Anth 101 Exam 1

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