anthro 2A midterm 1- Egan UCI

Anthropology (define)

Study of human diversity (difference/variations) over time and throughout the world.

Four subfields of anthropology:

SLAB

Sociocultural: human societies+cultures over time and space

Linguistic: Language, speaking, communication

Archaeology: Throughout time, inferences/observations, historical differences

Biological: Evolutionary history

Culture

Learned and shared meanings that mediate our relations with our broader social+material world. Learned shared behaviors, design for living, all things about man that are more than merely biological/organic

The Power to Naturalize

Culture is created through our interactions on a massive scale, happens as we don't realize it's going on. We tend not to think about it as something we've created, rather it being fixed in nature. Idea of normalizing race as biological.

Humans share a common ancestry with...

Chimpanzees. (But human beings are not ancestors of chimps)

A Priori

Assumptions, knowledge considered to be true w/out being based on previous experience or observations. Things you take to be true before you even start. Often operate invisibly.

Prejudice

devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes. People are prejudiced when they hold stereotypes about groups and apply them to individuals

Scientific Racism

Idea that humans are divided into discrete biological types (races).

- "each race has its own appearance, social/cultural attributes"

Racism

idea that racial types are biologically transmitted from parents to offspring. Discrimination against such ethnic groups

Race

Cultural categories in hands of science. Scientific type for human beings. When an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis.

- These derive from contrasts perceived and perpetuated in particular societies, rather than from scientific classifications based on common genes. NOT real on a biological level, but real as a set of social, political, and experiential facts.

- Significant as a cultural category, and racial distinctions and racial discrimination vary from one society to another

Colonialism

The one thing all different races had in common (european colonialism). Formed a series of multitribal and multiethnic states that corresponded poorly with preexisting cultural divisions

- The context in which race emerged, since colonists are the ones doing the typologizing

Science & Culture

Culture makes order out of chaos for science- have categories to put things into, organized

Linneaus

developed the first taxonomy of different things, and the classifications of living things

-Homo sapiens Europaeus albescens (white)

-Homo sapiens Asiaticus fucus (dark)

-Homo sapiens Africanus negreus (black)

-Homo sapiens Americanus rubescens (red)

Blumenbach

1st explicit scientific delineation and definition of "races", when applied to people it meant nationality

-Caucasian (white)

-Mongolian (yellow)

-Malay (brown)

-Ethiopian (black)

-American (red)

Hooton

"Big Three"

-Caucasoid: europe, middle east, into central/west asian, india

-Mongoloid: east asia, native americans, pacific islanders

-Negroid: africa

Monogenesis

Idea that all humans have one common origin

Polygenesis

Idea that each race had its own independent origin, different genetic processes (racist)

Typologizing

Categorization of humans into races based on physical traits. Concerns when science uses typology since it claims to be free of biases

Rank

Believing that races don't rank the same

Craniometry

tried to prove superiority of (white) men over women. Measured heads- smart people have big brains, big heads. Western European men had biggest heads, data was extremely skewed because of a priori

Robert Bennett Bean:

Research on anatomy of brain function:

-Anterior part of brain (genu): higher mental facilities. Posterior part of brain (splenium): sensory motor

-Believed more brain given to genu is superior (hypothesized white male brains have more genu)

-Measured "white"/"black" brains, and male/female brains within each race

-Results: complete 100% divergence- "all white men had more genu than all white women, and than black men" etc

Franklin Mall:

Suspicious of complete divergence so completely repeated the experiment, except measurements were done blind, reduces bias going into measurements. -Results: no statistically significant difference whatsoever

Paul Brocca:

- Did cranium measurements to show superiority of men but became skeptical of brain size

- Placement of the Foramen Magnum: Hole that exists down head where spinal cord exits the skull

- Knew that other factors caused variation in brain size bc was defensive when defending German v French brain

Brocca's Hypotheses & Research:

- Went into research thinking posterior position of foramen magnum shows greater relation to apes, hypothesized that black foramen magnum more posterior (whites more forward)

- Resulted in whites being more posterior, so he began searching for alternative theories

- Took the foramen magnum as the dividing line between genu and splenium, and implied that white people had more genu because more posterior

Culture: Biological v Social Transmission

Cultural differences between human beings are never due to biological differences. Culture is learned (socially), not inherited (biologically).

