Studied by 1 person
Some Definitions
Anthropology — Systematic study of all aspects of human (and other primate species) existence. It examines both the socio-cultural and biological phenomena. Focuses on behavioral interaction within a social context.
Holism — The study and description of the properties of complex systems. Anthropologists are interested in how various aspects of us as biological and cultural beings interact and affect each other. All aspects of culture are integrated and cultural phenomena are related between cultures.
Ethnology — Study of how and why cultures differ or are similar
Ethnography — A comprehensive description of a cultural group's customary behaviors and ideas (usually in writing or film).
Traditional Ethnography refers to how sociology and anthropology used to be closely related but then began splitting up as they developed different interests. Anthropologists began examining societies very different from their own where as sociologists began focussing on industrial western societies
Cross-Cultural Patterns — Behaviors and ideas that exist in more than one (and perhaps all) cultures
Indigenous — Refers to people who have lived in a region so long that their cultural attributes cannot (easily) be traced to earlier regions and/or cultural configurations
Participant Observation — When anthropologists live with the people they're studying for long intervals. (Anthropologists commonly dedicate many years and sometimes their entire careers to studying one (often small) group.) This results in anthropologists becoming fluent in the languages of the people they study and they often participate in the social, economic, and ceremonial life of the study group. Also often work with specific individuals in their study groups (i.e. advisors, teachers, etc.).
Applied Anthropology — Refers to the use of anthropological knowledge to help people solve "practical problems." Communities involved are in-charge of how anthropological knowledge is "applied" (or not).
Culture
Has many definitions but most anthropologists view it as being extrasomatic (comes from the Greek word "soma", meaning "body").
It is seen as being (or being the result of) behavioral abilities that are not directly controlled by our DNA
Something that humans have a choice about, in some sense.
Culture in learned
E.B. Tylor
Proposed the first definition of culture stating that it is that complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society
Marvin Harris
Culture refers to the learned, socially acquired traditions of thought and behavior found in human societies."
Robert Clifford
Integrated methods by which individuals adapt to their physical and social environments that are not directly genetically patterned
Robert C. Dunnell
Argues that culture does not exist and states that it is simply a guiding framework created by researches. It is a concept, an idea that has no objective existence in itself and is not subject to explanation in any scientific fashion. It is a means of explanation. Essentially, culture is a study tool, not what is being studied.
Symbols & Culture
Anthropologists differentiate culture from mere social behavior by the threshold of symbols
Culture involves the use of symbols, whereas social behavior need not have this component
Some anthropologists have define culture to consist only of these symbols
Symbol — A Definition When an object, idea, event, or memory is meant to represent or invoke other ideas, objects, events or memories (and associated thoughts and feelings).
Symbols are how humans model our interactions with our environments
Cultural Relativism
In science, cultural configurations cannot be judged as being good or bad and the only way scientists can judge culture is from the baseline of their morality.
Morality is subjective. Therefore, it is not a valid criteria for judging or ranking cultural developments — Morality is a judgement on reality, not reality itself
Roman Empire
Before the rise of the Roman Empire, most of Europe was populated by small-scale agricultural societies
In the Mediterranean, city states and regional empires developed. The largest and most powerful being Rome which began in central Italy (753 BCE - 476 ACE)
Rome was able to force huge parts of Europe into a single (complex, always changing) political system.
Rome would develop trading relationships that (indirectly) reached as far as east China and India and into sub-Saharan Africa
Political Fragmentation As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated, Europe became political fragmented which at times, were reincorporated int the old Eastern Roman world under the Byzantine Empire.
This initiated long periods of war as new, lesser power centers emerged.
Complex political systems developed around largely regional family relationships
European Isolation
With the end of the Western Roman Empire, trade relationships were greatly reduced or ceased altogether.
Economic activity overall simplified
Travel in and out of much of Europe became far less common
The rapid spread of Islam further isolated the European world
Christianity
For most of its history, Europe featured a complex mic of indigenous, largely regional religious systems
In the laster eras of the Roman Empire, Christianity entered Europe from the Middle East and spread, largely via Roman socio-political structures
By the later Middle Ages, most of Europe had been Christianized. Non-Christian regions still existed and pagan religious traditions survived within or alongside Christianity
Christianity differed significantly form indigenous European religions in that it was:
(Somewhat) Monotheistic
Highly hierarchal/authoritarian
Divorced from specific places
Urban-based
Based on written documents
Intolerant of other religious traditions
Medieval Scholarship Intellectuals in medieval Europe largely based their thought on the Bible. It was considered a historical document, which contained all information that was to know (or at least that was worth knowing).
These perspectives turned out to be highly inadequate for dealing with outside realities.
