Glossary

Note: The number at the end of each definition denotes the chapter in which the term is defined.

Accent. A regional or social variation in the way a language is pronounced (e.g., an Alabama accent). (4)

Acephalous society. A society without a governing head, generally with no hierarchical leadership. (8)

Action anthropology. An approach to anthropological research that seeks to study and, at the same time, improve community welfare. (3)

Action theory. An approach in the anthropological study of politics that closely follows the daily activities and decision-making processes of individual political leaders, emphasizing that politics is a dynamic and competitive field of social relations in which people are constantly managing their ability to exercise power over others. (8)

Adjudication. The legal process by which an individual or council with socially recognized authority intervenes in a dispute and unilaterally makes a decision. (8)

Age-grades. Groupings of age-mates, who are initiated into adulthood together. (8)

American Indian Movement (AIM). The most prominent and one of the earliest American Indian activist groups, founded in 1968. (14)

Animal husbandry. The breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks. (6)

Animism. The belief that inanimate objects such as trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers are animated by spiritual forces or beings. (12)

Anthropogenic landscapes. Landscapes modified by human action in the past or present. (6)

Anthropological linguistics. The study of language from an anthropological point of view. (4)

Anthropology. The study of human beings, their biology, their prehistory and histories, and their changing languages, cultures, and social institutions. (1)

Anthropology of development. The field of study within anthropology concerned with understanding the cultural conditions for proper development, or, alternatively, the negative impacts of development projects. (5)

Applied anthropology. Anthropological research commissioned to serve an organization’s needs. (1)

Appropriation. The process of taking possession of an object, idea, or relationship and making it one’s own. (7)

Archaeology. The study of past cultures by excavating sites where people lived, worked, farmed, or conducted some other activity. (1)

Balanced reciprocity. A form of reciprocity in which the giver expects a fair return at some later time. (7)

Band. A small, nomadic, and self-sufficient group of anywhere from 25 to 150 individuals with face-to-face social relationships, usually egalitarian. (8)

Biocultural. The complex intersections of biological, psychological, and cultural processes. (13)

Biological anthropology. The study of the biological aspects of the human species, past and present, along with those of our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates. (1)

Bride price (or bridewealth). Gifts or money given by the groom’s clan or family to compensate the bride’s clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with her productive and reproductive abilities. (11)

Call system. Patterned sounds, utterances, and movements of the body that express meaning. (4)

Capitalism. An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which prices are set and goods distributed through a market. (7)

Carrying capacity. The population an area can support. (6)

Caste. The system of social stratification found in Indian society that divides people into categories according to moral purity and pollution. (9)

Centralized political system. A political system, such as a chiefdom or a state, in which certain individuals and institutions hold power and control over resources. (8)

Chiefdom. A political system with a hereditary leader who holds central authority, typically supported by a class of high-ranking elites, informal laws, and a simple judicial system, often numbering in the tens of thousands with the beginnings of intensive agriculture and some specialization. (8)

Cisgender. Someone whose gender identity aligns with their biological sex at birth as male or female. (10)

Clan. A group of relatives who claim to be descended from a single ancestor. (11)

Class. The hierarchical distinctions between social groups in society, usually based on wealth, occupation, and social standing. (9)

Clinical therapeutic process. A healing process that involves the use of medicines that have some active ingredient that is assumed to address either the cause or the symptom of a disorder. (13)

Cognate words. Words in two languages that show the same systematic sound shifts as other words in the two languages, usually interpreted by linguists as evidence for a common linguistic ancestry. (4)

Cognatic. Reckoning descent through either men or women from some ancestor. (11)

Colonialism. The historical practice of more powerful countries claiming possession of less powerful ones. (1)

Commodities. Mass-produced and impersonal goods with no meaning or history apart from themselves. (7)

Commodity money. Money with another value beyond itself, such as gold or other precious metals, which can be used as jewelry or ornament. (7)

Comparative method. A research method that derives insights from a systematic comparison of aspects of two or more cultures or societies. (1)

Consumers. People who rely on goods and services not produced by their own labor. (7)

Consumption. The act of using and assigning meaning to a good, service, or relationship. (7)

Corporate groups. Groups of people who work together toward common ends, much as a corporation does. (11)

