Anthropology Midterm Review

Thursday, March 10, 2011

 Survivals: Survival is found in every culture

 There is evidence of where you, your culture, came from, and where you are going
 Customs that are retained that are unnecessary in the new society
 “processes, customs, and opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of
society different form that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an
older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved”
 Example: Sneezing – need to go into history to find where the term “bless you” came from.
 Can’t find this explanation in the present time, but must go into the past (primitive time)
 Animism: belief in a soul, a spiritual essence that differs from the tangible, physical body
 Unilineal Evolution: belief that there is one line, and every society is on this one line to civilization
 The English believed that they were at the end point of this line – civilization
 Global Homogenization – cultural difference in degree will disappear
 The inevitable endpoint is that everyone will be the same
 Historical Particularism: a detailed descriptive approach to anthropology associated with Franz Boas and his students, and
designed as an alternative to the broad generalizing approach
 The history and social changes of a particular group
 like causes produce unlike effects’ unlike causes can produce like effects
 relevant history is that of the material and cultural exchanges of a particular group
 universal pronouncements about “man” will have to wait for a complete empirical inventory of human practice
 Functionalism: the theory that all elements of a culture are functional in that they serve to satisfy culturally defined needs of
the people in that society or requirements of the society as a whole
 Presumes that societies are bounded and thought of as an organism.
 Every aspect of culture has a different “function
 Believes that a cultures focus is on stasis and reproduction, not on change and adaptation
 One single change will cause a malfunction – if everything changes = death

 North American used Salvage Anthropology. The colonists here believed that Native societies will die, because they
could not survive the changes that was happening around them
 Result: they collects as many artifacts, language, documents rituals, gathered everything they could from these
cultures, because of the fear that these cultures would one day become extinct.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy: by taking everything, and striping this Native society, they destroyed their culture
 Universal Human Mind: believed that everyone was essentially the same, and in this they had the same human nature, and
because of this, they had the same thought process.
 Independent Invention. Everything thinks the same way, so if someone was presented with a problem, they would
come to the same conclusions as someone else
 Nacirema: the Nacirema is written in a distinct writing called exoticizing
 This book satirizes anthropological papers on “other” cultures, and the Northern American culture
 It is written in a very artistic way that put emphasis on the way previous anthropologists have written about other
cultures in the past – very objective and detailed – describing things in ways that that culture would not
 Franz Boas: professor of anthropology at Columbia University, taught Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead
 Rejected the unilineal social evolution by the end of the 19th century
 Argued that differences of perception were rooted in different modes of classification
 Focused on the practices and experiences of a single group
 E. B. Taylor: the father of anthropology and father of the culture concept
 Looked at Culture (high Culture)
 He traveled to Mexico because he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and published a travel account of Mexico
 “Primitive Culture” – the first use of the word “culture”
 He saw that humans were very much the same
 Very interested in what people thought about – what their beliefs were
 Started Arm-Chair Anthropology and came up with Survivals
 Bronislaw Malinowski: a pioneer in ethnographic fieldwork
 Brought anthropology off the verandah
 Emphasized the importance of detailed participant observation and argued that anthropologists must have daily contact
with their informants if they are to adequately record the “imponderabilia” of everyday life that are so important t o
understand a different culture
 Notes and Queries on Anthropology: This handbook was given to sources which arm-chair anthropologists like E.B. Tylor
got his information. This book taught these people how to be unbiased
 It trained people to be purist in their observations
 had in it “anthropometry” – the measurement of a man
 very personal questions found in this handbook
 Participant Observation: anthropologists using participant observation must simultaneously inside the other culture,
experiencing it to understand it, and also outside to objectively observe and analyze it.
 To do this, they must have full command of the local language (no interpreter)
 Spend at least 12 months with a particular group, and participate in their daily life and activities

