Anthropology Terms - Asher

Asher Forman
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
7 September 2019
Anthropology Term Blog - IHSS
Adaptive Mechanism: Adaptive Mechanism is a system or method that a society makes for surviving in a certain area. An example of this would be having a small society that is placed next to or near the ocean. For this society to work, they would need to be organized, have certain roles and traditions that everyone would follow. This society would most likely adapt to using the ocean for there food supply. When hunting for food, people would have to find a way to capture these fish, which could be from inventing different weapons, or possibly a net that they would drag to capture fish (made out of woven leaves). When the food is captured, there would need to be different roles for how to cook and serve it. Someone would need to gather firewood, make a fire, cook the fish, ration the fish to everyone, and more. This would allow for an organized society which would thrive longer than one that wasn't organized. Additionally, if someone needed to get everyone’s attention than someone might discover the loud sound a conch could make. When someone would blow the conch, that would let everyone know that they needed to meet up. Also, during a rainstorm, people would need to figure out how they might keep water out of their huts. People would probably have to learn how to dig trenches around their hut for the ocean water to flow into, and have leaves on top of their hut to stay dry inside. All of these different traditions that this society would make up and discover is key for the survival of this society.

Cultural Relativity: Cultural relativity is when someone will try to understand and learn about a culture without bringing in their opinions from their own culture. An example of this would be an American from the U.S. that went to go and learn about monk's. The American would immediately realize that their life is so much different from a monk’s life. Most of the time, monks will only have a small number of things that they own, and also choose to have no money. Monks entirely rely on the community to help and provide for them through the time that they are a monk. This is a lifestyle that an American might think impossible to do and not normal due to their society in the U.S. revolving around money to pay for everything. Although if the American thought this, they would essentially be comparing his/her culture to this one. If the American really wanted to learn more about the culture of a monk, than they would have to tuck away their biases from their own culture, and try to gain an understanding of a monk's culture from the monk's perspective.

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