ANT100 - Final Exam

How has anthropology been used by Colonial Powers?

• Anthropology is an ethical discipline

• Anthropology was a tool of the colonial enterprise

  • Domination of the rest of the world by the west of the world\

• It was a science of the colonial “Other”

  • Defined by who they’re not 

  • Groups that are not colonising

  • Other usually referred to thgose without writing systems

It was mostly white people that were studying conquered peoples

• Generally coincides with groups that were directly dominated or under great influence from the west

What are the four fields of anthropology?

• Physical anthropoly

• Archaeology

• Cultural and Social anthropology

  • Linguistic Anthropology

What does Physical (evolutionary) Anthropology Cover?

Describe how the people look like. Also called biological anthropology

What does Archaeology cover?

1. Material culture, especially in the past

   1. Archive of what was their before

What does Cultural and Social Anthropology Cover?

1. Their customs and ideas and social organization

   1. Most useful to the colonial administrator

What does Linguistic Anthropology Cover?

1. What language(s) they speak

   1. Learn what language they would speak and train administrators

How have people attempted to Decolonize Anthropology?

• Making efforts to decenter the colonial “gaze” (perspective, the practice observation. Presenting what you’ve observed as a fact)

• Should/need to Include researchers in and from former colonies 

  • To grasp a better understanding of the west and the rest

• Include researchers form the Western world

• Need to study everything including the full, global in studying the postcolony

  • We are now part of the post colony

    • Still feel the effects of colonial expansion (which we can still see)

What is Culture?

• A principal tool of

  • Social construction 

  • Communication (social transmission)

  • Used to form identities

    • In-group vs other historically has been determined by language

How is culture different (Particular) in everyone?

• Each culture has its own characteristics

  • But differences between cultures are not infinite

    • We can misunderstand something but it is possible to understand culture

How is culture the same (Universal) In Everyone

• Human Cultures have more in common than not

• Cultures reflect global influence

  • Influence of weather, politics and economics on how people live

What is the purpose of languages in culture?

• Like cultures, languages have more in common than not

• We can learn them because it’s not totally unfamiliar

• Programmed languages of a certain kind

How is identity formed?

• Sameness (affect: community)

  • Affect means emotion

  • Sameness is an affect that is associated with community

• Different (affect: othering)

  • The affect of gathering stems from difference

What are some examples of human universals

• Culture and language

How does Culture and Language Display itself In us?

• But specific cultures and specific languages are human particulars

• Potential to learn language is in every body

  • RANT: What if they’re mute?

    • Do sign language which has similar structures ot many other languages especially when comparing English to ASL

What is the importance of language?

• Through language we are able to transmit info socially

• Important for species to survive

• Social transmission is much more flexible than genetic transmission

  • Humnan species is distinguishable inn the sense of having socially transmitted characteristics

What are niches (in languages)?

Specific languages and cultures develop to cope with specific enviroonmental and social contexts

What is Anthropecene?

• Language and society are universal that allow us to adapt to the environment

• But recently it is the environment that has to adopt to us

• It is the period we are in in which the environment responds to us

What is the role of Technology in Culture?

• Supposed to be helping us cope with the world 

• As we adapt through biotechnology and AI, but this may create species that may replace us

What is Social Construction

•  Something that is real, invented, naturalized (race) 

• Not from nature, but interpreted to be

• Formed by people in society

• Not constructed in nature

• Comes through us in sign system

• Most experience of the world comes across to us through the filter of signs and language

How does a social concept work?

• Works with something that already exists 

• Inventing from material reality, transforming it and categorizing it in a new way 

• Whatever is socially constructed is not going back to the creation of homo sapiens, a relatively recent concept 

• Historically conditioned (not “from time immemorial”) nothing in our generation or epoch was generally not constructed 

• Love marriage 

• Adolescence 

• nation(s)

• Race 

What is a race (in relation to humans)

• Race is a category of imagined common descent 

• Races are the product of racialization, a social construction 

• Do races exist? → Yes, in the sense they operate in society as a distinction;

EXAMPLE: How has Racial construction been used to lead tropes of inequality?

• Southern americans in the us constructed themselves as noble anglo-normans using tropes of medieval chivalry 

• Justifies enslaving black people 

• The whole idea of the black/african race doesn’t come from observation, but history of inequality and from slavery 

Is there any biological basis to race?

• Yes, socially constructed race can correlate w/ color and some other genetic traits 

• BUT not consistently enough to justify scientifically the notion of human races

• Race is given by genetics, categorized by society 

  • Distinctions by descent

What is the one drop rule?

