Final Ch. 7

in American society, people are stratified by income and personal possessions into various groups: lower class, middle class, and upper class.

In India, the population is stratified into hundreds of different social and occupational groups. Individuals are assigned at birth based on their parent’s caste. It’s a fixed identity: no mobility from one caste to another. There are strict rules including restrictions on marriage, even just talking to a member of a different caste

no individual or group has more access to resources, nobody has more power or prestige than anyone else. No fixed number of social positions. ex: !Kung, Inuit

- formal, permanent, social, economic inequality. Some denied access to basic resources (Sudra caste in India are the “untouchables” and face severe discrimination). Characterized by differences in standard of living, security, prestige and political power.

Institutionalized differences in prestige but no restrictions to basic resources. Associated with horticulture or pastoral societies with a surplus of food.

Ability of individuals or groups to impose their will upon others. Takes place in stratified societies.

Bands

-small group

-loosely organized

-kin-ordered group

-in specific territory

-may split into smaller extended fam groups

-decisions made by consensus

-they share! :)

Ex: !Kung San in Nisa

kin-ordered

·       politically integrated by some factor

·       share common ancestry, identity, language, territory and culture

·       there are leaders

·       more gender inequality

Ex: Dani people’s “Big Man”, or the village organizer

·       regional group where 2 or more groups are organized under 1 chief, who is head of a ranked hierarchy

·       Redistribution: chief asks for resources and redistributes to benefit everyone

Ex: Samoan Chief

·       centralized political system that has the capacity and authority to make laws and use force to maintain social order

Ex: USA

Big Men play a pivotal role in planning war as well as establishing peace, but the greatest skill required of him is to make moka, a form of ceremonial gift exchange in which a man makes an initial gift to a trading partner and then in return receives more than he gave. Status + the more you give

United States, a Protestant sect that originated in Moravia in the 16th century. Goal is to create a “colony of heaven”, they reject competition, violence, and war and believe that property is to be used and not possessed. Authority is group centered: an elective board consisting of religious leaders and the community teacher.  

adaptive response to environmental stress—takes months, years, produce more red blood cells. Ex: foot binding in China

a culturally assigned category that is presumably based on a set of inherited biological traits. The concept of race is a fairly new one.

· one of the founders of anthropology

· among one of the first social scientists who worked to discredit racist and sexist theories

Adaptive trait not a racial feature

Light skin allows for vitamin D absorption

Dark skin protects from ultra violet radiation

take the race of the parent who is the minority

Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered "tainted" with death or ritual impurity

a respected scientist and physician who began in the 1820’s to collect and measure skulls from all over the world (craniometry). He believed that one’s intelligence was related to the size of ther brain: the larger the brain, the more intelligent the person. Whites were smartest

He concluded that white skulls were smarter than: American indian and black

103 lb 4' 11'' from the Kasai River, Congo free state of South Central Africa displayed in a cage in 1904 for a white audience by Dr. Sammuel P Verner was eventually caged with orangoutangs

had the idea that you could tell who is a criminal by they way they look

Harvard biologist who re-examined Morton’s studies in 1977 and concluded that Morton had simply selected or rejected certain data to ensure that the results confirmed their American belief that whites were better.

A view of the self that defines each person as a replica of all humanity, the locus of motivations and drives, capable of acting independently from others.

used to curb immigration of biologically inferior “races” and ethnicities

A view of the self that is context dependent; there is no intrinsic self that can possess enduring qualities.

Questionable assumptions: Intelligence is assumed to be a single entity, it is assumed to be measurable and unequally distributed in the population, the amount people have is assumed to be relatively fixed throughout life and assumed to largely explain their degree of success in life, and assumed to be largely inherited.

the social principle that giving a gift creates social ties with the person receiving it, who eventually is obliged to reciprocate

A form of exchange in which the object is to get something for nothing or to make a profit.

A form of exchange in which persons share what they have with others but expect them to reciprocate later.

A form of exchange in which items of equal or near-equal value are exchanged on the spot.

*      Immigration into the United States of America was a big issue in the 1900’s these studies would make it possible to “weed out” the inferior stock of people trying to move there

the idea of saying “why have another generation of imbusuls? Occurred in 1924.  Carrie Buck was a woman who was a prositutie and feeble minded had the mentality of a 9 year old