History of Anthropology - Exam 1

Herodotus

5th century - "The Father of History" because of his history of the Persian Wars (The Histories) and travel narratives centering on parts of Western Asia and Egypt

Plato

(430-347 BCE) "Dialogues"; his work deals with the philosophical thinking of his day. It contains references to the cross-cultural encounters that were a part of everyday life in Greek city states

Aristotle

(384-322 BCE) Speculated about the nature of humanity and the differences between humans and animals concluding that humans and animals concluding that humans are social that only humans possess reason, wisdom, and morality

Marco Polo

(1254-1324) Italian explorer and author. The Travels of _____ ______

Sir John Mandeville

(14th century) - The Travels of ___ _____ _____, Knight

Amerigo Vespucci

(1490s) wrote 2 travel pamphlets

St. Augustine of Hippo

(AD 354-430): His version of Christianity through Roman Catholicism dominated the western world. His writings taught that humans could not hope to understand God, the cosmos, or nature. These things were essentially unknowable

Works:

Confessions (AD 397)

The City of God (ca AD 425)

Michel de Montaigne

(1533-1592) a writer during the Age of Discovery; his essays are significant because he took a relativist position when considering remote people; coined the term "le bon sauvage". Author of "On Cannibalism"

Thomas Aquinas

(1225-1274) taught that people were born with certain intrinsic rights; his ideas were dominant in Middle Ages thinking, said that the Indians were imperfect humans and natural slaves. Author of "Summa Theologica"

Bartolome de Las Casas

(1484-1566) Dominican friar who supported peaceful conversion of the Native American population of the Spanish colonies; "natural children"

John Locke

17th century English philosopher. Wrote that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, people are born without innate ideas. We are completely shaped by our environment. Author of "An Essay on Human Understanding" (1690)

Sir Isaac Newton

(1643-1727) English physicist, mathmetician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian. Published work in 1687 describing universal gravitation, and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics. Author of "Principals of Mathematics" (1687)

Marvin Harris

(1927-2001) an American anthropologist; held that anthropology does not begin until the Enlightenment. Author of "Rise of Anthropological Theory"

Rene Descartes

(1596-1650) known for Cartesian version of deduction; laid the foundation for the scientific tradition of French Rationalism

Father Joseph Lafiteau

(1671-1746) a Jesuit priest serving in French North America who created an inventory of cultural traits and categories from observations he made as a missioner. Author of "Customs of the American Savages Compared with Those of Earliest Times" (1724)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712-1778) French Enlightenment thinker who speculated on how and why human differences had developed over time; sought to counteract overly intellectualized Enlightenment formulations by emphasizing human pathos and emotion.

Works:

"Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men" (1751)

"The Social Contract" (1762)

Giambattista Vico

(1668-1744) "The New Science" (1725) described how humankind had passed through 4 stages of beast, Gods, heroes, and men.

Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu

(1689-1755) "Spirit of Laws" (1748) attempted to show how rules governing human conduct have always been correlated with culture

Francois Marie Voltaire

(1694-1778) radical, "Essays on the Customs and Spirit of Nations" (1745) actively attacked the theological view of history and traced the growth of christianity in secular terms

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

(1727-1781) "Plan for Two Discourses on Universal History" (1750) described the passage of humanity through 3 stages of hunting, pastoralism, and farming

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) English natural scientist who formulated a theory of evolution by natural selection. "On the Origin of Species" (1859)

Lewis Henry Morgan

(1818-1881) practiced law in New York, belonged to a fraternal orgaization known as the "League of Iroquois"; studied the Iroquois tribe

Ely Parker

(1823-1895) was Morgan's primary native informant

Edward Burnett Tylor

(1832-1917) Made culture concept known in 19th century; produced first definition of culture.

Books: Primitive Culture (1871); Anthropology (1881; first text book!); Researches in Early History of Mankind (1865)

Herbert Spencer

(1820-1903) English philosopher and sociologist who applied the theory of natural selection to human societies; author of "Principles of Sociology" (1876)

Sir James George Frazer

(1854-1941) "The Golden Bough" (1890); interested in the evolution of mental processes involvef in magic, religion, and science

Adolf Bastian

(1826-1905) introduced the doctrine of psychic unity; believed there was a fundamental similarity in human thought around the world; all people had the same basic capacity for cultural change

Clark Wissler

(1870-1945)

- Columbia Univeristy; PhD in Psychology 1901

- Classification of Native American tribal cultures

- The American Indian (1930)

- Culture Area concept

- Age-area hypothesis

Franz Boas

(1858 - 1942) Often called the founder of modern anthropology, this first professor of anthropology at Columbia University trained Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber, author Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. He conducted fieldwork on the Inuits of Baffin Island and the Kwakiutl (now referred to as Kwakwaka'wakw) on Vancouver Island. His publications include 1911's The Mind of Primitive Man, which describes a gift-giving ceremony known as the "potlatch."