Creole language. A language of mixed origin that has developed from a complex blending of two parent languages and exists as a mother tongue for some part of the population. (4)

Cross-cultural perspective. Analyzing a human social phenomenon by comparing that phenomenon in different cultures. (2)

Cultural anthropology. The study of the social lives of living communities. (1)

Cultural appropriation. The unilateral decision of one social group to take control over the symbols, practices, or objects of another. (2)

Cultural construction. The meanings, concepts, and practices that people build out of their shared and collective experiences. (2)

Cultural determinism. The idea that all human actions are the product of culture, which denies the influence of other factors like physical environment and human biology on human action. (2)

Cultural economics. An anthropological approach to economics that focuses on how symbols and morals help shape a community’s economy. (7)

Cultural imperialism. The promotion of one culture over others through formal policy or less formal means, like the spread of technology and material culture. (5)

Cultural landscape. The culturally specific images, knowledge, and concepts of the physical landscape that help shape human relations with that landscape. (6)

Cultural relativism. The moral and intellectual principle that one should seek to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices. (1)

Cultural resource management (CRM). Research and planning aimed at identifying, interpreting, and protecting sites and artifacts of historic or prehistoric significance. (14)

Culture. The taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group. (1)

Culture and personality movement. A school of thought in early and mid-twentieth-century American anthropology that studied how patterns of childrearing, social institutions, and cultural ideologies shaped individual experience, personality characteristics, and thought patterns. (11)

Culture-bound syndrome. A mental illness unique to a culture. (13)

Culture of mass consumption. The cultural perspectives and social processes that shape and are shaped by how goods and services are bought, sold, and used in contemporary capitalism. (14)

Culture of migration. The cultural attitudes, perceptions, and symbolic values that shape decision-making processes around, and experiences of, migration. (5)

Customs. Long-established norms that have a codified and lawlike aspect. (2)

Delayed reciprocity. A form of reciprocity that features a long lag time between receiving a gift and paying it back. (7)

Descriptive linguistics. The systematic analysis and description of a language’s sound system and grammar. (4)

Development anthropology. The application of anthropological knowledge and research methods to the practical aspects of shaping and implementing development projects. (5)

Dialect. A regional or social variety of a language in which the vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation differ from those of the standard version of the language (e.g., African American Vernacular English). (4)

Diffusionists. Early twentieth-century Boasian anthropologists who held that cultural characteristics result from either internal historical dynamism or a spread (diffusion) of cultural attributes from other societies. (5)

Discrimination. The negative or unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her membership in a particular social group or category. (9)

Disease. The purely physiological condition of being sick, usually determined by a physician. (13)

Diversity. The sheer variety of ways of being human around the world. (1)

Division of labor. The cooperative organization of work into specialized tasks and roles. (7)

Dowry. A large sum of money or in-kind gifts given to a daughter to ensure her well-being in her husband’s family. (11)

Ecological footprint. A quantitative tool that measures what people consume and the waste they produce. It also calculates the area of biologically productive land and water needed to support those people. (6)

Economic anthropology. The subfield of cultural anthropology concerned with how people make, share, and buy things and services. (7)

Economic system. The structured patterns and relationships through which people exchange goods and services. (7)

Emic perspective. A cultural insider’s perspective on his or her culture. (3)

Empirical. Verifiable through observation rather than through logic or theory. (1)

Enculturation. The process of learning the cultural rules and logic of a society. (2)

Environmental anthropology. The field that studies how different societies understand, interact with, and make changes to the natural world. (6)

Environmental justice. A social movement addressing the linkages between racial discrimination and injustice, social equity, and environmental quality. (6)

Ethics. Moral questions about right and wrong and standards of appropriate behavior. (1)

Ethnicity. A concept that organizes people into groups based on their membership in a group with a particular history, social status, or ancestry. (9)

Ethnobiology. The subfield of ethnoscience that studies how people in non-Western societies name and codify living things. (6)

Ethnocentrism. The assumption that one’s own way of doing things is correct, and that other people’s practices or views are wrong or ignorant. (1)

Ethnographic method. A research method that involves prolonged and intensive observation of and participation in the life of a community. (1)

Ethnohistory. The study of cultural change in societies and periods for which the community had no written histories or historical documents, usually relying heavily on oral history for data. Ethnohistory may also refer to a view of history from the cultural insider’s point of view, which often differs from an outsider’s view. (3)