Biblical Interpretations
The earth was thought to be of recent, supernatural origin and unlikely to last more than a few thousand years
The physical world was in an advanced state of degeneration and most natural changed represented the decay of God's original creation
Humanity was thought to have been created in the Garden of Eden
Internal Changes (Climate History)
Between 900-1300 ACE, Europe experienced favorable and very stable climate
Across Europe, farm productivity and populations rose
By the end of this period, internal trade and increased significantly
This era ended with significant climate changes — European climate became cooler, dryer, and often unstable
Farm productivity dropped and some regions experienced population loss
This period also saw a marked rise in internal conflict
Black Death
In 1347, a highly deadly strain of bubonic plague (Y. pestis) entered Europoe
quickly spread in a series of waves along Europe's trade routes and ultimately wiped out a third of Europe's population
Transformed economic and social relationships. Hierarchies broke down and feudal relationships vanished or were significantly changed
The power of the Catholic church was reduced. Religious and secular traditions began to be questioned
This period saw the expulsion of Islam from western Europe.
Weaponry and maritime technologies were crystalizing and becoming quite formidable. By the early 1400s, Europeans began expanding beyond the Mediterranean
Humanist Thought & The Englightenment
Humanists thinkers began to look for "natural' causes for phenomena. Attempted to reconcile rationalist perspectives with traditional church teachings.
Antiquity This period saw a rise in interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought and culture.
Many manuscripts from antiquity were rediscovered and copied. The first archaeological investigations of ancient European ruins took place
The Englighenment Rationalist strains in humanist thinking began crystallizing in the late 1600s with the radical intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment
Ideas formed the theoretical backbone of early anthropology
Enlightenment thinkers rejected religious explanations of physical phenomena and advocated for a material/humanist approach for understanding the nature of existence
Europe's Christian era was viewed as a fallback into superstition. They believed that European thought and progress had stagnated as a result of turning away from early Greek and Roman Ideals.
Revolved around the notion of "progress." The world was thought to have been created by a perfect god and human progress was defined as the movement towards "moral perfection."
Cultures were ranked based on the progress they had made in attaining this perfection
Human history was viewed as operating according to universal natural laws that led tot he moral development of people
Progress in this development was measured by the degree a society had "subjugated nature" — progress was measured by degrees of technological sophistication.
Progress was driven mostly by rational thought. Therefore, people from less "advanced" societies were less rational than those from more "advanced" societies.
ETHNOCENTRISM
Origin of Species
Published by Charles Darwin in 1859
Introduces the first truly coherent theories of biological evolution
Darwin proposed that species are not fixed in form but change over long periods of time by adapting to changing environments.
Swept away thousands of years of human (religious) beliefs concerning the nature of life (and existence)
Instigated the reorientation of the sciences and humanities
Proto-Ethnography
The act of observing other cultural groups and systematically recording (and evaluating) their traits goes back long before formal anthropology
has been documented in many ancient states
Can be traced back as far in time as Classical Greece, in Europe
Herodotus
In the Histories, he included many detail descriptions of non-Greeks, from regions such as Egypt and the Black Sea
He is purported to have traveled widely and much of his information appears to have been first-hand
Tacitus
Wrote numerous works, including Germania, an ethnographic study of Germanic peoples to Rome's north that contains much first-hand information
Marco Polo
His Travels of Marco Polo (late 1200s) contains detailed descriptions of many Asian regions and peoples.
Influenced later explorers (such as Columbus) and numerous cartographers
Captain Cook and Lewis & Clark, often detailed notes on the peoples they contacted. Their writings are still consulted by anthropologists to this day
Hobbes & Rousseau
Thomas Hobbes
Non-Europeans have "no culture of the earth ... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts; no letters; no societyl and whihc is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death ... [their lives are] solitary, nasty, brutish, and short."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Swiss Philosopher that disputed Enlightenment notions of "progress." Called "primitive" peoples "Noble Savages," and saw them as living in a kind of Eden
Lewis Henry Morgan
American Lawyer turned anthropologist that was extremely influential during his time.
Published the book Ancient Society (1877), in which he proposed that all cultures evolve in unilineal fashion through three stages:
Savagery > Barbarism > Civilization
I. Lower Status of Savagery— From the infancy of the human race to the commencement of the next period.
II. Middle Status of Savagery— From the acquisition of a fish substance and a knowledge of the use of fire …
III. Upper Status of Savagery— To the invention of the bow and arrow …
IV. Lower Status of Barbarism— The invention of the art of pottery to …
V. Middle Status of Barbarism—From the domestication of animals in the eastern hemisphere, and in the western from the cultivation of plant irrigation with the use of adobe-brick and stone to …
VI. Upper Status of Barbarism— The invention of the process of smelting iron ore, with the use of iron tools to …
VII. Status of Civilization—The invention of the phonetic alphabet, with the use of writing to the present time.
E.B. Tylor
Ranked cultures based on perceived progress and moral perfection. The more evolved the higher you are.