"Facts" of Human Biological Variation:

1. There is Human Bio Variation: investigation of human biological differences is important bc we differ from each other. There is some level of pattern in each individual (isn't race)

2. Geographically Localized Variation: two ppl with ancestry from the same part of the world are going to be more alike each other in measurable biological ways than ppl from ancestry with a very different part of the world. Ex: Iran and Iraq vs Iran and Jamaica.

3. Variation is Continuous (not discrete) in its Distribution: subtle and gradual changes. No discrete types where we know when a category ends and one begins. (like race). ex: Skin color: ppl at equator are dark, as you move away from equator ppl get lighter bc of differing melanin levels due to sun U.V.

4. Variation is Discordant in Distribution: Different traits don't vary or sort together. Things don't match up. Knowing one won't help predict another thing, these don't pair up together. Ex: "everybody with darker skin have blood type b" etc. knowing someone's skin color won't help you predict blood type, the two don't vary together.

Implications for Racial Typologies

limits of race as a biological unit of analysis. If science does the racial typologies then there is much bias

Social Races

Study race as a sociocultural phenomenon, race as a subject opposed to a unit of analysis. Ethnic groups that are assumed/believed to have a biological basis. There is a belief that a whole ethnic group is bc of a shared ideology that makes them a specific type.

Hypodescent

what happens when people of different races mate: In the event of an interracial marriage, the children belong to the lower ranking race of the parents

Race in Japan

While Japan presents itself as a homogenous country, there are minority groups (around 10%). The majority of Japanese define themselves by opposition to others. Cultural mechanisms, including residential segregation and taboos on "interracial" marriage, work to keep minorities "in their place."

- Burakumin: stigmatized group even though differences are indistinguishable. Societal conditions to keep them in lower classes

Race in Brazil

less exclusionary categories, which permit individuals to change their racial classification, using many racial terms. They recognize + attempt to describe the physical variation that exists, paying attention to phenotypes (evident traits).

- People can shift/change their race by altering their clothing, speech, location, or even attitude. The system of racial classification is changing in the context of international identity politics and rights movements

- No hypodescent rule developed in Brazil

Race and Intelligence

Race was continuously used as means of determining intelligence and proving superiority of majority groups

Biology and environment

Biologies vary profoundly because of genetic history. Biology and culture get blurred together

Cultural Biases

interpretation and judgment of phenomena by the standards of one's own culture

IQ scores, educational achievement, and race

differ by life experiences. Ex: IQ tests measure things we've been doing since we have been kids. Better at the test than those who haven't. Ex: IQ's increasing by generation means nothing biological, only social

Osage Indians

had highest academic achievement bc made money from oil and invested that into good education systems, nothing biological

IQ scores amongst black and white WWI military recruits

Blacks v whites in rural south: whites had higher IQ scores, disregards African Americans who migrated to the north, who had higher IQ because of SOCIAL/CULTURAL differences

Black migrants to NY v southern rural whites

Steele and Aronson

GRE scores in "black" and "white" students. Tests were given under different conditions, ex: saying vs not saying anything about the test being comparative/diagnostic. When you didn't say anything about it being comparative, there was no difference between the two groups but when you told people it was a diagnostic to compare, there were differences.

- These differences aren't biological, but instead important about political/socioeconomic conditions

Genes

Traits aren't distributed by Race. Parents pass genes/DNA to children. These genes don't look different for African children rather than Asian children, etc. This is something we impose upon the actual data

Clines

Gradation in a character over geographic distance. A range of measurable values in a particular trait and where in the world you find the populations that fall in that range of values

ex: ear wax or skin color

Breeding Population

A group of regularly interbreeding individuals. A flexible category given specific research questions. Ex; breeding populations in northern ghana, or all of ghana, or all across western africa, etc.

Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups

common identity based on cultural similarities.

Members of that ethnic group may share a particular language, may have specific customs/religion

Ethnicity as situational: One identity is used in certain settings, another in different ones- more complicated because of this globalized world

Majority and Minority groups

Majority: dominant group

Minority: occupy subordinate (lower) positions within a social hierarchy who have unique social, religious, ethnic, racial, or other characteristics.. Have less power and wealth than majority groups

Assimilation

the process of change that members of an ethnic group may experience when they move to a country where another culture dominates. ethnic group members adopt the patterns and norms of the host culture. They are incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that their ethnic group no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.

Plural Society

society combining ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization and the economic interdependence of those groups. In which ethnic groups can be in contact without assimilating

Multiculturalism

The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable. Opposite of assimilation because it socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture.

- It assumes that each ethnic group has something to offer and learn from the others. Instead of melting pots it's an ethnic salad

Discrimination: de jure & de facto

policies and practices that harm a group and its members

-De Jure: Legally sanctioned/ part of law discrimination

-De Facto: Discrimination practiced but not legally sanctioned

Apartheid (South Africa)

a system of legalized racial segregation and oppression in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 where one racial group is separated from another and denied political and civil rights. Ex of de jure discrimination

Imagination and Identity

We draw from resources (imaginary), like media, books, material that you pull from the imaginary to produce your own individual imagination. These ideas drawn from the imaginaries are available to you to form your own imagination. Able to be revised and changed

Nationalities & Imagined Communities

Community is something about how you've come to imagine the social world. Imagining others in similar space/time: (it's a fiction)

Discuss and critique the theory of scientific racism. What is "race" and how is it used to account for social and cultural as well as biological difference in human beings? What criticisms have anthropologists made of race and its use as a unit of analysis for gaining insights into human sociocultural and biological variation? What alternative concepts do anthropologists use to analyze human biological variation?

Race is a scientific type for human beings, and while society has made race to be biological, race is only real from a sociocultural standpoint. Anthropologists realize that race as a unit of analysis has much bias and cannot be used as a means of analyzing people because there is no biological basis. They use concepts like breeding populations (groups of people who breed together) and clines (gradual changes across geography) to show biological variation. Instead of denying the fact that there is variation, they demonstrate that the variation is geographically localized, discordant, and continuous

Discuss the concept of "social race". How do cultural anthropologists approach the race concept today, and how does this differ from scientific racism? Discuss some examples of how race is culturally constructed in different times and places.

The concept of social race is the approach taken by anthropologists to study race as a sociocultural construct shaped by historical, economic, and political factors rather than genetic differences instead of a unit of analysis. This differs from scientific racism because instead of believing races have a biological basis, social race understands the cultural and societal effects that affect races. Race is culturally constructed over time and not purposefully. For example, historically in the U.S., the hypodescent rule became very significant, in which the offspring of a mixed race child got the race of the minority parent. Biologically this child had both parent’s DNA, but culturally was seen as the minority group. In addition, Brazil takes on a more fluid approach to race, in which anyone can change their race by altering their appearance, ideas, and physical traits.

Discuss the field of craniometry and related uses of anatomical measures in racial arguments. What criticisms have Stephen Jay Gould and anthropologists made of these arguments? What logical and empirical errors are made? Give and discuss specific examples to make your points.

