Anthropology
The study of human beings in all times and places, their diversity and histories, and ways of knowing and inhabiting the world.
Social/ Cultural Anthropology
Study of patterns of human behavior, transmittion of ideas, values, perceptions, etc
Physical/ Biological Anthropology
Human adaptation, the study of human growth and development, and biological and physological adaptations to environmental conditions.
Molecular anthropology
Uses genetic techniques to human evolution, migration, adaptation, and variation
Paleoanthropology
Study of human origins and predecessors of modern human beings
Primatology
The study of living fossil primates
Anthropological Archeology
Studies past human societies through the recovery analysis of material remains and environmental data, stone tools to complex societies
Linguistic Anthropology
Study of language, focuses on the way language is used in speech communities
Culture
A system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, and contested by a group of people
Ethnocentrism
Judging or trying to understand or interpret behavior that is different than your own according to the standards of our own culture
Where is culture located
All around, culture is everywhere
Society
Includes rules and norms for forming and interacting with social groups, whose internal and external functions are defined, which perform a variety of social functions, and endure beyond the lives of members
How society is organized
Division of labor, social status/class, institutions, leadership and authority
Division of Labor
The idea that certain people are more fit for certain jobs, what kind of socioeconomic roles do people have in society and how are these determined.
Social status/class
What social position someone has relative to other members of society and how this defines social roles or status in society ex) marital status, property ownership, location, age, gender
Institutions
Stable, reoccuring patterns of behavior, norms and rules that operate within a place.
Leadership and Authority
who is eligible to be in positions of power and authority in a given society
Social structure
social relations are patterned and predictable, you can expect that you as well as other people will behave within a specific set of rules
Ethnography
Directly observing peoples behavior through discourse and participation in their societies and then explaining why this behavior occurs
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)
Considered to be "the father of fieldwork"
-Analyzed patterns of exchange between groups of Australian aboriginals
-Worked in the Trobiand islands of New Guinea
- Invented the idea of economic anthropology by studying the Kula exchange
Bronislaw malinowski main argument
We can come to understand the worldviewsa of others through detailed observations of the organization of life, the types of behavior, and the statements made by people living in a particular community.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
- coming of age in Samoa (1988), controversy with Derek Freeman regarding Mead's ethnographic fieldwork in Samoa.
Proto- anthropology
Earliest records of people documenting surrounding cultures dates back to the earliest writings of the ancient world
Herodutus
Ancient Greek around 500 BC, recorded cultural traditions in the medittereanean and near east
Pliny the elder
Roman, 1 AD, write accounts of roman soldiers
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
Muslim scholar, compared nomadic and agricultural groups in the middle east
Unilinear Evolution
Theory that posited the human societies move up some progressive ladder from savagery to civilization
How did anthropology grow out of the influence of european colonialism
�European explorers accounts
�Missionaries - accounts of indigenous peoples and their customs
�Enlightenment philosophers- notions of progress
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)
American anthropologist
o Worked with Iroquois (1877)
o Advanced a notion of cultural evolution
Influential on Karl Marx
Max Weber
German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist
o Studied meaning that individuals attach to their behavior and how they understand the world
o Had major impact on anthropology through the interpretive school
o The protestant ethic, the spirit of
Herbert Spencer
(English philosopher 1820-1903)
oSocial Darwinism
oCoined the term "survival of the fittest
Cultural Relativism
the idea that each culture has to be understood in its own terms and any attempt to rank cultures based on western standards is nothing but ethnocentric typology that is racist and scientifically misleading
Developed by Franz Boas
Ruth Benedict
o Wrote very famous book about patterns of culture that emphasized the coherence of cultures
o Patterns of life vs Set of things
Ethical Periods (Morgan)
I, II, III: lower , middle, upper status of savagery
IV, V, VI: Lower, middle, upper status of barbarianism
VII: status of civilization
Structural Functionalism
Shared the idea that society was like an integrated organism with the social evolutionists, but rejected the unilinear progression in that theory
