while care is taken that critical views of Islam are not unfair and inaccurate.
ivory tower view
of applied anthropology; the belief that anthropologists should avoid practical matters and concentrate on research, publication, and teaching.
A
Acculturation - refers to the processes by which families, communities and societies react to inter-cultural contact while retaining characteristics of own culture. As a result a new, composite culture emerges, in which some existing cultural features are combined, some are lost, and new features appear. The earliest recorded western discussion of acculturation appears to be that of Plato in 348 BC. More than 100 different taxonomies of acculturation have been formulated since then. See also adaptation, assimilation, enculturation, syncretism and transculturation.
Acculturation Difficulty - A problem stemming from an inability to appropriately adapt to a different culture or environment. The problem is not based on any coexisting mental disorder.
Achieved Status - Social status and prestige of an individual acquired as a result of individual accomplishments (cf. ascribed status).
Adaptation - is a process of reconciliation and of coming to terms with a changed socio-cultural environment by making "adjustments" in one's cultural identity. It is also a stage of intercultural sensitivity, which may allow the person to function in a bicultural capacity. In this stage, a person is able to take the perspective of another culture and operate successfully within that culture. The person should know enough about his or her own culture and a second culture to allow a mental shift into the value scheme of the other culture, and an evaluation of behaviour based on its norms, rather than the norms of the individual's culture of origin. This is referred to as "cognitive adaptation." The more advanced form of adaptation is "behavioural adaptation," in which the person can produce behaviours appropriate to the norms of the second culture. Adaptation may also refer to patterns of behavior which enable a culture to cope with its surroundings.
Advocacy View - of applied anthropology is the belief that as anthropologists have acquired expertise on human problems and social change, and because they study, understand, and respect cultural values, they should be responsible for making policies affecting people.
Aesthetics - Appreciation of the qualities discernible in superior works of art; the mind and emotions in relation to a sense of beauty.
Affinals - Relatives by marriage, whether of lineals (e.g., son's wife) or collaterals (e.g., sister's husband).
Affinal Kin - Persons related by marriage. Direct affinity is the relationship between the husband and his wife's relations by blood or between the wife and the husband's relations by blood. Collateral affinity is the relationship between the husband and the relations of his wife's relations.
Age Discrimination - is discrimination against a person or group on the basis of age. Age discrimination usually comes in one of two forms: discrimination against youth, and discrimination against the elderly.
Age set - Group uniting all men or women born during a certain historical time span.
Ambilineal - Principle of descent that does not automatically exclude the children of either sons or daughters.
Animism - is the belief that souls inhabit all or most objects. Animism attributes personalized souls to animals, vegetables, and minerals in a manner that the material object is also governed by the qualities which compose its particular soul. Animistic religions generally do not accept a sharp distinction between spirit and matter.
Anthropocentricity - The belief that humans are the most important elements in the universe and reality can be approached exclusively in terms of human values and experience.
Anthropology - The study of the human species and its immediate ancestors.
Apartheid - was a system of racial segregation used in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. Though first used in 1917 by Jan Smuts, the future Prime Minister of South Africa, apartheid was simply an extension of the segregationist policies of previous white governments in South Africa. The term originates in Afrikaans or Dutch, where it means "separateness". Races, classified by law into White, Black, Indian, and Coloured groups, were separated, each with their own homelands and institutions. This prevented non-white people from having a vote or influence on the governance. Education, medical care and other public services available to non-white people were vastly inferior and non-whites were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in those areas designated as 'White South Africa'.
Applied Anthropology - The application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.
Aquatic Ape Theory - This hypothesis or theory suggests that the ancestors of humans went through periods of living in aquatic settings and this was responsible for the development of many of the characteristics of Homo genus that are not seen in other primates. This hypothesis has been criticized as well as supported in mainstream paleoanthropology.
Archaeological Anthropology (Prehistoric Archaeology) - The study of human behaviour and cultural patterns and processes through the material remains and artefacts of that culture.
Archetype - the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a prototype. Also (in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.
Archaeomagnetic Dating - A method of dating artefacts from the past. Sometimes also called paleomagnetic dating. It is based on the fact that changes in the earth's magnetic field over time can be recorded as remnant magnetism in materials such as baked clay structure (ovens, kilns, and hearths used much earlier).
Arranged Marriage - Any marriage in which the selection of a spouse is outside the control of the bride and groom. Usually parents or their representatives select brides or grooms by trying to match compatibility rather than relying on romantic attraction.
Ascribed Status - Social status which is the result of inheritance (cf. achieved status).
Assimilation - is a process of consistent integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural group, typically immigrants, or other minority groups, are "absorbed" into an established larger community. If a child assimilates into a new culture, he/she gives up his/her cultural values and beliefs and adopts the new cultural values in their place. Originates from a Piagetian (Swiss Developmental Psychologist JEAN PIAGET, 1896-1980) term describing a person's ability to comprehend and integrate new experiences.
B
Band - Basic unit of social organization among foragers. A band includes fewer than 100 people; it often splits up seasonally.
