Socio-Cultural Anthropology
Unit 3. Family, culture, religion and traditional societies.
About this unit
Socio-cultural anthropology studies how human groups organise their lives: their families and kin, beliefs and rituals, ways of earning a living and ways of keeping order. Anthropologists usually learn about these through fieldwork and participant observation, living with a community for a long time. This unit builds the basic vocabulary needed to describe any society, simple or complex.
Key ideas
- Family types (nuclear, joint, extended) and forms of marriage (monogamy, polygyny, polyandry).
- Descent and kinship: patrilineal, matrilineal, residence rules and kin terms.
- Culture as learned and shared; ethnocentrism versus cultural relativism.
- Socialisation, diffusion, acculturation and other processes of cultural change.
- Religion and belief: animism, animatism, totemism, magic and shamanism.
- Subsistence: hunting-gathering, pastoralism, shifting cultivation and settled agriculture.
- Political organisation: bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states; power, authority and social control.
How to prepare
Learn precise definitions and the scholar linked with each idea (for example Tylor on culture and animism, Marett on animatism, Weber on authority). Practise applying terms to short case descriptions, since many questions describe a situation and ask you to name the concept.
Topics in this chapter
Family, marriage and kinship
Nuclear, joint and extended families; monogamy and polygamy; matrilineal and patrilineal descent.
5 questionsCulture and cultural change
Cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, socialisation, diffusion and acculturation.
5 questionsReligion and belief
Functions of religion; totemism, animism, animatism, magic and shamanism.
5 questionsSubsistence strategies
Hunting, gathering and agriculture.
5 questionsTraditional political systems
Bands, tribes and chiefdoms; power, authority and social control.
5 questions