James Egan Anthro 2A Midterm 1

Anthropology

study of human biological and cultural difference across space and time

4 Subfields of Anthropology

1. Sociocultural

2. Linguistic

3. Archaeology

4. Biological

Culture

Socially transmitted way of interacting with the world

Not BIOLOGICALLY inherited. It is LEARNED.

It has the POWER TO NATURALIZE!

Meaning that it normalizes beliefs, assumptions, and world views. It makes it seem so natural and innate that we don't question it.

Scientific Racism

Concept that humans are divided into discrete, BIOLOGICAL types (races)

Each identified by their own appearance, social cultural attributes, etc.

Linneaus

"Variants" of Homo Sapiens

Homo sapiens Europaeus albescens (white)

Homo sapiens Asiaticus fucus (dark = Asian)

Homo sapiens Africanus negreus (black)

Homo sapiens Americanus rubescens (red = Native Americans)

Blumenbach

First explicit scientific delineation of "races"

Caucasian (white)

Mongolian (yellow)

Malay (brown)

Ethiopian (black)

American (red)

Hooton

Big Three:

Caucasoid

Mongoloid

Negroid

Race, Typologizing, and Rank

Racism = typological thinking

Putting people into groups and categorizing them as different 'types'

Races are ranked because of beliefs that certain races correspond with distinct behavioral and cognitive characteristics

Western Europeans are at the top of the hierarchy

Monogenesis vs Polygenesis

Monogenesis → one origin of humans → differentiation into different races

Polygenesis → many origins → each race had its own distinct origin → treats race as different species

- Extreme form of racism

- Explains away diversity

Racism and Sociocultural differences

Different customs, beliefs, and forms of social organization were explained as expressions of racial types (explains that the way they do things are in their nature/biology)

Craniometry/Scientific Racism

Scientific study of the measurement of the skull (like size)

These studies were originally started due to the a priori (prior) beliefs (prejudice) that the scientists held. They had the belief that black people were inferior and aimed to prove that through their experiments.

Smart = big brain = big heads

Dumb = small brain = small heads

Used quantification (put things into numbers/data/statistics)

Limitations: malnutrition, health, disease, age, etc. affect brain size

Race and Colonialism

The minority races had the shared experience of being colonized by Europeans

Robert Bennet Bean

Research on anatomy of brain function

Anterior part of brain (genu)

Posterior part of brain (splenium) → sensory motor part of brain

His research

More genu = superior

Measure "white" and "black" brains

Measure male and female brains within each race

Results: complete divergence → all in one group had something

Franklin Mall

Suspicious of Bean's findings

Did his own research with same methods with exception that he did a blind experiment

Found that there were no statistically significant differences in proportions of genu and splenium in black and white people

Paul Broca

Skeptical of measuring brain size --> chose to instead focus on studying Foramen Magnum

Hypothesized that blacks would have a more posterior Foramen Magnum (similar to quadriceps) but his data proved him wrong

He then changed the way he interpreted his data to support his a priori beliefs that whites were superior --> said that since whites had a more posterior Foramen Magnum they had more genu while blacks had more splenium

Culture transmission

Culture is:

- socially transmitted, not biologically

- learned, not inherited

Biology and Environment:

IQ scores, Educational Achievement & Race

Shows that cultural biases are what changes people rather than innate differences

Osage Indians and other Native Americans

- The Osage have the best education systems of the Native Americans → higher scores

IQ scores black & white WWI military recruits

- The comparison of black and whites in rural south (low education areas) show that whites had higher IQ scores

- Comparison of black migrants to NY v. southern rural whites showed that blacks had higher scores

- Black south < white south < black NY

The opportunities people have affect their scores

Facts of human variation

1. There is variation

2. Variation is geographically localized

3. It is continuous

4. Variation is discordant in distribution (doesn't come as a package)

Genes

Passed biologically from parent to offspring

Alternative units of analysis

1. Breeding population

2. Clines

3. Haplogroups

Social Races

Sociocultural phenomenon

- culturally constructed beliefs about biology

Ethnicity

common identity based on cultural similarities

Expression of ethnicity is SITUATIONAL

Ethnic groups

Believed to have a biological basis

Race in Brazil vs Japan

Brazil: racial identity is more flexible, use many MORE RACIAL LABELS

- recognize and attempt to describe the physical variation that exists in their population