Behavioural Cue - A stimulus, either consciously or unconsciously perceived, that elicits or signals a type of behaviour. In other words it is a stimulus that provides information about what to do in a particular situation.
Belief System - is the way in which a culture collectively constructs a model or framework for how it thinks about something. A religion is a particular kind of belief system. Other examples of general forms of belief systems are ideologies, paradigms and world-views also known by the German word Weltanschauung. In addition to governing almost all aspects of human activity, belief systems have a significant impact on what a culture deems worthy of passing down to following generations as its cultural heritage. This also influences how cultures view the cultural heritage of other cultures. Many people today recognize that there is no one correct belief system or way of thinking. This is known as relativism or conceptual relativism. This contrasts with objectivism and essentialism, both of which posit a reality that is independent of the way in which people conceptualize. A plurality of belief systems is a hallmark of postmodernism.
Biculturalism - The simultaneous identification with two cultures when an individual feels equally at home in both cultures and feels emotional attachment with both cultures. The term started appearing in the 1950s.
Big Man - In anthropology the most influential man in a tribe of horticulturalists and pastoralists; a person with power in a community. The big man usually occupies no formal office and has no coercive authority but creates his reputation through skills, wisdom, entrepreneurship and generosity to others. His wealth or his position may not pass to his heirs.
Bilingual Education - teaching a second language by relying heavily on the native language of the speaker. The background theory claims that a strong sense of one's one culture and language is necessary to acquire another language and culture.
Bilateral Kinship Calculation - is a system in which kinship ties are calculated equally through both sexes: mother and father, sister and brother, daughter and son, and so on.
Biological Anthropology - is the study of human biological variation in time and space; includes evolution, genetics, growth and development, and primatology.
Biological Determinists - are those who argue that human behaviour and social organization are biologically determined and not learnt.
Bottom-up Development - Economic and social changes brought about by activities of individuals and social groups in society rather than by the state and its agents.
Bourgeoisie - describes a social class of people who are in the upper or merchant class, whose status or power comes from employment, education, and wealth rather than from aristocratic origin. They are the owners of the means of production (factories, mines, large farms, and other sources of subsistence).
Bride Price - is the payment made by a man to the family from whom he takes a daughter in marriage.
C
D
Daughter Languages - are languages developing out of the same parent language; for example, French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin or Bengali and Hindia are daughter languages of Sanskrit.
Demarginalization - The process which facilitates a marginal or stigmatized space becoming 'normalized' so that its population is incorporated into the mainstream.
Descent Group - is a permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry. Usually this is fundamental to tribal society.
Development Anthropology - is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues and the cultural dimension of economic development. Development here refers to the social action by institutions, private business, state, independent volunteers, who are aiming to modify the economic, technical, political or/and social life of a given place, mostly in developing nations.
Diaspora - The term was originally used by the ancient Greeks to mean citizens of a large city who migrated to a conquered land with the purpose of colonization to assimilate the territory into the empire. Later the word was used to refer specifically to the populations of Jews exiled from Judea in 586 BC and from Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. Now the term is used to refer to other population dispersals, voluntary and non-voluntary. The modern term evokes a sense of exile and homelessness.
Differential Access - refers to unequal access to resources, which is the basic attribute of different social structures from chiefdoms and states.
Diffuse - Diffuse/Specific is one of the value dimensions proposed by Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner (1997). It shows "how far we choose to get involved". In a very diffuse culture, a large part of the life is regarded as "private", where other persons without explicit consent have no access.
Diffusion - is the borrowing of cultural traits between societies, either directly or through intermediaries.
Diglossia - is the existence in a given society of two (often closely-related) languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more formalised. For example in Pakistan, there is a diglossia between the extremely Persianised Urdu (used by the literary elite and the Government officials) and an Urdu that is very similar to Hindi spoken by common people.
Discrimination - Treatment or consideration based on class or category defined by prejudicial attitudes and beliefs rather than individual merit. The denial of equal treatment, civil liberties and opportunities to education, accommodation, health care, employment and access. In many countries discrimination by law consists of making unjust distinctions based on:
- Religion, political affiliation, marital or family status
- Age, sexual orientation, gender, race, colour, nationality
- Physical, developmental or mental disability
State organized discriminations are universal only in mild forms e.g. non-citizens are excluded from health-care, unemployment support or study support. Extreme cases such as apartheid in South Africa, racial segregation in the USA and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany are not very common. Normative attempts by governments to reduce discrimination include equal opportunity laws, civil rights legislation and state policies of affirmative action.
Diversity - The concept of diversity means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing individual differences along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. Primary dimensions are those that cannot be changed e.g., age, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race and sexual orientation. Secondary dimensions of diversity are those that can be changed, e.g., educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, parental status, religious beliefs, and work role/experiences. Diversity or diversity management includes, therefore, knowing how to relate to those qualities and conditions that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong.
Dowry - A marital exchange in which the wife's family provides substantial gifts of money, goods or property to the husband's family. The opposite direction, property given to the bride by the groom, is called dower.
E
Egalitarianism - Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people. One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz measuring how other people are recognized as moral equals.