 This development caused a shift from human history to the “imponderabilia” of actual life (from universalizing,
believing that there are general rules across all cultures, to particularizing, that each culture is unique and difference,
and offers us difference understandings)
 Caused a shift form civilization to cultures
 Caused a wavering empiricism – less to believe that information about culture can just be collected and reported but,
more that in needs to be experienced
 “Arm Chair” Anthropology: staying at “home” and getting accounts of different cultures from missionaries, travelers, and
colonial officials (all these people are not scientists – so their observations are biased)
 These people were given the handbook “Notes and Queries on Anthropology, for the use of Travelers and Residents in
Uncivilized Lands”
 Ethnographic Present: ethnographies written in the present tense
 Gives an atmosphere of timelessness – images a culture as unchanging
 Erases the ethnographer’s subjectivity
 Generalizing – a degree of coherence in this culture is high
 Is less used now:
 Colonialism had eliminated all illusions about unchanged, untouched native cultures
 Rise of postmodernism and challenge to authorial objectivity and authority
 Ethnocentrism: the tendency to judge the customs of other societies by the standards of one’s own ethnographic present:
describes the point in time at which a society or culture is frozen when ethnographic data collected in the field are published
in a report
 Empiricism: reliance on observable and quantifiable data
 Cultural Relativism: the ability to view the beliefs and customs of other people with context of their culture rather than
one’s own
 Mercator Projection Map: a map that was created by the Europeans
 It shows Africa as small in comparison to Europe, and Europe is in the center
 The Europeans are influenced by their culture
 The brilliance of this is that a 3d object, a globe, is made 2d, a map
 Object of Observation: what you (anthropologist) is studying – the object or thing or culture
 Subject of Observation: the abstract question that you (anthropologist) want to answer by studying the object of observation
 Representation: Captain James Cook is a representation of the Gods, and the Local Chiefs of the Hawaiian island is a
representation of Man
 Because of this, during the Makahiki Festival, the Local Chiefs must kill and cannibalized Cook, to relive the
mythological struggle between man to Gods to control to earth, and to win genealogical seniority with the woman
 Bias: an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives
 To say that something is bias, means that there is a unbiased view also
 Universalism: attempt to trace out the general rules that may govern social life across a range of contexts
 Particularism: attempts to describe, understand, and explain other ways of life and practices; attempts at comparisons and
finding differences between cultures
 Mediation: culture is a mode of mediation
  Culture is a mode of mediation
 Anything that shapes actions, consciousness, or perception
 Bodily practicess, unconscious categories, ideologies and beliefs
 Culture: comes from the word “cultivation”, “civilization”
 There is a single universalizing standard that identifies cultured or uncultured
 cultures: learned, nonrandom systematic behavior and knowledge that can be transmitted from generation to generation; it is
a way of life
 Particularizing (differences in kind)
 Not individual, biologically determined; a thing out there in the world; unchanging
 White Man’s Burden: the White Man’s Burden is the way colonists justified colonial rule
 The colonists believe that it was their burden to improve the inferior race, teach them and convert them, and ultimately
change their entire culture, but this effort.
 Indirect Rule: salvage Anthropology denied colonial influence on native in ethnographic monographs, trying to minimize
colonial influence on native culture, so that they can study
 These anthropologists gave advice about indirect rule
 Modernist Ethnography: believes that the truth is out there that has not been found yet. Because of limited humans
observing limited humans, the truth will not be grasped
 Believe to have absolute faith in science and empirialism
 If you (anthropologist) work hard and put in a lot of effort, they can learn to be objective and to have no bias
 Place a lot of importance on training to be a scientist and learning no bias
 Post-modernism: believe that there is no truth out there to be found, all in representation. A variety of impressions of what is
happening, but no truth, no underlying answer that can be found
 Deconstructs the author and his authority.
 The author has unequal power over the people that he or she is studying
 Deconstructs objectivity
 Idea of pure objectivity is nonexistent – everything is partial
 Deconstruct a singular scientific truth
 Truth is relative – difference for different cultures and perceptions
 Secularization: separation between humans and church/other realm of human affairs
 Makes anthropology “thinkable”
 Structural Time: is movement through social rituals or role
 It is not like biological time, where age matters in what you do or don’t do
 Structural time is measures in ceremonies or rituals (coming of age)
 Is variable between different cultures and social classes, because each perceive time differently
 Structural Distance: Space is not flat
 Measures the distance between social relationships, kinship, not physical distance
 Synchronic: occurring on a single point in time (one moment – how did they live or die?)
 Diachronic: evolution over time of a culture (change in time)
 Used by E. B Tylor