Introduction
A. Religion is defined, following Wallace, as belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces.
B. So defined, religion is a cultural universal.
II. Expressions of Religion
A. Neanderthal mortuary remains provide the earliest evidence of what probably was religious activity.
B. Animism
1. Tylor first studied religion anthropologically, and developed a taxonomy of religions.
2. Animism was seen as the most primitive, and is defined as a belief in souls that derives from the first attempt to explain dreams and like phenomena.
C. Mana and Taboo
1. Mana is defined as belief in an immanent supernatural domain or lifeforce, potentially subject to human manipulation.
2. The Polynesian and Melanesian concepts of mana are contrasted.
a. Melanesian mana is defined as a sacred impersonal force that is much like the Western concept of luck.
b. Polynesian mana and the related concept of taboo are related to the more hierarchical nature of Polynesian society.
3. Things that are considered taboo are set apart as sacred and off-limits to ordinary people.
D. Magic and Religion
1. Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims.
2. Magic may be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or contagious (accomplished through contact).
E. Uncertainty, Anxiety, Solace
1. Magic is an instrument of control, but religion serves to provide stability when no control or understanding is possible.
2. Malinowski saw tribal religions as being focused on life crises.
F. Rituals
1. Rituals are formal, performed in sacred contexts.
2. Rituals convey information about the culture of the participants and, hence, the participants themselves.
3. Rituals are inherently social, and participation in them necessarily implies social commitment.
G. Rites of Passage
1. Rites of passage are religious rituals that mark and facilitate a persons movement from one (social) state of being to another (e.g. Plains Indians’ vision quests).
2. Rites of passage have three phases:
a. Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the group and begins moving from one place to another.
b. Liminality – the period between states, during which the participant(s) has left one place but has not yet entered the next.
c. Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society with a new status having completed the rite.
3. Liminality is part of every rite of passage, and involves the temporary suspension and even reversal of everyday social distinctions.
4. Communitas refers to collective liminality, characterized by enhanced feelings of social solidarity and minimized distinctions.
H. Totemism
1. Rituals play an important role in creating and maintaining group solidarity.
2. In totemic societies, each descent group has an animal, plant, of geographical feature from which they claim descent.
a. Totems are the apical ancestor of clans.
b. The members of a clan did not kill or eat their totem, except once a year when the members of the clan gathered for ceremonies dedicated to the totem.
3. Totemism is a religion in which elements of nature act as sacred templates for society by means of symbolic association.
4. Totemism uses nature as a model for society.
a. Each descent group has a totem, which occupies a specific niche in nature.
b. Social differences mirror the natural order of the environment.
c. The unity of the human social order is enhanced by symbolic association with and imitation of the natural order.
III. Social Control
A. The power of religion affects action.
B. Religion can be used to mobilize large segments of society through systems of real and perceived rewards and punishments.
C. Witch hunts play an important role in limiting social deviancy in addition to functioning as leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in wealth and status between members of society.
D. Many religions have a formal code of ethics that prohibit certain behavior while promoting other kinds of behavior.
E. Religions also maintain social control by stressing the fleeting nature of life.
IV. Kinds of Religion
A. Religious forms vary from culture to culture but there are correlations between political organization and religious type.
B. Religious Practitioners and Types
1. Wallace defined religion as consisting of all a society’s cult institutions (rituals and associated beliefs), and developed four categories from this.
2. Shamanic religions shamans are part-time religious intermediaries who may act as curers--these religions are most characteristic of foragers.
3. Communal religions have shamans, community rituals, multiple nature gods, and are more characteristic of food producers than foragers.
4. Olympian religions first appeared with states, have full-time religious specialists whose organization may mimic the states, and have potent anthropomorphic gods who may exist as a pantheon.
5. Monotheistic religions have all the attributes of Olympian religions, except that the pantheon of gods is subsumed under a single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being.
V. World Religions
A. Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world.
B. More than a billion people in the world either claim no religion or say they are atheists.
VI. Religion and Change
A. Revitalization Movements
1. Religious movements that act as mediums for social change are called revitalization movements.
2. The colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by Handsome Lake is an example of a revitalization movement.
B. Cargo Cults
1. Cargo cults are revitalization movements that emerge when traditional communities have regular contact with industrial societies.
a. Native communities attempt to explain European domination and wealth and achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior and manipulating symbols of the desired life style.
b. The cargo cults of Melanesia and Papua New Guinea blend Christian doctrine with aboriginal beliefs and practices.
2. They take their name from their focus on cargo—European goods that have been brought to the region by cargo planes and ships.
3. Cargo cults paved the way for unified political action through which indigenous communities eventually regained their autonomy.
C. A New Age
1. Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in formal organized religions.
2. New Age religions have appropriated ideas, themes, symbols, and ways of life from the religious practices of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, east Asian religions.
VII. Secular Rituals
A. It is difficult to distinguish between sacred and secular rituals as behavior can simultaneously have sacred and secular aspects.
B. Americans try to maintain a strict division between the sacred and the profane, but many other societies like the Betsileo do not.
VIII. Box: Islam in Africa
A. Islam and Christianity are competing in Africa for new members.
B. Islam is spreading faster than Christianity.
1. Islamic values have much more in common with traditional life.
a. Emphasis on communal living
b. Clear roles for men and women
c. Tolerance of polygamy
2. Greater amounts of funding from outside Africa (Saudi Arabia).
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
PRE-FINAL EXAM
1. Until 10,000 years ago, all human groups used which of the following subsistence strategies?
A) agriculture
B) foraging
C) horticulture
D) pastoralism
E) reciprocity
2. Which of the following groups is an example of a foraging society?
A) Kwakiutl
B) Yanomami
C) Qashqai
D) Ifugao
E) Basseri
3. What is the basic social unit of foragers?
A) the tribe
B) the clan
C) lineage
D) the band
E) the totem
4. Which of the following factors of production does horticulture make intensive use of?
A) land
B) labor
C) capital
D) machinery
E) Horticulture does not make intensive use of any of the above
factors of production.
5. Which of the following is commonly found in both horticultural and nonindustrial agricultural societies?
A) irrigation
B) slash and burn techniques to clear land
C) terracing
D) use of domestic animals for transportation, cultivating
machines, and manure
E) None of the above are commonly found in both horticultural
and nonindustrial agricultural societies.
6. Horticulture is characterized by which of the following?
A) the use of terraces
B) the use of a fallow period
C) the use of domestic animals
D) irrigation systems
E) intensive cultivation
7
7. Agriculture is characterized by all of the following except:
A) the use of terraces.
B) irrigation systems.
C) the use of domestic animals.
D) the use of a fallow period.
E) intensive cultivation.
8.Which of the following is not an environmental effect of intensive agriculture?
A) deforestation
B) concentration of organic wastes
C) increased environmental diversity
D) increased environmental uniformity
E) All of the above are environmental effects of intensive
agriculture.
9.The mode of production refers to:
A) the way in which production is organized.
B) the major productive resources of an economy including the
land, labor, technology, and capital.
C) the rational allocation of scarce resources to alternative
ends.
D) the profit-oriented system principle of exchange in which
goods and services are bought and sold, and values are
determined by supply and demand.
E) the exchange between social equals.
10. The means of production refers to:
A) the way in which production is organized.
B) the rational allocation of scarce resources to alternative
ends.
C) the profit-oriented system principle of exchange in which
goods and services are bought and sold, and values are
determined by supply and demand.
D) the major productive resources of an economy including the
land, labor, technology, and capital.
E) the exchange between social equals.
11. What is a replacement fund?
A) the time and energy devoted to replacing the calories used during a person's daily activity*the time and energy devoted to maintaining items essential to production
B) the time and energy devoted to helping friends, relatives,
in-laws, and neighbors
C) the time and energy devoted to the performance of rituals the time and energy a person must render to a superior individual or agency for access to land
12. What is the market principle?
A) the movement of goods, services, and resources from the local level to a central administrative location, then back to the local level
B) the exchange of goods, services, and resources between social equals
C) the rational allocation of scarce means to alternative ends
D) the exchange of goods, services, and resources in a market-place
E) the use of money to buy and sell things at prices determined by supply and demand
13. With which kind of reciprocity is something given and nothing is expected in return?
A) negative reciprocity
B) generalized reciprocity
C) specialized reciprocity
D) balanced reciprocity
E) market reciprocity
14. Which of the following statements about negative reciprocity is not true?
A) Negative reciprocity usually involves dealing with people outside or on the fringes of your social system.
B) Silent trade is an example of negative reciprocity.
C) Stealing is an extreme form of negative reciprocity.
D) Negative reciprocity cannot be practiced by a society that already practices generalized reciprocity.
E) Negative reciprocity involves the attempt to get something for as little as possible.
15. With balanced reciprocity, a person:
A) tries to get something for as little as possible.
B) exchanges with people only within his or her nuclear family.
C) gives and expects something in return, which may not come immediately, but the giver will be upset if the person who received the gift does not reciprocate the exchange.
D) uses money to buy and sell goods and services.
E) tries to rationally allocate scarce means or resources to alternative ends.
16. All of the following is true about human language except that it:
A) permits the discussion of past and future.
B) is based on an arbitrary association between words and the things for which they stand.
C) is produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered.
D) relies almost totally on learning.
E) allows one to benefit from others’ experiences.
17. All of the following statements about call systems are true except that they:
A) consist of a limited number of sounds.
