ANTH 200

STUDY GUIDE – MIDTERM EXAM (30%)

SPRING 2020
History in Context (Tuesday Jan. 7)
Sub-fields (4); Archaeology; Linguistic anthropology; Physical anthropology; Socio-cultural
anthropology
Ethnocentrism
Cultural relativism
The Story of Anthropology (Tuesday Jan. 14)
Captain James Cook
Simon Fraser
Charles Darwin
Interpretation
Meaning
Social memory
State of nature
Myth of the “Savage”; Jean Jacques Rousseau vs Thomas Hobbes
Social evolutionism
 Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881); “ethnical periods”; savagery; barbarism; civilization
 Edward Burnett Tylor (1832 - 1917)
Social evolution
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917); definition of “culture as “a whole”
Lewis Henry Morgan; Iroquois; “ethnical periods”; “savagery”; “barbarism”; “civilization”
History in Context (Tuesday Jan. 21)
Table of Major Anthropological Schools of Thought
American School
 Franz Boas; historical particularism
 Margaret Mead; culture and personality theorists
British School
 Bronislaw Malinowski; functionalism
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006); culture as “system of meaning”; symbolic & interpretive
anthropology
symbols
symbolic representation
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950); habitus; bodily techniques
Doing Anthropology (Tuesday Jan. 28)
Fieldwork
Culture shock
Ethnocentrism
Cultural relativism
Qualitative research

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Ethnography
Participant observationon
Reflexive thinking
Napoleon Chagnon - sociobiology
AAA Principles of Professional Responsibility (2012)
Making a Living (Tuesday Feb. 4)
Cultural ecology
Hunter-gatherers
Neoclassical economics
Reciprocity
Marcel Mauss
Exchange
Gift
Kula
Potlatch and the potlatch ban
Kinship (Tuesday Feb. 11)
Kinship
In-vitro fertilization and Euro-American social and cultural beliefs about kinship
“Donor Siblings”
Kinship systems
Kin types
Kin terms
Endogamy & Exogamy
Incest taboo
Cross-cousins and parallel cousins
Essay Questions:
What was the most popular theoretical perspective in the 19th century that greatly influenced
anthropological theorizing about culture? How does Lewis Henry Morgan’s work exemplify this
way of thinking about social and cultural change? How was Franz Boas’ anthropological
approach different from that of Victorian anthropologists?
Compare and contrast the British and the American Schools of anthropology using examples
from the work of Malinowski and Boas and their respective theoretical perspectives.
How did Margaret Mead’s ethnographic research in Samoa contribute to the defeat of biological-
determinist thinking in the United States and influence our understanding of human diversity?
What are the most important challenges to economic orthodoxy that come from the descriptions
of life in hunter-gatherer societies (Gowdy 1999)?

Exam Format:
 multiple choice questions (30 x 0.5pt)
 matching table (5pt)
 short essay questions 2 x 5pt