Ethnoscience. The study of how people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings. (4, 6)

Etic perspective. An outside observer’s perspective on a culture. (3)

Evolution. The adaptive changes organisms make across generations. (1)

Exchange. The transfer of objects and services between social actors. (7)

Exiles. People who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries. (5)

Exogamous. A social pattern in which members of a clan must marry someone from another clan, which has the effect of building political, economic, and social ties with other clans. (11)

Explanatory model of illness. An explanation of what is happening to a patient’s body, by the patient, by the patient’s family, or by a healthcare practitioner, each of whom may have a different model of what is happening. (13)

Extended families. Larger groups of relatives beyond the nuclear family, often living in the same household. (11)

Fiat money. Money created and guaranteed by a government. (7)

Fieldnotes. Information the anthropologist collects or transcribes during fieldwork. (3)

Fieldwork. Long-term immersion in a community, normally involving firsthand research in a specific study community or research setting where the researcher can observe people’s behavior and have conversations or interviews with members of the community. (3)

Food security. Access to sufficient nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life. (6)

Foodways. Structured beliefs and behaviors surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food. (6)

Foraging. Obtaining food by searching for it, as opposed to growing or raising it. (6)

Formal economics. The branch of economics that studies the underlying logic of economic thought and action. (7)

Functionalism. A perspective that assumes that cultural practices and beliefs serve social purposes in any society. (2)

Fundamentalism. Conservative religious movements that advocate a return to fundamental or traditional principles. (12)

Fundamentalist. A person belonging to a religious movement that advocates a return to fundamental or traditional principles. (12)

Gender. The complex and fluid intersections of biological sex, internal senses of self, outward expressions of identity, and cultural expectations about how to perform that identity in appropriate ways. (10)

Gender variance. Expressions of sex and gender that diverge from the male and female norms that dominate in most societies. (10)

Gender/sex system. The ideas and social patterns a society uses to organize males, females, and those who exist between these categories. (10)

Genealogical amnesia. The structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives, usually because they are not currently significant in social life. (11)

Genealogical method. A systematic methodology for recording kinship relations and how kin terms are used in different societies. (3)

General purpose money. Money that is used to buy nearly any good or service. (7)

Generalized reciprocity. A form of reciprocity in which gifts are given freely without the expectation of return. (7)

Globalization. The widening scale of cross-cultural interactions caused by the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas within nations and across national boundaries. (5)

Government. A separate legal and constitutional domain that is the source of law, order, and legitimate force. (8)

Green Revolution. The transformation of agriculture in the Third World, beginning in the 1940s, through agricultural research, technology transfer, and infrastructure development. (6)

Headnotes. The mental notes an anthropologist makes while in the field, which may or may not end up in formal fieldnotes or journals. (3)

Holism. Efforts to synthesize distinct approaches and findings into a single comprehensive interpretation. (1)

Holistic perspective. A perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. (2)

Horticulture. The cultivation of gardens or small fields to meet the basic needs of a household. (6)

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). A comparative anthropological database that allows easy reference to coded information about several hundred cultural traits for more than 350 societies. The HRAF facilitates statistical analysis of the relationship between the presence of one trait and the occurrence of other traits. (3)

Hybridization. Persistent cultural mixing that has no predetermined direction or endpoint. (5)

Illness. The psychological and social experience a patient has of a disease. (13)

Immigrants. People who enter a foreign country with no expectation of ever returning to their home country. (5)

Incest taboo. The prohibition on sexual relations between close family members. (11)

Industrial agriculture. The application of industrial principles to farming. (6)

Industrialization. The economic process of shifting from an agricultural economy to a factory-based economy. (1)

Informant. Any person an anthropologist gets data from in the study community, especially a person who is interviewed or who provides information about what the anthropologist has observed or heard. (3)

Instrumentalism. A social theory that ethnic groups are not naturally occurring or stable but instead are highly dynamic groups created to serve the interests of one powerful group or another. (9)

Intensification. Processes that increase agricultural yields. (6)

Interpretive approach. A kind of analysis that interprets the underlying symbolic and cultural interconnections within a society. (12)

Interpretive theory of culture. A theory that culture is embodied and transmitted through symbols. (2)