B) are made only in the presence of certain stimuli.
C) are used by chimpanzees.
D) permit discussion of the past.
E) are used by gorillas.
18. When the chimpanzee, Washoe, combined the signs for "water" and "bird" to denote a swan she saw, she was displaying:
A) displacement.
B) a call system.
C) a focal vocabulary.
D) productivity.
E) diglossia.
19. Which term refers to "the study of speech sounds and consideration of which soun ds are present and significant in a given language"?
A) phonology
B) morphology
C) phonetics
D) phonemics
E) kinesics
20. Which of the following is commonly used to communicate status differences in Madagascar?
A) bowing
B) falsetto voice
C) limp handshake
D) lowering one’s head
E) firm handshake
21. Which term refers to "the study of the significant sound contrasts of a given language"?
A) phonology
B) morphology
C) phonetics
D) phonemics
E) kinesics
22. What term refers to "a sound contrast that makes a difference to meaning "?
A) morpheme
B) lexicon
C) syntax
D) phoneme
E) kinesics
23. "Pit" and "bit" are two words in English differentiated by a single sound contrast between the /p/ and the /b/. This means that /p/ and /b/ are ________ in English.
A) morphemes
B) a lexicon
C) a syntax
D) phonemes
E) kinesics
24. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that:
A) the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways.
B) there are ten basic color terms which evolve in a set order.
C) the chimpanzees that are capable of ASL are more like trained circus animals and do not really show the capacity of language.
D) human brains contain a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.
E) gorillas have the capacity of speech, as demonstrated by the gorilla Koko.
25. Berlin and Kay's study, in which they determined that there are ten basic color terms that appear in languages in a consistent order, is an example of the study of:
A) morphology.
B) sociolinguistics.
C) phonetics.
D) focal vocabulary.
E) ethnosemantics.
26. The use of a falsetto voice by women in Japan is an example of:
A) diglossia.
B) a style shift.
C) ethnosemantics.
D) a call system.
E) kinesics.
27. According to the principle of linguistic relativity:
A) human brains contain a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.
B) all languages are daughter languages of Proto-Indo-Europeans.
C) all dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.
D) the proper language is a strategic resource to its user.
E) all languages are equally valid for study by linguistic anthropologists.
28. According to the textbook, all of the following are true about Black English Vernacular except that it is:
A) systematic and rule-governed.
B) less capable of communication than Standard English.
C) a relatively uniform dialect spoken by the majority of black youth in most parts of the United States.
D) able to differentiate between past and present verbs.
E) related to the dialect of English commonly used in the southern United States.
29. Languages that have descended from the same language are called:
A) historical linguistics.
B) daughter languages.
C) protolanguages.
D) linguistic subgroups.
E) proto-Indo-European.
30. All of the following are true about communication via AIT Advanced Information Technology except:
A) cyberspeak is usually less formal than print.
B) communication via AIT will mostly be used to facilitate communication among affinity groups.
C) cyberspeak language is less precise and less fixed than in print.
D) class anonymity is fully possible in AIT communication.
E) access to AIT is disproportionately high among certain ages, ethnicities, nationalities, and incomes.
31. What is the term for the permanent social unit whose members claim a common ancestry?
A) descent group
B) ambilineal group
C) extended family
D) nuclear family
E) family of procreation
32. What is the term for the nuclear family that is formed when one marries and has children?
A) family of procreation
B) zadruga
C) family of orientation
D) tarawads
E) clan
33. All of the following are features of the Bosnian zadruga except:
A) the household is headed by a male household head and wife.
B) it is a form of kin organization known as a descent group.
C) each nuclear family has its own sleeping room.
D) the zadruga is composed of married sons and their wives and children and unmarried sons and daughters.
E) it is a patrilocal system.
34. Which of the following terms means that people get to choose which lineage to join?
A) matrilineal descent
B) ambilineal descent
C) unilineal descent
D) patrilineal descent
E) demonstrated descent
35. All of the following are true of a descent group that is organized as a clan except:
A) members claim connection to an apical ancestor.
B) members use stipulated descent.
C) the apical ancestor is often a totem.
D) members typically practice a pre-industrial farming agriculture.
E) members can recite the names of their forebears back to their apical ancestor..
36. Under which form of post-marital residence rules systems do couples move to the wife's community?
A) patrilocal
B) matrilocal
C) unilocal
D) generational
E) neolocal
37. According to Edmund Leach, marriage can accomplish all of the following, except:
A) give either or both spouse a monopoly in the other's sexuality.
B) establish an arbitrary and meaningless bond between both spouses and their families.
C) establish a socially significant relationship between spouses and their families.
D) establish the legal father of a woman's children and the legal mother of a man's children.
E) give either or both spouses rights over the other's property.
38. Which of the following statements about berdaches is not true?
A) Berdaches are biological males who have assumed many of the gender roles assigned to women.
B) Berdaches are sometimes married men.
C) Berdaches fill the wifely role when they marry.
D) Berdaches are used in the textbook as an example of one of the shortcomings of same-sex marriage.
E) Several Native American groups have berdaches.
39. What is endogamy?
A) It refers to the rules that dictate marriage outside a group to which a person belongs.
B) It is synonymous with cross cousin marriage.
C) It refers to the rules that dictate marriage within a group to which a person belongs.
D) It refers to forbidden sexual relations with a close relative.
E) It refers to the custom by which the children of two brothers or two sisters marry.
40. Which of the following statements about India's caste system is not true?
A) It is an extreme example of endogamy.
B) A man who has sex with a lower-caste woman cannot restore his ritual purity.
C) Occupational specialization often sets off one caste from another.
D) Contact with a member of the untouchable caste is considered defiling.
E) The castes are endogamous, but many are internally subdivided into exogamous lineages.
41. Which of the following statements about dowry is not true?
A) Dowry exists in more cultures than bridewealth does.
B) Dowry is the exchange of gifts from the bride and her kin to the groom and his kin.
C) Dowry tends to be practiced in societies with low female status.
D) A woman's dowry is supposed to compensate the groom's kin for the added burden of being responsible for the bride.
E) In India, women are sometimes murdered when the groom's family considers the dowry insufficient.
42. Which of the following statements about bridewealth is not true?
A) Bridewealth exists in more cultures than dowry does.
B) As the value of bridewealth increases, marriages become more stable.
C) The bridewealth compensates the bride's kin for the loss of her companionship and labor.
D) Bridewealth is the exchange of gifts from the bride and her kin to the groom's kin.
E) Bridewealth is sometimes called progeny price.
43.Which of the following statements about divorce is not true?
A) Divorce is more common in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies.
B) Divorce is more common in modern Western society than it was a century ago.
C) As the value of the dowry increases, the likelihood of divorce increases.
D) Divorces tend to increase after wars.
E) Divorces tend to decrease when times are bad economically.
44. Which of the following statements about polygyny is not true?
A) Even in societies where polygyny is practiced, most men are monogamous.
B) Polygyny can play an important role in the economic standing of a household, but it has little to do with political functions.
C) The custom of men marrying later in life than women promotes polygyny.
D) The number of wives is an indicator of a man's household productivity and social position.
E) Widows often make up a large number of the women involved in plural marriages.
45. Which of the following statements about polyandry is true?
A) Most polyandrous societies are found in Polynesia.
B) Polyandry is more common than polygyny.
C) Polyandry is often a cultural adaptation to female mobility associated with trade or military operations.
D) Polyandry reduces the amount of land fragmentation between generations by limiting the number of wives and heirs.
E) Polyandry increases the amount of land fragmentation between generations by increasing the number of wives and heirs.
Part II - True or False
1. Most people in North America belong to only one nuclear family during their lives.
A) True
B) False
2. Clans typically have more members and cover a larger area than lineages do.
A) True
B) False
3. A person's genitor is his or her socially recognized father.
A) True
B) False
4. Endogamy refers to the rules that dictate marriage within a group to which a person belongs.
A) True
B) False
5. Polygyny is the kind of plural marriage in which a man has more than one wife.
A) True
B) False
6. The San, Inuit, and Yanomami are all foragers.
A) True
B) False
7. Horticulture makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery.
A) True
B) False
8. With transhumance, the entire group – women, men, and children – moves with the animals throughout the year.
A) True
B) False
9. With market exchange, items are bought and sold, using money, with an eye to maximizing profit.
A) True
B) False
10. Negative reciprocity involves the attempt to get something for as little as possible.
A) True
B) False
11. Nefamese is an example of a pidgin language.
A) True
B) False
12. A smile is likely to have the same meaning cross-culturally.
A) True
B) False
13. Black English Vernacular (BEV) is best defined by its lack of rules and diversity when compared with Standard English.
A) True
B) False
14. A close relationship between two languages indicates that the speakers are closely related biologically.
A) True
B) False
15. Early experiments with teaching chimpanzees spoken language failed because researchers had not developed the proper techniques.
A) True
B) False
GOOD LUCK!!!!
email ur answers to wftorre07@gmail.com or if not submit a hard copy to my office by tuesday (march 10) afternoon at 5pm
A) agriculture
B) foraging
C) horticulture
D) pastoralism
E) reciprocity
2. Which of the following groups is an example of a foraging society?
A) Kwakiutl
B) Yanomami
C) Qashqai
D) Ifugao
E) Basseri
3. What is the basic social unit of foragers?
A) the tribe
B) the clan
C) lineage
D) the band
E) the totem
4. Which of the following factors of production does horticulture make intensive use of?
A) land
B) labor
C) capital
D) machinery
E) Horticulture does not make intensive use of any of the above
factors of production.
