Anthropology Final Key Terms

What are the two ways anthropology is approached?

1. As a historical discipline - Focus on generating knowledge and understanding the broad scope of human existence within an academic framework. Theoretical frameworks and intellectual history are examined to make connections between various aspects of culture. Traditional disciplinary methods include extensive fieldwork, participant observation, and ethnography.

2. As a practice - Uses anthropological knowledge and methods to address contemporary issues outside academia. Applicable to real world problems such as public health, urban planning etc. Focus on serving practical needs of specific communities using insights to work toward solutions. BIGGEST DIF is th practice is goal driven and aimed at outcomes rather than general knowledge.

Aspects of anthropology

Anthropology is a comparative science that examines the human experience across different societies to identify both similarities and differences. This comparative approach allows anthropologists to distinguish between universal human traits and those that are culturally specific. By comparing societies across time and space, anthropology traces patterns of human development and adaptation while rejecting the assumption that western societies represent a single or universal model of progress. The emic-etic approach further strengthens this analysis by integrating insiders’ perspectives (mic) with comparative analytical frameworks (etc) allowing understanding of shared and culturally specific patterns.

Consequences of Darwinism

The impact of Darwinism on cultural and social thought, influencing ideas about evolution, race, and inequality in human societies. Philosophically, placed experience as central to knowledge.

Aim of Anthropology

Within anthropology a specific empirical object within human cultural life is identified and explored through fieldwork. Based on the empirical material gathered from fieldwork, one interprets the data within the context of the object.

Participant Observation

Combines participation in daily life with systemic observation to capture implicit behavior and unarticulated norms. It aims to understand practices within the cultural context.

Context

Provides situational and environmental background to understand cultural elements as they exist in society. It includes the historical, social, and political factors that influence cultural practices. A holistic focus on the discourse between practice and spatial relations.

Self-reflexivity

Recognition that personal background and cultural position shape interpretation.

Relationality

The understanding that social relationships and interactions between individuals influence cultural practices and identities, emphasizing the interconnectedness of people within specific contexts.

Emic and Etic Perspectives

Emic refers to understanding cultural practices from the insider's perspective, while etic refers to analyzing them from an outsider's viewpoint. This distinction highlights the differing interpretations of culture.

Ethnocentrism

Refers to viewing the world through one’s own cultural framework and treating the in-group as the normative or superior model. This often leads to the belief that other cultures are inferior or less valuable, impacting intercultural communication and understanding. Can lead to nationalism, racism, sexism, and exclusion and prejudice.

Fieldwork

Collection of empirical material through direct engagement with pekoe and social contexts. Based on the material collected, anthropologists construct descriptions that are inherently selective and summative of findings from fieldwork. This interpretation is framed through theory.Eth

Ethnography

A qualitative research method in anthropology focused on observing and recording the daily lives and cultures of people. It involves long-term fieldwork and in-depth interviews to provide detailed insights into social practices and beliefs.

Methodological challenges of fieldwork

Fragmentation refers to the risk of collecting scattered data without strong connections. Decontextualization refers to the risk of isolating observations from broader contexts.

Features of ethnographic research

Inquiry is rooted on particular social phenomena (specific), it is unstructured, small scale, and its interpretation integrates social, cultural, and symbolic meaning.

Culture

The complex and multidimensional concept used to understand social life, human behavior and meaning. Functions as a framework for analyzing how people think, act, organize societies

Culture as a polysemic concept

Culture possesses a vast variety of meanings depending on the historical, social, and academic context

Enlightenment versus German romanticism belief on culture

The Enlightenment emphasized reason and universal truths, while German Romanticism valued individual experience, emotion, and the unique cultural spirit of nations.

Cultural Capital

The non-financial social assets that promote social mobility, including education, intellect, style of speech, and dress. Acts as social glue and a mechanism for social differentiation.

Power of culture in change

Culture serves as a symbolic dimension that can produce and drive change. It carries symbols, meanings, and practices that can legitimize power, challenge inquality, and promote social transformation. It is a dynamic system that shapes how societies function and change.