Embeddedness - One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz describing people as part of a collective.
Emic Perspective (Emic View) - A term used by ethnographers to refer to the insider's or native's view of his or her world (see also etic perspective).
Emotionalistic Disease Theories - Theories that assume that illness is caused by intense emotional experiences (e.g., the experience of Susto, which is a folk illness, specifically a "fright sickness" with strong psychological overtones among some Latin American populations). There are two other theories about the causes of illnesses - Personalistic disease theories blame illness on agents such as sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits. Naturalistic disease theories explain illness in impersonal terms (e.g., Western biomedicine).
Enculturation - is the process whereby an established culture teaches an individual its accepted norms and values, by establishing a context of boundaries and correctness that dictates what is and is not permissible within that society's framework. Enculturation is learned through communication by way of speech, words, action and gestures. The six components of culture learnt are: technological, economic, political, interactive, ideological and world-view. It is also called socialization. (Conrad Phillip Kottack, Cultural Anthropology)
Endogamy - is the practice of marrying within one's own social group. Cultures who practice endogamy require marriage between specified social groups, classes, or ethnicities. Strictly endogamous communities like the Jews, the Parsees of India and the Yazidi of Iraq claim that endogamy helps minorities to survive over a long time in societies with other practices and beliefs. The opposite practice is exogamy.
Equity, Increased - is a reduction in absolute poverty and a fairer or more even distribution of wealth in a particular society or nation state.
Ethnic Competence - The capacity to function effectively in more than one culture, requiring the ability to appreciate and understand features of other ethnic groups and further to interact with people of ethnic groups other than one's own.
Ethnic Group - Group characterised by cultural similarities (shared among members of that group) and differences (between that group and others). Members of an ethnic group share beliefs, values, habits, customs, norms, a common language, religion, history, geography, kinship, and/or race.
Ethnicity - Belonging to a common group with shared heritage, often linked by race, nationality and language.
Ethnocentrism - Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group. Seeing the world through the lenses of one's own people or culture so that own culture always looks best and becomes the pattern everyone else should fit into.
Ethnography - A research methodology associated with anthropology and sociology that systematically tries to describe the culture of a group of people by trying to understand the natives'/insiders' view of their own world (an emic view of the world).
Ethnology - Cross-cultural comparison or the comparative study of ethnographic data, of society and of culture
Ethnomusicology - is the comparative study of the musics of different places of the world and of music as a central aspect of culture and society.
Ethnosemantics - is the study of meaning attached to specific terms used by members of a group. Ethnosemantics concentrates on the meaning of categories of reality and folk taxonomies to the people who use them. (Source: Cultural Anthropology. A.R.N.Srivastava. Prentice-Hall)
Etic - is the research strategy used by ethnographers that emphasizes the observer's rather than the natives' explanations, categories, and criteria of significance (see emic perspective).
Exogamy - is the custom of marrying outside a specific group to which one belongs. Some experts hold that the custom of exogamy originated from a scarcity of women, which forced men to seek wives from other groups, e.g., marriage by capture. Another viewpoint ascribes the origin of exogamy to totemism, and claim that a religious respect for the blood of a totemic clan, led to exogamy. The opposite of exogamy is endogamy.
Expatriate - Someone who has left his or her home country to live and work in another country. When we go to another country to live, we become expatriates or expats for short.
Experimental Research - A research methodology used to establish cause-and-effect relationships between the independent and dependent variables by means of manipulation of variables, control and randomisation. A true experiment involves the random allocation of participants to experimental and control groups, manipulation of the independent variable, and the introduction of a control group for comparison purposes. Participants are assessed before and after the manipulation of the independent variable in order to assess its effect on the dependent variable (the outcome).
Extended Family - The relatives of an individual, both by blood and by marriage, other than its immediate family, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, who live in close proximity and often under one roof. Extended families are very common in collectivistic cultures. This is the opposite of the nuclear family.
F
Family of Orientation - Nuclear family in which one is born and grows up.
Family of Procreation - Nuclear family established when one marries and has children.
Fascism - A term used particularly to describe the nationalistic and totalitarian regimes of Benito Mussolini (Italy, 1922-45) and Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1933-45). Fascism is characterised by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over almost all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state also regulates and controls the means of production and takes all investment decisions. The word "fascism" comes from the fasces (rods bundled around an axe), which was the ancient Roman symbol of the authority of judges.
Faux Pas - (French word meaning false step) is a violation of accepted and unwritten, social norms. What is considered good manners in one culture can be considered a faux pas in another. For example, in Western societies it is usually considered a friendly gesture to bring a bottle of wine when invited to someone's house for dinner. French hosts may consider this insulting as it implies that the hosts are unable to serve their own good wine.
Feminity - Masculinity/Feminity is one of the Hofstede dimensions. Hofstede defines this dimension as follows: "femininity pertains to societies in which social agenda roles overlap (i.e., men and women are supposed be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life)." (Hofstede, 1991, p. 83)
Feudalism - Hierarchical social and political system common in Europe during the medieval period. The majority of the population were engaged in subsistence agriculture while simultaneously having an obligation to fulfil certain duties for the landholder. At the same time the landholder owed various obligations called fealty to his overlord.