Japan: the valued group is majority ("pure") Japanese, believed to share "the same blood"

mixed offspring become members of the minority group

Burakumin: a stigmatized group of 3 million outcasts, considered "not us" and face discrimination

Hypodescent

Social rule of assigning a child of interracial mating to the race of the lower ranking race --> the minority

Science and Culture

Are often conflated (blurred)

Steele and Aronson: Impacts of race, stereotypes, and standardized test scores

Studied GRE scores in "black" and "white" students

When black people are stereotyped to be less intelligent and they are aware of it, they do worse on standardized tests → the knowledge of the stereotype and the expectations of them affect their scores

Imagination and Identity

Nationalities & Imagined Communities

We identify with a certain nation and create an imagined sense of community (ex. "national" community)

'Imagined' because these categories always change

Who belongs in a community and who doesn't? What is the culture of a country like the US where there are so many different types of people?

Assimilation vs Multiculturalism

Assimilation: Assimilation: the process of change that members of ethnic groups may experience when they move to a country where another culture dominates (adopt patterns and norms of host culture)

Multiculturalism: the view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable

encourages the practice of cultural-ethnic traditions

Discrimination: de jure & de facto

Discrimination: policies or practices that harm a group and its members

de jure: sanctioned by law

- ex. apartheid in South Africa

de facto: practiced by society

Herbert Spencer

Coined term "survival of the fittest" and called it social darwinism

Lewis Henry Morgan

Presented the idea of Unilinear Social

The theory of unilinear social evolutionism is that there is a singular path of development for all societies. It is based on social darwinism (survival of the fittest): the belief that societies with the necessary resources to develop will move up the linear evolutionary ladder while the ones who don't have the required resources will remain stagnant and primitive.

Evolution: Savagery --> Barbarism --> Civilization

Assumptions of Unilinear Social Evolutionism

1. Societies change over time

2. Societies can be ranked from high to low on some criteria

3. Rank order is a historical progression

How does unilinear social evolutionism explain sociocultural diversity?

It explains that diversity is caused by the environmental factors (material conditions) that are available and allow people to move to higher stages of civilization than others.

Explains that we are all on a single path, however, some societies do not have the resources necessary to move up the social stages and become primitives. These primitives at the different stages are the reason for diversity.

Primitives

People stuck in early stage of the unilinear social evolution due to lack of necessary environmental resources

ex. Eskimos

Franz Boas: Criticisms of Unilinear Social Evolutionism

Critiques Unilinear Social Evolution

Why?

1. Empirical Problems (got data from second hand accounts and speculations)

2. Multilinear sociocultural evolution (all people are different --> not because one group is less superior than another)

3. Histories are not independent of each other (cultural diffusion occurs and cultures interact)

"Progress" is problematic

Why?

- Ethnocentrism

- Problem of perspective --> misrepresents diversity

- Dominance is ephemeral = it does not last

Nature v Nuture

Debate of how much of how we are today are due to human nature (biology) and what is the result of the environment (society and upbringing)

Thomas Hobbes

Human nature = evil and selfish

Society constrains this evil human nature and forces us to be ordered

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Human nature = good

Society corrupts us --> teaches us selfishness

Romanticized native Americans

- Called them Noble Savages --> explains that since their society is less evolved they are therefor less corrupt and embody more of the natural goodness of humans

Used the Native Americans to compare to and criticize his own French society (Mirror of enthnocentrism)

Mirror of Ethocentrism

the opposite of ethnocentrism --> looking down on ones own society

Hobbes v Rousseau

"common view" = there is human nature that is changed by society

Chimpanzees

Cultural creatures

1. makes and use tools

2. teach their young to do the same

ex. termite fishing

Fossil Record/Archeological evidence

first stone tools 2.5+ mya --> sign of culture

Modern humans = 200,000 years ago

That means that our ancestors used tools before us modern humans

We have evolved biologically AS cultural creatures

Culture, Society, and Biology

Culture is distinct from both society and biology

Supra-Organic

Beyond the individual

Culture is not a result of individual choice --> it arises from social interaction

Subjectivity and Agency

Agency: capacity for creative action --> decisions

Subjectivity: we create out own pov and self-perception; USING AGENCY

Culture & world view

Culture = meanings, rules and values, etc.

