...Anthropology: Principles and Concepts Anthropology is all around us. It is the concept which has made it what the world is today. The study is like a window to the past, a mirror to our present life and is like a lens to our future. The principle of anthropology is an understanding of the human life and the condition. A study into the anthropological concepts will help a person understand the human adaptations, both cultural as well as biological which helps us to understand how human beings have adapted in this current generation. The main principles which drive anthropology include analyzing the cultural similarities among human beings, the cultural development among human beings and understanding the biological evolutions as proved by the fossil records in the past. All these factors play an important role in the understanding of the human biological diversity that exists in the world today. In simpler words, anthropology is a study which aims to understand Homo sapiens as a whole. Anthropology has four basic fields-cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology and linguistics. The study of human beings gives a holistic view on the life of the human beings and how they have adapted over time. All these approaches and subfields of anthropology help scientists to study the human behaviour in a much better way. Anthropologists maintain their holistic vision and come up with primary data which enhances the understanding of the human nature and how they have...
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...KOTTAK Department of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 The New Ecological Anthropology Older ecologies have been remiss in the narrowness of their spatial and temporal horizons, their functionalist assumptions, and their apolitical character. Suspending functionalist assumptions and an emphasis upon (homeo)stasis, "the new ecological anthropology" is located at the intersection of global, national, regional, and local systems, studying the outcome of the interaction of multiple levels and multiple factors. It blends theoretical and empirical research with applied, policy-directed, and critical work in what Rappaport called an "engaged" anthropology; and it is otherwise attuned to the political aspects and implications of ecological processes. Carefully laying out a critique of previous ecologies by way of announcing newer approaches, the article insists on the need to recognize the importance of culture mediations in ecological processes rather than treating culture as epiphenomenal and as a mere adaptive tool. It closes with a discussion of the methodologies appropriate to the new ecological anthropology. / "the new ecology, " political ecology, applied or engaged anthropology, linkages methodology] cological anthropology was named as such during the 1960s, but it has many ancestors, including Daryll Forde, Alfred Kroeber, and, especially, Julian Steward. Steward's cultural ecology influenced the ecological anthropology of Roy Rappaport and Andrew...
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...ANTHROPOLOGY 101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Queens College / CUNY, Spring 2015 TuTh 12:15-1:30PM, Kiely 150 Professor: Ramona Lee Pérez, PhD Email: ramona.perez@qc.cuny.edu Office hours: Th 2-3 PM, PH 315H COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is an introduction to the range of human diversity through an exploration of the peoples of the world. We will cover the basic concepts, theories, and methods that anthropologists use to study variations in cultural norms and social practices, economic systems and rules of law, social organization and patterns of inequality, identity and worldview, and patterns of social and cultural change. Focusing on the culture concept and the method of ethnography, we begin with the historical foundations of anthropology and then follow its attempts to understand contemporary human cultures. Comparative analysis of multiple ethnographic case studies and major theoretical approaches illuminates the range of human diversity, the forces that shape cultures, and how people adapt to a rapidly changing modern world. The central objectives of this course are to develop your intellectual skills, your cross-cultural fluency, and your sense of civic and moral engagement in global society. I hope that this course inspires many of you to become anthropology majors or minors, and grants each of you an anthropological perspective on your own life. REQUIREMENTS This is an intensive course that requires full participation from every student...
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...created. During WWII the people living in the Arlington area where displaced in order to provide an area for the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery to be built. They were relocated to the Dunbar area, originally in trailers, and later had the Dunbar apartments built in the Nauck Green Valley neighborhood. The Dunbar apartments have recently been demolished to provide room for the area’s expanding urbanization projects. Some of the people interviewed lamented about their loss of culture as a result of this urbanization which has caused a diasporic population (a consequence of urbanization were the dispersed people feel uprooted). Is this film an example of applied anthropology? Explain. Applied anthropology is the field of anthropology that deals with identifying a problem and seeking ways to solve it. This field of anthropology usually has a specific client. I don’t think that the Nauck...