Folk - means 'Of the people', originally coined for European peasants. It refers to the art, music, and lore of ordinary people, as contrasted with the "high" art or "classic" art of the European elites.
Functional Explanation - The study of social institutions by behavioural scientists on the premise that social customs can be explained by considering their function or role in society. Term originally used by A.R.Radcliffe-Brown (1933).
Functionalism - In the social sciences, specifically sociology and sociocultural anthropology, functionalism (also called functional analysis) attempts to focus on the ways in which social institutions fill social needs, especially social stability.
G
Gender Discrimination - Gender discrimination is any action that allows or denies opportunities, privileges or rewards to a person on the basis of their gender alone. The term 'glass ceiling' describes the process by which women are barred from promotion by means of an invisible barrier. In the United States, the Glass Ceiling Commission has stated that women represent 1.1% of inside directors (those drawn from top management of the company) on the boards of Fortune 500 companies.
Gender Roles - The tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.
Gender Stereotypes - are oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics, roles and behaviour models of males and females.
Gender Stratification - Unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom) between men and women, depending on their different positions in a social hierarchy.
Genealogical Method - Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage in societies by using diagrams and symbols.
General Anthropology - The field of anthropology as a whole, consisting of cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology.
Generalized Reciprocity - is the principle that characterizes exchanges between closely related individuals. As social distance increases, reciprocity becomes balanced and finally negative.
Genitor - Biological father of a child.
Gentrification - The process by which middle- and upper class incomers displace established working-class communities. Gentrification may be small-scale and incremental (i.e. started by individuals) or be associated with major redevelopment and regeneration schemes by governments or public bodies e.g. Docklands and Notting Hill in London.
Global Culture - One world culture. The earth's inhabitants will lose their individual cultural diversity and one culture will remain for all the people.
Globalization - A disputed term relating to transformation in the relationship between space, economy and society. The International Monetary Fund defines globalization as "the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology". Meanwhile, The International Forum on Globalization defines it as "the present worldwide drive toward a globalized economic system dominated by supranational corporate trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national governments."
Glocalization - The interaction between the particular character of places or regions and the more general processes of change represented by globalization. The term glocalization emphasizes that the globalization of a product is more likely to succeed when the product or service is adapted specifically to each locality or culture it is marketed in. Glocalization as a term first appeared in the late 1980s in articles by Japanese economists in the Harvard Business Review. First English usage is by the British sociologist Roland Robertson. The term combines the word globalization with localization. An example of glocalization in practice: for promotions in France, the restaurant chain recently chose to replace its familiar Ronald McDonald mascot with Asterix the Gaul, a popular French cartoon character.
Green Revolution - Agricultural development based on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, 20th-century cultivation techniques, and new crop varieties.
Harmony - One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz measuring the fitting in harmoniously with the environment.
Health-Care Systems - Beliefs, customs, knowledge and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal.
Hegemony - Term derived from the work of the Italian writer and political theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), which refers to the ability of a dominant group to exert or maintain control through a combination of overt and subtle mechanisms.
Hidden Transcript - A term used by James Scott to describe the coded critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage and in private, where the power holders can't see it.
Hierarchy - One of the seven fundamental value dimensions of Shalom Schwartz measuring the unequal distribution of power in a culture.
High Context and Low Context Cultures - According to E.T. Hall (1981), all communication (verbal as well as nonverbal) is contextually bound. What we do or do not pay attention to is largely dictated by cultural contexting. In low-context cultures, the majority of the information is explicitly communicated in the verbal message. In high-context cultures the information is embedded in the context. High- and low-context cultures also differ in their definition of social and power hierarchies, relationships, work ethics, business practices, time management. Low-context cultures tend to emphasize the individual while high-context cultures places more importance on the collective.
Historical Linguistics - also called diachronic linguistics, is the study of how and why languages change.
Holistic - Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. Interested in the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.
Horticulture - The science or art of cultivating fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants. In behavioural sciences, nonindustrial system of plant cultivation in which plots lie fallow for varying lengths of time.
Holocultural Analysis - A paradigm of research for testing hypotheses "by means of correlations found in a worldwide, comparative study whose units of study are entire societies or cultures, and whose sampling universe is either (a) all known cultures... or (b) all known primitive tribes" (Naroll, Michik, & Naroll, 1976).
Human Rights - Human rights refers to the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans irrespective of countries, cultures, politics, languages, skin colour and religions are entitled. Examples of human rights are the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law, the right to participate in culture, the right to work, the right to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and to not be enslaved, or imprisoned without charge and the right to education.
Hybridity - Refers to groups as a mixture of local and non-local influences; their character and cultural attributes are a product of contact with the world beyond a local place. The term originates from agriculture and has for a long time been strongly related to pejorative concepts of racism and racial purity from western colonial history.
Hyperdescent - is the practice of determining the lineage of a child of mixed race ancestry by assigning the child the race of his more socially dominant parent (opposite of Hypodescent).