• The one drop rule 

• If you have african ancestry, then you're black 

• Socially constructed, racialized as black 

• Many people with african ancestry but can be said to be white passing 

• Also works for non white groups; if you have any non-white blood, then you’re not white  

• Humans’ nature can be conflated with appearance in terms of race

• Depends on the context and inequality and systemic, not individual 

• Power is normalized

• Humans naturally differ by app, but their class by diff is not given by nature

• It is given by lang and the social conte

What is Semiotics?

The study of language and other signs

• Need specific words to actualize a concept and make it something tangible

What is Semiosis?

• Signficiation, the process 

• Making sense, making signs 

• Linguistic and nonlinguistic signs 

• The nature of signs

• Signifier and signified 

• Symbol, icon index

• Denotation and connotation 

• Doesn’t necessarily have to be a written word, can be spoken or visual or object 

How does Ferdinand de Saussure look at Semiosis (REMEMBER NAME)

• Together the signifier and the signified make up the sign

• Signifier and signified

  • One is the material aspect of the sign (signifier), one is immaterial

• Sign is not the physical thing but the connection between the material and the immaterial

  • Immaterial: What it stands for

How does Charles Sanders Pierce Look at Semiosis?

• Signs have three qualities

  • Symbol

  • Icon

  • Index

What is Symbol (Charles Sander Pierce)

• Arbitrary relation to the signified (referent)

• Learning the system of which it is a apart of 

• System of signs → like a language

• Most words are arbitrary, symbols 

• Cat, happy, scramlbled 

• But some words are not pure symbols; moo, oink, splash (onomotapiea) 

What is the Icon (Charles Sanders Pierce)

• Kind of quality in signs where they represent, in their physical characteristics, what they stand for 

• Share some of their physical form with the referent 

• Physical form includes sound, shape, etc.

What is the Index (Charles Sanders Pierce)

• Does not share any of their form with the referent

• Poison sign, hand pointing to a direction (index of direction)

What is the Haplogroup R1B)

• Dominant in Much of Europe (Northern Italy, France, Spain, UK)

• White people are quite likely have to this haploid group

  • Where they migrate to other parts hey are also likely to be part of this haploid group’

• Very middle in the Northern Part of Africa

  • More common of Black people to be part of this than it is for Italians and Germans and Norwegians

• No evidence that nature breaks down race into the things we know

What is Denotation and Connotation?

• Denotation: What a sign like  a photo of Donald trump (including linguistic signs such as words) means “literally

  • The photo is literally donald trump

• Connotation: What it implies

  • What is the picture trying to convey

  • “Threatening” connotations

  • “Nothing to smile about in my life”

  • “Seirous man on serious business”

What can’t denotation and connotation represent?

• The unrepresentable (DUH)

What is the Unrepresentable?

• There is something that remains unrepresentable with den 

• notation and connotation

• This part of life is called “innefable, trascendental”

  • It transcends the sign system

  
  

What is the Purpose of Signs in Linguistics?

• Signs (linguistics and other) attempt to construct an ordered reality that we can think and talk about

  • System for representing the world

  • To talk about the world we need that sign system

  • We constantly work with language, it is always there

  • If we don’t use internal language, it means we’re not talking

What is Reality?

• What is verifiable

  • If we can’t verify it it’s not reality 

• The world as it makes sense to us

What is Jargon and its purpose in understanding the real?

• Type of specialized language

• And how we understand the real

• It’s “our reality”

What is the Species-Specific Construction of Reality?

• How we understand/perceive the real is not entirely a matter of social construction

  • Example: Species-specific vision

  • Different animals see the same scenes in different away

  • Their eyes construct the image of the scene they see

  • They

• A lot of the real is not our reality, we do not understand it

  • We understand it through our language and culture

EXAMPLE: Colour Spectrum and Languages

• A continus thing that unites all into units

• Different languages do it in different ways

• Our language makes different named (colors) part of your reality

• Some people are better with others than colours

• There is no sharp boundary between colours

  • In between colours we can call them different things 

  • Nothing in the spectrum where the things become green

What is the Whorf Hypothesis (Created by Benjamin Whoirf)

• Each language significantly influences the way its speakers thing

  • Differnet languages construct different realities

• Called linguistic relativity

  • Admired einstein and honored it after him

How is the Self A “Construct”

• Even the idea that we have a self is not entirely given by nature

• It is constructed by society, by signs

• Includes representation, self-understanding

• Even our body is not the same as it was yesterday

• Mind is still connected to what you have read, seen, been told and so forth

• We don’t overlap with other people’s bodies

• All of our experiences and actions are united in the one distinct whole

  • We call “I” through social construction

What is Capitalism?

