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G290 Midterm Review
(Fall 2022)
Module 1 – Introduction
• Lecture note highlights: Psalm 8, Mongolia Video, The Unlikely Disciple and Kevin Roose
(know him) (ethnography), emic (internal) (one culture) and etic (external) (cross culture),
Circle: Jesus, Bible, Theology, and Culture. Paul Hiebert’s Economic System, Political System,
and Social System, “Human Skin Color Variation” and Melanin
• “The truth is that cultural anthropology is the (description), interpretation,
and (analysis) of similarities and differences in human cultures.”
• What are the four subfields of anthropology: What is the “fifth subfield”?
• The primary method of research conducted by cultural anthropologist is
(ethnography).
• “Because cultural anthropology draws together (history),
(economics) , (politics), (religion) ,
(family), and (psychology) to understand people’s social and cultural lives, it
overlaps with several disciplines, but none more than (sociology).”
• Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
-Sexuality
-Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
• “Later missionary anthropologists and linguists made significant contributions to the discipline
from work that flowed directly from their
and evangelism, even establishing scholarly journals such as
(Christian) work in Bible translation
(Anthropos) and
(missiology) (formerly known as Practical Anthropology) with the express
purpose of bringing together anthropology and missiology.”
Module 2- Culture
• Lecture note highlights: Know how we talked about the Yanomami people and David’s
experience, Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Burnett Tylor, Franz Boas, Eugene Nida and Biblical
Cultural Relativism, Seeing Ancient Culture and Us, “The History of Kiss”
• “The ‘ethnic fair’ assumptions about cultures as (neatly) bounded and
(highly) homogeneous entities simply didn’t withstand scrutiny.”
• “These first anthropologists are now often called
(armchair anthropologists) for their gathering of data from travelogues and books rather than
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from their own direct research. They were most interested in explaining why groups were so
different from one another. Building on the biological theories of evolution advanced by Charles
Darwin and others, these scholars assumed all societies moved from
(simple) to (complex) forms in progressive evolutionary stages. They
developed an idea of Culture as a singular capacity that all human beings possess to greater and
lesser degrees. These anthropologists did not talk about different (cultures),
only the differences in Culture, with a capital C. In this view, all cultural development followed a
(single) path, or line, from simple to complex.”
• The theory of unilinear cultural evolution supports “cultural superiority, the idea that people
of one culture are more (enlightened), (advance),
(civilized), or (intelligent) than another and
(racism), the belief that humans are organized into race groupings that are
different from one another in (intelligence) and (worth).”
• “This new theory, which would come to be called
(HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM), argued that each culture is a unique representation of its
(history) and (context).
• “Today, in light of (globalization),
(communication technology), and (urbanization), anthropologists emphasize
the importance of seeing cultures as (complex), with
(permeable) boundaries, instead of as isolated, (bounded) entities.”
• “In other words, cultures can only be understood relative to the (historical),
(ecological), and (social) context in which they developed.
• “Cultural relativism is the view that cultural (practices) and
(beliefs) are best understood in relation to their (entire)
context. A (symbol), (belief), or
(behavior) may make little sense or even be offensive when understood from an outsider’s
cultural perspective.”
• “Cultural relativism is distinct from (moral) relativism or
(ethical) relativism. (Moral) relativism is the idea that something is only right
or wrong according to context-specific criteria. This notion is (incompatible)
with Christian faith and ethics, and also is virtually impossible to put into
(practice).”
• “When (cultural relativism) is not practiced, people
typically use the standards of their own culture to understand others, which invariably leads to
misunderstandings rooted in (ethnocentrism).”
• In anthropology, there are three kinds of ethnocentrism: (xenophobia),
(cultural superiority), and
(tacit ethnocentrism).
• “Tacit ethnocentrism is the assumption that one’s own way of life is just
(normal), not (cultural). Tacit ethnocentrism is present, for example, when a
person does not see anything particularly (cultural) about liking ice in a glass
of water, or finding a mountain lake beautiful, or wanting a soft bed off the floor.”
• “Acknowledging how tacit ethnocentrism plays into our assumptions should humble us into
acknowledging the (strengths) and (limitations) of our
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vantage point on God’s world.”
