SAQ Anthro Final

Boas Culture

Culture refers to historically produced, learned patterns of behavior that shape how people live and understand the world. It is not biologically inherited. Must be understood through historical particularism. Each culture has its own history and must be studied on its own terms.

Durkheim Mechanical vs Organic Solidarity

On mechanical versus organic solidarity: 

• Mechanical solidarity: Characterizes societies bound by similarity, shared belief, and collective conscience. 

• Organic Solidarity: Characterizes societies bound by differentiation and interdependence through division of labor. 

Durkheim Social Facts

External, coercive forces (laws, norms) that shape behavior. 

Tarde

On imitation: Spreads behavior and norms

Creation: Introduces novelty

Opposition: Occurs when competing waves collide

Waves: how social life unfolds as waves. 

Mauss The Gift, Kula, Potlatch, Hau

On the gift: Never free, creates obligations to give, receive and reciprocate. 

On the Kula (Gift exchange), Potlatch (Distribution of wealth): Shows how exchange binds groups, distributes status, and sustains hierarchy.

Hau: Spirit of the gift which compels recipients to return what has been given. 

De Saussure Langue vs. Parole

Langue vs. Parole: Langue refers to the underlying system of language (rules, grammar, structure), and Parole refers to the actual speech acts, which vary across situations. 

Binary Oppositions Levi Strauss

On binary oppositions as “structure”: Applies Saussure’s insights to culture, arguing that institutions and kinship systems are organized by binary oppositions. These structures operate unconsciously and give social life meaning. 

Synchronic vs. Diachronic analysis

• Synchronic analysis: Examines a system at a single moment, focusing on structure and relations. 

• Diachronic analysis: Examines historical change over time.

Women as Gifts Rubin

On women as gifts and the circulation of women: Rubin argues that gender inequality is produced through kinship systems where women are exchanged between men to form alliances. Positions men as givers and women as gifts. 

Sex Gender Systems Rubin

Social arrangements that transform biological sex into gendered roles and hierarchies.