5. Which of the following is commonly found in both horticultural and nonindustrial agricultural societies?
A) irrigation
B) slash and burn techniques to clear land
C) terracing
D) use of domestic animals for transportation, cultivating
machines, and manure
E) None of the above are commonly found in both horticultural
and nonindustrial agricultural societies.
6. Horticulture is characterized by which of the following?
A) the use of terraces
B) the use of a fallow period
C) the use of domestic animals
D) irrigation systems
E) intensive cultivation
7
7. Agriculture is characterized by all of the following except:
A) the use of terraces.
B) irrigation systems.
C) the use of domestic animals.
D) the use of a fallow period.
E) intensive cultivation.
8.Which of the following is not an environmental effect of intensive agriculture?
A) deforestation
B) concentration of organic wastes
C) increased environmental diversity
D) increased environmental uniformity
E) All of the above are environmental effects of intensive
agriculture.
9.The mode of production refers to:
A) the way in which production is organized.
B) the major productive resources of an economy including the
land, labor, technology, and capital.
C) the rational allocation of scarce resources to alternative
ends.
D) the profit-oriented system principle of exchange in which
goods and services are bought and sold, and values are
determined by supply and demand.
E) the exchange between social equals.
10. The means of production refers to:
A) the way in which production is organized.
B) the rational allocation of scarce resources to alternative
ends.
C) the profit-oriented system principle of exchange in which
goods and services are bought and sold, and values are
determined by supply and demand.
D) the major productive resources of an economy including the
land, labor, technology, and capital.
E) the exchange between social equals.
11. What is a replacement fund?
A) the time and energy devoted to replacing the calories used during a person's daily activity*the time and energy devoted to maintaining items essential to production
B) the time and energy devoted to helping friends, relatives,
in-laws, and neighbors
C) the time and energy devoted to the performance of rituals the time and energy a person must render to a superior individual or agency for access to land
12. What is the market principle?
A) the movement of goods, services, and resources from the local level to a central administrative location, then back to the local level
B) the exchange of goods, services, and resources between social equals
C) the rational allocation of scarce means to alternative ends
D) the exchange of goods, services, and resources in a market-place
E) the use of money to buy and sell things at prices determined by supply and demand
13. With which kind of reciprocity is something given and nothing is expected in return?
A) negative reciprocity
B) generalized reciprocity
C) specialized reciprocity
D) balanced reciprocity
E) market reciprocity
14. Which of the following statements about negative reciprocity is not true?
A) Negative reciprocity usually involves dealing with people outside or on the fringes of your social system.
B) Silent trade is an example of negative reciprocity.
C) Stealing is an extreme form of negative reciprocity.
D) Negative reciprocity cannot be practiced by a society that already practices generalized reciprocity.
E) Negative reciprocity involves the attempt to get something for as little as possible.
15. With balanced reciprocity, a person:
A) tries to get something for as little as possible.
B) exchanges with people only within his or her nuclear family.
C) gives and expects something in return, which may not come immediately, but the giver will be upset if the person who received the gift does not reciprocate the exchange.
D) uses money to buy and sell goods and services.
E) tries to rationally allocate scarce means or resources to alternative ends.
16. All of the following is true about human language except that it:
A) permits the discussion of past and future.
B) is based on an arbitrary association between words and the things for which they stand.
C) is produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered.
D) relies almost totally on learning.
E) allows one to benefit from others’ experiences.
17. All of the following statements about call systems are true except that they:
A) consist of a limited number of sounds.
B) are made only in the presence of certain stimuli.
C) are used by chimpanzees.
D) permit discussion of the past.
E) are used by gorillas.
18. When the chimpanzee, Washoe, combined the signs for "water" and "bird" to denote a swan she saw, she was displaying:
A) displacement.
B) a call system.
C) a focal vocabulary.
D) productivity.
E) diglossia.
19. Which term refers to "the study of speech sounds and consideration of which soun ds are present and significant in a given language"?
A) phonology
B) morphology
C) phonetics
D) phonemics
E) kinesics
20. Which of the following is commonly used to communicate status differences in Madagascar?
A) bowing
B) falsetto voice
C) limp handshake
D) lowering one’s head
E) firm handshake
21. Which term refers to "the study of the significant sound contrasts of a given language"?
A) phonology
B) morphology
C) phonetics
D) phonemics
E) kinesics
22. What term refers to "a sound contrast that makes a difference to meaning "?
A) morpheme
B) lexicon
C) syntax
D) phoneme
E) kinesics
23. "Pit" and "bit" are two words in English differentiated by a single sound contrast between the /p/ and the /b/. This means that /p/ and /b/ are ________ in English.
A) morphemes
B) a lexicon
C) a syntax
D) phonemes
E) kinesics
24. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that:
A) the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways.
B) there are ten basic color terms which evolve in a set order.
C) the chimpanzees that are capable of ASL are more like trained circus animals and do not really show the capacity of language.
D) human brains contain a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.
E) gorillas have the capacity of speech, as demonstrated by the gorilla Koko.
25. Berlin and Kay's study, in which they determined that there are ten basic color terms that appear in languages in a consistent order, is an example of the study of:
A) morphology.
B) sociolinguistics.
C) phonetics.
D) focal vocabulary.
E) ethnosemantics.
26. The use of a falsetto voice by women in Japan is an example of:
A) diglossia.
B) a style shift.
C) ethnosemantics.
D) a call system.
E) kinesics.
27. According to the principle of linguistic relativity:
A) human brains contain a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis.
B) all languages are daughter languages of Proto-Indo-Europeans.
C) all dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.
D) the proper language is a strategic resource to its user.
E) all languages are equally valid for study by linguistic anthropologists.
28. According to the textbook, all of the following are true about Black English Vernacular except that it is:
A) systematic and rule-governed.
B) less capable of communication than Standard English.
C) a relatively uniform dialect spoken by the majority of black youth in most parts of the United States.
D) able to differentiate between past and present verbs.
E) related to the dialect of English commonly used in the southern United States.
29. Languages that have descended from the same language are called:
A) historical linguistics.
B) daughter languages.
C) protolanguages.
D) linguistic subgroups.
E) proto-Indo-European.
30. All of the following are true about communication via AIT Advanced Information Technology except:
A) cyberspeak is usually less formal than print.
B) communication via AIT will mostly be used to facilitate communication among affinity groups.
C) cyberspeak language is less precise and less fixed than in print.
D) class anonymity is fully possible in AIT communication.
E) access to AIT is disproportionately high among certain ages, ethnicities, nationalities, and incomes.
31. What is the term for the permanent social unit whose members claim a common ancestry?
A) descent group
B) ambilineal group
C) extended family
D) nuclear family
E) family of procreation
32. What is the term for the nuclear family that is formed when one marries and has children?
A) family of procreation
B) zadruga
C) family of orientation
D) tarawads
E) clan
33. All of the following are features of the Bosnian zadruga except:
A) the household is headed by a male household head and wife.
B) it is a form of kin organization known as a descent group.
C) each nuclear family has its own sleeping room.
D) the zadruga is composed of married sons and their wives and children and unmarried sons and daughters.
E) it is a patrilocal system.
34. Which of the following terms means that people get to choose which lineage to join?
A) matrilineal descent
B) ambilineal descent
C) unilineal descent
D) patrilineal descent
E) demonstrated descent
35. All of the following are true of a descent group that is organized as a clan except:
A) members claim connection to an apical ancestor.
B) members use stipulated descent.
C) the apical ancestor is often a totem.
D) members typically practice a pre-industrial farming agriculture.
E) members can recite the names of their forebears back to their apical ancestor..
36. Under which form of post-marital residence rules systems do couples move to the wife's community?
A) patrilocal
B) matrilocal
C) unilocal
D) generational
E) neolocal
37. According to Edmund Leach, marriage can accomplish all of the following, except:
A) give either or both spouse a monopoly in the other's sexuality.
B) establish an arbitrary and meaningless bond between both spouses and their families.
C) establish a socially significant relationship between spouses and their families.
D) establish the legal father of a woman's children and the legal mother of a man's children.
E) give either or both spouses rights over the other's property.
38. Which of the following statements about berdaches is not true?
A) Berdaches are biological males who have assumed many of the gender roles assigned to women.
B) Berdaches are sometimes married men.
C) Berdaches fill the wifely role when they marry.
D) Berdaches are used in the textbook as an example of one of the shortcomings of same-sex marriage.
E) Several Native American groups have berdaches.
39. What is endogamy?
A) It refers to the rules that dictate marriage outside a group to which a person belongs.
B) It is synonymous with cross cousin marriage.
C) It refers to the rules that dictate marriage within a group to which a person belongs.
D) It refers to forbidden sexual relations with a close relative.
E) It refers to the custom by which the children of two brothers or two sisters marry.
40. Which of the following statements about India's caste system is not true?
A) It is an extreme example of endogamy.
B) A man who has sex with a lower-caste woman cannot restore his ritual purity.
C) Occupational specialization often sets off one caste from another.
D) Contact with a member of the untouchable caste is considered defiling.
E) The castes are endogamous, but many are internally subdivided into exogamous lineages.
41. Which of the following statements about dowry is not true?
A) Dowry exists in more cultures than bridewealth does.
