Exam 8: Why Is the Concept of Culture Important

The goal of cultural relativism is understanding. However, to understand does not mean to condone. Select a contemporary scenario (such as civil war, genocide) and how an anthropologist, from a relativistic point of view, would explain the cultural practice.

The exercise of at least some control over their lives by human beings is called

Adam Kuper shows how the rulers in apartheid South Africa used the plural concept of culture to liberate themselves from control by the colonial government.

The process by which human beings, as material organisms, living together with other similar organisms, cope with the behavioral rules established by their respective societies is called

The idea that some cultures dominate others, and that domination by one culture leads inevitably to the destruction of subordinated cultures and their replacement by the culture of those in power, is called

The process by which human beings living with one another must learn to come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling considered appropriate in their respective cultures

According to the chapter, anthropology is guaranteed to

To argue that "their culture made them do it" is to take the position of

Rabinow writes, "There is no primitive, there are only other [people] leading other lives." Describe what he means by this statement. What are the implications of such a view for the way anthropologists carry out their research?

Discuss cultural imperialism, cultural hybridization, and cosmopolitanism. How do anthropologists define these concepts, how are they related, and why are they important in contemporary anthropological discussions of globalization?

Describe the difference between Culture and cultures. Discuss the different ways in which cultures can be used.

At the present time, anthropologists are seeing that the plural definition of culture is used by indigenous groups to define themselves and by other scholarly disciplines.

The feeling, akin to panic, that develops in people living in an unfamiliar society when they cannot understand what is happening around them is

Culture…

Identify an example of ethnocentrism from recent news and discuss the range of possible perspectives on the practice in question that might be held by members and outsiders of the society where it is found.

African women who are trying to eliminate female genital cutting from their own societies are often not happy when American outsiders like Mary Daly and Alice Walker denounce the practice as a human rights abuse because outsiders' condemnations of female genital cutting sound too much like the ethnocentric, reductionist critiques of "barbaric" African customs that Europeans once used to justify colonial conquest.

The perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind and body, individuals and society, and individuals and the environment interpenetrate and even define one another is called

Critics identify problems with several assumptions of the traditional plural concept of culture in anthropology because group members uncritically accept the differences between themselves and other groups.

Compare and contrast the advantages and drawbacks of multisited field research as compared to singlesited field research.

When Paul Rabinow found that Malik was hesitant to list his own possessions, he discovered