Alfred L. Kroeber

(1876-1960)

- Columbia University; PhD 1901

- Araphos, Shoshones, Utes, Bannocks

- Position at the University of California, Berekeley

- Culture as superorganic

- Culture and personality

Ruth Fulton Benedict

(1887-1948)

- Columbia Univeristy; PhD 1923

- Serrano Indians (Kroeber)

- Zuni (1924), Cochiti (1925), and Pima (1926)

- Patterns of Culture (1934)

- The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946)

Edward Sapir

(1884-1939)

- Columbia Univeristy; PhD 1909

- Worked with Kroeber in California, documenting Indian languages

- Classification of the Indigenous languages of North America

- Historical Linguistics: comparison of Indigenous languages possible; not too simple as initially thought

- Linguistic Relativity (____-Whorf Hypothesis)

Margaret Mead

- Columbia Univeristy; PhD 1929

- Samoa, Island of Tau in the Manus Group (1925)

- Participant observation

- Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

- Mead was a public figure and communicated in various ways through public lectures and a monthly column in Redbook magazine, read primarily by women

Derek Freeman

a New Zealand anthropologist known for his criticism of Margaret Mead's work on Samoan society, as described in her 1928 ethnography Coming of Age in Samoa

Emile Durkheim

(1858-1917) One of the first sociologists to actually use the scientific method. Best known for his scientific study of suicide which also the first true sociological study

Works:

Division of Labor in Society (1893)

The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)

Suicide (1897)

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)

Marcel Mauss

(1872-1950) Nephew of Durkheim; He was widely education in law, religion, and modern and ancient languages; a member of a multidisciplinary group gathered around Durkheim prior to WWI. Author of "The Gift" (1925)

Lucien Levy-Bruhl

(1857-1939) "How Natives Think" (1910); late in life influenced by sociology and turned attention to anthropological literature and the sociology of knowledge; said the primitive mode had to be understood in its own terms; there can be primitive people that are capable of having modern thoughts, just as there are modern people having primitive thoughts

Arnold van Gennep

(1853-1957) "The Rites of Passage" (1960) demonstrated that rituals in the life cycles of human groups were based on a three-part structure of separation, transition, and incorporation; The concept of liminality is associated with the transitional stage

Ibn Khaldun

(AD 1332-1406) best known for the Muqaddimah the first volume in his universal history; anticipated such concepts as social solidarity, and understood the importance of kinship and religion in social groups

Anthropology

four field discipline: holistic, comparative, interdisciplinary

Fieldwork

a protracted time, living among the studied population; learning the language

Ethnocentrism

the evaluation of the customs and behaviors of others through the lens of one's own culture; it often results in a devaluation of the other culture in the belief that the customs and behaviors of one's own culture are superior or right

Universalist

would try to identify commonalities and similarities that suggest similarity among societies

Relativist

would emphasize the uniqueness and particularity of each society

Synchronic

studying societies at one time

Diachronic

studying societies across time

Fall of Rome

ca. AD 476

Middle Ages

aka the Dark Ages; a period that lasted from about 500 to about 1500; many new advances in science and literature

Renaissance

The 14th - 16th centuries

- It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to what we now consider "the Modern World"

- The Age of Exploration, from the 15th century, opened the world to Europeans

Concept of Culture

the accumulated ways of living created and acquired by people and transmitted from one generation to the next extra somatically

Reconquista

The effort by Christian leaders to drive the Muslims out of Spain, lasting from the 1100s until 1492

Voyages of Geographical Discovery

- John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) reached the coast of northern North America in 1497 from Bristol, England

- Amerigo Vespucci (1490s) wrote two travel pamphlets

- Magellan circumnavigated globe 1519-1522

Thomistic Christianity

held that people could reason and that they were responsible to use this God-given gift to learn about nature; nothing that was discovered through the gift of reason would cast doubt on the authority of God or his representatives on earth

Scholasticism

involved the painstaking reading and rereading of a group of supposedly authoritative texts which by the 16th century, had expanded from the Bible to include the work of Greek and Latin theologians

Enlightenment

1690-1789 or 1687-1789 depending on if you think Locke or Newton began the movement

Peace of Westphalia

In 1644, representatives from some 200 Catholic and Protestant powers gathered in the northeastern German province to negotiate a settlement; it instituted a right to religious toleration; from that time, whoever was king, or queen, decided what religion their nation would have; made possible the modern Europe of Nations

Age of Reason

Another great philosophical debate beginning in the Enlightenment and continuing into the 19th century was the one between empiricists and rationalists during the 17th and 18th centuries

