Cultural Anthropology/Glossary

A

 * Anthropology: The scientific study of human beings as social organisms.
 * Applied anthropology: The practice of applying anthropological theory and or methods to solve human problems.
 * Archeology: The study and interpretation of the human past through examination of the material artifacts and remains left behind.
 * Achieved status: refers to the status level an individual in society has earned through work, education, luck, and/or social climbing. Achieved status is changeable throughout one's life.
 * Ataque de Nervios: State of mind characterized by uncontrollable shouting, crying, aggressiveness, shaking or trembling, fainting, and suicidal gestures. Typically follows a stressful event in one's life, and is accompanied by amnesia for the ataque.

B

 * Biological Anthropology (also Physical Anthropology): The study of human biology using principles of genetics, osteology, comparative primatology, evolution and adaptation.

C

 * Chronemics:A type of nonverbal communication, this tends to cover the role of time when studying nonverbal communication.
 * Cline:Genetic variation between populations of species that are isolated in their reproduction.
 * Collective Investigation: A way of gathering bits and pieces of information from different sources.

D
Diaspora: A group of people who have relocated from their place of origination to varied foreign lands.

E

 * Ethnography: A scientific of describing different people and their cultures.

H

 * Haptics: To use your sense of touch to move objects or manipulate other types of matter.

I

 * Ideology: A system of ideas and ideals or manner of thinking which are characteristics of a group, social class, or individual.
 * Imperialism: The act of extending a particular country's power, either from military force and colonialism or through diplomacy
 * Intrinsic Quality: This usually has to do with the nature of people and or animals. Ex: Both humans and animals have to feed themselves in order to survive.

N

 * Natural Selection: A system in which nature chooses who lives and dies.
 * Nonverbal Communication: This includes gestures with in body language to indicate what that person is thinking or what they want to do.

O
Opprobrium

Extremely harsh criticism, censure or judgement.

P

 * Positivist Approach: Based around the central idea of positivism, ( positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena with their properties and relations are verified by scientific method). Main goal is to produce objective knowledge.
 * Proxemics:The amount of space that people feel necessary to put between themselves and others as they interact; usually dependent on the region and culture that the people came from.

Q

 * Qualitative: a type of data that describes the results of an experiment or trial.

T

 * Taxonomic Analysis: A catalog that usually has an arrangement and sometimes has a division or a predetermined system according to science.
 * Triangulation: Finding and drawing different measurements of groups often found in territories or regions.