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Questions and Answers

What is the nature of indexical signs?

They have a universal meaning.

They are based on cultural interpretation.

They resemble the signified.

They correlate with the signified. (correct)

Which of the following is a medicinal use of coca leaves?

Relieving fatigue and nausea (correct)

Enhancing athletic performance

Reversing the effects of cocaine addiction

Stimulating rapid weight loss

How is coca an important source of income for indigenous communities?

It serves as a primary export for these communities.

It is primarily sold for recreational use.

It provides financial support solely through tourism.

It is exchanged for labor in local economies. (correct)

What distinguishes symbolic signs from other types of signs?

They often lack a direct connection to the signified. Signup and view all the answers

What role did Ebo Morales play concerning coca and indigenous communities?

He promoted coca's benefits in the political arena. Signup and view all the answers

What is the main characteristic that differentiates crack cocaine from regular cocaine?

It can be smoked or injected. Signup and view all the answers

In the context of cartels, how is wealth from cocaine primarily utilized once it enters the United States?

To fuel industry and buy political influence. Signup and view all the answers

What does 'superstructure' refer to in the context of political economy?

The social constructs that maintain and legitimize production. Signup and view all the answers

Which type of power is described as the ability to control the context in which other forms of power operate?

Structural power. Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary purpose of scapegoating in social dynamics?

To justify unjust treatment of an individual or group. Signup and view all the answers

What does the scapegoat theory of intergroup conflict relate to?

Heightened prejudice and violence towards outgroups in times of economic despair Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following accurately describes the endocannabinoid system?

Endocannabinoids regulate functions such as sleep and appetite. Signup and view all the answers

What is a primary distinction between Delta-9 and Delta-8 THC?

Delta-9 THC is found in high concentrations in the plant, while Delta-8 is less potent. Signup and view all the answers

Which method emphasizes the researcher's involvement in the daily life of participants?

Participant observation Signup and view all the answers

What is a major disadvantage of participant observation as a research method?

It is time-consuming and difficult to document accurately. Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary focus of autoethnography?

To articulate personal epiphanies within a cultural context. Signup and view all the answers

What ethical consideration is NOT commonly associated with participant observation?

Conducting research without informing participants. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following correctly distinguishes between structured and unstructured interviews?

Structured interviews consist of a predetermined set of questions, whereas unstructured have open-ended conversations. Signup and view all the answers

Which chemical compound is known for its antimalarial properties?

Quinine Signup and view all the answers

What was one reason Britain grew cinchona in Darjeeling?

To produce cheap quinine for the Indian population Signup and view all the answers

What archaeological evidence indicates drug use in past cultures?

Human remains with stained teeth Signup and view all the answers

What is one proposed function of religion according to the content?

Intensifying group solidarity Signup and view all the answers

In which type of cult does each individual act as their own religious specialist?

Individualistic Cults Signup and view all the answers

What type of drug use is described as potentially enhancing spiritual life?

Ritualistic usage Signup and view all the answers

What does cultural relativism emphasize when studying a culture?

Understanding a culture on its own terms Signup and view all the answers

How does ethnocentrism typically affect cultural interactions?

It leads to cultural misinterpretation and distorted communication Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following defines counterculture?

A culture with differing norms and values from mainstream society Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary focus of semiotics?

The study of signs and symbols Signup and view all the answers

What does the process of stigmatization reflect?

Labeling that morally discredits individuals Signup and view all the answers

What type of ritual is characterized by repetitive symbolic activities?

Rituals Signup and view all the answers

What term describes the romanticization of cultural ethnicities?

Exoticism Signup and view all the answers

What can chemical signatures in organic residue analysis reveal?

Identification of past drug use Signup and view all the answers

What is a primary focus of anthropology as a discipline?

Understanding human beings and their ancestors over time and space Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following best describes the term 'holistic' in anthropology?

Viewing systems and their properties as wholes rather than parts Signup and view all the answers

What is one of the key points Joralemon emphasizes regarding medical anthropology?

Political and economic factors impact the experience of disease Signup and view all the answers

What is the role of ethnography in medical anthropology?

To provide insight into human experiences with diseases Signup and view all the answers

Which factor can shape biomedical knowledge according to the content?

Cultural and social influences Signup and view all the answers

What is the effect of khat as described in the study guide?

Induces wakefulness, sociability, and euphoria Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following describes pharmacological determinism?

The idea that drug harms are an intrinsic characteristic of their chemical composition Signup and view all the answers

What is a common characteristic of depressants?

