ANT 2410 Cultural Anthropology Theories

ANT 2410 Cultural Anthropology - Anthropology Dr. K.
ARTHUR
All lecture materials including outlines are the property of Dr. K. Arthur and should not
distributed or sold without her

ANT 2410 Cultural Anthropology - Anthropology Dr. K. ARTHUR
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LECTURE: PART 2 HISTORY & THEORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

III. Early to Mid-20
th
century WWI & WWII (1914-1945)
Culture is shared-
7. Psychological Anthropology IV.Post WWI & WWII/The Cold W
ar (1945-1991)
o Culture is adaptive-
8. Neoevolutionary, 9. Cultural Ecology, 10. Cultural Materialis
m
o Culture is symbol-based-
11. Structural & 12. Symbolic Anthropology V.The Cold War Ends & Post-
Cold War Globalization (1991-Present)
o Does Culture Exist? 13. Gender and 14. Postmodernism 15. Indigenous
anthropology

III. EARLY to MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY
Anthropology is still predominately a Western based discipline
World Wars
Students of Franz Boas- absence of the organic analogy-- did not believe in a
link between biology and culture
Gestalt psychology
Borrow ideas of archetypes from Freud (Id, ego, Superego), and Jung (child,
mother, hero, trickster,etc.)
Personalities as an interrelated psychological pattern
Focus on the individual and interaction with culture
Based on the foundation of enculturation, every culture is characterized by a
dominant personality type
Culture shapes behavior not biology
US government (WWI 1914-1918 & WWII 1939-1945) request
anthropologist to outline National Characters
o Stalins Russia
Swaddling infants creates pent up raged, handling a child in an
impersonal way. Rage gives way to guild and explains the rage
of the Bolshevik revolution (1917).
CULTURE IS SHARED
Culture is an abstraction from the body of learned behavior which a g

roup of people who share the same tradition transmit entire to their children
, and in part, to adult immigrants who become members of the society. (Marg
aret Mead, Cultural patterns and Technical Change 1955:12)
Norms- are shared ideals (or rules) about how people ought to act

7. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (Theory)

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Psychological Anthropology- individual and cultural personalities are formed
through enculturation or the process of cultural transmission.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

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Barnard College
Author of Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Demonstrate cultural particularism through comparison of USA adolescence
to those of other cultures, especially in the Pacific
Studied among the Samoans, and found they emphasized group harmony and
cooperation. Values that were part of the child-rearing practices
NATIONAL CHARACTER STUDIE
S Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
Partially deaf made field work difficult
1905 Vassar
1914 Biochemist- Cornell
1919- Anthropology-New School of Social Research
Author of Patterns in Culture (1934) and The Chrysanthemum and the

Sword (1964)
US Department of War, WWII
Japanese National Character
o Child-rearing practices- toilet training conflict between obligation and
pleasure
o Japanese- contradiction between pleasure (flower arrangement) and
obligation (martial arts)

CRITICISMS OF CULTURE AND PERSONALITY/Psychological SCHOOL
Field work was not conducted or not rigorous
Field Methods
How do you scientifically study how people feel
Emphasized the importance of photography and film
Reductionism and Ethnocentric
Others- both stress artistry and discipline
Failure to recognize widespread cultural diversity and personality
differences that exist in all cultures

IV. POST WORLD WARS & COLD WAR (1945-1991)
End of Colonialism
Technology & Consumerism
Civil Rights
Importance of small scaled societies
Influenced by the 19th century evolutionists of Spencer and Morgan
Evolutionary theory was sound, but that the earlier theorists worked with
inadequate data
Did not assume unilineal direction of society
Two trends in Anthropology
o Scientific Anthropologists- Evolutionists & Materialists
o Humanistic Anthropologists- Structural & Symbolic
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8. NEOEVOLUTIONISM (theory)
Leslie White (1900-1975)
1921-1926 Columbia University & Univ. Chicago
1927 Prof. Univ. Buffalo & 1930 Univ. of Michigan
Author of The Science of Culture (1949), The Evolution of Culture: The
development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959)
Criticized functionalists who view the world as static
Neoevolutionism- culture was a means by which humans adapted to nature
Cultural complexity was a result of an increased concentration of e

nergy (focused on a global scale)
Separated cultures into 3 levels: technological*, sociological, and ideological
Technological change affected a societys institutions and value systems