Craniometry is ‘scientific’ research based on measuring the size of people’s brains in order to rank intelligence by race or gender. Anthropologists realize that scientists go into their research with a priori, or assumptions made before starting, and simply want to confirm their own biases. Many logical and empirical errors are made. For example, Robert Bennett Bean decided to measure the brains of both white people and black people, and he knew that the genu (posterior part of the brain) was responsible for more logical actions while the splenium (anterior part of the brain) was more motor/sensory based. After measuring all the brains, his results showed complete 100% divergence, with all white brains measuring to be bigger than the black brains. However, when his student Franklin Mall replicated the study blind, his results proved to have no significant difference. In addition, Paul Brocca’s experiment had an initial hypothesis stating that a more posterior foramen magnum would indicate a greater relation to apes. When his results showed that whites were more posterior, he made a new hypothesis that the foramen magnum was the dividing line between the genu and the splenium, and whites were therefore smarter. These errors were made by people who wanted to further their own racist beliefs.

Social Darwinism (Survival of the Fittest (who coined it?)

Herbert Spencer: Coined the term "survival of the fittest" (not even by Darwin) to discuss superiority of certain groups. Survival of the fittest- idea that different human societies in the world are all in conflict with each other over resources. The more fit ones would dominate

3 Assumptions of Evolution

1. Social forms change over time. 2. Societies can be ranked from high to low on some criterion. 3. Rank order is a historical progression: all societies started from the bottom, and went on to become more and more advanced, but some got stuck along the way

Unilinear Social Evolution (who came up with it?)

idea that societies evolve along a single, linear trajectory from primitive to advanced stages. One universal evolutionary process for all peoples everywhere. Different than scientific racism because racists believed races had initial differences while unilinear believed differences in material conditions accounted for whether people changed or didn't

- Lewis Henry Morgan: Founding father of anthro. Came up with Unilinear Evolution as an alternative to scientific racism Theory is based on ethnocentrism, racism, and understanding race biologically and hierarchically

Evolutionary Stages

Idea that cultural attributes evolved in strict sequence

- Savagery: Hunter-gatherer societies

- Barbarism: Societies that practice agriculture and animal domestication

- Civilization: Societies characterized by writing, advanced technology, and urban development

These stages overlook the complexity of diversity with the idea that there's no diversity, just social maturation through the stages

Franz Boas:

Critique of Unilinear Evolution

Founded the first department of anthro. Launched first scale critique of scientific racism and unilinear social evolutionism.

Emphasizing cultural relativism and the importance of historical context. Cultural diversity cannot be understood through a single evolutionary framework.

Each society has its own unique trajectory influenced by environmental, historical, and cultural factors.

Empirical Problems with Social Evolution

Bad data for unilinear ideas, leaving much up to speculation. Many societies exhibit characteristics of multiple evolutionary stages simultaneously, contradicting the unilinear model

Multilinear Evolution

There are multiple ways of changing and evolving as societies, rather than one specific line, it's like a branching tree. All people and societies change but they don't change in the same way. All peoples have equally long histories

Cultural Diffusion

how cultural ideas and traits spread to other societies because of social contact. No group is completely independent because we are all interacting with each other. Challenges unilinear model

"Progress" is a problematic term

The notion of "progress" implies a hierarchy of cultures and assumes that all societies are striving toward a common goal. If we're doing the ranking we are going to we are going to choose criteria that makes us look good

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture is superior to others. Anything different is 'wrong'. Problem of perspective is that we emphasize what we did and say they don't have what we do

Dominance is ephemeral

The dominance of certain cultures or societies is temporary and can shift over time due to various factors such as globalization, migration, and cultural exchange. Ephemeral= there one moment and gone the next, constantly changing/shifting.

- Therefore, dominance is not permanent and not a good criterion to use

Discuss the theory of unilinear social evolutionism. What are its core assumptions, and how does it represent sociocultural diversity? What criticisms have anthropologists made of unilinear social evolutionism?

Unilinear social evolutionism is the idea that humans all have one path to civilization and that we evolved in a specific way. It contradicts scientific racism because it believes that races rank differently because of material conditions. Its core assumptions are that races evolved from savagery to barbarians to civilization, with specific features representing each stage. Sociocultural diversity is said to exist because some cultures got stuck while others progressed. However, anthropologists have critiqued it for its lack of empirical evidence, as many societies have progressed while skipping steps. Anthropologists understand that all people have equally long histories, and that people don't all change in the same way.

