Social Anthropology Glossary

The holistic study of humanity across time and space, encompassing cultural, social, biological, and linguistic dimensions.

Goods or payments transferred from the groom's family to the bride's family to legitimize a marriage and establish social alliances.

A social group claiming common descent from a shared ancestor, often mythological, forming a basis for social identity and solidarity.

Victor Turner's term for the intense bond of equality and shared humanity experienced during liminal states.

The principle that beliefs and practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than judged by external standards.

The socially recognized tracing of kinship relationships through parent-child links, which can be patrilineal, matrilineal, or bilateral.

The insider's own categories, meanings, and interpretations of their culture, as opposed to externally imposed analytical frameworks.

The practice or rule of marrying within a specific social group, caste, or community.

The tendency to evaluate other cultures according to the standards of one's own culture, often resulting in bias or misunderstanding.

Both the primary research method (participant observation) and the written product of anthropological fieldwork, describing a community's social and cultural life.

An outsider's or analyst's framework for understanding cultural phenomena, using comparative or scientific categories rather than the insider's own terms.

The practice or rule of marrying outside one's own social group, clan, or lineage, often creating alliances between groups.

A theoretical approach holding that cultural practices and institutions exist because they serve necessary functions for individuals or society.

Bourdieu's concept of durable, internalized dispositions shaped by social position that guide perception, thought, and action.

The network of social relationships based on descent, marriage, and recognized bonds that organize individuals into families, lineages, and clans.

The transitional, in-between phase of a rite of passage in which individuals exist outside the normal social structure.

A kinship group tracing descent from a known common ancestor through a recognized line (patrilineal or matrilineal).

A Polynesian concept of impersonal supernatural power or force that can be possessed by people, objects, or places.

The fieldwork method of simultaneously participating in and observing a community's daily activities over an extended period.

The exchange of goods, services, or favors between individuals or groups, creating and maintaining social bonds and obligations.

A ceremony marking the transition of a person from one social status to another, typically involving separation, liminality, and reincorporation.

A political system organized through nested kinship segments that oppose each other at one level but unite at higher levels against common threats.

The enduring, patterned arrangements of roles, relationships, and institutions that organize a society.

Levi-Strauss's theoretical approach seeking universal structures of human thought, particularly through binary oppositions in myth, kinship, and classification.

A symbolic system in which social groups are associated with natural species or objects, expressing identity and cosmological classification.