Issues
The ideas of Morgan and Tylor were falling into disrepute (the early 1900s) because such schemes were being understood to be both ethnocentric and unsupported by data
John Wesley Powell
Follower of LHM
Led the first expedition that navigated the Colorado River
First director of the Bureau of Ethnology
Conducted ethnographic fieldwork in southwest and western Native American groups
Accumulated and/or edited an extremely rich catalogue of data concerning Native Americans
Set the state for U.S. government involvement in anthropology and established a framework for later fieldworkers in the American west.
Coined the term "acculturation"
Franz Boas
Worked for the Bureau of Ethnology
Studied Indigenous people of the PNW
Reoriented the discipline away from evolutionary frameworks towards a fieldwork baseline
Innovations
Learning languages of the groups being studied
Long-term multi- year residence with a study group
Working with long-term "informants"
Emphasizing holistic studies
Acquisition of extreme cultural detail
Understanding culture on their own terms — learning how individual cultures worked
Historical Particularism
Boas believed that anthropologists did not have enough accurate data to engage in broad, cross-cultural theorizing
Said studies should be based around description, function, and diffusions
Believed anthropologists should concentrate on how individual cultural groups were formed and worked
Critiques of Historical Particularism
It was essentially atheoretical.
Therefore, it had no way to order data or ask scientifically valid questions — it was unscientific.
This led to a situation where a great deal of data was acquired that ultimately could not answer fundamental questions of cultural development.
Bronislaw Malinowski
Polish-born British anthropologist who engaged in the longest continuous field study of his time. Conducted fieldwork on the Trobriand Islands (off the coast of New Guinea). Advanced the practice of participant observation.
Contributed to understanding economic systems and forces of cultural integration. Also made important studies of religion and mythology
Functionalism Cultural studies should know how cultural components work in relation to each other.
Broadly influenced Karl Marx
Viewed humans as having three basic needsL
Biological (food, sex, etc.)
Instrumental (education, law, politics etc.) and
Integrative (common worldview, religion, art, etc.)
To meet these needs, social groups develop various institutions
In a healthy, well-functioning society these institutions are integrated with social needs and function largely in unison.
In other words, a society’s institutions all support and reinforce each other, while meeting the needs of the people who created them.
His ideas have been faulted for being unable to explain how such institutions evolve.
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
British anthropologist trained in law, who was known for his studies of Andaman Islanders and Native Australians.
Has been argued to have applied anarchist perspectives to anthropological theory (Graeber 2007).
Originator of the theory of Structural-Functionalism.
Structural Functionalism Broadly like Malinowski’s “functionalism,” except Radcliffe-Brown viewed social structures as existing for their own sake, not to meet people’s needs.
Social structures are viewed as functioning separately from people—they mold peoples’ behavior, not the other way around.
In Radcliffe-Brown’s view, anthropology should be the study of these systems.
Because of this emphasis (along with the views of Malinowski), what in America is called Cultural Anthropology in the United Kingdom is often referred to as Social Anthropology.
The concept of culture is largely ignored in these perspectives.
Karl Marx
His ideas have had massive influence on most of the social sciences and humanities
His work initially had less influence on anthropology.
It was seen as addressing primarily complex capitalist societies.
Though Marx concentrated largely on complex societies, he also proposed general explanations of human social development based on materialist principles.
By the 1930s, though, anthropologists were discovering ways to adapt these ideas for understanding smaller-scale societies.
Marx's Thoughts Marx saw social systems evolving as people dealt with the realities of underlying environmental and technological conditions.
He thought that modes of production* largely determined the nature of societies.
Struggles for control of these mechanisms between classes largely determined the political and general social nature of human groups.
Leslie A. White
In the 1930s, White began publicly re-evaluating the work of Lewis Henry Morgan and other early evolutionists.
He proposed a return to evolution-oriented cultural studies
He developed a scheme of cultural evolution that draws significantly from the work of Marx and Morgan.
White's Argument
Cultures change thru time, or in some sense evolve.
There are cross-cultural patterns of culture change.
Cultures generally evolve from simpler to more complex forms.
Material (environmental and technological) conditions drive culture change.
Julian Steward
Proposed broadly neo-Marxist theories of culture change (Wolf 1980).
Developed the first comprehensive model of cultural evolution starting from an environmental baseline.
The became known as known as Cultural Ecology.
Studied Native American groups in the Great Basin of the United States.