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...Journal of International Economics 76 (2008) 356–370 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of International Economics j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o n b a s e Globalization and the dynamics of cultural identity Jacques Olivier a,b, Mathias Thoenig b,c,d,⁎, Thierry Verdier b,d a b c d HEC Paris, France CEPR, United Kingdom Université de Genève, Switzerland Paris School of Economics, France a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t This paper presents a simple model where micro-founded dynamics of cultural identity are endogenous and interact with an international trade equilibrium. This process generates a strong home bias under autarky. We then show that goods market integration causes a phenomenon of cultural divergence, whereby the distributions of cultures become more dissimilar across countries and one of the cultures that existed under autarky ultimately disappears. By way of contrast, we show that social integration causes cultural convergence and can counterbalance the effects of goods market integration. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Article history: Received 15 March 2006 Received in revised form 1 May 2007 Accepted 23 June 2008 Keywords: Cultural identity Cultural transmission International trade JEL classification: F02 F10 Z10 Z13 1. Introduction Revolutionary developments in information and transport technology are changing the world. Our daily lives are governed by...
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...The film The Namesake started out while Ashoke Ganguli was traveling on a train to visit his grandfather. On the train Ashoke meets fellow traveler, Ghosh, who impresses upon him to start traveling. The train crashes and Ashoke almost dies but is found and survives. After the crash, Ashoke relocates to America for school. In 1977, Ashoke returns home to India to be arranged to marry Ashima. When Ashima accepts Ashoke’s marriage proposal, she has to move to New York with him where their residence becomes permanent. Ashima has to adapt and adjust to American culture, which is very hard for her because she has never been out of India and she misses her family. Shortly after, they become parents of a boy, who they name Nikhil, with the pet name Gogol, after his father’s favorite author. In time, they have their second child together, a girl named Sonia. Both kids grow up as rebellious, typical American teenagers and have very slight interest in their Bengali culture. When they visit India, they both feel very out of place especially with their grandparents who want them to get married and have children already. After visiting the Taj Mahal, Gogol knows he wants to become an architect. He studies at Yale and falls in love with a preppy, wealthy American girl named Maxine. Sonia continues to live the American way of life when she moves to California to live an independent life. Cultural tensions flare when he brings Maxine home to meet his parents, who want their children...
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...Assignment 1: Essay Due Week 4 and worth 100 points Read the selection in the textbook. Write a three to four (3-4) paragraph essay (250 words) which analyzes the “surprise ending” of the reading selection. APA format. Topic Choices: * Reading selection from Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Swift begins with offering the solution that the English could do things which might solve the problem of over-population and the mistreatment of citizens in Ireland and ends by offering the solution that an internal change in the Irish government would best solve the problem of over-population and a populace victimized by its own government. Read more about A Modest Proposal located at http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/modest.html. For the reading selection you choose: 1. Clearly state in your own words the “surprise ending” in the reading you selected. Identify the point in the reading when you realized that the ending would be different from what the beginning of the reading suggested that it would be. 2. Since you were expecting a different ending, evaluate how successful the author was in convincing you to accept the validity of the “surprise ending” that was not clearly suggested at the beginning. * Include a cover page containing the tile of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length. The specific course...
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...Romaine Smith Susan Doody ENG 111 02/14/13 Outline The positive impact music has on one’s identity In his musical lyrics, Bob Marley, a singer, songwriter and musician, motivates people across the world with his positive and encouraging music. In his biggest hi “One Love, One Heart, Let’s Get Together and Feel Alright,” created an atmosphere of love and exhilaration 2among people of different backgrounds and culture. After his death, Marley was venerated by people all over the world for his outstanding work and role model to the society. An icon had died. The positive influence of a song can reflect one’s character in different ways. One’s culture, attitude and appearance create an identity that can leave a positive impact on society. The cultural identity is those attributes, behavior patterns, lifestyles, and social structures that distinguish a person from another. Culture is learned and passed through generations and includes the believes and value system of a society. If we can examine the role of culture in a group formation, for example. If participants are told they share musical taste with an individual, they are more likely to appraise them positively and want to become their friend….. All these components of culture have an effect on one’s character. Music can have both positive and negative influences on one’s attitude. For example, a child that tends to listen more positive and...