Stratified Conception of Man - Layered Model

Humans consist of interrelated layers - biological, psychological, social, and cultural. Culture is a system of meaning and control not just shared customs. It integrates all frameworks.

Thick versus Thin Description

Thick description refers to a detailed account of a cultural context, incorporating insights into the meanings and interpretations of behaviors, while thin description only provides surface-level observations without deeper understanding or context.

Semiotic Theory of Culture

Semiotic theory of culture examines how cultural meanings are constructed and interpreted through signs, symbols, and codes. It emphasizes the ways in which signs convey complex ideas and social values within cultural contexts.

Space

Space is not neutral or purely physical. It is culturally constructed, socially regulated, symbolically meaningful, and experienced differently depending on gender, power, theory, and worldview.

Types of space in cultural anthropology

1. public space; socially visible and regulated area; formal rules, surveillance, status markers

2. Private space; domestic, intimate, restricted; family life, privacy, moral regulation; living room

3. liminal space; transitional space between categories; ambiguity, negotiation, flexibility; front porch

4. sacred space; symbolically charged, meaningful; rituals, reverence, order; church

5. Social space; produced through interaction; meaning created by use; porch

Maps and Spatial Power

Maps and spatial power refer to how maps are used to represent and manipulate geographic and social realities, influencing perceptions of space, authority, and identity. They can reveal underlying power dynamics and cultural narratives within a given context.

• Eurocentric Maps; north = superior; reinforces hierarchy

• Indigenous mapping; story-based territory; identity over ownership

The definition of territory is illustrated through the western model and indigenous. Ownership was legal versus narrative, boundaries fixed versus borrowing stories, identity was individual versus s ancestral, space meaning was economic versus sacred.

Anthropology before Malinowski

Refers to early anthropological theories and practices that existed prior to Bronisław Malinowski's contributions, often characterized by armchair anthropology and a lack of fieldwork, focusing more on the study of cultures through literature and reports rather than direct observation.

• reliance on secondhand reports

• judged cultures as primitive or backward

• used evolutionary hierarchies

Malinowskis contributions

Pioneering fieldwork techniques, participant observation, emphasis on understanding cultures from within, and the establishment of functionalism in anthropology.

• making fieldwork central

• emphasizing cultural relativism

• creating standards

Lewis Henry Morgan

An early American anthropologist known for his work on kinship systems and social structure among Indigenous peoples, particularly his theories of social evolution. He did not collect data himself.

How can we understand other cultures without treating them as deviations from our own norms?

avoid ethnocentrism, reject idea of cultural backwardness, cultural relativism Malinow

Malinowski’s rule of ethnographic validity

Is the principle that researchers must capture the native's point of view and understand their culture on their own terms.

Positivism

A philosophical system that emphasizes observable phenomena and empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge, rejecting metaphysics and subjective interpretation.

Kula and South Sea and the Trading System

Exchange system where communities share gifts to reinforce social ties and establish alliances. In the Kula ring, participants circulate valuable shell ornaments and other items, creating a complex web of reciprocity and social relationships among the islands.

Marcel Mauss Contributions

Marcel Mauss was a pioneering French sociologist and anthropologist known for his work on gift exchange, particularly in the context of social relationships and economic systems. His most famous work, "The Gift," outlines the importance of reciprocity in social bonds.

• gifts are never free

• they create obligations, relationships, power, and morality

Function of gifts

socially

• create bonds

• maintain peac

• mark relationships

Obligations of the gift

• To give = start the relationship

• To receive = refusal = hostility

• To reciprocate = maintains honor and balance

Total Social Phenomenon

A concept introduced by Marcel Mauss that refers to practices, such as gift exchange, that encompass a wide range of social, economic, and cultural relationships, highlighting how these interactions reflect and shape society as a whole.

Presentation

In anthropology, the term refers to the distinction between gifts given for immediate benefit and those that entail ongoing obligations and social ties, emphasizing the complexities of social exchanges.

Potlatch as Agonistic Exchange

A ceremonial gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, where leaders demonstrate wealth and status by distributing goods and resources.

• This practice is often competitive, where the goal is to outdo rivals in generosity, thereby reinforcing social hierarchies and community ties.

