Difference between revisions of "Terms to add"

From Cyborg Anthropology
Jump to: navigation, search
(Created page with 'status actual behavior what people really do in their lives rather than what they think they are doing or what they believe they should be doing. In most societies there is a d…')
 
Line 1: Line 1:
 +
{{cleanup}}
 +
 
status
 
status
  

Revision as of 15:47, 25 January 2011

The text on this page requires cleanup to be considered a solid article. Consider adding formatting, sources and categories to make it more readable. You can help CyborgAnthropology.com by expanding it.

status

actual behavior what people really do in their lives rather than what they think they are doing or what they believe they should be doing. In most societies there is a discrepancy between these three kinds of behavior. It is important for anthropologists to distinguish between actual, believed, and ideal behavior when they learn about another society and its culture. http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cglossary.htm

adaptive mechanism a behavior, strategy, or technique for obtaining food and surviving in a particular environment. Successful adaptive mechanisms provide a selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms. For humans, the most important adaptive mechanism is culture. http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cglossary.htm

androgy the characteristic of having a blend of both masculine and feminine personality characteristics but not strongly either one. http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cglossary.htm


anomie a feeling of alienation and isolation from all other people, including family and friends.

anthropology the broad scientific study of human culture and biology. Anthropologists are interested in what it is to be human in all of our many different societies around the world today and in the past. In North American universities, the study of anthropology is usually divided into four main sub-disciplines: cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics.


applied anthropology

the branch of anthropology oriented towards using anthropological knowledge for practical purposes. The work of most applied anthropologists has the goal of helping small indigenous societies adjust to the massive acculturation pressures that they are now experiencing without their suffering culture death and genocide.


balanced reciprocity

an economic exchange in which there is an explicit expectation of immediate return. Simple barter or supermarket purchases involve this understanding. See reciprocity.


believed behavior what people honestly believe that they are doing in their lives rather than what they think they should be doing or what they actually are doing. In most societies there is a discrepancy between these three kinds of behavior. It is important for anthropologists to distinguish between actual, believed, and ideal behavior when they learn about another society and its culture.


kinesics

the part of non-verbal communication consisting of gestures, expressions, and postures. This part of paralanguage is also known as body language.


interaction distance

the distance our bodies are physically apart while talking with each other. If two speakers have different comfortable interaction distances, a ballet of shifting positions usually occurs until one of the individuals is backed into a corner and feels threatened by what may be perceived as hostile or sexual overtures. As a result, the verbal message may not be listened to or understood as it was intended. Interaction distance is an aspect of proxemics.


proxemics

the study of interaction distances and other culturally defined uses of space that affect communication. Most people are unaware of the importance of space in communication until they are confronted with someone who uses it differently. Proxemics is a form of paralanguage.


paralanguage

auxiliary communication devices that generally assure clarity by transmitting the same message in different ways at the same time. These include variations in tone and character of voice along with such non-verbal forms of communication as kinesics, proxemics, clothing, and makeup.

(online, paralanguage takes the form of profile pictures, wall posts and other creations of self)


inner-directed personality

a personality that is guilt oriented. The behavior of individuals with this sort of personality are strongly controlled by their conscience. As a result, there is little need for police to make sure that they obey the law. These individuals monitor themselves. The inner-directed personality is one of the modal personality types identified by David Riesman in the early 1950's.

(online this can manifest as feeling guilty for not immedeatelyy responding to messages or beinf there to reciecve messages, thus reinforcing the behaviour of compuselvely chekcing ones phone or feeling the compulsion of "be there" and present for an incoming message or communication.


Industrial Revolution

the transition from a society primarily dependent on hand tools produced by individual craftsmen to one with machine and power tools developed through large-scale industrial production. In Western Cultures, this began to occur during the last half of the 18th century. It resulted in increased individual wealth, progressive urbanization, and globalization of the economy.


ideal behavior what people believe that they should do in their lives rather than what they think they are doing or what they actually are doing. In most societies there is a discrepancy between these three kinds of behavior. It is important for anthropologists to distinguish between actual, believed, and ideal behavior when they learn about another society and its culture.


national personality type

a distinct culturally specific personality pattern acquired during the process of being enculturated. The notion of national personality types implies that personality is almost entirely learned rather than genetically inherited. This is no longer widely believed in anthropology and psychology.