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...Business Overseas James Hall AIU Online Unit 5 IP Business Overseas “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive”. -Mahatma Gandhi In order for any business to travel overseas and find success they must first learn to understand and appreciate the culture in which they plan to thrive. Learning this and losing your sense of ethnocentrism, the belief that your own culture is superior to another, is something that many business fail to do and in turn never find success. In order to find success overseas we must first learn to view their culture with and open-mind, or cultural relativism, and judge them according to the standards of their society, not our own. You must look at many things before trying to establish a foothold overseas. To prevent culture clash you must recognize the barriers you may face including language, cultural values and cultural norms. One way to avoid language barrier is to make sure the plant opened in Asia has local personal that not only understand the language but also understand the region in which you expect to establish a foothold. If a business is unaware of the values in which the society holds they can risk offending rather than satisfying their desire for your product. This is why local personal is important. These individuals will not only be knowledgeable of the language, religion, values, and culture norms but they will be comfortable executing these values. This prevents the culture shock or disorientation one might feel...
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...Chapter 3: Catering for the cultural and social environment of international marketing What is culture? * ‘Culture is the total way of life in a society’ (Fletcher, 1979) * Culture is the collective programming of the mind (Hofstede, 1980) Elements of culture * Material culture: technology and economics * Social institutions: concerned with the way people relate to each other * Relations with the universe: religion, superstition, and impact on value systems * Aesthetics: activities and art forms and dance all have a role in interpreting symbolic meanings in each culture. * Language: differ in the way they convey meanings The impact of culture on international marketing * Knowledge * Factual knowledge conveys meaning about a culture which appears straightforward. * Interpretive knowledge is based on feeling and intuition and is often influenced by past experiences. * Sensitivity * Cultural sensitivity involves being aware of the nuances (sắc thái) of the different culture, being empathetic with it and viewing it objectively * Collectivism * It plays a greater role in decision making because of the strength of family ties, strong affinity with the group. * Social conventions (quy ước) * Relative to eating: time take to eat the mail, the composition of each meal, … * Cognitive styles * Consumers are loyal to products varies between culture. Ex: Asian countries consumers are more loyal and less to switch...
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...Role of religion in human culture Anthropologists define religion as a cultural universal that encompasses beliefs and behavior concerned with supernatural beings, powers and forces (Kottak, 2013). Even though it is a human universal, the rules of religion vary from culture to culture. Even within the major religious traditions, there may be a great many variations. Methodist traditions are different from Baptists who are widely different from Catholic tradition. Signs of religion date back as far as sixty to one hundred thousand years. Prior to the Neanderthals there were no signs of religion. Neanderthals were the first to bury their dead, suggesting a belief in an afterlife. Religion serves many different functions in society. First and foremost, it provides an answer to universal questions humans have. These questions are: What am I? Where do I come from and where do I go? What is death? What happens when I die? Why do bad things happen? What is the meaning of life? Religion can provide a sense of comfort and security to people as it provides explanations for events that are outside of people’s control. It also can establish and “maintain social control through a series of moral and ethical beliefs along with real or imagined rewards and punishments. (Kottak, 2013)” For most religious people, their beliefs are the very core of their world views. These believes also are important in defining humans’ ideas of what is right and wrong. If one does the right...