NEOEVOLUTIONISM
Elman Service (1915-1996)
Univ. Michigan degrees (1941)
Prof. Univ. Michigan, Univ. of California Santa Barbara
Author of Primitive Social Organization (1962), Origins of the Sta

te and Civilization (1975)
Based on social organization, kinship and power
Band- egalitarian
Tribe- sodalities (association) kinship and nonkin (such as age) as basis for
organization
Chiefdom- Ranked, inherited leadership,
State- Divine authority

9. CULTURAL ECOLOGY (Theory)
Cultural Ecology- stresses the interrelationship between culture and the
natural conditions in the environment
Julian Steward (1902-1972)
University of California degrees (1931)
Univ. Michigan, Utah, California, Bureau of American Ethnology
Stresses the interrelationship among the natural conditions in the
environment
Focused on how specific sociocultural systems adapt to environmental
conditions
Divides the sociocultural systems into the culture core (Subsistence -
environment, technology, and economic arrangement) and secondar
y features (politics and religion)
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The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands (1936), Theory of C

ulture Change (1955)

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Shoshone, Southern California
o Religion =
o Arid environment-
o Scarce wild resources
o Non-migratory game
o Low population density
o Person/sq. mile
o Hunting & gathering
o Individual and shamanism
o Shoshone lacked complicated ritual system small groups lack the need
for ceremony and rites mostly concerned with individual thus
o Shaman spiritual specialists who helped cure individuals
10. CULTURAL MATERIALISM (Theory)
Cultural materialism- Material needs shape human behavior
Marvin Harris (1927-2000)
o Columbia University degrees and professor
The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches
(1974)
Focuses on technology, environment, and economic factors as key
determinants in sociocultural evolution
o Infrastructure (technology and production of resources)
o Structure (domestic and political economy)
o Superstructure (religion, art, etc.)
Infrastructure determines the structure and superstructure
Focuses on Etic reasoning
Religion- superstructure-
all aspects of culture such as myth, magic, ritual that are intended to mediat
e between ordinary beings and extraordinary beings and resolve ambiguous
and control temptation to engage in behavior that has short-term benefits.
o People of India worship zebu cattle, which are protected by Hindu
doctrine of ahimsa, a principle of nonviolence
o More energy is reaped from keeping cattle alive (fuel, fertilizer,
pulling power) than from killing and eating them

CRITICISMS OF NEOEVOLUTIONIST AND MATERIALIST
Criticized for generalizations and lack of specifics
Lacks historical or political factors, reduces human behavior to simple
adaptations to the environment or to technology
Adaptations are best possible solutions --- no maladaptations
Too much emphasis on the environment
Technological determinists
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How does kinship reflect technology or the environment?

11. STRUCTURALISM (Theory)
Structuralism- Inherent structure biological to the human mind and the
human mind universally categorizes and divides, creates contrast and
oppositions
Culture is a collection of arbitrary symbols
Human thought uses binary contrast
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
1927-1932 University of Paris
1934- University of Sao Paulo Brazil
1950- University of Paris, International Council of Social Sciences
Author of Structural Anthropology (1958), The Raw and the Cooked (1964)
Construction of ideologies to maintain the balance or health of society
Religion- a symbolic integrated system that serves to communicate
Australian Aborigines, Native North American cultures- Muskogee
People turn to nature to represent their diversity to create differences among
themselves when no biological or cultural differences are visible
o Each group has a different totem
o Totems-animals, plants, geographical features
o Model for society
o Social differences between groups mirror natural species in binary
opposition
o Totems symbolize through use of natural images togetherness on one
landscape

12. SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY (Theory)
Symbolic Anthropology- study of culture through the interpretation of the
meaning of symbols, values and beliefs of a society
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)
Degrees Antioch and Harvard (1956)
Prof. University of Chicago & Princeton
Author of The Interpretation of Culture (1973)
Study of culture through the interpretation of the meaning of symbols, values
and beliefs of a society
Rejects that culture could be modeled like mathematics
We construct our cultural reality, so that it is concerned with studying

the process by which people give meaning to their world, and how this wor
ld is expressed in cultural symbols- Thick Description.
Example: a Balinese cockfight -
o Warrior, bachelor, political candidate
o Aversion to animals
o Deep play
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o Emphasis on an actor-centered perspective and thick description
o Interpretation within context
CRITICISM OF SYMBOLS AND STRUCTURES

Reductive-
Too much emphasis on symbols neglecting the processes that lead to the mak
ing of culture- universal psychic of the human mind- ignores basic needs
Ahistorical- Culture is not separate from historical, political and economic
processes- esp. Structuralists
Unscientific-
esp. symbolic anthro.

V. THE COLD WAR ENDS & POST-COLD WAR GLOBALIZATION (1991-Present)
Cold War period ideology
Globalization emphasis on politics, ideology, and military to trade and
economic issues
Multiculturalism
Increase in voices of Non-Western Anthropologists & other Social Scientists

13. ANTHROPOLOGY AND GENDER (Theory)
Gender & Anthropology- Concerned with documenting womens lives and their
roles in societies around the world
Feminist Movement
Sally Slocum (1939--)
Author of Woman the Gatherer (1975),
Began in the 1970s, women began to question some of the male-centered
assumptions within anthropology
Example: Challenged man the hunter, womens roles in human evolution
have been ignored by focusing on hunting rather than gathering
How does gender relate to class, the social relations of power, etc.
Like postmodernists ideology in that they argue that the absenc

e of a womans voice has made anthropology a male-
centered and thus NOT objective or scientific!

14. POSTMODERNISM (Theory)
Postmodernism- Do not believe that an observer can have a neutral or
objective knowledge about a culture. There will always be a bias based on our
language, cultural background, and personal experiences
Deconstruct Western thought
reason, truth, ideal form, origin. Western thought falsely constructs a dichot
omy between itself and other Emphasis on how an anthropologist obtains
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their information, ex: I am writing my interpretation of what the natives we
re doing.
Not writing as an omniscient narrator, writing in the first person using I.

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0
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0

Renato Rosaldo
Author of Culture and Truth (1989).
Illongot, Philippines
Headhunting-
Death and grief
Rage in bereavement caused them to kill
1974 Ferdinand Marcos outlawed head hunting
Needed another means/ritual/practice to deal with grief and began
converting to Christianity
Death of Michelle Rosaldo- wife
Grief and rage expressed through legal system- government officials and
insurance companies
Two cultures overlap but are not the same
Writes how he watched his wife die in the field and how this made him
understand Ilongot men take heads after the death of loved ones

15. INDIGENOUS ANTHROPOLOGY (Theory)
Indigenous anthropologist-
focus on indigenous knowledge and culture from emic perspectives (often th
e anthropologists is a member of the indigenous culture s/he writes about) as
a contrast to Western Cultures
Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005)
Sioux
1970 Univ. Colorado degree
Univ. Colorado Prof
Author of Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration

of Independence, Creationism and other Modern Myths, Red Earth, White Li
es
Emphasis on Native American voices to represent Native American peoples
in the past and present
Highly critical of Anthropologists
Disconnection in White Christian culture between land and people

CRITICISMS OF FEMINISM AND POSTMODERNISM
Argue that biology plays no role with male and female differences
Unscientific
Only women can study other women
Gender studies often argue that Science is androcentric
Unscientific
Nihilists

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ANT 2410 Cultural Anthropology - Anthropology Dr. K.

Culture is an abstraction from the body of learned behavior which a g

Author of Patterns in Culture (1934) and The Chrysanthemum and the

Cultural complexity was a result of an increased concentration of e

Author of Primitive Social Organization (1962), Origins of the Sta

The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands (1936), Theory of C

We construct our cultural reality, so that it is concerned with studying

Like postmodernists ideology in that they argue that the absenc

Author of Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration

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