World view is shaped by culture

This comes naturally

Cultural Constructions

Culture is created undeliberately --> naturally happens --> reason why it has so much power

Ethnocentrism

Belief that one's own culture is the correct/natural/superior one

Problems:

1. Bad comparison of cultures with this mindset

2. Does not create useful understanding of other cultures

Cultural Relativism

Opposite of ethnocentrism

Cultural behavior needs to be evaluated in terms of their cultural context

Cannot push too far --> can lead to ethical issues

Right and wrong should be provisional --> need to discuss it

ex. Holocaust --> we can't just explain what they did as culture

Verbal and non-verbal communication

Spoken language is not the only way we communicate

Non-verbal = expressions, stances, gestures, movements, unconsciousness, etc.

Phoneme & morpheme

Phoneme: a sound that makes a difference

Morpheme: simplest unit of words that have meaning

lexicon & syntax

Lexicon: dictionary containing all a language's morphemes and their meanings

Syntax: arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences

Language & thought

Changes in culture produce changes in language

Sociolinguistics

field investigating relationships between social and linguistic variation

Dialects (BEV)

Not the typical way of speaking a language

These dialects are still complex linguistic systems with their own rules

Gender speech contrasts

Women use language and body movements to build rapport

Men recite information to create rapport and establish a place for themselves on the hierarchy

Stratification & Symbolic Domination

We talk differently in different contexts

Some speech habits can become symbols of "low-status" or "uneducated" groups

Speech habits determine employment and other material resources

Ethnorace

combining ethnicity and race

ex. Asian American

Biopolitics

Power relations of society inscribed on the body

Power relations are socially produced but are made to seem as if there are natural

Ex. race, gender

Assemblage

Set of meanings (symbols, signs, key words, etc.) assembled to create an advertisement

Asian American as a census category

Ad agencies use term "Asian Americans" to market products to them.

Are Asian Americans are part of the community or "forever foreigners?"

Asian American as ethnorace

"ethnorace" blurs two identities - Asian and American

Ads market the culture, identity, and experiences to appeal to and DEFINE the groups they represent

Turning model citizens into model consumers

turning 1st and 2nd gen Americans to consumers

Once they become model consumers --> they are no longer "forever foreigners" and are now model consumers and citizens

Normal v Not Normal

Normal = unmarked and unracialized

- usually when referring to middle class white American

Not Normal = marked and racialized

The not normal tends to needs specification

General Market Ad. Characteristics

Large corporation

Big budget

Broad base of potential customers

Target is generally white, know they should market to the diversity

General market Ad. view of normal

Presents what they think of as normal: white middle class American with American accent

General Market Ad. approach to diversity

Cast minority actors that are as "normal" as possible. Don't let it seem like they are purposefully targeting them. 20-30% mix of racial minority to white Americans

Multicultural Ad. producing creative affect

Use emotions and make individuals like/identify with products

Targets 1st and 1.5 generation mingrants

Use in-language and in-culture to appeal to consumers

Multicultural Ad. signs/qualisigns to index diversity

use cultural imagery --> use qualisigns of particular culture to get them to want a product

Multicultural Ad. in-Language and in-culture

build brand identification by using language and culture

Transcreation

Assumptions and expectations of white corporate world seeps into multicultural ads.

Clients have ads or want similar ads to General Market advertisements to reach bigger audience

Have their idea of wanting to advertise to minority but have pressure to make it "normal" so that the client likes it

Who Multicultural Ad. Agencies hire

Migrants because they lived in the country of the population of interest --> they speak languages, know the customs and values

Multicultural Ad. Agencies Client Relations Intercultural Affact/Implications

Ad agencies need to appeal to their clients

Without the influences of both the client and the Multicultural Ad Agencies, the work would not be valuable in white corporate America

- cannot solely appeal to minorities

Racialization of Space

Normal = whiteness

This white space means that diversity needs to conform to the norms of whiteness

Corporate America is a white space --> it addresses racism while perpetuating it in a new packaging