• An isolating economical system

• Response to when people say that i’s gone too far

How does Jaques Lacan look at the self?

• Reinterpreted freud

• Developed the Stages of how the self develop

1. Real

2. Imaginary (Mirror)

3. Symbolic

   1. Where language and culture become explicit

What is the Real (Lacan)?

• Ego is not yet formed

• Doesn’t have separate consciousness yet

• Baby does not know how to use signs yet

  • There are natural instinctive signs (such as crying)

• Uncategorized experience 

What is the Imaginary Stage? (Lacan)

• The ego forms

• Things important to remember

  • Corresponds to the icon

  • There are no words yet

  • Prioritizes images rather than words

    • Most typical image sign is the icon

• Begins to understand that it may be different from mom or whoever’s looking after it

• Can also be called Iconic (from Icon – the thing that is represented directly)

• Can regonize itself directly like in a mirror (which is why it’s called mirror)

• Development happens when there is teaching of loving support from those around him

• In the imaginary state, the world is perceived without words

• The ego image is supported by the authority of Mother/Father/Society

  • So it’s what it’s influencing it

• The baby is losing the relationship with the mother’s body

  • Feeling of not being separated from the world

  • Don’t have a sense of separation

• Now you are separationg and separation is taking place under authority of parents/society

What is the Symbolic Stage (Lacan)

• Systematic

• Socially Constructed

• Socially sanctioned

• Not nature given

• Not (according to Lacan) real

  • Our reality is shaped from what we have learned in the symbolic stage

What is the External “I”

• Face: How we appears to others (our image)

• Expressions: Lose face, save face, face-saving measures)

  • Based his theories on these expressions

• Coined “facework”: What we do maintain face

What is the purpose of Inner conversation?

• Talking to ourselves internally or internally

• “We are both I and you to ourselves”

• In inner convo, one party coaches the other

  • One is the voice of society

• It “represents society”

• According to Freud: This is the superego

How has religion impacted society?

• Division in our society 

  • Those who take religious seriously and those who don’t

  • Not many in between

• Religious faith governs the lives

• Religious beliefs and secular  learning are in a tense relationship

• Social scientists not governed by religious teachings

What are the Parts of Religion?

• Spirituality

• Ritual 

• Politics

• Sacrilized Spaces

EXAMPLE: Religion in Anthropology?

• Can you be religious and an anthropolist?

  • Yes (but doesn’t have to be)

• Goal is not to judge or to establish trust or falsehood

  • Essentially determining whether the religious makes sense if the gods exist and whatever else

• We want to recognize the nature and the role that a religion plays in its cultural and social context

• Want to discover what “religion” might mean as a general characteristic of human society

  • It is part of being human to have a religion

  • Present in every society

• In anthropology religion is not restricted to these criteria

  • Want to include spirituality but not religion

  • Beyond just organized religion and dogmas and texts

What is Religion (according to anthropoligsts

• Language is a human characteristic

• Religion is a human characteristic and individual as well

• A lot in common between the religions

  • Much more about what is similar than what is different like in language

• Universal human tendency vs culture-specific  manifestations

  • Broad: Islam

    • Different types of Islam

What does Lacan say about religion

• It has to do with real and reality

• Religion influences of the real

  • Real is what cannot be expressed in words

  • All of our languages and signs are attempts to translate the real into reality

• Every religious group that has discussion about religions come to the point

  • Not possible to express religious feelings, religious character of life in ordinary language

• Lacan refused to discuss a relationship between his psychoanalysis and religion

• Relationship between real-reality is often like the thing we see in the divine and “the world” in Christianity

  • Essentially like some paradise or hell vs what we world

What is Animatism?

• Belief that a common spirit pervades the world

  • Oki (Haudenosaunee)

  • Tao (Chinese, East Asian)

  • Karma (hindu)

  • Perchance God

  • Luck/fate

What are the Abrahamic Religions?

• Judaism, Christianity, Islam

• One god (monotheism)

• Revealed himself first to Abrahm 9Ibrahim)

• Later to selected leaders and other individuals

  • Isn’t that convenient

• Prophets: People who mediate between sacred (Lacan’s real) and the profane (like Lacan’s reality)

Does Religion have to have specifically holy texts and some sort of god?

