1.
Holistic perspective of anthropology
2.
Comparative perspective of anthropology
3.
Cultural relativism
4.
Ethnocentrism
5.
Four subfields of anthropology
6.
Applied anthropology
7.
Ethnography
8.
Ethnology
9.
Cultural anthropology ethics (handout and ‘Humanity’)
10.
Cultural anthropology methods (handout and ‘Humanity’)
11.
Culture definitions (especially the definition discussed in class during week 1, see power point notes)
12.
What does it mean that culture is shared, learned, symbolic, moral, limit-setting, changing, integrated, adaptive, and sometimes maladaptive? (Lecture. See wiki week 1)
13.
Is everyone becoming westernized (pg. 28 and 28 of ‘Humanity’)
14.
Norms and values (‘Humanity’)
15.
Why do most anthropologists understand ‘race’ as a cultural construction, rather than biologically determined? (Lectures, film Race: the power of an illusion, AAA website on race, the link is on the wiki in week 1, ’10 things …’ handout, ‘Humanity’)
16.
Why is the concept of race a ‘floating signifier’ according to Dr. Stuart Hall? (video week
1)
17.
To better understand why ‘race’ is a cultural construction, why is it important to understand how and why human groups create categories with meanings associated with those categories? (Lectures during week 2 and video of Dr. Stuart)
18.
What did Claude Steele and fellow researchers demonstrate about stereotypes and performance? (Lecture week 2)
19.
What did researchers discover about sleeping habits and practices cross culturally, according to authors of the article Slumber’s Unexplored Landscapes?
20.
Was Claire Sterk’s approach to studying prostitution in Tricking and Tripping a more etic or emic approach? Why? What did she learn?
21.
What are ethical considerations for the ethnographer? (‘Humanity’ and Lecture week 2))
22.
What did Richard Borshay Lee learn about himself and his own ethnocentrisms through his fieldwork experiences with the !Kung San in the article Eating Christmas in the
Kalahari?
23.
What did Michael Wesch and his students discover about the significance of community or lack of community in relation to networked individualism as described in the film
Anthropology of Youtube?
24.
What is context collapse and aesthetic arrest, and why are these concepts significant in the Youtube experience, according to Wesch and his students?
25.
What are cultural and social restraints connected with Youtube and the internet that differ in face to face circumstances? Why might people communicate with ‘hate’ comments or with ‘flaming’ in one context and less often in other contexts, according to
Wesch and his students?
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26.
What does Wesch have to say about law, piracy, and Youtube?
27.
In what ways is learning language biological? (Lecture, film The Mind’s Big Bang, lecture, and ‘Humanity’)
28.
What is the most important connection between language and culture?
29.
According to Stephen Pinker and others featured in the film The Mind’s Big Bang, why do we seem biologically more intelligent than Homo sapiens (modern humans) who lived 35,000 to 60,000 years ago? Are we innately smarter, according to biological anthropologists featured in the film who study genetics, fossils, skull shapes and fossilized brain impressions?
30.
What relationship exists between cave art, carvings, tool making and bead making several thousand years ago and the use of language? What does evidence about symbolic life tell us about The Mind’s Big Bang?
31.
What does the video about Kanzi the bonobo and his sister tell us about non-human animal abilities to imitate, learn, and share language?
32.
What is Theory of Mind and its importance to human language ability? (The Mind’s Big
Bang video, Robert Seyforth video clip [week 2], and lecture.)
33.
Explain the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis and how some scientists have attempted to prove that language influences perceptions of the world. (Lecture and ‘Humanity’)
34.
What is the definition of intelligence according to Gerhard Roth and Ursula Dicke?
(lecture)
35.
Who is Franz Boas and what is his role in development of the concepts of cultural and linguistic relativism? What is Boas’s notion of the psychic unity of humanity? (lecture week 3)
36.
What is the importance of categorization in language to our understanding or perception of the world? (lecture and ’Humanity’)
37.
How did Dr. Lera Boroditsky work to demonstrate linguistic relativity based on her NPR interview? (NPR radio story, week 3)
38.
What did Howard Conklin discover about color terms for Hanunoo speakers in the
Philippines? (Lecture week 3)
39.
How is culture connected to the language that the Piraha speak, according to anthropologist Kate Douglas in the article Lost For Words? Based on their language classifications and usages, what norms and values would you say are important to the
Piraha community?
40.
Can Shakespeare be understood in the same way from one culture group to the next?
Or do different culture groups with different languages understand Shakespeare's stories differently because they see and categorize human relationships differently?
Based on the article Shakespeare in the Bush, what did Laura Bohannan experience when she worked to tell the Tiv the story of Hamlet? What might her experience reveal about language, culture, and our interpretations of what goes on around us? Explain your answer logically.
41.
What is the language socialization paradigm?
42.
What did linguistic anthropologists Don Kulick and Bambi Schieffelin demonstrate about ways caregivers teach children how to be ‘good’ through language, but also how caregivers create a condition called dual indexicality? Be able to explain the findings of
Patricia Clancey and others about some of the differences between commonly-practiced
Japanese early language socialization and commonly-practiced U.S. early language socialization.
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