Hypodescent - A social rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less-privileged group. In its most extreme form in the United States, hypodescent came to be known as the "one drop rule," meaning that if a person had one drop of black blood, he was considered black.The opposite of hypodescent is hyperdescent.
I
Xenophile - is a person attracted to everything that is foreign, especially to foreign peoples, manners, or cultures.
Xenophilia - The belief that people and things from other countries must be superior.
Xenophobe - is a person who is fearful or contemptuous of anything foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples or cultures.
Xenophobia - The belief that people and things from other countries are dangerous and always have ulterior motives. Xenophobia is an irrational fear or hatred of anything foreign or unfamiliar.
Z
Zooarchaeology - The study of faunal remains found in archaeological sites and their cultural significance.
Zoomorphic - "Animal-like". refers to art-work or decorated objects with an animal motif or appearance.
Source:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com
Hall, E. T. (1959), The Silent Language, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Hall, E. T. (1977). Beyond Culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.
Hofstede, G. (1991 Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London UK: McGraw-Hill. P.51)
Holden, Nigel 2001, Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective) Financial Times Management
Kottack Conrad Phillip, Cultural Anthropology, 9th. Ed. New York, New York: Mcgraw-Hill Higher Education, 2002
Naroll, Raoul, Gary Michik, and Frada Naroll 1980 "Holocultural Research." In H. Triandis and J. Berry, Eds. Handbook of Cross Cultural Methodology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Schwartz, S "Beyond Individualism/Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values," in H. C. Triandis, U. Kim, and G. Yoon (eds.), Individualism and Collectivism (London: Sage, 1994), pp. 113-114,
Sibley, David. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Srivastava A.R.N.Cultural Anthropology. Prentice-Hall, New Delhi
Trompenaars, F. & Hampden-Turner, C.(1997) Riding the Waves of Culture:Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business (Second Edition) London: Nicholas Brealey.
Wikipedia, web-based free encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org
J
Jati - A local subcastes in Hindu India.
Jet Lag - A temporary disruption of bodily rhythms caused by high-speed travel across several time zones typically in a jet aircraft. Typical symptoms are fatigue, insomnia. The world has 24 time zones, one for each hour in the day. A part of the brain called the hypothalamus acts as a kind of alarm clock to activate various body functions such as hunger, thirst, and sleep. It also regulates body temperature, blood pressure, and the level of hormones and glucose in the bloodstream. Thus, when the eye of an air traveler perceives dawn or dusk many hours earlier or later than usual, the hypothalamus may trigger activities that the rest of the body is not ready for, and jet lag occurs.
Joint Family Household - Is a complex family unit formed through polygyny or polyandry or through the decision of married siblings to live together with or without their parents.
K
Kinesics - The study of non-linguistic bodily movements, such as gestures, stances and facial expressions as a systematic mode of communication.
Kinship Calculation - The system by which people in a particular society reckon kin relationships.
M
Machismo - The word machismo-and its derivatives machista and macho, comes from the Spanish word macho, meaning "male" or "manly" and refers to a prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity. Machistas firmly believe in the superiority of men over women and that women were created to stay home and be mothers and wives. In many cultures, from Latin America to Korea and to countries of the Muslim world, machismo is acceptable and even expected male behaviour.
Magic - Use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims. Common in many societies. Example: Folk magic, Witchcraft or Voodoo.
Mana - Sacred impersonal force in Melanesian and Polynesian religions.
Market-Based States - Modern states e.g UK, where the market is the dominant means by which land, labour, capital and goods are exchanged and has a major influence over social and political organization.
Market Principle - Profit-oriented principle of exchange that dominates in states, particularly industrial states. Goods and services are bought and sold, and values are determined by supply and demand.
Masculinity - One of the Hofstede dimensions. Hofstede defines this dimension as follows: "masculinity pertains to societies in which social roles are clearly distinct (i.e., men are supposed to be assertive, tough and focused on material success whereas women are supposed to be more modest, tender and concerned with the quality of life)." (Hofstede, 1991, p. 83)
Mater - Socially recognized mother of a child.
Matriarchy - A society ruled by women. There is consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists that a strictly matriarchal society never existed, but there are examples of matrifocal societies. There exist many matriarchal animal societies including bees, elephants, and killer whales. The word matriarchy is coined as the opposite of Patriarchy.
Matrifocal - Mother-centered society. It often refers to a household with no resident husband-father.
Matrilocality - Customary residence with the wife's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their mother's community. The Nair community in Kerala in South India and the Mosuo of Yunnan and Sichuan in southwestern China are contemporary examples.
Means (or factors) of Production - Land, labor, technology, and capital-major productive resources.
Medical Anthropology - Field of study where anthropologists are concerned with the sociocultural context and implications of disease and illness.
Matrilineal Descent - Unilineal descent rule in which people join the mother's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
Matrilineage - Line of descent as traced through women on the maternal side of a family. In some cultures, membership of a specific group is inherited matrilineally. For example one is a Jew if one's mother (rather than one's father) is a Jew. The Nairs of Kerala, India are also matrilineal.