•
Paul Hiebert (1983:23) defined culture “as the integrated system of learned patterns of
behavior, ideas, and products characteristic of a society.”
• “Without culture, we have no (language), no (symbols),
no (revelation), and no (community) ....... We are always
Christians in particular (times), (places), and
(cultures). We were designed, from the beginning, to interact with God and
each other through culture.”
Module 3 – Language
• Lecture note highlights: Shen Zhen Hao, 7000+ official languages, E. Nida and 3 common
human experiences (human reasoning, life experiences, and symbolic framework), 3
suggestions (curiosity, cognitive complexity, empathy), HCC: high context communication
(South Korea) vs. LCC: low context communication (USA)
• “Language is a system of (verbal) and (nonverbal)
symbols used to communicate.”
• “As with culture, anthropologists ask many questions about language:”
–“How (different) are the various languages of the world?”
–“Are some languages more (developed) or
(sophisticated) or just more (suitable) for particular activities?”
–“How and why do languages (change)?”
• In the late 18th century, Sir (William Jones) found the
relationship of Sanskrit and classical Greek, Latin, and modern European languages.
• “By studying (linguistic) morphology, the patterns and structures of words
in a language, Jones and other scholars connected different languages into language families. A
(language family) is a group of languages that derives from
a common ancestor language. Each language family traces back to a
(protolanguage), the ancient language from which all the members of a
particular language family are derived.”
• Descriptive linguistics is the “study of specific features of individual languages, such as patterns
of (grammar) and (sound)” at a given moment in time.
• “Phonemics is the study of specific structures and sounds in a particular language. Phonetics is
the study of all possible structures and sounds humans use in the language. Together, these two
areas of study are known as phonology.”
• Descriptive linguists utilize and :
–“study of all possible structures and sounds humans use in languages” (phonetics)
–“study of specific structures and sounds in a particular language” (phonology)
• To form words and meaning, languages use (phonemes) and
(morphemes):
–“sounds available in any particular language”
–“units of language that carry meaning”
• “In English, many morphemes are simply (words) (e.g., the distinct
phonemes— b, a, t— combine to make one morpheme— bat).”
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• “Syntax refers to the (order) in which morphemes appear.”
• “Like grammar, the rules of syntax are (adaptable) and continually
(changing).”
• “In 1960s, linguists became interested in social influences of language.”
• “In the 1960s, William Labov’s research of (social
influences) on language helped to find sociolinguistics,“one that addresses the mutual
influences between (culture) and (language),” as a
subdiscipline of anthropology.
• “One of the most influential thinkers in the development of language theory was Swiss scholar
Ferdinand de Saussure.”
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and structuralism – “Language, he argued, could be
studied by separating the human forms of speech (what he called (parole))
from the underlying rules on which these utterances were based (the
langue)).
• Parole could change with each speaker, reflecting
(idiosyncratic pronunciation), (kinesics), body language, or even the certain
qualities applied to particular words such as (volume),
(tone), or emphasis , features known as paralanguage.
• What did not vary, Saussure argued, were the (rules) — the structure— that
organized the meanings of words in relationship to one another.”
• “Saussure’s emphasis on the systemic structures of language gave rise to the term
(structuralism) to refer to his theory of language that says all languages share
an underlying binary structure.”
•
“Linguist Noam Chomsky further developed a structuralist linguistic theory in the 1950s and
later. He also referred to the language as having two parts: surface and deep structure.”
• “By comparing (linguistic systems), Chomsky believed
linguists could uncover principles of human thought (generally).”
•“The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that language shapes people’s
(perceptions), (thoughts), and (views) of reality.”
•“Through attention to the social use of language and its cultural settings, these scholars
supported the idea that language use, as it is (modified) and
(shaped) in real social contexts, potentially shapes how people think and
behave. In other words, culture is not just a reflection of language; culture
(change) language.”
•“Language hierarchy can even portray certain languages as intrinsically
(superior) to other languages.”
•“While languages are not inherently (better) or (worse)
than one another, where many languages are used in a single society, there are always political
dynamics in which the use of various languages becomes (hierarchically)
arranged.”