B) Dowry is the exchange of gifts from the bride and her kin to the groom and his kin.
C) Dowry tends to be practiced in societies with low female status.
D) A woman's dowry is supposed to compensate the groom's kin for the added burden of being responsible for the bride.
E) In India, women are sometimes murdered when the groom's family considers the dowry insufficient.
42. Which of the following statements about bridewealth is not true?
A) Bridewealth exists in more cultures than dowry does.
B) As the value of bridewealth increases, marriages become more stable.
C) The bridewealth compensates the bride's kin for the loss of her companionship and labor.
D) Bridewealth is the exchange of gifts from the bride and her kin to the groom's kin.
E) Bridewealth is sometimes called progeny price.
43.Which of the following statements about divorce is not true?
A) Divorce is more common in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies.
B) Divorce is more common in modern Western society than it was a century ago.
C) As the value of the dowry increases, the likelihood of divorce increases.
D) Divorces tend to increase after wars.
E) Divorces tend to decrease when times are bad economically.
44. Which of the following statements about polygyny is not true?
A) Even in societies where polygyny is practiced, most men are monogamous.
B) Polygyny can play an important role in the economic standing of a household, but it has little to do with political functions.
C) The custom of men marrying later in life than women promotes polygyny.
D) The number of wives is an indicator of a man's household productivity and social position.
E) Widows often make up a large number of the women involved in plural marriages.
45. Which of the following statements about polyandry is true?
A) Most polyandrous societies are found in Polynesia.
B) Polyandry is more common than polygyny.
C) Polyandry is often a cultural adaptation to female mobility associated with trade or military operations.
D) Polyandry reduces the amount of land fragmentation between generations by limiting the number of wives and heirs.
E) Polyandry increases the amount of land fragmentation between generations by increasing the number of wives and heirs.
Part II - True or False
1. Most people in North America belong to only one nuclear family during their lives.
A) True
B) False
2. Clans typically have more members and cover a larger area than lineages do.
A) True
B) False
3. A person's genitor is his or her socially recognized father.
A) True
B) False
4. Endogamy refers to the rules that dictate marriage within a group to which a person belongs.
A) True
B) False
5. Polygyny is the kind of plural marriage in which a man has more than one wife.
A) True
B) False
6. The San, Inuit, and Yanomami are all foragers.
A) True
B) False
7. Horticulture makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery.
A) True
B) False
8. With transhumance, the entire group – women, men, and children – moves with the animals throughout the year.
A) True
B) False
9. With market exchange, items are bought and sold, using money, with an eye to maximizing profit.
A) True
B) False
10. Negative reciprocity involves the attempt to get something for as little as possible.
A) True
B) False
11. Nefamese is an example of a pidgin language.
A) True
B) False
12. A smile is likely to have the same meaning cross-culturally.
A) True
B) False
13. Black English Vernacular (BEV) is best defined by its lack of rules and diversity when compared with Standard English.
A) True
B) False
14. A close relationship between two languages indicates that the speakers are closely related biologically.
A) True
B) False
15. Early experiments with teaching chimpanzees spoken language failed because researchers had not developed the proper techniques.
A) True
B) False
GOOD LUCK!!!!
email ur answers to wftorre07@gmail.com or if not submit a hard copy to my office by tuesday (march 10) afternoon at 5pm
Monday, March 2, 2009
New Assignment for Marriage Topic
New Assignment to be passed on March 9 or 10 (1 or 2 or any number of pages)
Marriage among the Hmong: Read Gary Yia Lee's article entitled "Household and Marriage in a Thai Highland Society" at
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~yeulee/Culture/hmong%20marriage.html
a. Who are the Hmong? Where do they live?
b. What are their ideal post-marital residence rules? How does this influence settlement pattern?
c. What is the courtship process among the Hmong?
d. With marriage among the Hmong, are gifts transferred from the bride's family to the groom's or from the groom's family to the bride's?
e. What are the characteristics of an ideal groom among the Hmong?
f. What is the relationship between kinship and potential marriage partners in Hmong society?
Marriage among the Hmong: Read Gary Yia Lee's article entitled "Household and Marriage in a Thai Highland Society" at
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~yeulee/Culture/hmong%20marriage.html
a. Who are the Hmong? Where do they live?
b. What are their ideal post-marital residence rules? How does this influence settlement pattern?
c. What is the courtship process among the Hmong?
d. With marriage among the Hmong, are gifts transferred from the bride's family to the groom's or from the groom's family to the bride's?
e. What are the characteristics of an ideal groom among the Hmong?
f. What is the relationship between kinship and potential marriage partners in Hmong society?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Marriage
I. Introduction
A. There is no single definition of marriage that is adequate to account for all of the diversity found in marriages cross-culturally.
B. Edmund Leach argued that there are several different kinds of rights allocated by marriage.
1. Marriage can establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal mother of a man’s.
2. Marriage can give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
3. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
4. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights over the other’s property.
5. Marriage can establish a joint fund of property—a partnership—for the benefit of the children.
6. Marriage can establish a socially significant relationship of affinity between spouses and their relatives.
Genitor - the biological father of the children
Pater -socially recognized father (foster father)
II. Same-Sex Marriage
A. In the section Kottak argues that same-sex marriages are legitimate unions between two individuals because like other kinds of marriage, same-sex marriage can allocate all of the rights discussed by Leach.
1. In the U.S., since same-sex marriage is illegal, same-sex couples are denied many of these rights (e.g. rights to the labor of the other, over the other’s property, relationships of affinity with the other’s relatives).
2. This does not mean that same-sex marriages like any other cultural construction is not capable of meeting these needs; only that in the U.S. laws prevent it from doing so.
B. There are many examples in which same-sex marriages are culturally sanctioned (e.g. the Nuer of Sudan, the Azande of Sudan and Congo, and the Igbo of Nigeria, Belgium and the Netherlands).
III. Incest and Exogamy
A. Exogamy is the practice of seeking a spouse outside one's own group.
1. This practice forces people to create and maintain a wide social network.
2. This wider social network nurtures, helps, and protects one's group during times of need.
B. Incest refers to sexual relations with a close relative.
1. The incest taboo is a cultural universal.
2. What constitutes incest varies widely from culture to culture.
C. In societies with unilineal descent systems (patrilineal or matrilineal), the incest taboo is often defined based on the distinction between two kinds of first cousins: parallel cousins and cross cousins.
1. A sexual relation with a parallel cousin is incestuous, because they belong to the same generation and the same descent group.
2. Sexual relations with a cross cousin is not incestuous because they belong to the opposite group or moiety.
D. Specific cultural examples are taken from the Yanomami, the Lakher, and middle class America.
IV. Explaining the Taboo
A. Instinctive Horror
1. This theory argues that Homo sapiens are genetically programmed to avoid incest.
2. This theory has been refuted.
a. However, cultural universality does not necessarily entail a genetic basis (e.g. fire making).
b. If people really were genetically programmed to avoid incest, a formal incest taboo would be unnecessary.
c. This theory cannot explain why in some societies people can marry their cross cousins but not their parallel cousins.
B. Biological Degeneration
1. This theory argues that the incest taboo developed in response to abnormal offspring born from incestuous unions.
2. A decline in fertility and survival does accompany brother-sister mating across several generations.
3. However, human marriage patterns are based on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal concerns about biological degeneration several generations in the future.
a. Neither instinctive horror nor biological degeneration can explain the very widespread custom of marrying cross cousins.
b. Also, fears about degeneration cannot explain why sexual unions between parallel cousins but not cross cousins is so often tabooed.
C. Attempt and Contempt
1. Malinowski (and Freud) argued that the incest taboo originated to direct sexual feelings away from one’s family to avoid disrupting the family structure and relations (familiarity increases the chances for attempt).
2. The opposite theory argues that people are less likely to be sexually attracted to those with whom they have grown up (familiarity breeds contempt).
D. Marry Out or Die Out
1. A more accepted argument is that the taboo originated to ensure exogamy.
a. Incest taboos forces people to create and maintain wide social networks by extending peaceful relations beyond one's immediate group.
b. With this theory, incest taboos are seen as an adaptively advantageous cultural construct.
2. This argument focuses on the adaptive social results of exogamy, such as alliance formation, not simply on the idea of biological degeneration.
3. Incest taboos also function to increase a group's genetic diversity.
V. Endogamy
A. Endogamy and exogamy may operate in a single society, but do not apply to the same social unit.
1. Endogamy can be seen as functioning to express and maintain social difference, particularly in stratified societies.
2. Homogamy is the practice of marrying someone similar to you in terms of background, social status, aspirations, and interests.
B. Caste
1. India’s caste system is an extreme example of endogamy.
2. It is argued that, although India’s varna and America’s “races” are historically distinct, they share a caste-like ideology of endogamy.
C. Royal Incest
1. Royal families in widely diverse cultures have engaged in what would be called incest, even in their own cultures.
2. Manifest function is the reason given for a custom by its natives.
3. Latent function is the effect a custom has, that is not explicitly recognized by the natives.
4. The manifest function of royal incest in Polynesia was the necessity of marriage partners having commensurate mana.
5. The latent function of Polynesian royal incest was that it maintained the ruling ideology.
6. The royal incest, generally, had a latent economic function: it consolidated royal wealth.
VI. Marriage as Group Alliance
A. Bridewealth
1. Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage partners represent an alliance of larger social units.
2. Bridewealth is a gift from the husband’s kin to the wife’s, which stabilizes the marriage by acting as an insurance against divorce.