Meme - is a theoretical concept introduced by Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Meme is derived from a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated) and shortened so that it sounds similar to "gene". Meme refers to any unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice, idea or concept, which one mind transmits (verbally or by demonstration) to another mind. Examples of cultural memes are thoughts, ideas, theories, opinions, beliefs, moods, poetry, habits, dance, tunes, catch-phrases, fashions, ways of building arches. Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process broadly called imitation very similarly how genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs. A list of memetic concepts can be found here.
Meritocracy - A system of government based on rule by ability or merit rather than by wealth, race or other determinants of social position. Nowadays this term refers to openly competitive societies like the USA where large inequalities of income and wealth accrued by merit rather than birth is accepted. In contrast egalitarian societies like the Scandinavian countries aim to reduce such disparities of wealth.
Minority Group - A group that occupies a subordinate position in a society. Minorities may be separated by physical or cultural traits disapproved of by the dominant group and as a result often experience discrimination. Minorities may not always be defined along social, ethnic, religious or sexual lines but could be broad based e.g. non-citizens or foreigners.
Mode of Production - Way of organizing production. It is a set of social relations through which labour is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, and knowledge.
Monotheism - Worship of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being. Judaism and Islam are examples.
Morphology - The study of form. It is used in linguistics (the study of morphemes and word construction).
Monochronic - E.T.Hall introduced the concept of Polychronic/Monochronic cultures. According to him, in monochronic cultures, people try to sequence actions on the "one thing at a time" principle. Interpersonal relations are subordinate to time schedules and deadlines.
More Developed Countries (MDCs) - Countries with significant competitive advantages in today's globalizing economy. They have well-developed, increasingly knowledge-based and strongly interconnected manufacturing and service sectors that provide a significant proportion of employment and contribute to significant national and individual wealth. In these countries indices such as literacy levels, incomes and quality of life are high and these countries exercise considerable political influence at the global scale. Examples are the UK, the US, Germany and France.
Multiculturalism - A belief or policy that endorses the principle of cultural diversity of different cultural and ethnic groups so that they retain distinctive cultural identities. The United States is understood as a "mosaic" of various and diverse cultures, as opposed to the single monolithic culture that results from the "melting pot" or assimilation model. Pluralism tends to focus on differences within the whole, while multiculturalism emphasizes the individual groups that make up the whole. The term multiculturalism is also used to refer to strategies and measures intended to promote diversity. According to Wikipedia, the word was first used in 1957 to describe Switzerland, but came into common currency in Canada in the late 1960s.
Mythology - A body or collection of myths belonging to a people and addressing their origin, history, deities, ancestors, and heroes. Mythology refers to the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths symbolically. If interpreted literally rather than symbolically mythology becomes psychology misread as biography, history and cosmology.
N
Nation - Earlier a synonym for "ethnic group," designating a single culture sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship. Now usually a synonym for state or nation-state.
National Culture - Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.
Nationalities - Ethnic groups that have, once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country).
Nation-State - A symbolic system of institutions claiming sovereignty over a bounded territory. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "nation-state": a sovereign state of which most of the citizens or subjects are united also by factors which define a nation, such as language or common descent. Japan and Iceland could be two examples of near ideal nation-states.
Naturalistic Disease Theories - One of the theories of diseases used in anthropology that explain illness in impersonal systemic terms.It includes scientific medicine.
Natural Selection - Originally formulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. Refers to the process by which nature selects the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment such as the tropics.
Négritude - Black association and identity. It is an idea developed by dark-skinned intellectuals in Francophone (French-speaking) West Africa and the Caribbean.
Neolocality - Postmarital residence pattern in which a couple establishes a new place of residence rather than living with or near either set of parents.
New Economic Geography - An economic geography that recognizes the importance of culture as an influence on economic processes and outcomes. This draws attention to the culturalization of the economy in contrast to the economization of culture.
New International Division of Labour (NIDL) - The global shift of economic activity that occurs when the process of production is no longer centered primarily around national economies.
Newly Agriculturizing Countries (NACs) - Some low-middle income countries which have specialized in the export of high-value foods e.g. Brazil, Mexico, China, Argentina and Kenya.
Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) - Countries where there has been a relatively recent and significant shift away from primary activities such as agriculture towards manufacturing production e.g. South Korea and Mexico. In some cases the proportion of manufacturing production is similar to that of the more developed countries like UK or the US.
Nomadism, Pastoral - Movement throughout the year by the whole pastoral group (men, women, and children) with their animals: More generally it means such constant movement in pursuit of strategic resources.
Nuclear Family - is a household consisting of two heterosexual parents and their children as distinct from the extended family. Nuclear families are typical in societies where people must be relatively mobile e.g., hunter-gatherers and industrial societies.
O
One-World Culture - A belief that the future will bring development of a single homogeneous world culture through advances and links created by modern communication, transportation and trade.
Open Class System - Stratification system that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank.
Overinnovation - Characteristic of projects that require major changes in the daily lives of the natives in the target community, especially ones that interfere with customary subsistence pursuits.
