UNIT 3: colonialism & the history of anthropological thought

capitalism:

an economic system dominated by private ownership, wage labour, and a supply-and-demand market designed to create capital and profit - economic model founded on the principles of individualism, private property and progress

key tenets in capitalism:

is that land, labour and wealth are commodities, goods produced not for use but for sale - the world is a market and everything has its price

consequences of capitalism:

were frequently negative for non-elite members of these societies who lost many traditional socioeconomic supports, its even more devastating for those in small scale societies (land seized, attack/eradication of non-european social identities)

feudalism:

the political and economic model that dominated europe until the 15th ce wherein monarchs were imbued with divine power allowing them to control national territory (crown land) - in exchange for access to land and resources, nobility and the peasantry gave tribute, tax, surplus, labour to the crown (system exported to colonies)

what system replaced feudalism in europe?

capitalism

modernity:

a eurocentric concept of self emerging from the age of enlightenment and capitalism characterized by progress, technological advancement and reason

colonialism:

the oppressive cultural domination of a people by larger, wealthier powers - colonialism is best understood as an enduring structure rather than a historical event

2 historical phases (of european colonialism):

1. led by Spain, Portugal, Holland - characterized by feudalism and christianity

2. led by England and France - characterized by capitalism where colonies were treated as plantations governed to meet demands of industrial capitalism

terra nullius:

nobody’s land (and therefore we can colonize)

terra regis:

the belief that all newly discovered territories were the king’s land by divine right

what two things would establish the foundation for settler colonialism?

HBC exploitation of resources and exploration for the northwest passage paired with the idea of terra nullius

what 3 colonial projects (in North America) would establish the basis for the intersection of capitalism, colonialism and modernity?

the fur trade, the trade of enslaved peoples, and settler colonialism

fur trade: (5)

• land/resources were commodities to feed growing european economy

• who won: British (control of beavers)

• beavers = keystone species; species on which the balance of an entire ecosystem depended but also was the primary food source for many Indigenous groups

• capitalist response to declining resources was to expand to new territory

• european disease began to devastate/decimate some Indigenous groups, modifying social organizational features and ecological relationships

trade of enslaved peoples: (5)

• Africans became the foundation of resource extraction economies (sugar/cotton)

• transatlantic slave trade = +12 million enslaved Africans shipped across the atlantic to colonies throughout the americas (over 400 years)

• those who did survive the boat trip then experience violence, exploitation, malnutrition, loss of freedom

• slavery abolished in 1834; in Canada, slaves predominantly laboured in the domestic sphere; difficult to capture the devastation experienced by enslaved peoples in Canada as there is often denial or diminishment of the history of slaves and its legacies

• profoundly reshaped the lives of not only Africans but also Indigenous peoples and european colonists

trade of enslaved peoples: 6 effects on the hinterland (Africa)

• over a million died (1/12) during the capture, resistance, and transport of enslaved people

• separation of family members

• increased conflict between African states/communities

• erosion of subsistence strategies such as farming lead to famine

• undermining of local governance structures

• destruction of cultural traditions and practices

settler colonialism: (3)

• seizure of land for resources and settlement was fundamental to colonialism that would endure after the fur trade and slavery was ended

• as the fur trade diminished and industrial capitalism took hold (1800s) the need for Indigenous territory increased 3-fold

• treaties were discussed with Indigenous peoples then confederation in 1876 newly formed Canadian government passed “the Indian Act” (paternalistic/assimilationist plan to rid Canada of the Indian problem)

as the fur trade diminished and industrial capitalism took hold in the 1800s, need for Indigenous territory increases 3 fold:

1. england needed to secure its colonial claim in north america and sought to do so with a settler presence

2. there was an increasing need for raw resources for the industrial revolution, crops to feed europe’s increasingly urban population

3. as rural/working class europeans became increasingly exploited in industrial capitalism, they were desperate for new economic opportunities abroad

the “Indian problem”:

was and is that there were/are aboriginal owners/and their descendants inhabiting the land to which europeans wanted to lay claim - the genocide of aboriginal peoples grew out of a need to extinguish aboriginal title to the land without violating the letter and spirit of established british policy

7 most destuctive provisions of the Indian act:

• imposition of the band council, eroding traditional political systems

• imposition of patrilineal system (stripped Indigenous women of membership/traditional positions of political power)

• banning of ceremonies that were the foundation of economic, political, religious, social traditions and identities (potlatch)

• creation of reserve system which violated sovereign rights to traditional territory

• imposition of pass system - requiring permission of an Indian agent to travel between communities and to traditional hunting grounds

• forced enfranchisement (loss of Indigenous status) when going off to university/military service or when a woman married a man without status