Intersectionality. The circumstantial interplay of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other identity markers in the expression of prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory actions. (9)

Intersex. Individuals who exhibit sexual organs and functions somewhere between male and female elements, often including elements of both. (10)

Intersubjectivity. The realization that knowledge about other people emerges out of relationships and perceptions individuals have with each other. (3)

Interview. Any systematic conversation with an informant to collect field research data, ranging from a highly structured set of questions to the most openended ones. (3)

Kinship. The social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage. (11)

Kinship chart. A visual representation of family relationships. (11)

Language. A system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar. (4)

Language ideology. Widespread assumptions that people make about the relative sophistication and status of particular dialects and languages. (4)

Laws. Sets of rules established by some formal authority. (8)

Life history. Any survey of an informant’s life, including such topics as residence, occupation, marriage, family, and difficulties, usually collected to reveal patterns that cannot be observed today. (3)

Limited purpose money. Objects that can be exchanged only for certain things. (7)

Lineage. A group composed of relatives who are directly descended from known ancestors. (11)

Linguistic anthropology. The study of how people communicate with one another through language and how language use shapes group membership and identity. (1)

Linguistic relativity. The idea that people speaking different languages perceive or interpret the world differently because of differences in their languages. (4)

Localization. The creation and assertion of highly particular, place-based identities and communities. (5)

Magic. An explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at a distance without direct physical contact. (12)

Market. A social institution in which people come together to exchange goods and services. (7)

Masculinity. The ideas and practices of manhood. (10)

Material culture. The objects made and used in any society. Traditionally, the term referred to technologically simple objects made in preindustrial societies, but material culture may refer to all of the objects or commodities of modern life as well. (14)

Materiality. Having the quality of being physical or material. (14)

Matrilineal. Reckoning descent through women, who are descended from an ancestral woman. (11)

Means of production. The machines and infrastructure required to produce goods. (7)

Mediation. The use of a third party who intervenes in a dispute to help the parties reach an agreement and restore harmony. (8)

Medical pluralism. The coexistence and interpenetration of distinct medical traditions with different cultural roots in the same cultural community. (13)

Medicalization. The process of viewing or treating as a medical concern conditions that were not previously understood as medical problems. (13)

Migrants. People who leave their homes to live or work for a time in other regions or countries. (5)

Mind. Emergent qualities of consciousness and intellect that manifest themselves through thought, emotion, perception, will, and imagination. (13)

Modes of subsistence. The social relationships and practices necessary for procuring, producing, and distributing food. (6)

Money. An object or substance that serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value, or a unit of account. (7)

Monotheism. Belief in a single god. (12)

Morphology. The structure of words and word formation in a language. (4)

Multi-sited ethnography. An ethnographic research strategy of following connections, associations, and putative relationships from place to place. (5)

Natal family. The family into which a person is born and in which she or he is (usually) raised. (11)

Nation-states. Independent states recognized by other states, composed of people who share a single national identity. (8)

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The 1990 law that established the ownership of human remains, grave goods, and important cultural objects as belonging to the Native Americans whose ancestors once owned them. (14)

Naturalization. The social processes through which something becomes part of the natural order of things. (9)

Negative reciprocity. A form of reciprocity in which the giver attempts to get something for nothing, to haggle his or her way into a favorable personal outcome. (7)

Negotiation. A form of dispute management in which the parties themselves reach a decision jointly. (8)

Neoclassical economics. An approach to economics that studies how people make decisions to allocate resources like time, labor, and money in order to maximize their personal benefit. (7)

Non-centralized political system. A political system, such as a band or a tribe, in which power and control over resources are dispersed between members of the society. (8)

Norms. Typical patterns of actual behavior as well as the rules about how things should be done. (2)

Nuclear family. The family formed by a married couple and their children. (11)

Nutrition transition. The combination of changes in diet toward energy-dense foods (high in calories, fat, and sugar) and declines in physical activity. (6)

Obesity. Having excess body fat to the point of impairing bodily health and function. (6)

Open-ended interview. Any conversation with an informant in which the researcher allows the informant to take the conversation to related topics that the informant rather than the researcher feels are important. (3)

Othering. Defining colonized peoples as different from, and subordinate to, Europeans in terms of their social, moral, and physical norms. (1)

Overweight. Having an abnormally high accumulation of body fat. (6)