P
Paleoethnobotany (Archaeobotany) - is the recovery and identification of plant remains from archaeological contexts, important in the reconstruction of past environments and economies.
Paradigm - is the set of fundamental assumptions that influence how people think and how they perceive the world.
Paradigmatic view - is an approach to science, developed by Thomas Kuhn, which holds that science develops from a set of assumptions (paradigm) and that revolutionary science ends with the acceptance of a new paradigm which ushers in a period of normal science.
Parallel Cousins - Children of two brothers or two sisters.
Particularity - Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.
Participant Observation - Technique for cross-cultural adjustment. This entails keeping a detailed record of your observations, interactions and interviews while living in a culture that is not your own.
Participative competence - Skills especially in cross-cultural communication for engaging in discussions and interactions productively. Even when using a second language, people with high participative competence are able to contribute equitably to the common task under discussion and can also share knowledge, communicate experience, and stimulate group learning. (Source: Holden, Nigel 2001, Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective) Financial Times Management
Particularism - One of the value dimensions as proposed by Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner (1997). It reflects the preference for rules over relationships (or vice versa). Particularist societies tend to be more flexible with rules, and acknowledge the unique circumstances around a particular rule.
Pastoralists - People who use a food-producing strategy of adaptation based on care of herds of domesticated animals.
Pastoral Nomadism - A form of social organization that is based on livestock husbandry for largely subsistence purposes. Pastoral nomads are characterized by a high level of mobility which allows them continually to search for new pastures in order to maintain their herds of animals. First known nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 6200 - 6000 BC in the Middle East.
Pater - Socially recognized father of a child though not necessarily the genitor or biological father.
Patriarchy - Political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.
Patrilineal - An interrelated constellation of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy.
Patrilineal Descent - Unilineal descent rule in which people join the father's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
Patrilineage - Line of descent as traced through men on the paternal side of a family each of whom is related to the common ancestor through males. Synonym is agnation and opposite is matrilineage.
Patrilocality - Customary residence with the husband's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their father's community.
Peasant - Small-scale agriculturalist living with rent fund obligations.
Peer-Polity Interaction - is the full range of exchanges taking place, including imitation, emulation, competition, warfare, and the exchange of material goods and information between autonomous (self-governing) sociopolitical units, generally within the same geographic region.
Peer Pressure - the influences that people of the same rank, age or group have on each other. Under peer pressure a group norm of attitudes and/or behaviours may override individual moral inhibitions, sexual personal habits or individual attitudes or behavioural patterns.
Periphery - is the weakest structural position in the world system.
Personalistic Disease theories - One of the theories in Anthropology that attributes illness to sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits.
Personal Space - Humans desire to have a pocket of space around them and into which they tend to resent others intruding. Personal space is highly variable. Those who live in a densely populated environment tend to have smaller personal space requirements. Thus a resident of a city in India or China may have a smaller personal space than someone who lives in Northern Lapland. See also Proxemics.
Phenotype - An organism's evident traits, its "manifest biology". The term is used in anatomy and physiology.
Phoneme - Significant sound contrast in a language that serves to distinguish meaning, as in minimal pairs.
Phonemics - The study of the sound contrasts (phonemes) of a particular language.
Phonetics - The study of speech sounds in general; what people actually say in various languages.
Phonology - The study of sounds used in speech.
Phylogenetic tree - is a graphic representation of evolutionary relationships among animal species.
Plural Society - A society that combines ethnic contrasts and economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.
Polyandry - A variety of plural marriage in which a woman has more than one husband. Tibet is the most well-documented cultural domain within which polyandry is practised, though it has recently been outlawed.
Polytheism - Belief in several deities who control aspects of nature. The ancient Greeks believed that their gods were independent deities who weren't aspects of a great deity.
Polychronic - The concept of Polychronic/Monochronic cultures was introduced by E.T. Hall. He suggested that in Polychronic cultures, multiple tasks are handled at the same time, and time is subordinate to interpersonal relations.
Positive Eugenics - is a method of increasing the frequency of desirable traits by encouraging reproduction by individuals with these traits. Negative eugenics is aimed at lowering fertility among the genetically disadvantaged by means of abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning
Positivism - refers to the theoretical position that explanations must be empirically verifiable, that there are universal laws in the structure and transformation of human institutions, and that theories which incorporate individualistic elements, such as minds, are not verifiable.
Postcolonial - Refers to interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized (mainly after 1800). "Postcolonial" may be used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism
Postmodern - Describes the blurring and breakdown of established canons (rules, standards), categories, distinctions, and boundaries.
Postmodernity - Refers to the condition of a world in flux, with people on the move, in which established groups, boundaries, identities, contrasts, and standards are breaking down.
Post-Partum Sex Taboo - is the prohibition of a woman from having sexual intercourse for a specified period of time following the birth of a child.
Power Distance - One of the Hofstede dimensions of national cultures. "The extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally" (Hofstede, 1991 p.27)
Power Geometry - The notion of Power Geometry is a product of globalization and refers to the ways that different groups of individuals interact at different scales, linking local development to national, international, and global processes.