Monogenesis

the position that humans constitute a single biological species with a common origin and physical differences produced by natural agents over time

Polygenesis

the position that humans constitute distinct species with separate origins and physical differences that are unalterable and innate

Epistemology

the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of knowledge-how we know what we know

Scientific Method

- Observation: to become familiar with phenomena, to formulate questions that can be used to generate hypotheses

- Hypotheses state the questions and are initial ideas about how to explain phenomena

- Experiments test the hypotheses (ideas) against facts

- Outcomes are evaluated and the hypotheses refuted or refined

Deductive logic

reasons from the general to particular statements-or more broadly, the process of drawing a conclusion from something known or assumed

Inductive logic

the process of discovering general explanations for particular facts by weighing the observational evidence for propositions that make assertions about these facts; a method of reasoning in which broad generalizations or principles are derived from a body of observations

Empiricism

a philosophy of experience

Rationalism

assumes the essential duality of a world divided into objects and subjects-the rational and the irrational, the natural and the cultural

cultural relativism

not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms

Enculturation

Although there are distinctly human abilities, as opposed to other animals, there are no innate ideas; Human behavior is learned, not instinctual; different experiences, or in modern terms, differential environmental exposures, will produce both individual and national differences in behavior

Subjective understanding

attempts to understand a practice from the native's point of view

Pseudoscience

- indifferent to facts

- a lack of interest in rules of valid evidence

- relies on subjective validation

- appeals to emotion and sentiment

- encourages a distrust of established fact and scholarly tradition

Comparative Method

research technique that compares existing official statistics and historical records across groups to test a theory about some social phenomenon

Progress

referred to the positive direction of historical change in opposition to the direction presupposed by medieval Christian theologians which considered humanity degenerate and fallen from the grace of God

Perfectibility

referred to the final outcome of reason and progress-improvement of the human condition on earth

Conservatism

manifestations in post-enlightenment Europe

Rise of Conservatism

- The rise of fundamental Christianity

- The creation of utopian, visionary, or socialist communities

- The rise of nationalism

- The appeal of Romanticism

- Racism

Positivism

the application of the scientific approach to the social world

Prehistory

the period of time before written records

Ethnographic analogy

a method for inferring the use or meaning of an ancient site or artifact based on observations and accounts of its use by living people

League of the Ho-de-no-sa-unee of Iroquois (1851)

- A major study of Iroquois social organization based on interviews with Seneca chiefs and translated by Parker

- Sympathetic portrayal of Indigenous life, customs, religious life

- Morgan offered his help with Seneca land claims

Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871)

- Morgan gathered information throughout the US and Canada through a questionnaire circulated by the Smithsonian Institution to Indian agents, travelers, and military officers

- This information contributed to a global perspective that was incorporated into a comprehensive consideration of kinship

Ancient Society (1877)

- Morgan's magnum opus based on his experiences and the questionnaires

- Morgan presented a vast scheme of cultural evolution on interrelated levels

- Culture was defined somewhat inconsistently

- Stages: Savagery, Barbarism, Civilization

- Morgan called these "ethnical stages"

Classificatory kinship

lumps together kinship categories that Anglo-Americans would split-for example, a single term for brother and brother's children-we would use brother and cousin

Descriptive Kinship

tends to provide more terms for members of a person's kindred

unilineal kinship systems

Kinship systems reckoned through one parental line, either matrilineal or patrilineal (clan, lineage)

Endogamy

marriage between people of the same social category

Exogamy

marriage between people of different social categories

Polygyny

One male, several females.

Polyandry

One female, several males.

Lower Savagery

began with the infancy of the human race in restricted habitats, subsistence on fruits and nuts; no living examples in Morgan's time

Middle Savagery

began with the acquisition of fish and the use of fire. Humankind spread over a greater portion of the earth. Ex: Australian aboriginals and Polynesians

Upper Savagery

began with the invention of the bow and arrow. Ex: Athabascan tribes of the Hudson's Bay region

Lower Barbarism

began with the invention or practice of pottery

Example: Native American tribes of the United States east of the Missouri River

Middle Barbarism

began with the domestication of animals in the Eastern hemisphere and with cultivation, irrigation, and the use of adobe brick and stone in architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Examples: villages in New Mexico and Mexico

Upper Barbarism

began with the manufacture of iron. Example: Greek tribes of the Homeric Age and German tribes of the time of Julius Caesar

Civilization

Began with the development of the phonetic alphabet and the production of literary records

Consanguines/consanguineal kin

blood relatives

Affines/affinal kin

kin through marriage

Anima

an invisible and diffuse supernatural force

Definition of culture

That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society

Sorcerers and shamans

have the task of making the connection between the living and souls

Social Darwinism

survival of the fittest