• No

• Not all religions have god(s), holy text(s), dogma (things you have to believe in)’

• Natural history

What is the etymology of religion?

• Does not come from the latin re-legio (latin)

  • Re-link → What would it relink’

• The world as we understand (signify) it - Reality nad the real

• Different religions may be seen  as different imaginative and symbolic systems

• Aim to re-link with the real in their own way

What is Liminality?

• In betweenness

• A powerful, possibly dangerous state “at the threshold”

  • Where something begins

• Liminal stages

• Religious rituals are liminal between the ordinary world and what is beyond it

How can religion interfere with the law?

• (Secular) law can conflict with religious law

• Stances on a lot of topics such as abortion, gay marriage are influenced by religoon

  • Stances on abortion

    • Most Christians would like to ban this

  • Drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad

    • A few years ago it caused severed disturbances in France and other places

How has religion been used to maintain political power

• Religion supports power structures

• Religion extends social relations to the sacred (Emilie Durkheim, Mary Douglas)

• God is defined a lot of the times as the father, and the king

  • Symbol of authority

What is the role of religion in understanding the spiritual and material world?

• Religion is a human habit of translating the spiritual into the material

• Materializations of the sacred; spirituality functions → how something immaterial becomes material 

What is the embodiment?

1.  ritual are typical for all religions, perform them with your body (dancing, sitting, standing) 

   1. Example: Wedding rituals → liminal, shift in conditions, link to the real → affirming yourself in the condition of humanity that includes birth and death

   2. sacred even if it's not from a religious standpoint, connects the real with reality) 

What is the difference between sacred and secular rituals?

• Both are thinks that either happen fairly frequently or mark big steps in your life

  • Those that are sacred are thoroughly linked with religion and represent another step in your religious life

  • Secular rituals are moreso life events

• A wedding is a sacred ritual — connected with god (when done religiously), connects the real with reality (can also be secular)

• Birthday Cakes: They are a ritual but it’s not religious

What is a Sacred Space?

1.  areas that have a special spiritual significance

What did Michel Foucault say about Sacred Spaces?

• Came up where heterotopia

• diff place where the presence of other places is powerful
  

What are some examples of Sacred Spaces/Precints?

• Aztec city reconstructed in mexico city tenochtitlan 

• Ayodhya temple 

What is the role of Sacred People?

1. → prophets, differentiate the normal and the divine

• Liminal between this world and the beyond 

• Examples:

  • The incarnation of jesus 

  • The buddha 

  • Priests, nuns, monks, sadhus 

What is an unmarked religious identity?

• Unsaid, unnoticed, default

What is a marked religious identity?

• said, noticed 

• In christian countries: christianity 

• We should recognize other religions in their own right, not as versions of “religion” modeled on christianity 

What is a Nation?

• An imagined community

•  an imagined group of common descent, a country or similar political unit 

• It can also mean a e within a land as their inheritence

What is Ethnonationalism?

•  is based on imagined common descent 

• Civic nationalism is based on residence, citizenship 

What is Jus Sanguinis?

• It means LAW OF BLOOD

• Blood decent

• Most citizenship is mixed but it tends to be either toward jus sanguinis or jus soli

What is Jus Soli?

• It means LAW OF SOIL

• Descent by territory

• Most citizenship is mixed but it tends to be either toward jus sanguinis or jus soli

(COMPREHENSION CHECK) Explain National Identity By Using Canada As An Example

• nationality → canada is multicultural and the US is a melting pot (untrue) 

• Mostly jus soli → born in canada or naturalized (immigrated and then got citizenship)

• Unmarked canadian identity (“just” canada) → white, british 

• Marked canadian identity → ethnic, quebecois → quebec is a nation 

What is the role of identities in understanding the liminal?

• Transitioning challenges gender norms; liminal

• Liminal is very powerful → challenges wisdom, belief in what we thought was natural, identities are not given to us by nature, complex and diverse 

• Liminalities between the border between one identity and another

What is Bordering?

• The activity of marking national/ethnic/racial borders 

• Geographic → enforced at border control posts (Canada/US Border)

• Internal → providing different opportunities and support to different groups 

  • International Bordering in Europe

    • EU citizens have the right to reside anywhere in the union

What did Lewis Henry Morgan Develop?

Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family

What are some forms of Relatedness?