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...How are scholars able to find out how early people with no written records lived? Scholars use several techniques in order to establish and conclude a portrayal of early people’s lives, before any written records. They simply rely on findings that were left behind. Tools, bones, graveyards, hunting equipment, as well as weapons, art on pottery or cave walls, are some of the prehistoric finds, to name a few. These findings, when examined can tell scholars a lot about peoples lifestyle pre-written records. For example, by examining bones, a scholar would determine if people were malnourished, or whether they knew how to take care of broken bones or used any healing methods. What was prehistoric society like around the Amazon? Populations from North American and Europe did not find the prehistoric Amazon population interesting. The cultural differences were too vast, as opposed to societies around the Amazon. The Amazonian people believed in coexisting with their gods and relied heavily on their dangerous environment. I suppose the Amazon was a threat to societies around it, since they had not developed an acquired set of skills to survive. What ensured European domination in the New World? The Europeans were able to dominate the New World, by having armies that would take over natives ground, and have their own people settle. They also were in advantage knowing how to trade, how to build weapons, which were made of steel, as opposed to native culture who used leather, wood...
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...Work plays an important part in our lives. Growing up we see our parents, grandparents and relatives work to provide for their family. In order to survive in this world, an individual has to work. A man’s basic needs; food, clothing and shelter comes with a price, and in order to have the basic needs a man has to work. Most people like us work in order to get compensated and have enough to feed the family. Some people work to succeed. They do not just have a job, but they want careers. They will challenge themselves to go higher and higher in the business world. They work not only for the money but for self-respect and gratification about themselves. Individuals, who are born rich, will consider pursuing their hobbies into work. They start their own fashion line, or perfumes, become a singer or actor, but all this is considered work. Different cultures look at work differently. I was born and raised in India. Growing up, friends, relatives and neighbors all at some point of time dreamt about coming to America, the land of opportunities. I knew a few people who came here to work, and heard stories from them about how the working environment in America is different from that in India. It made me want to come here and take advantage of the opportunities out here and make a name for myself. When I first came here and started working at the hospital, I came across various cultures, but all had one thing in common, they all worked hard. There was no job that was inferior to the...
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...The impact of Cultural Capital on advertisement Class Professor *** Name Date Overview The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu first proposed the concept of cultural capital. Since the 1980s, social capital has become a popular concept in many disciplines concerned and analysis of important starting point. Hofstede (1980) published a study in the field of cultural significance of the research results. In 1980s, scholars did a large number of cross-cultural consumer behavior based Hofstede’s cultural construct. After the 1990s, globalization and technological revolution in the joint action, cultural issues in all areas of marketing, reflected in all directions, the impact of cultural capital on advertisement journals were seen everywhere. "Advertising." The word of foreign origin, derived from the Latin word “Adteurture”; its basic meaning is the meaning of attention and induce the latter evolved into the English language “Advertise”. In recent years, advertising fills of people’s lives. From the television’s ads, newspaper’s ads, outdoor walls’ ads, to the network, advertising are seen every where. But in different cultural background, consumer values, consumption patterns and consumer behavior are different. Cultural capital has a deep impact on advertising, which cannot be ignored. Today's society is in economic globalization; all the advertising companies cannot separate from cultural capital. We need to know when planning to advertise the nation's culture, and...
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...“Do you think that business practices in an Islamic country are likely to differ from business practices in the United States? If so, how?” I think that business practices in an Islamic country are different from business practices in the United States, some factors influence the business practices in different cultures. As the culture, values and norms, social structure and diversity of individual all might affect the business practices. Culture is a complex factor that includes beliefs, knowledge, arts, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities obtained by people as members of society (Hill, 2011). Values and norms are the cores of the components for culture, values are general ideals about a society’s good, correct and desirable fact. Norms are the social rules and guidelines that suggest appropriate behavior in specific circumstances (Hill, 2011). I don’t know much about Islamic country, but the American culture is different from Islamic culture. Due to the religion, social structure and much diversity in the two different worlds, the business practices would affect by these differences. International business is different from national business due to the culture and society. The ethics in Islamic world, governs almost all aspects of people’s life. Ethical norms and moral codes discernable from some verses of the Quran, and the teachings of the Prophet are far reaching and comprehensive (Azim, n.d.). Islamic teachings extremely influence the observance...
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