(in the digital space, this would be a site-specific personality type - that one's personality online is to a large degree influenced by the sites on which they are found. a facebook personality type would thus be different from a twitter personality type and so on)


informal negative sanction

an "unofficial", non-governmental punishment for violations of social norms. Informal negative sanctions usually are in the form of gossip, public ridicule, social ostracism, insults, or even threats of physical harm by other members of the community. See negative sanction and positive sanction.

(this can be easily found on Facebook bullying)


internalization of the moral code

the situation in which people accept society’s moral code and do not need police or other external means of social control to get them to follow it. They feel guilty if they do something “wrong” and punish themselves or turn themselves in for punishment.

(a moral code for a site such as Facebook is that one knows when one has done something wrong and acts in accordance. newcomers who violate the standing social code become bothered.


informant someone who is not only knowledgeable about his or her own culture but who is able and willing to communicate this knowledge in an understandable way to an anthropologist or some other outsider. Ethnographers usually try to develop a warm and trusting relationship with their informants. This makes it more likely that they will learn what the informant's culture is really like.



rites of passage ritual ceremonies intended to mark the transition from one phase of life to another.


role the part a society expects an individual to play in a given status (e.g., child, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother). Social group membership gives us a set of role tags to allow people to know what to expect from each other.


rituals stylized and usually repetitive acts that take place at a set time and location. They almost always involve the use of symbolic objects, words, and actions. For example, going to church on Sunday is a common religious ritual for Christians around the world.


Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

the early 20th century idea of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf that language predetermines what we see in the world around us. In other words, language acts like a polarizing lens on a camera in filtering reality--we see the real world only in the terms and categories of our language. This hypothesis was objectively tested by anthropologists in the 1960's. That research indicated that Sapir and Whorf went too far. It is now clear that the terminology used by a culture primarily reflects that culture's interests and concerns. All normal humans share similar sense perceptions due to the fact that their sense organs are essentially the same. Therefore, they can understand and perceive the categories of reality of another culture, if they are explained.

(this makes it difficult for higher order cyborgs to communicate to lower order cyborgs -- age group and generational differences also play a large role)


small-scale society generally a society of a few dozen to several thousand people who live by foraging wild foods, herding domesticated animals, or non-intensive horticulture on the band or village level. Such societies lack cities as well as complex economies and governments. Kinship relationships are usually highly important in comparison to large-scale societies. (livejournal groups are an example of small scale societies)


social dialect a dialect spoken by a speech community that is socially isolated from others. Social dialects are mostly based on class, ethnicity, gender, age, or particular social situations. The upper class English "public school" way of talking is an example of a social dialect.

(also based on which website group they are a part of)


socialization

the general process of acquiring culture as you grow up in a society. During socialization, children learn the language of the culture as well as the roles they are to play in life. In addition, they learn about the occupational roles that their society allows them. They also learn and usually adopt their culture's norms through the socialization process. See enculturation.

(socialization on a website consists of how you are socialized and the people on the site according to the aspects of the site)


norms

the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. Norms are also referred to as "social norms."


participant observation physically and emotionally participating in the social interaction of another society on a daily basis in order to learn about its culture. In practice this usually requires living within the community as a member, learning their language, establishing close friendship ties, eating what they eat, and taking part in normal family activities. By becoming an active participant rather than simply an observer, ethnographers reduce the cultural distance between themselves and the host society.


positive sanction a reward for appropriate or admirable behavior that conforms with the social norms. Common positive sanctions include praise and granting honors or awards. See negative sanction. (on the web, things like points, awards, prizes, badges, level ups, etc. enforce normalistic or the standard set of social behavior. -- see early forum systems and level ups. show navy seals and their ranks based on understanding of socal systems, etc.)


ethnography anthropological research in which one learns about the culture of another society through fieldwork and first hand observation in that society. Ethnography is also the term used to refer to books or monographs describing what was learned about the culture of a society.


ethnology an anthropological study that systematically compares similar cultures. An example of an ethnological study would be a comparison of what cultures are like in societies that have economies based on hunting and gathering rather than agriculture. The data for this sort of ethnology would come from the existing ethnographies about these peoples. In other words, an ethnology is essentially a synthesis of the work of many ethnographers.