They slow down the operations of the brain and body Signup and view all the answers

How does the emic approach differ from the etic approach in anthropology?

The emic approach involves understanding from within the cultural context Signup and view all the answers

What is an agonist drug's function?

To bind to specific receptors and create a physiological response Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following best describes functionalism in anthropology?

It looks at how a phenomenon serves a purpose in its context Signup and view all the answers

What describes antagonistic drugs?

They oppose the actions of agonists by blocking their access to receptors Signup and view all the answers

Which drug category is known to interfere with pain perception?

Dissociative anesthetics Signup and view all the answers

What is the relation between metaphor and reality as discussed in the content?

Changing metaphors can lead to changing reality and understanding Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Anthropology

The science of human beings, their ancestors, and their relationship with physical character, environment, social relations, and culture.
Holistic: The system and its properties should be viewed as wholes and not a collection of parts.

The Four Fields of Anthropology

Anthropological Archeology
Biological Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology

The Nacirema

Ethnography of North American culture.

Medical Anthropology

Utilizes all disciplines to understand health and healing as a practice and cultural understanding.
"Draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anth to better understand those factors which influenced health and well being".

Joralemon's 4 Key Points about Medical Anthropology

Biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease.
The political economy is a primary epidemiological factor: Economic and political systems in society affect disease spread.
Ethnography is an essential tool to understand human suffering due to disease.
Medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering.

Biomedical Knowledge

Is shaped by cultural and social forces.
Dano in Peru: an illness linked with society, science, and biomedicine are cultural.

Khat

Stems and leaves of the tree Catha edulis, typically chewed.
Induces wakefulness, sociability, and euphoria.
Popular in many areas including Yemen, Kenya, Somalia, and Madagascar, but controversial:
- In Kenya, it is a source of cultural pride.
- In UK, it is considered harmful and should be banned.

Drug (As a Category)

A substance that changes a person's mental or physical state.
Context and cultural specific - not universal.
How drugs work: Contain substances that resemble natural transmitters or force the release of natural transmitters.

Ethnography

Observation and interpretation of behavior written from an outside view.
Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.

Metaphors

Help us make certain aspects of our experience coherent.
Create our reality.
If we change our metaphors, we can change our reality.

Pharmacology

Pharmacological determinism: The harms related to drugs are innate parts of their chemical makeup, and therefore will always cause harm.
- ex) smoking cannabis one time will create dependency.
- This does not show the full picture, the effects of drugs are shaped by a culture and not just the chemical makeup of the drug.
  - ex) inactive drugs can have placebo effects.

Assemblages

How various things come together to shape our world: Material objects, concepts and ideas, relationships between people, ect.

Neurons and Their Parts

All sensations, movements, thoughts, memories, and feelings come from signals passing through neurons:
- Cell body, dendrites, axon.
- Synapse: where the signal passes from one neuron to another.

Neurotransmitters

Vesicles release neurotransmitters from the axon terminal into the synapse and they cross from one neuron to another.
ex) Adrenaline, Dopamine, Serotonin

Agonist Drugs

Bind to specific receptors and cause a specific physiological response (natural or artificial).
ex) Endorphins and Morphine on opioid receptors.

Antagonist Drugs

Opposes the action of an agonist - block agonist from accessing receptors.
ex) Narcan is an opioid antagonist.
Doesn't block the receptor itself, instead blocks the agonist from binding to the receptor.

Membrane Transport Inhibitors

Large proteins embedded in cell membrane.
Inhibit the action of membrane transporters (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).

Categories of Drugs

Depressants: Slow down the operations of the brain and body.
Stimulants: Accelerate heart rate, elevate blood pressure, and speed up or stimulate the body.
Hallucinogens: Causes the user to perceive things differently than they actually are.
Dissociative Anesthetics: Drugs that inhibit pain by cutting off the brain's perception of pain.
Narcotic Analgesics (Narcotics): Relieve pain, induce euphoria, and create mood changes in the users.
Inhalants: Include a wide variety of breathable substances that produce mind-altering results and effects.
Cannabis: Active ingredient: Delta 9, THC.
Others: Steroids and other hormone-based drugs.

Cultural Relativism, Methodological Relativism, and “Emic” Approach

The idea that many things that might be seen as universal for humans are not, but relative to particular culture and society.
Best understood from the perspective of that culture.
- Emic approach: Inside perspective - meaning making - how people make sense of their world.
- Etic approach: Outside perspective.

