Definitions
Key Concepts
Society: Society refers to the way in which humans organize themselves in groups and networks. Society is created and sustained by social relationships and institutions. The term “society” can also be used to refer to a human group that exhibits some internal coherence and distinguishes itself from other such groups.
Inquiry Specific Concepts
Production, Consumption and Exchange
Change: The alteration or modification of cultural or social elements in a society. Change may be due to internal dynamics within a society or the result of contact with another culture through processes such as those involved in globalization
Power: It is an essential feature of social relations and can be considered as a person’s or group’s capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and resources which in a broader sense is centered around the structure and the inequalities between the different levels of hierarchy within the structure.
Materiality: Refers to objects, resources, and belongings that have cultural meanings. They are embedded in all kinds of social relations and practices. It is studied to understand human experience through the study of material objects.
Identity: refers to individual’s private and personal view of the self – “moi”. It is also understood to be how an individual is viewed from a perspective of a social group. It can also refer to group identity, e.g. religious, ethnic, national identities etc.
Symbolism: The study of the significance that people attach to objects, actions and processes creating networks of symbols through which they construct a culture’s web of meaning
Belief & knowledge: A set of convictions, values and viewpoints regarded as ‘the truth’ and shared by the members of a social group. These are underpinned and supported by known cultural experience.
Culture: Refers to organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. Customs by which humans organize their physical world; maintain social structure. Shared social construction of meanings; site of contested meaning. No static, homogenous, bounded; it is dynamic and fluid. May be the subject of disagreement & conflict
Other General Concepts
Related to Kinship
Health, Illness and Healing
Belonging
Movement, Time and Space
Production:
Occidentophobia: Fear of the “West”, their ideologies
Acculturation : cultural modification of an individual , person or a group by adapting or borrowing traits from another culture
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Kinning: The social process where adopted or non-biologically related children become kin
Kinship: The web or pattern of social relationships, which connects people through descent or marriage, although other forms of social connections may be included.
Consanguine: Kin related by blood
Fictive kinship: Forms of kinship or social ties that are based neither on consanguinial nor affinal ties. A problematic term as it assumes that this kinship is less real than, for instance, biological kinship.
Affine: Kin created through marriage
Endogamy: People marry those considered part of their group
Exogamy: Marriage with only those outside of group
Social kinship: Relationships created through social interaction rather than biologically based relations. Often used as a synonym for fictive kinship, but can be objected to because it differentiates between social and biological, whereas people
Reproductive technologies: New forms of technology, including IVF or other fertility treatments, that create new forms of kinship relations
Genealogical ties: social ties that relate to family and family history and ancestors patrilineal or matrilineal. Ancestorally defined realtionships.
Gender: The culturally constructed distinctions between males and females. In many cultures it was and is seen as a binary (though perceptions of gender often change as cultures do), but in the anthropology – particularly more contemporary anthropology – gender is seen as fluid and is a spectrum. Other genders exist and it can be influenced by individual’s sexuality
Personhood: Refers to being a person – a full member of a society. It is a status which is given at different times by differed societies with different criterions for personhood and, in some societies, it can be taken away for various reasons. For example, in …
Levirate: When a husband dies and the widow marries the brother of the husband
Gendered identity: The way we see ourselves and are seen by others in relation to culturally constricted ideas of what it means to be a man or woman or other gender
Gendered relations: The nature of relationships between men and women in terms of responsibilities, power and decision making
Sexuality: A center feature of being human that is highly individualized. It includes sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions, preferences and sometimes behavior.
Status: The position a person has within a social system – this may be ascribed (beyond an individual’s control) or achieved (acquired on the basis of merit). Person’s statuses are usually multiple and come with sets of rights, obligations, behaviors and duties that individuals of certain positions are expected to perform.
Family: A term covering a range of meanings in terms of relatedness and connection of people. It may refer to a domestic group or household, or a wider kinship network.
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Diversity that exists in family forms; e.g. nuclear family, extended family, conjugal family, stem family
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Enculturation: Refers to the process about being socialised into one's own culture.
Othering: The process by which imperial discourse creates its ‘others’. Used by post-colonialism scholars such as Spivak.
Hybridity: Blend of cultures and/or traditions.
Commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization. This involves the imbalance and inequality of power relations between the dominant and inferior culture
Disease:. . . technically, means simply a biomedically measurable lesion, anatomical or physiological irregularity. Disease is something that is either cured, or not. But disease itself does not spur people to seek medical treatment.
Illness: is the culturally structured, personal experience of being unwell and it entails the experience of suffering. The main goal of most people seeking medical treatment is to have their suffering removed
Health: broad construct consisting of physical, psychological, and social well-being, including role functionality." [not just the absence of disease]
Healing: "A complex process that starts with a patient’s experience of something being wrong and proceeds to some form of diagnosis and then possibly treatment. Cultural ideas and practices are fundamental in the healing process and societies vary enormously in the ways that the healing process proceeds."
The individual body: lived experience of the body-self
The social body: the representational uses of the body as a natural symbol with which to think about nature, society, and culture"
The body politic: the stability of the body politic rests on its ability to regulate populations (the social body) and to discipline individual bodies
the regulation, surveillance, and control of bodies (individual and collective)"
Syndemic: Essentially it means not looking at individual illnesses but also look at it's interaction with other illnesses and social factors, which impact the burden of disease of populations and individuals.
Medical hegemony: the process by which capitalist assumptions, concepts, and values come to permeate medical diagnosis and treatment
Movement:
Time:
Space:
Place: is a location or area in which no social interactions are taking place
Liminality: To be in betwixt and between; usually a phase of transformation, of changing to a different status or position.Van Gennep was the first to use it, but Victor Turner is also closely associated with the concept. It is often looked at as a stage in a rite of passage.
Inclusion:
Exclusion:
Labour:
Globalisation: the increased flow of people, ideas and goods across borders.
Globalisation:
Globalization: Globalisation: the increased flow of people, ideas and goods across borders.
Commodification: The act of turning something into a commodity
Consumption:
Exchange:
Colonialism: The act of a country or nation occupying and exploiting the resources of another
Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which goods and services are freely exchanged by means of the market mechanism.
Occidentalism: A way of knowing the ‘West’.Applying or following the idea of the ‘West’
Means of production: the resources used to produce goods in a society such as land for farming or factories
Modes of production: the social relations through which human labor is used to transform energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge
Types of exchange:
Balanced Reciprocity - the exchange of something with the expectation that something of equal value be returned within specific time period.
Generalized Reciprocity - giving without expecting a specific thing in return
Negative Reciprocity - an attempt to get something for nothing; exchange in which both parties try to take advantage of the other
Redistribution: the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person or institution for the purpose of dispersal at a later date