stratified sample

a probability sample in which people are selected because they come from distinct sub-groups within the society. This approach may be used by ethnographers if the information that is being sought is not specialized knowledge such as the esoteric activities of a secret organization with restricted membership. (this sort of sample is often used by ux designers when trying to determine the different possible users and user scenarios of a site in hHCI research. they are also known as "personas" and are often invented.

random sample a probability sample in which people are selected on a totally random, unbiased basis. This can be accomplished by assigning a number to everyone in a community and then letting a computer or hand calculator generate a series of random numbers. If a 10% sample is needed, then the first 10% of the random numbers will indicate who will be the focus of the research. This sampling approach is reasonable for ethnographic research only when there does not seem to be much difference between the people in the population. Since this is rarely the case, random sampling is not often used for ethnographic research. (sometimes used in twitter research)


revitalization movement a millenarian movement in which the followers focus on recreating and revitalizing their indigenous culture in response to tremendous pressure to acculturate to the culture of another society that dominates them. (the hipster movement is ean example of this -- attention to record players,typewriters and vintage clothing, or ideas of things that exist as one object and cant be transformed in their use value by the click of a button as ipossible with a comptuer screen. the idea of non-reproducible ovbjects in an era of reproducibility. preserving non-digtal practices and sets of prcess such as photography with analog camera and other devies, dark rooms, diy haircuts, intelligence and the study og vintage culture, architecture, printing and graphic design elements. dhard work and lots of analog socialization. unfortunately these items have been fetizished themselves and taken up into modern culture to be endlellsy reproduced. as this occurs, the succesful hipster must be continaully ahead of the cultural erosion line, skeeping out new material that has not yet been recolonize and remixed by popular culture. in doing so, ironically bringing culture and eroding past culture with it, fatishing a past that never existed.

rites of passage

ritual ceremonies intended to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. for kids, getting on the internet for the first time. getting a facebook profile

regional dialect

a dialect associated with a geographically isolated speech community. An example is the Texas in contrast to the upper midwestern American dialect. facebook dialcts are different from twitter. different spaces on the web, (a lord of the rings area, for insance) would have another kind of dialect.


social velocity the common social phenomenon in which disruptive interpersonal conflicts increasingly occur as the number of people in a society grows. Richard Lee coined this term as result of observing the phenomenon among the ju/'hoansi of southwest Africa. Band fissioning occurred before a community reached the full carrying capacity of the environment. Families decided to leave and form their own bands because the conflict settling mechanisms were not adequate to resolve differences. It was not food scarcity but, rather, social discord that was the cause of the break-up. (in sites that quickly grow, such as twitter or quora, or the well, there have been discords that exist -- as more people come in, messing with the culture that existed in the past.


foraging


specialized foraging a foraging subsistence pattern in which a limited number of species are hunted or gathered. Aquatic and equestrian foragers usually are specialized in their food quest. Specialized foraging can be highly productive but is risky in environments that experience periodic droughts or other significant environmental changes that affect the food supply. See diversified foraging.

hunting and gathering

(hunting and gathering a resource online as a form of research -- often going out into the community to get resources to proove a point or to find information related to a very specific topics, such as how to edit bits of wordpress)


special purpose money

objects that serve as a medium of exchange in only limited contexts. In societies that have it, usually there are certain goods and services that can be purchased only with their specific form of special purpose money. If you don't have it, you cannot acquire the things that it can purchase. You may not be able to easily obtain the special purpose money either. The Tiv people of central Nigeria provide an example. In the past, they used brass rods to buy cattle and to pay bride price. These rods were acquired by trade from Sahara Desert trading peoples who ultimately obtained them from the urbanized societies of North Africa. If a man could not acquire brass rods by trade or borrowing them, he would be prevented from acquiring cattle and getting married. See general purpose money. (facebook money, club penguin money -- different items have different values in different contexts online -- people have certain values in some contexts).


status

the relative social position of an individual. For instance, student, teacher, child, and parent are easily identifiable statuses in most cultures. Each of us has a number of different statuses. We usually acquire new ones and lose old ones as we go through life. See role. (status is what you currenty are ona group, active, passive, online, offline)


syncretism an amalgamation or incorporation of traditional and introduced alien culture traits. In Southern Mexico and Guatemala, the Maya Indian combination of mutually exclusive indigenous religious and European Christian beliefs to create a new composite religion is an example. Syncretism is often a psychologically more satisfying alternative to rapid acculturation that totally replaces indigenous cultural beliefs and customs since one's own cultural identity is maintained.