3. Brideprice is rejected as an appropriate label, because the connotations of a sale are imposed; but progeny price is considered an equivalent term.
4. Dowry, much less common than bridewealth, correlates with low status for women.
5. Fertility is often considered essential to the stability of a marriage.
6. Polygyny may be practiced to ensure fertility.
B. In the News: Love and Marriage
1. Typically, anthropologists have overlooked romantic love as a factor in the interpersonal relationships of the people they study, but this has begun to change.
2. As motifs of romantic love have become more widespread, globally, it has come to play an increasingly important role in the selection of marriage partners, even to the extent of being a basis for resistance against arranged marriages, for example.
C. Durable alliances
1. The existence of customs such as the sororate and the levirate indicate the importance of marriage as an alliance between groups.
2. Sororate marriages involve the widower marrying one of his deceased wife’s sisters.
3. Levirate marriages involve the widow marrying one of her deceased husband’s brothers.
VII. Divorce
A. Divorce is found in many different societies.
1. Marriages that are political alliances between groups are harder to break up than marriages that are more individual affairs.
2. Payments of bridewealth also discourage divorce.
3. Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies as well as societies in which postmarital residence is matrilocal.
4. Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies as the woman may be less inclined to leave her children who as members of their father’s lineage would need to stay him.
B. In foraging societies forces act to both promote and discourage divorce.
1. Promote divorce:
a. Since foragers lack descent groups, marriages tend to be individual affairs with little importance placed on the political alliances.
b. Foragers also have very few material possessions.
2. Discourage divorce:
a. The family unit is the basic unit of society and division of labor is based on gender.
b. The sparse population means that there are few alternative spouses if you divorce.
C. Divorce in the U.S.
1. The U.S. has one of the world’s highest divorce rates.
2. The U.S. has a very large percentage of gainfully employed women.
3. Americans value independence.
VIII. Plural Marriages (Polygamy)
A. Polygamy is illegal in North America, but North Americans do practice serial monogamy, through multiple marriages and divorces.
B. Polygyny (a man has more than one wife)
1. Even in cultures that approve of polygamy, monogamy still tends to be the norm, largely because most populations tend to have equal sex ratios.
2. Polygyny is more common than polyandry because, where sex ratios are not equal, there tend to be more women than men.
3. Multiple wives tend also to be associated with wealth and prestige (the Kanuri of Nigeria and the Betsileo of Madagascar are used as examples).
C. Polyandry (a woman has more than one husband)
1. Polyandry is quite rare, being practiced almost exclusively in South Asia.
2. Among the Paharis of India, polyandry was associated with a relatively low female population, which was itself due to covert female infanticide.
3. Polyandry is usually practiced in response to specific circumstances, and in conjunction with other marriage formats.
4. In other cultures, polyandry resulted from the fact that men traveled a great deal, thus multiple husbands ensured the presence of a man in the home.
A. There is no single definition of marriage that is adequate to account for all of the diversity found in marriages cross-culturally.
B. Edmund Leach argued that there are several different kinds of rights allocated by marriage.
1. Marriage can establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal mother of a man’s.
2. Marriage can give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
3. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
4. Marriage can give either of both spouses rights over the other’s property.
5. Marriage can establish a joint fund of property—a partnership—for the benefit of the children.
6. Marriage can establish a socially significant relationship of affinity between spouses and their relatives.
Genitor - the biological father of the children
Pater -socially recognized father (foster father)
II. Same-Sex Marriage
A. In the section Kottak argues that same-sex marriages are legitimate unions between two individuals because like other kinds of marriage, same-sex marriage can allocate all of the rights discussed by Leach.
1. In the U.S., since same-sex marriage is illegal, same-sex couples are denied many of these rights (e.g. rights to the labor of the other, over the other’s property, relationships of affinity with the other’s relatives).
2. This does not mean that same-sex marriages like any other cultural construction is not capable of meeting these needs; only that in the U.S. laws prevent it from doing so.
B. There are many examples in which same-sex marriages are culturally sanctioned (e.g. the Nuer of Sudan, the Azande of Sudan and Congo, and the Igbo of Nigeria, Belgium and the Netherlands).
III. Incest and Exogamy
A. Exogamy is the practice of seeking a spouse outside one's own group.
1. This practice forces people to create and maintain a wide social network.
2. This wider social network nurtures, helps, and protects one's group during times of need.
B. Incest refers to sexual relations with a close relative.
1. The incest taboo is a cultural universal.
2. What constitutes incest varies widely from culture to culture.
C. In societies with unilineal descent systems (patrilineal or matrilineal), the incest taboo is often defined based on the distinction between two kinds of first cousins: parallel cousins and cross cousins.
1. A sexual relation with a parallel cousin is incestuous, because they belong to the same generation and the same descent group.
2. Sexual relations with a cross cousin is not incestuous because they belong to the opposite group or moiety.
D. Specific cultural examples are taken from the Yanomami, the Lakher, and middle class America.
IV. Explaining the Taboo
A. Instinctive Horror
1. This theory argues that Homo sapiens are genetically programmed to avoid incest.
2. This theory has been refuted.
a. However, cultural universality does not necessarily entail a genetic basis (e.g. fire making).
b. If people really were genetically programmed to avoid incest, a formal incest taboo would be unnecessary.
c. This theory cannot explain why in some societies people can marry their cross cousins but not their parallel cousins.
B. Biological Degeneration
1. This theory argues that the incest taboo developed in response to abnormal offspring born from incestuous unions.
2. A decline in fertility and survival does accompany brother-sister mating across several generations.
3. However, human marriage patterns are based on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal concerns about biological degeneration several generations in the future.
a. Neither instinctive horror nor biological degeneration can explain the very widespread custom of marrying cross cousins.
b. Also, fears about degeneration cannot explain why sexual unions between parallel cousins but not cross cousins is so often tabooed.
C. Attempt and Contempt
1. Malinowski (and Freud) argued that the incest taboo originated to direct sexual feelings away from one’s family to avoid disrupting the family structure and relations (familiarity increases the chances for attempt).
2. The opposite theory argues that people are less likely to be sexually attracted to those with whom they have grown up (familiarity breeds contempt).
D. Marry Out or Die Out
1. A more accepted argument is that the taboo originated to ensure exogamy.
a. Incest taboos forces people to create and maintain wide social networks by extending peaceful relations beyond one's immediate group.
b. With this theory, incest taboos are seen as an adaptively advantageous cultural construct.
2. This argument focuses on the adaptive social results of exogamy, such as alliance formation, not simply on the idea of biological degeneration.
3. Incest taboos also function to increase a group's genetic diversity.
V. Endogamy
A. Endogamy and exogamy may operate in a single society, but do not apply to the same social unit.
1. Endogamy can be seen as functioning to express and maintain social difference, particularly in stratified societies.
2. Homogamy is the practice of marrying someone similar to you in terms of background, social status, aspirations, and interests.
B. Caste
1. India’s caste system is an extreme example of endogamy.
2. It is argued that, although India’s varna and America’s “races” are historically distinct, they share a caste-like ideology of endogamy.
C. Royal Incest
1. Royal families in widely diverse cultures have engaged in what would be called incest, even in their own cultures.
2. Manifest function is the reason given for a custom by its natives.
3. Latent function is the effect a custom has, that is not explicitly recognized by the natives.
4. The manifest function of royal incest in Polynesia was the necessity of marriage partners having commensurate mana.
5. The latent function of Polynesian royal incest was that it maintained the ruling ideology.
6. The royal incest, generally, had a latent economic function: it consolidated royal wealth.
VI. Marriage as Group Alliance
A. Bridewealth
1. Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage partners represent an alliance of larger social units.
2. Bridewealth is a gift from the husband’s kin to the wife’s, which stabilizes the marriage by acting as an insurance against divorce.
3. Brideprice is rejected as an appropriate label, because the connotations of a sale are imposed; but progeny price is considered an equivalent term.
4. Dowry, much less common than bridewealth, correlates with low status for women.
5. Fertility is often considered essential to the stability of a marriage.
6. Polygyny may be practiced to ensure fertility.
B. In the News: Love and Marriage
1. Typically, anthropologists have overlooked romantic love as a factor in the interpersonal relationships of the people they study, but this has begun to change.
2. As motifs of romantic love have become more widespread, globally, it has come to play an increasingly important role in the selection of marriage partners, even to the extent of being a basis for resistance against arranged marriages, for example.
C. Durable alliances
1. The existence of customs such as the sororate and the levirate indicate the importance of marriage as an alliance between groups.
2. Sororate marriages involve the widower marrying one of his deceased wife’s sisters.
3. Levirate marriages involve the widow marrying one of her deceased husband’s brothers.
VII. Divorce
A. Divorce is found in many different societies.
1. Marriages that are political alliances between groups are harder to break up than marriages that are more individual affairs.
2. Payments of bridewealth also discourage divorce.
3. Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies as well as societies in which postmarital residence is matrilocal.
4. Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies as the woman may be less inclined to leave her children who as members of their father’s lineage would need to stay him.
B. In foraging societies forces act to both promote and discourage divorce.
1. Promote divorce:
a. Since foragers lack descent groups, marriages tend to be individual affairs with little importance placed on the political alliances.
b. Foragers also have very few material possessions.
2. Discourage divorce:
a. The family unit is the basic unit of society and division of labor is based on gender.
b. The sparse population means that there are few alternative spouses if you divorce.