Functional versus structural obligation

The concept that distinguishes between obligations arising from the roles and functions within a society (functional) and those stemming from overarching social structures and relationships (structural). This differentiation helps analyze the dynamics of social interactions and obligations.

Victor Turner Contributions

Anthropologist known for his work on rituals and social drama, emphasizing the nature of liminality and communitas in cultural practices. Links meaning (symbols), action (ritual), social organization (structure versus anti-structure)

How does Victor Turner define symbols, rituals, and the development of social organization?

Victor Turner defines symbols as powerful objects that convey meaning within cultural contexts, rituals as structured actions that express these meanings, and the development of social organization as a dynamic process influenced by the tension between established structures and transformative anti-structural moments.

Processual Model (Rites of Passage)

Separation (individual is removed from previous social status), liminality (in-between phase, identity is ambiguos, normal rules suspended), reaggregation (individual returns with a new status, social order is restored)

Communitas

A transient community formed during rituals where participants experience equality, shared emotional bonds, and a sense of togetherness beyond social hierarchies.

Structure versus Anti-structure

Structure = hierarchy, order, rules

Anti-structure = liminal moments that disrupt structure, found in rituals, pilgrimages, festivals; does not destroy society but renews it

Turner’s fieldwork Among Ndembu (Zambia)

Anthropologist Victor Turner studied Ndembu rituals in Zambia, emphasizing the significance of rites of passage and the concept of communitas in understanding social dynamics and cultural practices.

Controversy of Ethnographies as texts

Ethnographies are not natural representations of reality. They are constructed texts shaped by authorial choices, narrative strategies, historical and political contexts

• anthropologists must examine how they are written, not just what they want to describe.

Ethnography as literary genre

Since ethnographies create a version of reality rather than simply recording it, Marcus and Cushman argue that ethnography should be analyzed like literature and historical narrative.

• mindful of authority, credibility, meaning

Critique of Classical Ethnography

Traditional ethnographies claimed scientific objectivity, masked ethnographer’s presence, and presented cultures as stable, coherent, and timeless. Writing style reinforced illusion of neutral observation and cultural wholeness.

How is authority and voice produced?

Ethnographic authority is produced through use of impersonal language, selective quotation of informants, control over interpretation. The ethnographer typically speaks for the people studied and limits alternative voices.

Ethnographic realism

A dominant writing style in anthropology that uses detailed description to assert truthfulness. It aims to convey an accurate representation of cultures and experiences. It features 3rd person narration, minimal self-reference, emphasis on “typical” behavior.

• problem that is hides power relations and subjectivity

Textual strategies in ethnography

• Totalizing descriptions - present culture as unified and internally consistent

• detached narrator - creates scientific distance

• selective exemplars - specific cases stand in for whole cultures

rhetorical moves not neutral methods

Reflexivity

acknowledging ethnographer’s role, situation fieldwork socially and historically, making writing practices visible; not confession, self-indulgence, abandoning analysis

Visual anthropology

A subfield of anthropology that uses visual media to study and represent cultures. It emphasizes the analysis of images and visual forms as important sources of cultural knowledge.

Ethnographic filmmakers - The Camera People

Individuals who produce films that depict cultural practices and experiences, often using immersive techniques to convey the subject's perspective.

• Invisible observers

• traits

  • believe they are unnoticed despite cameras

  • gather raw information for research

  • resist technological adaptation

• cosmology

  • worship reality

  • strong tension between scientific documentation and aesthetic concern

Contributions of visual media

Captures actions, rituals, and cultural practices otherwise difficult to record

• demonstrates behavior

• makes cultural aspects visible

• enhances ethnographic analysis

Key Concepts in Visual anthropology

Film: representation of people on film

Ethics: debate between scientific observation vs artistic license

Competing perspectives

• ethnographers aim for objective documentation

• aesthetics: focus on artistic and narrative interpretation

future direction

• community-driven story-telling

• inclusion

• blending science and art

Challenges and criticism

• early films are often exorcized or misrepresented cultures

• slow evolution in methods; more recent works

  • highlight filmmakers’ presence

  • include dialogue with subjects

  • offer reflexive and ethical approaches