totem

a mythical clan founding ancestor. Totem origins are so far back in time that they are often believed to be non-human. Totems are used as symbols of clans. When they are believed to be particular kinds of animals or plants, killing or eating them is usually not allowed. Totems are also referred to as "totemic emblems" . (the totem of the internet is cats)

tradition-oriented personality a personality that has a strong emphasis on doing things the same way that they have always been done. Individuals with this sort of personality are less likely to try new things and to seek new experiences. The tradition-oriented personality is one of the modal personality types identified by David Riesman in the early 1950's. (many of these people continue in the face of the net, even though they've been around it for a while - it's been in research for 30 years, for instance)


transculturation

what happens to an individual when he or she moves to a new society and adopts their culture. See acculturation. (for instance, when a myspacer moves to facebook, they move and adopt their culture and become it)



Tacit culture in anthropological terms? In: Anthropology [Edit categories] Become an Anthropologistwww.Degrees-HumanServices.com Online Human Service Degree to Jump Start Your Career. Get Free Info! Ads [Improve] Tacit culture in Anthropology refers to parts of culture that are explicit or directly observable. Social scientists have argued that it is at points of conflict that tacit culture becomes visible.

For example, think of a checkout queue at a store. There is no signage that explicitly tells you to wait behind the people already standing in line, or any information on how close you should stand to the person in front of you. However, you have probably learned these rule via observation in your day to day life.

When someone doesn't follow tacit cultural rules there is normally some form of sanctioning. This can be things like glaring at people who cut in line, or moving away from someone who stands too close to you.

Also, tacit culture goes beyond rules. It includes language use (ever heard an older person misuse slang) and object use (how we use cultural artifacts), etc.

Edward Hall discusses this concept in his books The Silent Language (1959) and Hidden Dimensions (1966). Arguably, this is what was also meant by Durkheim when he discusses cultural fact.

I hope this is helpful.


Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Tacit_culture_in_anthropological_terms#ixzz1C4ppsenK

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Tacit_culture_in_anthropological_terms


Cultural Resource Management	 decides what sites need saving, and to preserve significant information about the past when sites cannot be saved (jason scott provides this an an archivits of digital history) 

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Emic Approach	 investigates how local people think

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Informed Consent	 the agreement to take part in research, after having been so informed

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Emic Approach	 investigates how local people think

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Longitudinal Research	 the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Participant Observation	 taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analysing

(Often required in doing logitudinal studies in cyberspace websites - also see Deep Hanging Out)

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/

---

International Culture	 a level of culture that extends beyond and across national boundaries

(also singulairy -- global soccer/football on twitter, micheal jackson'sdeath, world events when appearing online, bring many todather into a global forum)

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Particularities	 features that are unique to certain cultural traditions

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Focal Vocabulary	 specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups

(the focal vocabulary of cybogs is very precise and evolved. it also cincreases over time with giant amounts of upheval and change -- mostly, it is product based, and when products diesseapear, so do those words in language, unless a group is looking back and nostaligizing about a certain aspect or sitaution. )

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Sociolinguistics	 investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/

(make lists of words relative to earch architecture, such as twitter vs. well, vs. facebook vs. parc


Domestic-Public Dichotomy	 a strong differentation between the home and the outside world

(akwardness arrisis when these divisions are not preserved online)

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/

Open-Class System	 stratification system that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Prestige	 esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Power	 the ability to exercise one's will over others

(online, the amount of attention and the ability to move people into action around a certain idea, object, or set of ideas)


http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Pantribal Sodality	 a non-kin based group that exists throughout a tribe, spanning several villages

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/


Village Head	 leadership position in a village that has limited authority; leads by example and persuasion (ceo)? 

http://quizlet.com/560577/anthropology-terms-flash-cards/ ---

Charisma, charismatic: a quality, coming from a person rather than from an office, that inspires intense loyalty and devotion; often has religious significance, linking prophet and followers.

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/dictionary.pdf