Karl Marx
German philosopher, socialist, economist
o posted notion of "class- struggle" as fundamental to society
o Influenced by / and strongly influenced anthropology
o Focused on class within the system of communism
Theory of Needs
Metabolism, Reproduction, Bodily Comforts, Safety, Movement, Growth
Emile Durkheim
French sociologist and philosopher
o Interested in studying "social solidarity"
o Impacted anthropology through structural-functionalism
o Social institutions and practices, division of labor, served to keep society in tact
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Aimed at development of "natural science of society" where universal laws of social life could be formulated
Believed that social institutions functioned in a system and that component parts were needed to maintain the integrity of that system
Individual
E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Student of Radcliff Brown- during the years when the British social anthropology reigned
His perspective shifted overtime from a structural-functionalist stance to one that looked at Social history
Carried out fieldwork in Africa during a time when anthro
Foraging
� Foraging - hunting, gathering, fishing
o Diet is primarily plants
o Focused on wild, small, medium sized game
o Costs: land = high, energy = low, risk = low- environment gives u what u need
o Small groups, nomadic, egalitarian
Horticulture
- extended gardening
o Wild plants, wild game, early crops
o Costs: land = high-ish, energy = low, risk = medium
o Small scale, simple tools, polycropped
Pastoralism
- herders, domesticated animals
o Limited diet, meat, milk, some wild plants
o Costs: land = high, energy = medium, risk = high- if animals get sick, die, etc
o Nomadic, marginal environments
Agriculture
- fully domesticated crops, communities that don't move around, large permanent fields, more technology, often monocropped
o domesticated plants, wild or raised meat
o Costs: land = low, energy = high, risk = high
o Larger, denser settlements, specializat
Features of Language
� Language is a symbolic system
� All languages are systematic, rule-drive, and equally complex
� All languages feature creativity and displacement
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
� Showed that language shapes worldview, and thought is not a process that takes place independent of the world
� The hypothesis states that: the structure of the language we speak shapes the ways that we perceive and act within the world.
Language Ideologies
� Language and cultural groups make assumptions about the characteristics of certain members of society based on how (or what) they speak.
� Language ideologies attach these meanings about language to use to certain people and qualities
Malagasy in Madagascar
womens speech is more direct, men speak indirectly and ornately
Culture as a symbolic system
o A symbolic approach to culture requires understanding the meaning of its creators and members
o Understanding culture requires understanding the creators and members
o Symbols contain multiple layers of meaning, explaining cultural behavior is an interp
Clifford Geertz
Symbolic because of focus on culture as a symbolic system
Interpretive because of the role of ethnographer in interpreting symbols
Cultural involves acting out the worldview values and ethos
Anthropologists role is to explain a cultural or social event wi
What was with the Azande's and witchcraft?
Their reaction explains moral reasons behind why things happen rather than how they happen
Ameridian Perspectivism
Distinctions made between humans and not humans, some animals such as jaguarsbelieved to have an inner human skin
Religion
A participation in a distinct form of faith, not a universally recognized idea
E.B Taylor (1890)
Belief in supernatural beings
Durkeim (1900)
A set of practices and social instritutions that brought members of the community together, focused on solidarity through ritual
Malinowski (1920) religion
Religion "born out of real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between human plans and realities
Marx (1843/1930) religion
religion as the "opiate of the masses"
o religion as an ideology which attempts to justify inequalities in power and status
o important focus on religious rules and moral order as reproducing relations of power in society
o religion causing people not fig
Geertz (1980) religion
religion as a system of symbols which enact or make visible important cuktural values
o ex) the cross- demonstrates ideas of sacrifice
Tala Asad (1993)
o How did religious symbols get their power?? Who or what gives religion the power to have meaning??
o Symbols don't have meaning by themselves
Authorizing complex
complex social and historical developments in which power and meaning are created, contested, and maintained
Syncretism
where religious systems mix beliefs
Elements of religion
� Cosmology: an exploration for the origin or history and nature of the world
� A belief in the supernatural
� Rules governing behavior: define proper conduct for individuals and society as a whole
� Ritual: Practices or ceremonies that serve a religious