Nature v Nurture

This debate addresses whether human behavior is determined primarily by biological factors (nature) or by cultural and environmental influences (nurture). Anthropologists tend to emphasize that while biology sets certain potentials, culture shapes how these potentials manifest in diverse societies

Common View

the idea that human beings first developed biologically and cognitively, and then culture came afterward, "overlaying" or mediating human nature and that there is an underlying human nature and society/human nature come after the fact to constrain/corrupt that human nature. - However: culture is PART of our nature

Viewing culture as veneer: Culture is often viewed as a superficial layer added on top of a more fundamental, pre cultural human nature

Thomas Hobbes

Pessimistic about humans. Believed that they are naturally selfish/greedy but culture/society constrains that evil human nature and forces us to cooperate with one another

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Opposite as Hobbes. Believed human nature deep down was social, communal, and we cared about our fellows (good underlying nature). But he believed society corrupts us and teaches us greed, how to use each other, and to be selfish

- Romanticized native americans: Believed that they were 'noble savages' and that because they had less culture and a less developed society than the French, they therefore had less of the corrupting influence that society has upon us. Wrote out Native Americans to be the opposites of the French as to critique French society

Culture in Evolutionary Perspective

Culture and biological evolution are deeply interconnected; humans evolved as cultural beings, with culture playing a key role in survival, social development, and adaptation. Anthropology views human nature as inherently cultural, with culture evolving alongside and shaping human biology

Culture in Evolutionary Perspective: Field Studies with Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees exhibit culture-like behaviors such as tool use (termite fishing), social learning, and even warfare, indicating that aspects of culture extend beyond humans. Ancestors that we shared with chimps most likely also had culture

Culture in Evolutionary Perspective: Fossil record

biological marking that separated chimps and humans was bipedalism. Oldest evidence of stone tool use in Eastern Africa (2.5+ million years ago) are clear evidence of culture. Modern human anatomy appeared about 200,000 years ago. We have evolved biologically AS cultural creatures. It is our nature to be cultural

Culture & Society

Culture is "learned shared behaviors, design for living, all things about man that are more than merely biological/organic". Culture and society are NOT interchangeable words. Culture is the meaning that guides life and orients each of us to the world around us; it moves around. People live in human groups called societies

Culture & Biology

Culture is learned not inherited. Differences between a sociocultural group are never due to the biological differences between. No biological basis for differences. Yes, we acknowledge we are predisposed to biology but this is something all homosapiens have

Supra-Organic

Culture operates at a level above the individual and you can't reduce it to individuals. It persists across generations, transcends individuals, and cannot be reduced to biology or individual psychology

Agency

our capacity for creative action. The ability to act and make choices in a social context

Subjectivity

Your own personal perspective of yourself, of others, of the world. A sense of where you fit in the broader scheme of things. We all have different subjectivities

Culture and World View

The way we see the world is based on culture. Culture includes all sorts of things, even when we aren't aware. Culture operates very invisibly but profoundly impacts so much

Cultural Constructions

Cultures create meanings through complex interactions and social practices (not deliberately), which are constructed over time, not fixed or natural. Even our beliefs about nature are themselves constructive and vary. Culture is hardly ever politically neutral. Products of human history but we think they're fixed in nature

Cultural Relativism

Opposite of ethnocentrism. Cultural practices need to be understood in terms of their own sociocultural context. A methodological approach that encourages understanding a culture from its own perspective without imposing one's own cultural values. However, it has limits, especially when moral or human rights issues arise (e.g., human rights abuses under the guise of "cultural differences", concentration camps). Right and wrong should be provisional, not absolute in these kinds of ways

Language (verbal and non-verbal communication)

A communication system based on meaningful signs, sounds, gestures, or marks. Transmitted through learning.

