Glossary
Armchair anthropology: an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.
Cultural evolutionism: a discredited theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolve through stages from simple to advanced.
Cultural relativism: the idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.
Culture: a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways.
Enculturation: the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group.
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as most important and correct and as the ruler by which to measure all other cultures.
Functionalism: an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.
Going native: becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.
Holism: taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.
Kinship: blood ties, common ancestry, and social relationships that form families within human groups.
Participant observation: a type of observation in which anthropologists observe while participating in the same activities in which their informants are engaged.
Structural-Functionalism: an approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.
The Other: a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own.
