Anthropology 2A Fall 2011
Midterm Study Guide
Review the following anthropological concepts. Look to your quizzes as aides, and make sure you can apply the vocabulary words in
context and to the DeVita readings.
These people are important!
-What (who) Anthropologists study
-The 4 traditional fields of Anthropology
-Paleontolgist
-Primatologist
-Glottochronologist
-The barrel model of culture
-The many facets of Culture
-Signal vs. Symbol
-What the general vocabulary of a culture can tell us about that culture
-The three types of gendered division of labor
-Differences between child rearing in the U.S. vs. traditional food foraging societies
-Native American views on the third gender
-Ethnography vs. Ethnology
-The holistic perspective
-Hypothesis vs. Theory vs. Doctrine
-Globalization
-Nationalism
-Ethnohistory
-Applied Anthropology
-Multi-site Anthroplogy
-Urgent Anthropology
-Advocacy Anthropology
-Pluralistic Society
-Subculture
-Cultural Relativism
-Participant Observation
-Ethnocentrism
-Gender vs. Biological Sex
-Key Consultant
-Qualitative vs. Quantitative data
-Human Relations Area Files
-The “diseases of civilization”
-Evolutionary medicine
-Recent African origins vs. multiregional hypothesis
-Species
-Race
-Phonology vs. morphology
-Kinesics vs. proxemics
-linguistic nationalism
-ethnolinguistics
-code switching
-Egyptian hieroglyphs – when they first arose
-Enculturation
-Adaptation
-Factors responsible for the formation of personality
-Modal personality and core values
-Intersexual vs. transgender
-Ecosystem
-Horticulture vs. Agriculture vs. Pastoralism vs. Industrialism vs. Food Foraging
-Generalized reciprocity vs. balanced reciprocity vs. negative reciprocity
-Leveling mechanism vs. conspicuous consumption vs. Potlach
Know the various culture-bound
syndromes in the chart on pg. 155
The Zhutwasi/San Bushmen
The Trobriand Islanders
Bronislaw Malinowski
Herodotus
DeVita prep:
Make sure you can critically apply vocabulary words to the DeVita stories, and the other way around. For
example, you will need to know:
How Douglas Raybeck in “Getting Below the Surface” practiced participant observation
What lesson about culture do the conflicting stories of Haangguma and Waangusa relate in Terrence E. Hayes
“Pigs of the Forest” present?
What caused the earthquake in Alice Pomponio’s “What Did the Earthquake Mean?” from the emic perspective
of the local Mandok people and the etic perspective of Pomponio.
The various examples of reciprocity in David Counts’ “Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples & No
Watermelons at All?”
The division of labor by age and gender in Phyllis Morrow’s “What Drives the Birds?” and Susan DwyerSchick’s “Some Consequences of a Fieldworker’s Gender for Cross-Cultural Research.”
Reasons for acceptance from both an emic and etic perspective in “Not a Real Fish: The Ethnographer as Inside
Outsider”
Why using etic analysis was problematic for Linda Kent in “Fieldwork that Failed”
Examples of how both the anthropologist and the study group in Richard Scaglion’s “Ethnocentrism and the
Abelam” demonstrated ethnocentrism
The Key Informant (if identified) in each of the DeVita stories
You will be given copies of the DeVita summaries on the day of the Midterm as a reminder of the general
themes and authors of the stories.