Participant observation. The standard research method used by cultural anthropologists that requires the researcher to live in the community he or she is studying to observe and participate in day-to-day activities. (3)

Participatory action research. A research method in which the research questions, data collection, and data analysis are defined through collaboration between the researcher and the subjects of research. A major goal is for the research subjects to develop the capacity to investigate and take action on their primary political, economic, or social problems. (3)

Pastoralism. The practice of animal husbandry. (6)

Patrilineal. Reckoning descent through males from the same ancestors. (11)

Philology. Comparative study of ancient texts and documents. (4)

Phonology. The systematic pattern of sounds in a language, also known as the language’s sound system. (4)

Pidgin language. A mixed language with a simplified grammar, typically borrowing its vocabulary from one language but its grammar from another. (4)

Placebo effect. A healing process that works on persuading a patient that he or she has been given a powerful medicine, even though the ”medicine” has no active medicinal ingredient. (13)

Political ecology. The field of study that focuses on the linkages between political-economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction. (6)

Political power. The processes by which people create, compete, and use power to attain goals that are presumed to be for the good of a community. (8)

Politics. Those relationships and processes of cooperation, conflict, social control, and power that are fundamental aspects of human life. (8)

Polyandry. When a woman has two or more husbands at one time. (11)

Polygamy. Any form of plural marriage. (11)

Polygyny. When a man is simultaneously married to more than one woman. (11)

Polytheism. Belief in many gods. (12)

Postcolonialism. The field that studies the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism. (5)

Practicing anthropology. Anthropological work involving research as well as involvement in the design, implementation, and management of some organization, process, or product. (1)

Prejudice. Preformed, usually unfavorable opinions that people hold about people from groups who are different from their own. (9)

Prestige economies. Economies in which people seek high social rank, prestige, and power instead of money and material wealth. (7)

Primary materials. Original sources such as fieldnotes that are prepared by someone who is directly involved in the research project and has direct personal knowledge of the research subjects. (3)

Proto-language. A hypothetical common ancestral language of two or more living languages. (4)

Push-pull factors. The social, economic, and political factors that “push” people to migrate from their homes and that “pull” them to host countries. (5)

Qualitative method. A research strategy that produces an in-depth and detailed description of social behaviors and beliefs. (1)

Quantitative method. A methodology that classifies features of a phenomenon, counting or measuring them, and constructing mathematical and statistical models to explain what is observed. (1)

Quran. The main body of scripture in Islam, consisting of verses of classical Arabic poetry understood to be revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by Allah, often in dreams or in the midst of other activities. These verses were memorized by the Prophet’s followers and written down after his death. (12)

Race. A concept that organizes people into groups based on specific physical traits that are thought to reflect fundamental and innate differences. (9)

Racialization. The social, economic, and political processes of transforming populations into races and creating racial meanings. (9)

Racism. The repressive practices, structures, beliefs, and representations that uphold racial categories and social inequality. (9)

Rapid appraisal. Short-term, focused ethnographic research, typically lasting no more than a few weeks, about narrow research questions or problems. (3)

Reciprocity. The give-and-take that builds and confirms relationships. (7)

Redistribution. The collection of goods in a community and then the further dispersal of those goods among members. (7)

Refugees. People who migrate because of political oppression or war, usually with legal permission to stay in a different country. (5)

Religion. A symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence. (12)

Repatriation. The return of human remains or cultural artifacts to the communities of descendants of the people to whom they originally belonged. (14)

Rite of passage. Any life cycle rite that marks a person’s or group’s transition from one social state to another. (12)

Rituals. Stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities. (12)

Salvage paradigm. The paradigm that held that it was important to observe indigenous ways of life, interview elders, and assemble collections of objects made and used by indigenous peoples. (1)

Scientific method. The standard methodology of science that begins from observable facts, generates hypotheses from these facts, and then tests these hypotheses. (1)

Secondary materials. Sources such as censuses, regional surveys, or historical reports that are compiled from data collected by someone other than the field researcher. (3)

Secular worldview. A worldview that does not accept the supernatural as influencing current people’s lives. (12)

Sex. Understood in Western cultures as the reproductive forms and functions of the body. (10)

Sexuality. Sexual preferences, desires, and practices. (10)

Sexually dimorphic. A characteristic of a species in which males and females have different sexual forms. (10)