C. Divorce in the U.S.
1. The U.S. has one of the world’s highest divorce rates.
2. The U.S. has a very large percentage of gainfully employed women.
3. Americans value independence.
VIII. Plural Marriages (Polygamy)
A. Polygamy is illegal in North America, but North Americans do practice serial monogamy, through multiple marriages and divorces.
B. Polygyny (a man has more than one wife)
1. Even in cultures that approve of polygamy, monogamy still tends to be the norm, largely because most populations tend to have equal sex ratios.
2. Polygyny is more common than polyandry because, where sex ratios are not equal, there tend to be more women than men.
3. Multiple wives tend also to be associated with wealth and prestige (the Kanuri of Nigeria and the Betsileo of Madagascar are used as examples).
C. Polyandry (a woman has more than one husband)
1. Polyandry is quite rare, being practiced almost exclusively in South Asia.
2. Among the Paharis of India, polyandry was associated with a relatively low female population, which was itself due to covert female infanticide.
3. Polyandry is usually practiced in response to specific circumstances, and in conjunction with other marriage formats.
4. In other cultures, polyandry resulted from the fact that men traveled a great deal, thus multiple husbands ensured the presence of a man in the home.
Families, Kinship, Descent
I. Families
A. Nuclear and Extended Families
1. The nuclear family consists of a married couple and their children.
2. The nuclear family is ego-centered, and impermanent, while descent groups are permanent (lasting beyond the life-spans of individual constituents) and reckoned according to a single ancestor.
3. One’s family of orientation is the family in which one is born and grows up, while one’s family of procreation is formed when one marries and has children.
4. Claims made for the universality of the nuclear family, based upon the universality of marriage, do not hold up--the nuclear family is widespread, but not universal.
5. In societies where the nuclear family is important, this structure acts as a primary arena for sexual, reproductive, economic, and enculturative functions, but it is not the only structure used by societies for these (e.g., the Etoro, Nayar, Betsileo, etc.).
6. In many societies, the extended families are the primary unit of social organization.
a. Among the Muslims of western Bosnia, nuclear families are embedded within large extended families called zadrugas headed by a male household head and his wife.
b. The Nayars are a matrilineal society in which extended families live in compounds called tarawads headed by a senior woman.
B. Industrialism and Family Organization
1. The most prevalent residence pattern in the United States is families of procreation living neolocally.
2. In the U.S., as in other large, industrialized societies, patterns of residence and family types may change from class to class, in response to the conditions of these different contexts (e.g., extended families as a response to poverty).
C. Changes in North American Kinship
1. In 1995, 25 percent of American households were inhabited by nuclear families.
2. Increasing representation of women in the work force is associated with a rise in marriage age.
3. The divorce rate rose steeply between 1970 and 1994.
4. The media is reflecting an intensifying change.
5. Comparatively, Americans (especially the middle class) identify a smaller range of kindred than members of nonindustrial societies.
6. A comparison between American and Brazilian kinship is made.
D. The Family among Foragers
1. The two basic units of social organization among foragers are the nuclear family and the band.
2. Typically, the band exists only seasonally, breaking up into nuclear families when subsistence means require.
II. Descent
A. Descent Groups
1. A descent group is a permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry.
2. With matrilineal descent individuals automatically join the mother’s descent group when they are born (see figure 15.1).
3. With patrilineal descent individuals automatically join the father’s descent group when they are born (see figure 15.2).
4. Matrilineal and patrilineal descent are types of unilineal descent in which individuals only recognize one line of descent.
5. A lineage is a descent group who can demonstrate their common descent from an apical ancestor.
6. A clan is a descent group who claims common descent from an apical ancestor but cannot demonstrate it (stipulated descent).
7. When a clan’s apical ancestor is nonhuman, it is called a totem.
B. Interesting Issues: Brady Bunch Nirvana
1. The 1960's television program The Brady Bunch focused on a blended family.
2. The great familiarity introductory anthropology course students have with the characters of this program is contrasted with the lack of familiarity the same students have for the members of their own extended families.
3. Some reference to the role television plays in transmitting and shaping American culture is made.
C. Lineages, Clans, and Residence Rules
1. In tribal societies, the descent group, not the nuclear family, is the fundamental unit.
2. In many societies, descent groups are corporate, sharing resources and property.
3. Unilocal Residence
a. Patrilocality—married couple lives with husband's family; associated with patrilineal descent and is more common than matrilocality.
b. Matrilocality—married couple lives with wife's family; associated with matrilineal descent and is less than patrilocaility.
D. Ambilineal Descent
1. People can choose the descent group that they want to belong to.
2. Membership is fluid as people can change their descent group membership.
3. With unilineal descent, membership is ascribed, but for ambilineal descent, membership is achieved.
III. Kinship Calculation
A. Kinship calculation is any systemic method for reckoning kin relations.
B. Genealogical Kin Types and Kin Terms (see figure 15.3)
1. Kin terms are the labels given in a particular culture to different kinds of relatives.
2. Biological kin type refers to the degree of actual genealogical relatedness.
C. Bilateral Kinship
1. Used by most Americans and Canadians
2. Kinship is traced through both male and female lines.
3. Kin links through males and females are perceived as being similar or equivalent.
4. In North American bilateral kinship there is often matrilineal skewing, a preference for relatives on the mother's side.
IV. Kinship Terminology
A. Kinship terminologies are native taxonomies (emic), not developed by anthropologists.
B. Lineal terminology: most Americans and Canadians use lineal terminology, which distinguishes lineal, collateral, and affinal relatives (figure 15.4 and figure 15.5).
C. Bifurcate merging terminology: this is the most common, associated with unilineal descent and unilocal residence (figure 15.6).
D. Generational terminology: typical of ambilineal societies, this calls ascending, same sex relatives by the same names (figure 15.7).
E. Bifurcate collateral terminology: common to North Africa and the Middle East, this is the most particular system (figure 15.8).
A. Nuclear and Extended Families
1. The nuclear family consists of a married couple and their children.
2. The nuclear family is ego-centered, and impermanent, while descent groups are permanent (lasting beyond the life-spans of individual constituents) and reckoned according to a single ancestor.
3. One’s family of orientation is the family in which one is born and grows up, while one’s family of procreation is formed when one marries and has children.
4. Claims made for the universality of the nuclear family, based upon the universality of marriage, do not hold up--the nuclear family is widespread, but not universal.
5. In societies where the nuclear family is important, this structure acts as a primary arena for sexual, reproductive, economic, and enculturative functions, but it is not the only structure used by societies for these (e.g., the Etoro, Nayar, Betsileo, etc.).
6. In many societies, the extended families are the primary unit of social organization.
a. Among the Muslims of western Bosnia, nuclear families are embedded within large extended families called zadrugas headed by a male household head and his wife.
b. The Nayars are a matrilineal society in which extended families live in compounds called tarawads headed by a senior woman.
B. Industrialism and Family Organization
1. The most prevalent residence pattern in the United States is families of procreation living neolocally.
2. In the U.S., as in other large, industrialized societies, patterns of residence and family types may change from class to class, in response to the conditions of these different contexts (e.g., extended families as a response to poverty).
C. Changes in North American Kinship
1. In 1995, 25 percent of American households were inhabited by nuclear families.
2. Increasing representation of women in the work force is associated with a rise in marriage age.
3. The divorce rate rose steeply between 1970 and 1994.
4. The media is reflecting an intensifying change.
5. Comparatively, Americans (especially the middle class) identify a smaller range of kindred than members of nonindustrial societies.
6. A comparison between American and Brazilian kinship is made.
D. The Family among Foragers
1. The two basic units of social organization among foragers are the nuclear family and the band.
2. Typically, the band exists only seasonally, breaking up into nuclear families when subsistence means require.
II. Descent
A. Descent Groups
1. A descent group is a permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry.
2. With matrilineal descent individuals automatically join the mother’s descent group when they are born (see figure 15.1).
3. With patrilineal descent individuals automatically join the father’s descent group when they are born (see figure 15.2).
4. Matrilineal and patrilineal descent are types of unilineal descent in which individuals only recognize one line of descent.
5. A lineage is a descent group who can demonstrate their common descent from an apical ancestor.
6. A clan is a descent group who claims common descent from an apical ancestor but cannot demonstrate it (stipulated descent).
7. When a clan’s apical ancestor is nonhuman, it is called a totem.
B. Interesting Issues: Brady Bunch Nirvana
1. The 1960's television program The Brady Bunch focused on a blended family.
2. The great familiarity introductory anthropology course students have with the characters of this program is contrasted with the lack of familiarity the same students have for the members of their own extended families.
3. Some reference to the role television plays in transmitting and shaping American culture is made.
C. Lineages, Clans, and Residence Rules
1. In tribal societies, the descent group, not the nuclear family, is the fundamental unit.
2. In many societies, descent groups are corporate, sharing resources and property.
3. Unilocal Residence
a. Patrilocality—married couple lives with husband's family; associated with patrilineal descent and is more common than matrilocality.
b. Matrilocality—married couple lives with wife's family; associated with matrilineal descent and is less than patrilocaility.