Module 4 – Social Structure
• Lecture note highlights: Cross-cultural Servanthood written by Duane Elmer, elites vs low
classes, Wonder and Auggie, Karl Marx, One God and One Humanity, God’s truth in Social
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Structure and Social Stratification, Queen Elizabeth II and Relative Value, Average income
around the world (#1, #8, and #38), Dr. Thomas Sowell, Video on Global Wealth and the Poor
Nations, Micah 6:8, James 1:9-10
• “ (social structure), also called social organization or
social order, refers to the ways people (organized) their lives in relation to
one another at the level of society.”
• “ (race), (class), (gender),
(religion), (language), (dialect) and
(citizenship), are just a few important elements of social structure that
influence an individual’s life chances.”
• Sociologist Max Weber identified three related areas of social stratification:
(wealth), or economic status; (power), or the ability to influence others; and
(prestige), or the social affirmation and approval given to some members of
society.
• “Within every society, differences in (age), (gender),
(race), (ethnicity), and many other
(categories) become social statuses arranged in hierarchical systems. Yet social stratification is
not a consequence of difference alone; it forms around the ways those differences are given
relative (value) in society.”
• “ (Race) is a cultural category that divides the human race into subspecies
based on (supposed) biological differences.”
• Two varying views on ethnicity:
–“Primordialism is the view that ethnic identity, like race, is a (naturally)
occurring and immutable feature of human life.”
–“Instrumentalism (or constructivism) is the idea that ethnicity (changes)
with people’s interests and context.”
• “ (Class) (also called social class) is a cultural category describing how people
are grouped according to their positions within the (economy).”
• “In societies in which class is particularly fixed, anthropologists use the term
(caste).”
Module 5 – Sex and Gender
• Lecture note highlights: Bible and Sex according to the Gospel Coalition article, Oneida
Community and Complex marriage, Gilbert Herdt’s understanding of sexual culture and sexual
identity, Sexual Chromosomes, Sex and Gender Concepts
• “For anthropologists, sex and gender are (distinct) concepts.
(Sex) refers to biological maleness or femaleness, known as sexual
dimorphism, usually given at birth. (Gender) describes what it means to be
male or female in a particular culture” (2011:88).
• “In the United States, gender statuses— boy, girl, man, or woman— are usually ascribed,
based on (biology). A gender status is a (position) a
person can occupy in the social order that is directly related to maleness or femaleness. . . .
Each gender status is connected to a gender role, a set of expectations regarding proper
(behavior) and (appearance) for a particular gender.”
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• “The process of learning how to act according to the gender norms of society is called gender
socialization.”
• “As children grow, gender socialization (continues). Ideals of womanhood or
manhood are often expressed in (ritual), particularly rites of passage in
which a community marks a person’s transition from childhood to adulthood........ The
quinceañera is a ritual passage of a girl from (childhood), to
(adulthood), that is popular in Mexico and other Latin American countries
and in the United States.”
• “Sexuality includes biological sex but also refers to
(sexual thoughts), (feelings), and (behaviors). Though
some societies (including the contemporary U.S.) enculturate people to believe sexuality is just
natural, anthropologists study the many ways in which human sexuality is shaped by cultural
(norms) and (values).”
• “In many conservative Islamic countries, this understanding of male and female sexuality is
expressed in cultural institutions such as (purdah)— the seclusion of women
from public view— and restrictive clothing such as the (burqa), a long
garment covering every bit of a woman’s body, including her eyes.
• “In the United States, the notion that women are more (emotional), and
thus less likely to use (logic) in decision making, has historically led to the
(marginalization) of women in political and economic spheres.”
• “In Indonesia, it is thought that (men) are the more passionate and
emotional gender. Men, the thinking goes, are more likely to give in to their passions. They are
more easily tempted by things like (gambling), (drinking),
and (sex). It makes good sense, then, for women to control family
(finances) , (trading), and other aspects of
(economic) life.”
• “Regardless of how individual Christians interpret passages about men’s and women’s
(roles) and (statuses) in the church, it is clear that there is
to be no (oppression) or (inequality) in how Christians
treat one another (Gal. 3: 28; Col. 3: 11).”