Functionalism

Focuses on how a given phenomenon serves a purpose in a given context.
- Thinking about the work that something does and what purpose does it serve?

Quinine

Known to have antimalarial properties.
Atabrine, chloroquine, DDT all become ways to reduce malaria, making quinine obsolete.

Colonialism

Britain starts growing cinchona in Darjeeling during Imperial occupation of India.
Brought people from neighboring kingdoms to Darjeeling to work the plantations.
Britain is trying to make money, but is also trying to produce cheap quinine for India's population.
- Pice-packets: first public assistance program for malaria.
- Modern imperial sovereignty is about the power to control life according to Foucaly: Drugs have biopower to shape people and populations.
- Britain realizes it cannot produce enough quinine, and their priorities are revealed when they reserve it for troops.

Plants

Cinchona plantations still exist and people still work there, even though they are not as used.

Labor

In the case of alcohol, processing plants give the best indicators of widespread alcohol use.

Archeology

Pant matter can be preserved.
Material culture of the past (pottery shards, amphoras, pipes, ect) tell us about what substances were used.
Iconography gives clues to drug use.

Materiality

Finding pipes gives evidence that tobacco and cannabis was used.
Human remains also indicate drug use:
- Stained teeth from betel nut chewing.
- Mummified bodies with coca in stomachs.
Cave art possibly depicting experience of drug use.

Drugs in Human History

Monks in the 14th century consumed 1 gallon of ale per day.
Humans have always used drugs and go to great lengths to acquire them.

Methods for Studying Drugs in the Archeological Record

Paleobotany: study of remains of ancient plants.
Organic residue analysis: identifying chemical signatures.
Ancient texts: hieroglyphics.

Religion

Beliefs and behaviors related to supernatural beings and/or forces.
A socio-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations that relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.

Proposed Functions of Religion

Our earliest human ancestors needed to explain the difference between the living and the dead.
Social control, conflict resolution, intensifying group solidarity, cognitive, emotional.

Spirituality

A more individual practice, and has to do with having peace and purpose.

Ways of Classifying Religion

Anthony Wallace identified four principle patterns of religious organization based on "cults".
Individualistic Cults: Each person is their own religious specialist.
Shamanistic Cults: Part-time religious specialists called shamans who intervene with the deities on behalf of their "clients". Emphasize the meaningfulness of humanity’s connection to the earth and the supernatural.
Communal Cults: Societies in which religious groups of ordinary people conduct religious ceremonies for the well being of the total community.
Ecclesiastical Cults: Often standardized, religious systems employing full-time priests, formally elected or appointed and devote all or most of their time to perform priestly functions.

Ways Drugs Are Used or Relate to Religion

They are used in rituals/rites.
Prescriptions for their use.
They are prohibited.
Enhancers into the spiritual life.

Rites and Rituals

Rites of passage or conversion.
Rituals: Repetitive sets of symbolic activities, can also be secular and not necessarily connected to religious beliefs.

Altered States of Consciousness in Religion

Enhancers into the spiritual life.
Ethnoen: any drug used in a religious context.

Others and Othering

A social process of marginalization through which a person values their own group while denigrating and excluding those from a group different to theirs.
ANTH used to be the study of the other.
Changed as a society and the discipline of anthropology has changed.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s cultural group is centrally important and superior to others.
Evaluating of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture.
Leads to cultural misinterpretation and it often distorts communication between people and groups.

Cultural Relativism

The ability to understand a culture in terms of its own values and without judgment using the standards of one’s own culture.
One can truly understand the meanings a given culture ascribes to certain things only if you look at them from within that cultural framework.

Exoticism/Exoticization

Exoticization: The romanticization, commodification, or fetishization of cultural, racial, or ethnic otherness.
- Can refer to ethnocentric stereotyping, where the other is defined by difference.
- The West exoticized and romanticized the Middle Eastern cultures in a problematic way.

Time and the Other

The tendency to see "others" as being less modern.
The idea that "others" are frozen in time.
Seeing ourselves as "here and now" and others as "there and then".
Power and historical context.

Counterculture

A culture whose norms and values of behavior differ substantially from those in mainstream society.
- LSD celebrated experimentation, the rise of hippie or alternative lifestyle.

Subculture

A cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.

Stigma and Stigmatization

Stigma: The process through which people become labeled in ways that are morally discrediting:
- Usually against core cultural values.
- Reflects perceived failures to enact prevailing social norms of how people should look, act, and be.
When people are stigmatized, it allows those people who are so labeled to be pushed down, in, and away by people who have more power or the institutions they control.
- Stigmatized face mistreatment, as well as substantial political and economic barriers that make it difficult to lead a good life.