Prejudice - Over-generalized, oversimplified or exaggerated beliefs associated with a category or group of people. These beliefs are not easily changed, even in the fact of contrary evidence. Example: A French woman is in an elevator alone. She grabs her purse tight when an African young man enters. Prejudice can also be devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, attitudes, or other attributes.
Prestige - Esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary.
Progeny Price - A gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin before, at, or after marriage. It legitimizes children born to the woman as members of the husband's descent group.
Protoculture - is the simplest or beginning aspects of culture as seen in some nonhuman primates.
Proto-language - refers to a language ancestral to several daughter languages. Example: Latin or Sankrit.
Proxemics - is the study of human "perception and use of space" (Hall 1959). Proxemics tries to identify the distance and the way the space around persons are "organised". In some cultures, people are comfortable with being very close, or even touching each other as a normal sign of friendship. In other cultures, touching and sitting/standing very close can cause considerable discomfort.
Protestant Work Ethic - a bible based value system that stresses the moral value of work, self-discipline, and individual responsibility as the means to improving one's economic well-being. Also known as the Puritan work ethic, the term was first coined by Max Weber, a German Economist and Sociologist in 1904. Many Europeans and Americans consider it as one of the cornerstones of national prosperity.
Public Transcript - A term used by James Scott to refer to the open, public interactions between dominators and oppressed. It points to the outer shell of power relations and is the opposite of 'Private Transcript'.
Purdah - is the Muslim or Hindu practice of keeping women hidden from men outside their own family; or, a curtain, veil, or the like used for such a purpose.
R
Racism - Theories, attitudes and practices that display dislike or antagonism towards people seen as belonging to a particular ethnic groups. Social or political significance is attached to culturally constructed ideas of difference.
Random Sample - A sample in which all members of the population have an equal statistical chance of being included.
Ranked Society - A society in which there is an unequal division of status and power between its members, where such divisions are based primarily on such factors as family and inherited social position. This is in contrast with egalitarian society, which aims to minimise such unequal divisions.
Reciprocity - One of the three principles of exchange. It governs exchange between social equals and is a major exchange mode in band and tribal societies. Since virtually all humans live in some kind of society and have at least a few possessions, reciprocity is common to every culture. Reciprocity is the basis of most non-market economies.
Regional Inversion - is a process of radical change when the established order of territorial influence changes. Through regional inversion, previously backward regions become predominant in a national context. Lagging areas that emerge through this process eventually overshadow the influence of predominant regions.
Religious Discrimination - Religious discrimination is treating someone differently because of what they do or don't believe. Religious discrimination is closely related to racism, but there are differences in how it is expressed and how it is treated in law. An example of religious discrimination by the state is non-Muslims being discriminated against in some Islamic states. In many countries legislation specifically prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals because of their religion in relation to hiring, firing and other terms and conditions of employment. Today, many western states forbid discrimination based on religion, though this is not always enforced. For example, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States of America, research conducted by the Level Playing Field Institute and the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut revealed that Muslims were rated very low relative to other racial, ethnic, and religious groups in terms of their fit in the American workplace. Adapted from source: http://en.wikipedia.org
Rescue Archaeology - A term applied to the emergency salvage of sites in immediate danger of destruction by major land modification projects such as reservoir construction.
Revitalization Movements - Movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society.
Rites of Passage - Culturally defined activities (rituals) that mark a person's transition from one stage of life to another. Puberty, wedding, childbirth are examples.
Ritual - Behaviour that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped. A ritual is performed earnestly as a social act. Rituals are held at set times and places and have liturgical orders.
Rust Belt - A region of the North-Eastern USA roughly between Chicago and New York City that suffered substantial industrial decline, especially after the Second World War.
S
Sample - A smaller study group chosen to represent a larger population.
Sapir - Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) (also known as the "linguistic relativity hypothesis") is a theory that different languages produce different ways of thinking. It postulates a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
Schizoid view-of Applied Anthropology - is the belief that anthropologists should help carry out, but not make or criticize, policy, and that personal value judgments should be kept strictly separate from scientific investigation in applied anthropology. Term first used by Conrad.Philip.Kottack.
Segmentary Lineage Organization - Political organization based on descent, usually patrilineal, with multiple descent segments that form at different genealogical levels and function in different contexts. A segmentary lineage society is characterized by the organization of the society into segments; what is often referred to as a tribal society.
Semiperiphery - Structural position in the world system intermediate between core and periphery.
Sexual Dimorphism - Marked differences in male and female biology, besides the contrasts in breasts and genitals, and temperament.
Sexual Orientation - A person's habitual sexual attraction to, and activities with: persons of the opposite sex, heterosexuality; the same sex, homosexuality; or both sexes, bisexuality.
Sexual Orientation Discrimination - Sexual orientation discrimination is discrimination against individuals, couples or groups based on sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation. Usually, this means the discrimination of a person who has a same-sex sexual orientation, whether or not they identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Acceptability of sexual orientation varies greatly from society to society. The Republic of South Africa is the first nation on earth to integrate freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation into its constitution.
Shaman - A religious practitioner who mediates b