• Consanguineal (by descent, “blood”)

• Affinal (by marriage

• Patriotism: Attached to your fotherland

• “Brotherhood” - brotherly love potentially excludes other people

Is relatedness an imagined community like nationality?

No, relatedness is not an imagined community

What are the two types of lineage?

• Patrilineage

• Matrilineage

What is Patrilineage:

• everyone descended from the same male line

• Mother is not part of the lineage

• Her children belong to her husband’s lineage

What is Matrilineage?

•  Reckoned on the female side only

• Father is not part of the lineage

• His children belong to his wife’s lineage

• Does not necessarily mean that matrilineage is matriarchal

• Avunculate: the most powerful male relative is Mother’s Brother (not the biological father)

• Essentially mother’s brother would be boss of his sister’s family, not his own

What is an Avunculate?

• the most powerful male relative is Mother’s Brother (not the biological father)

How does the Hawaiian Kinship System Work

• Only four main terms

  • Two for the parent’s generation (father/mother) and two for your generation (brother/syster)

• Uncle — is father

• Aunt — is mother

• Cousins are brothers and systers

How does the Omaha Kinship System Work

• Patrilineal naming convention

• Parallel (same-sex sibling) cousins are called brother and systers

• Cross-cousins (different-sex sibling) are called different

  • Those on mother side are called different terms compared to those on father side

• The first brother to the father is called the same term

• The first daughter to the mother is called by the same terms

• But the second brother/daughter are uncle/aunt

How does the Crow Kinship System Work

• Matrilineal convention

• Omaha but mirrored

How does the Iroquois Kinship System Work

• Similar to Omaha and Crow

• Cross cousins are called by the same two terms (male cousin/female cousin)

• Parallel cousins are still brother and syster

How does the Sudanese Kinship System Work

• Makes most possible distincations

• Uses a different term for each relationship and collapsing no relationship into others

How does the Eskimo Kinship System Work

• Similar to Anglo-American one

• Mo distinction between cross and parallel cousins

• Cousins are distinguished only by sex

How does Kinship affect affection (haha)?

• Emotion (affect) towards people with the same kinship role tends to be similar

• A traditional Hawaiian daughter might feel much the same about her biological mother and her biological aunts

• So feelings of kinship are socially constructed

• Feelings may be constructed, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real

EXAMPLE: Afro-Brazilian Nannies

• Enslaved wetnurses - alternative, and often more intimate, “mothers”

• Impoverished nannies of upper and middle class White(ned) Brazilians

• By the symbolic stage, they must separate from, and oppose themselves to, the nanny and her/their African heritage

• Often this separation anxiety is accompanied by denial and racism

• A parallel to the nature of Brazil in general (which is not very racist)

What are the (perhaps some) of the language families?

• 19th century progress in philology (historical linguistics)

• Language families: Indo-Europeans (Aryan), Semitic(Jews, arabs), Bantu, Malayo-Polynesian

• Indo-European

• Germanic (German, Swedish, English)

• Slavic (Russian, Polish, Bulgarian)

• Romance (Latin: Italian, French, Romanican)

What is a Language?

• A social construct: typically a distinct category cut out from a continuum of dialects

  • Modern Italian comes from a dialect

What’s So Special about the Chinese Language?

• One language but speakers cannot always understand each other, because their dialects are much more different from each other than Russian from Ukrainian or Hindi from Urdu

• Dialects are united by common script while different languages have different scripts

What is the purpose of a marriage?

• A reproductive alliance between families

• Does not just involve the two (or more) people married

What are Universals in Culture?

Universals are normalized; strong, interesting, unfamiliar with another culture

• as a species, our languages/imaginations/culture fall within a limited range

What is the role of Participant Observation?

• How anthropologists learned about the places they studied and “brought back” with them 

• The ethnographer spends time in the field to live with the people they study; immerse yourself in a specific area, see things from their perspective, “never see the world they’re studying unless they make it their world”

Why is Ethnography so Important to SCL Anthropologists?

• Essential method of SCL anthropologists  

• Replicability of anthropological experiences is very low → differing perspectives on the same topic, samoa, by different APs; experiences are different 

• Scientific method → require us to record everything we did so other scholars can replicate everything and reference data and choose most reasonable hypothesis 

• Some APs may choose a side, neglect to look at opposing data 

What is Cultural Relativism?

• Taken by people to mean that “you shouldn’t judge other peoples’ cultures” 

• Culturalism can get out of hand, that anything that is traditional is absolutely okay → in practice, we do judge 

• Don’t approve of a multitude of practices outside our respective cultures