Shaman. A religious leader who communicates the needs of the living with the spirit world, usually through some form of ritual trance or other altered state of consciousness. (12)

Sick role. The culturally defined agreement between patients and family members to acknowledge that a patient is legitimately sick, which involves certain responsibilities and behaviors that caregivers expect of the sick. (13)

Social institutions. Organized sets of social relationships that link individuals to each other in a structured way in a particular society. (2)

Social sanction. A reaction or measure intended to enforce norms and punish their violation. (2)

Social stratification. The classification of people into unequal groupings. (9)

Social support therapeutic process. A healing process that involves a patient’s social networks, especially close family members and friends, who typically surround the patient during an illness. (13)

Sociolinguistics. The study of how sociocultural context and norms shape language use and the effects of language use on society. (4)

Speaking in tongues. The phenomenon of speaking in an apparently unknown language, often in an energetic and fast-paced way. (12)

Spheres of exchange. Bounded orders of value in which certain goods can be exchanged only for others. (7)

Spirit familiar. A spirit that has developed a close bond with a shaman. (12)

State. The most complex form of political organization, associated with societies that have intensive agriculture, high levels of social stratification, and centralized authority. (8)

Structural power. Power that not only operates within settings, but also organizes and orchestrates the settings in which social and individual actions take place. (8)

Structural-functionalism. An anthropological theory that the different structures or institutions of a society (religion, politics, kinship, etc.) function to maintain social order and equilibrium. (8)

Substantive economics. A branch of economics, inspired by the work of Karl Polanyi, that studies the daily transactions people engage in to get what they need or desire. (7)

Surplus value. The difference between what people produce and what they need to survive. (7)

Swidden agriculture. A farming method in tropical regions in which the farmer slashes and burns a small area of forest to release plant nutrients into the soil. As soil fertility declines, the farmer allows the plot to regenerate to forest. (6)

Symbol. Something—an object, idea, image, figure, or character—that represents something else. (2)

Symbolic therapeutic process. A healing process that restructures the meanings of the symbols surrounding the illness, particularly during a ritual. (13)

Sympathetic magic. Any magical rite that relies on the supernatural to produce its outcome without working through a specific supernatural being such as a spirit, demon, or deity. (12)

Syntax. The pattern of word order used to form sentences and longer utterances in a language. (4)

Taste. A concept that refers to the sense that gives humans the ability to detect flavors, as well as the social distinction associated with certain foodstuffs. (6)

Teknonymy. A system of naming parents by the names of their children. (11)

Theory. A tested and repeatedly supported hypothesis. (1)

Third genders. A category found in many societies that acknowledge three or more gender categories. (10)

Totemism. A system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species called “totems” as an emblem. (12)

Tradition. Practices and customs that have become most ritualized and enduring. (2)

Traditional ecological knowledge. Indigenous ecological knowledge and its relationship with resource management strategies. (6)

Trance. A semiconscious state typically brought on by hypnosis, ritual drumming and singing, or hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline or peyote. (12)

Transactional orders. Realms of transactions a community uses, each with its own set of symbolic meanings and moral assumptions. (7)

Transgender. Someone to whom society assigns one gender who does not perform as that gender but has taken either permanent or temporary steps to identify as another gender. (10)

Transnational. Relationships that extend beyond nation-state boundaries but do not necessarily cover the whole world. (5)

Tribe. A type of pastoralist or horticulturist society with populations usually numbering in the hundreds or thousands in which leadership is more stable than that of a band, but usually egalitarian, with social relations based on reciprocal exchange. (8)

Unilineal. Based on descent through a single descent line, either males or females. (11)

Value. The relative worth of an object or service that makes it desirable. (7)

Values. Symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities. (2)

Violence. The use of force to harm someone or something. (8)

World culture. Norms and values that extend across national boundaries. (5)

World Heritage Sites program. A UNESCO-run program that provides financial support to maintain sites of importance to humanity. (14)

World religions. Religions that claim to be universally significant to all people. (12)

World systems theory. The theory that capitalism has expanded on the basis of unequal exchange throughout the world, creating a global market and global division of labor, dividing the world between a dominant “core” and a dependent “periphery.” (5)

Worldview. A general approach to or set of shared, unquestioned assumptions about the world and how it works. (12)