Semiotics

The study of meaning making, the study of signs, symbols, and their use and interpretation.

Sign

Anything that communicates meaning (that is not the sign itself) to the interpreter of the sign.

Signified v. Signifier

Signified: The way we refer to things.
Signifier: The sign.

Indexical, Iconic, and Symbolic Signs

Indexical: The signifier correlates with the signified (crown).
Iconic: The signifier resembles the signified (smiley face).
Symbolic: The signifier is often disconnected from the signified (stop lights).

Indigenous Use of Coca

Source of income for cocaleros and people who work the fields.
Exchanged for labor.
Consumed in groups like coffee or tea.

Medicinal Uses of Coca

Has been suggested as a method to wean addicts off of cocaine.
Reduces pain (leaves sometimes placed on the body).
Recommended to travelers for altitude.
Usually consumed by travelers as tea or candy.
Mate de coca: brew of coca and water, sometimes sweetened.
Coca leaves are also placed on temples and foreheads for strength.
The chewing of coca relieves fatigue and nausea.

Relationship Between Coca and Indigeneity

Associated with people from indigenous backgrounds and laborers.
Seeing in both rural and urban settings, with agricultural workers, miners, construction, and other laborers.
Evo Morales used it in political spaces to remind people of the importance of the indigenous community.
Vital source of income for many people because it thrives in regions where not much else grows.

Crack v. Cocaine Differences

A freebase form of the stimulant, can be smoked or injected.
Made by dissolving powder cocaine and baking soda in boiling water and forming the resulting paste into “rocks”.
Short, intense high, inexpensive additive makes crack cheaper than a similar dose of cocaine.

Narconomics

Cartel buys coca paste from farmers.
Values is added when cocaine enters US.
Most of the wealth produced through cartel stays in US.
Cocaine income is used to fuel the industry and buy political influence.

Political Economy

The distribution of power and wealth between different groups and individuals.
The process and mechanisms that create, sustain, and transform these relationships over time.

Base and Superstructure

Superstructure: Everything not to do with production in society.
- Education, family, religion, politics, media.
- Maintains and legitimates the base.
Base: All things needed to produce.
- Machines, factories, land, raw materials.
- People’s relations to production.
- Shapes the superstructure.

Different Types of Power

Individual power: Power you have over yourself.
Interactional power: Power over another.
Tactical/organizational power: The power to control the setting.
Structural power: Organizes and orchestrates the setting/contexts within other forms of power operate.

Scapegoating

The practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent treatment.
A process in which mechanisms of projection or displacement are used in focusing feelings of aggression, hostility, frustration, ect.

Scapegoat Theory

The theory explains the correlation between economic hardship and prejudice towards minorities.
Groups that are economically disadvantaged are often targeted as scapegoats for societal problems.
This can manifest as increased prejudice and violence against these groups.

Endocannabinoid System

The endocannabinoid system is a network of receptors found throughout the body.
Endocannabinoids are neurotransmitters produced by the body that regulate essential functions, including sleep, appetite, cognition, and memory.
Unlike other neurotransmitters, endocannabinoids travel backwards across synapses.
The primary goal of the endocannabinoid system is to maintain homeostasis.

Delta-9 vs. Delta-8 THC

THC is the psychoactive component of cannabis.
Delta-9 THC is naturally found in high concentrations within the cannabis plant.
Delta-8 THC is also a psychoactive substance found in cannabis, but it is less potent than Delta-9.

Methods Presentations

Participant Observation

Researchers immerse themselves in daily life while maintaining discretion.
The goal is to observe and document without disrupting the environment.
Field notes are typically handwritten.
Ethnography is a key component, where the researcher gains trust, blends in, participates, and interacts with various settings while respecting confidentiality.
Challenges of participant observation include time-consuming data collection, subjective interpretations, and the difficulty of comprehensive documentation.

Autoethnography

It's a blend of autobiography and ethnography.
The author reflects on epiphanies experienced while immersed in a culture.
It aims to reduce exploitation of participants and maintain ethical considerations.
Key ethical considerations include consent, privacy, maintaining a balanced perspective, and ensuring the validity of findings.
Covert research is often frowned upon in anthropology but is more common in sociology.

Interviews

Interviews are structured conversations used for gathering information.
Different types of interviews exist:
- Structured interviews use a fixed list of questions.
- Unstructured interviews allow more flexibility and open-ended questions.

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