D. Ambilineal Descent
1. People can choose the descent group that they want to belong to.
2. Membership is fluid as people can change their descent group membership.
3. With unilineal descent, membership is ascribed, but for ambilineal descent, membership is achieved.
III. Kinship Calculation
A. Kinship calculation is any systemic method for reckoning kin relations.
B. Genealogical Kin Types and Kin Terms (see figure 15.3)
1. Kin terms are the labels given in a particular culture to different kinds of relatives.
2. Biological kin type refers to the degree of actual genealogical relatedness.
C. Bilateral Kinship
1. Used by most Americans and Canadians
2. Kinship is traced through both male and female lines.
3. Kin links through males and females are perceived as being similar or equivalent.
4. In North American bilateral kinship there is often matrilineal skewing, a preference for relatives on the mother's side.
IV. Kinship Terminology
A. Kinship terminologies are native taxonomies (emic), not developed by anthropologists.
B. Lineal terminology: most Americans and Canadians use lineal terminology, which distinguishes lineal, collateral, and affinal relatives (figure 15.4 and figure 15.5).
C. Bifurcate merging terminology: this is the most common, associated with unilineal descent and unilocal residence (figure 15.6).
D. Generational terminology: typical of ambilineal societies, this calls ascending, same sex relatives by the same names (figure 15.7).
E. Bifurcate collateral terminology: common to North Africa and the Middle East, this is the most particular system (figure 15.8).
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Assignments for BSHRM Sections B, D and F
Part II- In one whole sheet of paper, answer the following questions based on the website cited below:
New Guinea Feast: Read the page by Oliver Kortendick entitled "A village, and anthropologist, two goats and a meal…" at
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/Oliver/hoploi/hop1.html
a. Why was the feast being held?
b. What kind of food was eaten at the feast? What are some typical foods eaten by the people of Hoploi?
c. Who had the original idea for the feast? Who performed what tasks in obtaining and preparing the food? Who then participated in the feast?
d. How does the Hoploi feast compare to celebrations you have participated in?
Part I - In clean sheets of paper, answer the following
Samburu Pastoralists: Read the article about the Samburu at http://africa.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp/e/about1/samburu.html.
a. Who are the Samburu? Where do they live?
b. What role do cattle play in Samburu subsistence? What role do cattle play in Samburu society?
c. How has contact with the outside world changed Samburu society?
d. How are cattle central to Samburu culture? Is there something similar that is central to your own culture?
New Guinea Feast: Read the page by Oliver Kortendick entitled "A village, and anthropologist, two goats and a meal…" at
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/Oliver/hoploi/hop1.html
a. Why was the feast being held?
b. What kind of food was eaten at the feast? What are some typical foods eaten by the people of Hoploi?
c. Who had the original idea for the feast? Who performed what tasks in obtaining and preparing the food? Who then participated in the feast?
d. How does the Hoploi feast compare to celebrations you have participated in?
Part I - In clean sheets of paper, answer the following
Samburu Pastoralists: Read the article about the Samburu at http://africa.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp/e/about1/samburu.html.
a. Who are the Samburu? Where do they live?
b. What role do cattle play in Samburu subsistence? What role do cattle play in Samburu society?
c. How has contact with the outside world changed Samburu society?
d. How are cattle central to Samburu culture? Is there something similar that is central to your own culture?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
MAKING A LIVING
I. Adaptive Strategies
A. Yehudi Cohen used the term adaptive strategy to describe a group’s system of economic production.
B. Cohen has developed a typology of cultures using this distinction, referring to a relationship between economies and social features, arguing that the most important reason for similarities between unrelated cultures is their possession of a similar adaptive strategy.
II. Foraging
A. Human groups with foraging economies are not ecologically dominant.
B. The primary reason for the continuing survival of foraging economies is the inapplicability of their environmental settings to food production.
C. Correlates of Foraging
1. Band organization is typical of foraging societies, because its flexibility allows for seasonal adjustments.
2. Members of foraging societies typically are socially mobile, having the ability to affiliate with more than one group during their lifetimes (e.g., through fictive kinship).
3. The typical foraging society gender-based division of labor has women gathering and men hunting and fishing, with gathering contributing more to the group diet.
4. All foraging societies distinguish among their members according to age and gender, but are relatively egalitarian (making only minor distinctions in status) compared to other societal types.
III. Cultivation
A. Horticulture
1. Horticulture is nonintensive plant cultivation, based on the use of simple tools and cyclical, noncontinuous use crop lands.
2. Slash-and-burn cultivation and shifting cultivation are alternative labels for horticulture.
B. Agriculture
1. Agriculture is cultivation involving continuous use of crop land and is more labor-intensive (due to the ancillary needs generated by farm animals and crop land formation) than horticulture.
2. Domesticated animals are commonly used in agriculture, mainly to ease labor and provide manure.
3. Irrigation is one of the agricultural techniques that frees cultivation from seasonal domination.
4. Terracing is an agricultural technique which renders land otherwise too steep for most forms of cultivation (particularly irrigated cultivation) susceptible to agriculture (e.g., the Ifugao of Central Luzon, in the Philippines).
5. The Costs and Benefits of Agriculture.
a. Agriculture is far more labor-intensive and capital-intensive than horticulture, but does not necessarily yield more than horticulture (under ideal conditions) does.
b. Agriculture’s long-term production (per area) is far more stable than horticulture’s.
C. The Cultivation Continuum
1. In reality, nonindustrial economies do not always fit cleanly into the distinct categories given above, thus it is useful to think in terms of a cultivation continuum.
2. Sectorial fallowing: a plot of land may be planted two to three years before shifting (as with the Kuikuru, South American manioc horticulturalists), then allowed to lie fallow for a period of years.
3. A baseline distinction between agriculture and horticulture is that horticulture requires regular fallowing (the length of which varies), whereas agriculture does not.
D. Intensification: People and the Environment
1. Agriculture, by turning humans into ecological dominants, allows human populations to move into (and transform) a much wider range of environments than was possible prior to the development of cultivation.
2. Intensified food production is associated with sedentism and rapid population increase.
3. Most agriculturalists live in states because agricultural economies require regulatory mechanisms.
IV. Pastoralism
A. Pastoral economies are based upon domesticated herd animals, but members of such economies may get agricultural produce through trade or their own subsidiary cultivation.
B. Patterns of Pastoralism
1. Pastoral nomadism: all members of the pastoral society follow the herd throughout the year.
2. Transhumance or agro-pastoralism: part of the society follows the herd, while the other part maintains a home village (this is usually associated with some cultivation by the pastoralists).
V. Modes of Production
A. Economic anthropology studies economics in a comparative perspective.
1. An economy is a study of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.
2. Mode of production is defined as a way of organizing production--a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.
3. Similarity of adaptive strategies between societies tends to correspond with similarity of mode of production: variations occur according to environmental particularities.
B. Production in Nonindustrial Populations
1. All societies divide labor according to gender and age, but the nature of these divisions varies greatly from society to society.
2. Valuation of the kinds of work ascribed to different groups varies, as well.
3. Examples are taken from the Betsileo, of Madagascar.
C. Means of Production
1. Means of production include land, labor, technology, and capital.
2. Land: the importance of land varies according to method of production — land is less important to a foraging economy than it is to a cultivating economy.
3. Labor, tools, and specialization: nonindustrial economies are usually but not always characterized by more cooperation and less specialized labor than is found in industrial societies.
D. Alienation in Industrial Economies
1. By definition, a worker is alienated from the product of her or his work when the product is sold, with the profit going to an employer, while the worker is paid a wage.
2. A consequence of alienation is that a worker has less personal investment in the product, in contrast to the more intimate relationship existing between worker and product in nonindustrial societies.
3. Alienation may generalize to encompass not only worker-product relations, but coworker relations, as well.
VI. Economizing and Maximization
A. Classical economic theory assumed that individuals universally acted rationally, by economizing to maximize profits, but comparative data shows that people frequently respond to other motivations than profit.
B. Alternative Ends
1. People devote their time, resources, and energy to five broad categories of ends: subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial, and rent.
2. Subsistence fund: work is done to replace calories lost through life activities.
3. Replacement fund: work is expended maintaining the technology necessary for life (broadly defined).
4. Social fund: work is expended to establish and maintain social ties.
5. Ceremonial fund: work is expended to fulfill ritual obligations.
6. Rent fund: work is expended to satisfy the obligations owed (or inflicted by) political or economic superiors.
7. Peasants have rent fund obligations.
C. Interesting Issues: Scarcity and the Betsileo
1. Kottak describes some of his fieldwork experiences on Madagascar, particularly in the Betsileo village of Ivato, which was a principal research site and where he made many friends.
2. The process of interviewing and sharing wine and cigarettes with his friends generated comparative comments from them regarding their perceptions of American wealth and which also revealed the sense that Ivatans felt they had all they needed.
3. Kottak uses these experiences as evidence to support the argument that the profit motive is culturally specific, being attached to Western-style consumerism.
VII. Distribution, Exchange
A. The Market Principle
1. The market principle occurs when exchange rates and organization are governed by an arbitrary money standard.
2. Price is set by the law of supply and demand.
3. The market principle is common to industrial societies.
B. Redistribution
1. Redistribution is the typical mode of exchange in chiefdoms and some nonindustrial states.
2. In a redistributive system, product moves from the local level to the hierarchical center, where it is reorganized, and a proportion is sent back down to the local level.
C. Reciprocity
1. Reciprocity is exchange between social equals and occurs in three degrees: generalized, balanced, and negative.
2. Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely related exchange partners and involves giving with no specific expectation of exchange, but with a reliance upon similar opportunities being available to the giver (prevalent among foragers).
