University of Toronto ANT100 Cultural-Linguistic Anthropology Exam Study Notes

Culture

hard to define; what we learn from each other v. what was "programmed" by our genes;

language

A distinctively human resource and a central element of culture, used for: communication and cooperation

Universals

Innate (genes)

Particulars

learned (talk/ society)

Adaptive Value of Social Transmission

- Much more flexible than genetic code

- Major changes can occur within a generation or two

- Major changes can occur without a change in specicies

- If successful, the result = adaptation occurs without us becoming a new species

- We have the potential for changing while remaining homo sapiens

- Language and culture help to preserve the species

The Adaptive Value of Sociocultural Difference

Specific languages and cultures develop to cope with specific environmental and social contexts (niches)

Anthropocene

- Culture can change the niche itself

- The era of the human being; we influence the future of the world as much or more than natural phenomena

Social and Geopolitical Competition and Inequality

- The competing groups may be social classes or ethnoracial groups (may live in the same or different locations)

- Ethnic cleansing

prejudice

does not come from difference but from its context

race

a folk notion, not a scientific notion; not scientifically but popularly defined (its real)

one-drop rule

the belief that "one drop" of black blood makes a person black

White

- Default or unmarked term

- Unmarked is an indicator of privilege

Social construction

the source of ideas/ arrangements not given by nature (but works with natural materials)

Invented

ideas that are the result of social construction

Naturalization

people come to think of what was socially constructed as if it were given by nature (race)

genealogy

account of the descent of a person or family from an ancestor

Signifying Reality

how signs reflect and make our world; Without a word like "race" and without pictures, books, and movies dealing with race, there would be no race (diversity would still be there, but we wouldn't see it as racial)

Signs

image, written word, smell, written word + object it's on, the spoken word, sound associated to the sign (bark)

signification

making sense, making signs linguistic/ non-linguistic

Semiotics

Language and other signs; the study of signs

Sign

signifier + signified

If you wouldn't get the meaning without learning a code or a language?

Symbol

you can say in ordinary talk that the sign "is" what it stands for

Icon

you cannot say in ordinary talk that the sign "is" what it stands for; indicates but isn't what it stands for

Index

Symbol

an arbitrary relation to signified (referent) i.e. numbers or letters

Icon

has a physical resemblance to the signified, the thing being represented. A photograph is a good example as it certainly resembles whatever it depicts (c'est n'est pas une pipe)

Index

shows evidence of what's being represented. A good example is using an image of smoke to indicate fire or pointing

Connotation

what it means not literally, what it "implies";vary more from one person to another; powerful but not easily open to argument and/ or analysis

Denotation

what a sign (including linguistic signs like words) means "literally

Reality

what is verifiable; the world as it makes sense to us; construct (formed by people in society); comes across to us through the filter of signs and language

The Real

Lacan

Jargon vs Ordinary language

In ordinary language: reality is what is real

In social science/ humanities jargon (specialized language): reality is how we understand the real

It is "our reality"

For the most part, reality seems pretty real and we are well advised to live in it!

But a lot of the real is not our reality; we do not understand it

Whorf Hypothesis

Each language decisively influences the way its speakers think; different languages construct different realities (Linguistic relativity)

Lacan's stages of development

the real, the imaginary, the symbolic

The "real" stage

- Ego not yet formed

- The real is undifferentiated

- No signs

The Imaginary (mirror stage)1. Imaginary (mirror stage)

- The first "me"

- Icon: it corresponds to the icon (images rather than words)

- The most typical image sign is the icon

- the world is perceived without words

- Mother's hand supports baby on way to self-recognition (ego)

- Roughly: this (the imaginary) is the image v. the words stage

Symbolic (accomplished through language)

- Language appears

- Language is mostly symbols

- Language is learned from parents/ society

- Language is a complicated system

- In this stage the world is differentiated into categories marked by signifiers (words)

- Ego is called "I"

- Ego Learns to understand "I" as part of society, that is, in relation to "you" and "he, she, they"

- systematic, socially constructed, socially sanctioned, not nature-given, not (Lacan's) real... but reality

- Images do not constitute an extensive system as does language (the rules of grammar, for example)

Anthropological Attitude to Religion

- The goal is not to judge or to establish truth or falsehood

- Recognize the nature and role of religion in its cultural and social context

- Discover what "religion" might mean as a general characteristic of human society

- Can anthropologists be religious? YES!

- In one way or another everyone is religious

Spirituality

Not accepting A and B may lead someone to describe themselves as _______.

a) Organized religion

b) Religious beliefs or texts

God

As described in my religion and/ or some other: a historical and personal force in the world

As an approximate signifier for the ineffable: cannot be believed or not believed but can be useful to our understanding