Language includes both spoken words and also our expressions, stances, gestures, and movements, even if unconscious, convey information and are part of our communication styles. We communicate whenever we transmit information about ourselves to others and receive information from them

Phoneme + Morpheme

Phoneme: a sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning

Morpheme: words and their meaningful parts (sounds coming together to form words)

Lexicon + Syntax

-lexicon: dictionary containing all its morphemes and their meanings, a language's vocabulary.

-syntax: the structure and order of words in phrases and sentences

Language and Thought

different languages produce different ways of thinking and the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways

-Changes in culture produce changes in language and thought

Sociolinguistics

investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation

Sociolinguistics: dialects (BEV)

Variations in language associated with specific social or geographical groups. Ex: BEV or AAVE (african american vernacular english)

Sociolinguistics: gender speech contrasts

Women ​​typically use language and the body movements that accompany it to build rapport, social connections with others, while men tend to make reports, reciting information to establish a place for themselves in a hierarchy, as they also attempt to determine the relative ranks of their conversation mates. These gender differences reflect + perpetuate social hierarchies

Sociolinguistics: stratification & symbolic domination

We use and evaluate speech in the context of extralinguistic forces—social, political, and economic. Language reflects and perpetuates social hierarchies; certain dialects or language forms can be seen as superior. SAE (Standard American English) has the most "symbolic capital"

Unmarked

considered the default, ex: male, normal, white

Marked

those viewed as outside the norm, ex: female, non-white/ diversity

Shalini Shankar

Investigates how advertising agencies in the US represent "Asian Americans" in their efforts to market products to them.

Corporations want to sell consumers products, and recognize that large minority populations can be consumers

Racial Naturalization

Natural in the sense of "Normal". Normalizing race by believing that it's fixed and not something that changes over time

Post Racial America

Idea that society has moved beyond racial prejudices and discrimination; however, this notion ignores the realities of racism and the ongoing societal issues, while promoting an illusion of equality

Assemblage

Assembling cultural markers to represent and appeal to specific racial or ethnic groups in ads. Assembling things from parts and pieces A set of meanings assembled for particular ends to make something

How to make an assemblage of diversity?

Casting minority actors, but making them as "normal" as possible. Pulling in other things that indicate normal. The mere presence of a minority body indexes diversity without using any of the qualisigns that refer to specific cultural or life-context details

Casting Minority Actors: what are three racial ideologies furthered by this

Championing white middle-class values: ex: how do you decorate your home, what is important to you, how you speak

Reinforcing whiteness as an aspirational norm in the US: this is what looks the best and how you want to be perceived (like the ads)

Suggest that the racial/ethnic differences are naturalized to the point of being normal and no longer matter. The idea that there isn't any more prejudice or discrimination, but this isn't true

Hope for Change in Multicultural Advertising

Despite the tendency to reproduce white norms, there is potential for multicultural advertising to reshape perceptions of normalcy, challenging the notion of "forever foreigners" and inviting a broader inclusion of diverse identities within the imagined community of the nation

Biopolitics

The relationship between biology and power, how social power inscribes meaning onto bodies and differences. ​​Power relations are socially produced, but are made to appear as though they emanate from the very structure of bodies and differences of bodies

Imagined Community

A socially constructed sense of belonging to a group or community, even when its members don't know each other personally. It creates a shared identity, like imagining America as a unified nation despite internal diversity. This concept often includes defining who belongs and who is excluded

believing we are all one nationality, one group of people with similar characteristics and beliefs. The way that we imagine thinking of people that's not necessarily what they are. Ex: Thinking that all UCI students are the same because we all have UCI ID cards. Creates the idea of US vs THEM, if you don't belong in the imagined group, you are an alien

Ethnorace

A hybrid term blending race and ethnicity. While race is often seen as biological and ethnicity as cultural, the concept of ethnorace acknowledges that these categories often intersect in how groups are represented and understood, especially in advertising