3. Balanced reciprocity involves more distantly related partners and involves giving with the expectation of equivalent (but not necessarily immediate) exchange (common in tribal societies and has serious ramifications for the relationship of trading partners).
4. Negative reciprocity involves very distant trading partners and is characterized by each partner attempting to maximize profit and an expectation of immediate exchange (e.g., market economies, silent barter between Mbuti foragers and horticulturalist neighbors).
D. Coexistence of Exchange Principles
1. Most economies are not exclusively characterized by a single mode of reciprocity.
2. The United States economy has all three types of reciprocity.
VIII. Potlatching
A. Potlatches, as once practiced by Northwest Coast Native American groups, are a widely studied ritual in which sponsors (helped by their entourages) gave away resources and manufactured wealth while generating prestige for themselves.
B. Potlatching tribes (such as Kwakiutl and Salish peoples) were foragers but lived in sedentary villages and had chiefs--this political complexity is attributed to the overall richness of their environment.
C. Dramatic depopulation resulting from postcontact diseases and the influx of new trade goods dramatically affected the nature of potlatches, which began to extended to the entire population.
D. The result of the new surplus, cultural trauma, and the competition caused by wider inclusion was that prestige was created by the destruction of wealth, rather than the redistribution of it
E. Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful displays generated by culturally induced mania for prestige, but Kottak argues that customs like the potlatch are adaptive, allowing adjustment for alternating periods of local abundance and shortage.
F. The Northwest Coast tribes were unusual in that they were foraging populations living in a rich, nonmarginal environmental setting.
A. Yehudi Cohen used the term adaptive strategy to describe a group’s system of economic production.
B. Cohen has developed a typology of cultures using this distinction, referring to a relationship between economies and social features, arguing that the most important reason for similarities between unrelated cultures is their possession of a similar adaptive strategy.
II. Foraging
A. Human groups with foraging economies are not ecologically dominant.
B. The primary reason for the continuing survival of foraging economies is the inapplicability of their environmental settings to food production.
C. Correlates of Foraging
1. Band organization is typical of foraging societies, because its flexibility allows for seasonal adjustments.
2. Members of foraging societies typically are socially mobile, having the ability to affiliate with more than one group during their lifetimes (e.g., through fictive kinship).
3. The typical foraging society gender-based division of labor has women gathering and men hunting and fishing, with gathering contributing more to the group diet.
4. All foraging societies distinguish among their members according to age and gender, but are relatively egalitarian (making only minor distinctions in status) compared to other societal types.
III. Cultivation
A. Horticulture
1. Horticulture is nonintensive plant cultivation, based on the use of simple tools and cyclical, noncontinuous use crop lands.
2. Slash-and-burn cultivation and shifting cultivation are alternative labels for horticulture.
B. Agriculture
1. Agriculture is cultivation involving continuous use of crop land and is more labor-intensive (due to the ancillary needs generated by farm animals and crop land formation) than horticulture.
2. Domesticated animals are commonly used in agriculture, mainly to ease labor and provide manure.
3. Irrigation is one of the agricultural techniques that frees cultivation from seasonal domination.
4. Terracing is an agricultural technique which renders land otherwise too steep for most forms of cultivation (particularly irrigated cultivation) susceptible to agriculture (e.g., the Ifugao of Central Luzon, in the Philippines).
5. The Costs and Benefits of Agriculture.
a. Agriculture is far more labor-intensive and capital-intensive than horticulture, but does not necessarily yield more than horticulture (under ideal conditions) does.
b. Agriculture’s long-term production (per area) is far more stable than horticulture’s.
C. The Cultivation Continuum
1. In reality, nonindustrial economies do not always fit cleanly into the distinct categories given above, thus it is useful to think in terms of a cultivation continuum.
2. Sectorial fallowing: a plot of land may be planted two to three years before shifting (as with the Kuikuru, South American manioc horticulturalists), then allowed to lie fallow for a period of years.
3. A baseline distinction between agriculture and horticulture is that horticulture requires regular fallowing (the length of which varies), whereas agriculture does not.
D. Intensification: People and the Environment
1. Agriculture, by turning humans into ecological dominants, allows human populations to move into (and transform) a much wider range of environments than was possible prior to the development of cultivation.
2. Intensified food production is associated with sedentism and rapid population increase.
3. Most agriculturalists live in states because agricultural economies require regulatory mechanisms.
IV. Pastoralism
A. Pastoral economies are based upon domesticated herd animals, but members of such economies may get agricultural produce through trade or their own subsidiary cultivation.
B. Patterns of Pastoralism
1. Pastoral nomadism: all members of the pastoral society follow the herd throughout the year.
2. Transhumance or agro-pastoralism: part of the society follows the herd, while the other part maintains a home village (this is usually associated with some cultivation by the pastoralists).
V. Modes of Production
A. Economic anthropology studies economics in a comparative perspective.
1. An economy is a study of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.
2. Mode of production is defined as a way of organizing production--a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.
3. Similarity of adaptive strategies between societies tends to correspond with similarity of mode of production: variations occur according to environmental particularities.
B. Production in Nonindustrial Populations
1. All societies divide labor according to gender and age, but the nature of these divisions varies greatly from society to society.
2. Valuation of the kinds of work ascribed to different groups varies, as well.
3. Examples are taken from the Betsileo, of Madagascar.
C. Means of Production
1. Means of production include land, labor, technology, and capital.
2. Land: the importance of land varies according to method of production — land is less important to a foraging economy than it is to a cultivating economy.
3. Labor, tools, and specialization: nonindustrial economies are usually but not always characterized by more cooperation and less specialized labor than is found in industrial societies.
D. Alienation in Industrial Economies
1. By definition, a worker is alienated from the product of her or his work when the product is sold, with the profit going to an employer, while the worker is paid a wage.
2. A consequence of alienation is that a worker has less personal investment in the product, in contrast to the more intimate relationship existing between worker and product in nonindustrial societies.
3. Alienation may generalize to encompass not only worker-product relations, but coworker relations, as well.
VI. Economizing and Maximization
A. Classical economic theory assumed that individuals universally acted rationally, by economizing to maximize profits, but comparative data shows that people frequently respond to other motivations than profit.
B. Alternative Ends
1. People devote their time, resources, and energy to five broad categories of ends: subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial, and rent.
2. Subsistence fund: work is done to replace calories lost through life activities.
3. Replacement fund: work is expended maintaining the technology necessary for life (broadly defined).
4. Social fund: work is expended to establish and maintain social ties.
5. Ceremonial fund: work is expended to fulfill ritual obligations.
6. Rent fund: work is expended to satisfy the obligations owed (or inflicted by) political or economic superiors.
7. Peasants have rent fund obligations.
C. Interesting Issues: Scarcity and the Betsileo
1. Kottak describes some of his fieldwork experiences on Madagascar, particularly in the Betsileo village of Ivato, which was a principal research site and where he made many friends.
2. The process of interviewing and sharing wine and cigarettes with his friends generated comparative comments from them regarding their perceptions of American wealth and which also revealed the sense that Ivatans felt they had all they needed.
3. Kottak uses these experiences as evidence to support the argument that the profit motive is culturally specific, being attached to Western-style consumerism.
VII. Distribution, Exchange
A. The Market Principle
1. The market principle occurs when exchange rates and organization are governed by an arbitrary money standard.
2. Price is set by the law of supply and demand.
3. The market principle is common to industrial societies.
B. Redistribution
1. Redistribution is the typical mode of exchange in chiefdoms and some nonindustrial states.
2. In a redistributive system, product moves from the local level to the hierarchical center, where it is reorganized, and a proportion is sent back down to the local level.
C. Reciprocity
1. Reciprocity is exchange between social equals and occurs in three degrees: generalized, balanced, and negative.
2. Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely related exchange partners and involves giving with no specific expectation of exchange, but with a reliance upon similar opportunities being available to the giver (prevalent among foragers).
3. Balanced reciprocity involves more distantly related partners and involves giving with the expectation of equivalent (but not necessarily immediate) exchange (common in tribal societies and has serious ramifications for the relationship of trading partners).
4. Negative reciprocity involves very distant trading partners and is characterized by each partner attempting to maximize profit and an expectation of immediate exchange (e.g., market economies, silent barter between Mbuti foragers and horticulturalist neighbors).
D. Coexistence of Exchange Principles
1. Most economies are not exclusively characterized by a single mode of reciprocity.
2. The United States economy has all three types of reciprocity.
VIII. Potlatching
A. Potlatches, as once practiced by Northwest Coast Native American groups, are a widely studied ritual in which sponsors (helped by their entourages) gave away resources and manufactured wealth while generating prestige for themselves.
B. Potlatching tribes (such as Kwakiutl and Salish peoples) were foragers but lived in sedentary villages and had chiefs--this political complexity is attributed to the overall richness of their environment.
C. Dramatic depopulation resulting from postcontact diseases and the influx of new trade goods dramatically affected the nature of potlatches, which began to extended to the entire population.
D. The result of the new surplus, cultural trauma, and the competition caused by wider inclusion was that prestige was created by the destruction of wealth, rather than the redistribution of it
E. Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful displays generated by culturally induced mania for prestige, but Kottak argues that customs like the potlatch are adaptive, allowing adjustment for alternating periods of local abundance and shortage.
F. The Northwest Coast tribes were unusual in that they were foraging populations living in a rich, nonmarginal environmental setting.
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