• forced removal of children from families to residential schools where they encountered cultural genocide

settler colonialism definition:

the form of colonialism whereby domination is principally asserted by the displacement of Indigenous populations to secure the territory for a new population of settlers

women and colonization:

experiences differed between Indigenous men and women; Indian Act imposed Indigenous women to lose both their political power and their status

colonialism created the context for anthropology to emerge:

anthropology allowed european “experts” to speak for and about noneuropean subjects, and these acts reproduced the self/other binary so key in europes relationship with colonized territories

neocolonialism:

the persistence of profound social and economic ties linking former colonial territories to their former colonial rulers despite political sovereignty

typologies:

a classification system based on systematic organization into types on the basis of shared qualities

idealism:

the philosophical view that ideas or the mind that produces such ideas constitute the essence of human nature

dualism:

philosophical view that reality consists of two equal and irreducible forces (mind & body; culture & biology; good & evil)

materialism:

the philosophical view that the activities of our physical bodies in the material world constitue the essence of human nature

determinism:

the philosophical view that one simple force (or a few simple forces) causes/determines complex events

materialism & idealism in their most extreme views pose competing forms of determinism:

idealist claims human nature is determined by the causal forces of mind/spirit; materialists argue that human nature is determined by the causal force of physical matter

synchronic:

considering a number of entities in the same timeframe

diachronic:

considering one entity through its timeline

unilineal cultural evolutionism:

a 19th century theory that proposed a series of stages through which all societies myst go (or had gone) in order to reach civilization

british social anthropology (BSA) considers what 2 key things?

• social structure

• structural-functional theory

(BSA) social structure: (2)

the enduring aspects of the social forms in a society, including its political and kinship systems

• new focus on structure rather than evolutionary stages marked an important dualistic explanatory divide between diachronic and synchronic analysis

(BSA) structural-functional theory: (2)

a position that explores how particular social forms function day to day in order to reproduce the traditional structure of society

• was used by the british to ask “how do African political systems work today?” to answer the real question of “what must we know about these systems to make them work for us and our rule?”

american cultural anthropology (ACA) considered what key?

• historical particularism

(ACA) historical particularism: (4)

• the study of cultures in their own historical contexts (by Franz Boas)

• emphasized the many “new” cultural forms were borrowed or diffused from neighbouring societies (unilineal evolution is a scam)

• argued against scientific racism, structural and synchronic explanations and put forth a new diachronic analysis of change grounded in idealism through a commitment to cultural relativism

• culture area = defined by the limits of borrowing or the diffusion of a particular trait or set of traits

Canadian anthropology considers what? (2)

• our proximity to USA meant early professional anthropology followed Franz Boas (much of his fieldwork in BC/Canadian Arctic)

• 3 major anthropological schools of thought came to influence development of Canadian anthropology; american, british and french (structuralism) schools

political economy:

social structure that is organized around material (economic) interests, in which these interests are protected and enhanced through the use of power (politics)

many anthropologists describe the colonial order as a political exonomy…

that created various connections between colonizers/colonized and between different colonized communities

interpretive anthropology: (3)

an approach in anthropology premised on the idea that culture can be understood as a text to be interpreted and that focuses on meaning

• grounded in idealism, building on Boas’ cultural relativism

• argued human interaction (intellectual specifically) is always a process of interpretation not observation - capture multilayered interpretations through a process of “thick description”

thick description:

a methodological and textual commitment to provide extensive detail of particular cultural phenomena

• used especially in interpretive anthropology

androcentric bias:

an explanation of cultural phenomena based on male experiences and perspectives that is then used to represent a community as a whole (critiqued by feminist anthropology)

feminist anthropology:

the critical study of gendered categories, gender inequality, and how they intersect with racism, colonialism and capitalism

postcolonial anthropology:

the focus on the heterogeneity and complexity of colonial encounters and their enduring legacies (or on the contemporary political, social and economic conditions that are the result of colonialism)

globalization:

reshaping of local conditions by powerful global forces on an ever intensifying scale; seen in the growth of transnational corporations that relocate their manufacturing operations to low wage countries or that appropriate local cultural forms and turn them into images or commodities to be marketed worldwide

cyborg anthropology:

a form of anthropological analysis based on the notion of organism machine hybrids, or cyborgs; it offers a new model for challenging rigid social, political, and economic boundaries that have been used to separate people by gender, sexuality, class and ‘race’ (boundaries proclaimed by their defenders as ‘natural’)

science studies:

research that explores the interconnections among the sociocultural, political, economic, and historic conditions that make scientific research both possible and successful

ontological turn in 3 words:

philosophy of being

ontological turn - diverse approaches but have some shared principles: (4)

• all previous dualisms are typologies established in the enlightenment that arbitrarily divide that which cannot be divided: nature/culture, mind/body, conscious/material world

• all things have agency, including animals, nature, humans, technology and material objects

• humans are but one of these agents and must be considered equally with all others (HUMANS ARENT EXCEPTIONAL)

• like culture, our individuality and bodies are not bounded but rather in constant relationships with other agents (think viruses or climate change) - we are all connected