Noticed that the lifeways of these groups seemed to consistently differ in relation to underlying environmental conditions.
He hypothesized that cultural differences between these groups could be traced to differences in the environments in which they lived.
Cultural Ecology
Cultures evolve in the ways they do largely because of underlying environmental conditions.
Cultural evolution is not unilineal (one-line), but multilineal (many lines).
It fundamentally represents an adaptation to environmental conditions and therefore can proceed in whatever direction such conditions allow.
Cultural evolution is largely the outcome surviving in a particular environment.
Cultural evolution then becomes the changing methods a cultural group uses to adapt to its surroundings.
Multiple cultural (social) configurations may be possible for similar environments.
Cultural stages are completely removed.
Clifford Geertz & Interpretive Anthropology
American Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has arguably been the most influential researcher in this sort of “Interpretive Anthropology.”
This school of thought has been heavily influenced by literary criticism.
Culture, in his view is something one interprets, similarly to how one would understand a work of art.
Ideas
Culture is analogous to a literary text: it cannot be studied scientifically, only analyzed for meaning. -The goal of anthropology is to figure what a person’s culture means to them.
All the anthropologist can do is “translate one culture into another.” This translation is subjective: there are as many valid interpretations as there are anthropologists doing the interpreting.
Culture is an interlocking constantly altering amalgam of symbols.
Symbols only exist in that they have meaning for individuals interpreting them.
No individual can ever fully understand another’s interpretations. Therefore, any analysis done by anthropologists of another's culture can only be an interpretation thru his/her own culture (biases). -Since “objectivity” is impossible science is impossible. -Anthropology then becomes an interpretive discipline, differing from the art criticism mainly in its systematic nature.
Influence Such views have radically altered cultural anthropology.
There is an argument between these thinkers and those who believe anthropology can and should be scientific.
These fights have all but split the discipline into scientific and non-scientific wings, which at time have been quite hostile to one another.
Materialist v. Ideational Perspectives
Anthropology has long been in conflict as to what should be its theoretical baseline.
Such arguments have been complex and broadly based in approaches based in materialist or ideational frameworks (Harris 1968; Wolf 1980; Wallerstein 2005).
Materialist* thinkers believe that sociocultural development is driven largely by the engagement of people with the material aspects of their region / society (environment / technologies).
Ideational* approaches place a great deal of importance on individual decision making and treat sociocultural development as being less directly connected to material realities (Harris 1995; 1968).
These thinkers often question if anthropology is a science.
In recent years, the American Anthropological Association has removed the word “science” from their official definition of anthropology.
Foraging
Foragers obtain their primary resources without the aid of domestication (without raising crops and/or livestock).
They live within wild ecosystems—ones largely unregulated by human actions.
In other words, foraging societies obtain their food and other resources thru some combination of hunting, fishing, gathering of plants, or scavenging.
Early Anthropologists & Foragers Early anthropologists based their views on foragers on Enlightenment thought and evolutionary analogies of biology (Darwin).
19th-Century Anthropologists such as Lewis Henry Morgan [1818-1881—Left] viewed foragers as existing at the bottom of the cultural-evolutionary scale.
They were seen as throwbacks to an earlier time, who were such because of mental and by extension moral deficiencies.
Marshal Sahlins Viewed foragers as having “the original affluent society.”
According to Sahlins, foragers did not have to work as many hours as modern peoples to meet their needs.
They had a “Zen Economy”—“Wanting little they had all they wanted.”
He also stated that their societies: -Were far less destructive to the “natural” environment
Featured little violence
Often placed women in roles where they had equal or near equal status with men.
Disease was not a major problem. Anxiety and stress were felt far less than in other societies.
General Forager Traits
Low populations and population densities.
High degree of physical mobility.
Few material possessions.
Minimum of food storage.
Flux in band composition.
Lack of territoriality.
Lack large-scale violence.
Largely Egalitarian.
Complexity Foraging lifeways are centered on the exploitation of water-based foods tend to create societies, compared to other foragers, that are:
Sedentary
Populous
Territorial
Violent
Socially complex (hierarchical)
They also tend to feature many more material items.
Agriculture
Agriculture—The domestication of plants and animals to provide food and other necessary commodities for human use.
Domestication—The conscious or unconscious act of altering the genetic structure of a plant or animal in manner seen as being beneficial to humans.
Agricultural Beginnings
Between roughly 12,000-4,500 years ago agriculture was independently developed in several parts of the world.
This happens first in the area often called the Fertile Crescent (Middle East—12,000-10,000 BP).
Areas: China—10,500 BP Mesoamerica—5,500 BP* Andes and Amazonia—5,500 BP* Eastern U.S.—4,500 BP New Guinea—9,000 BP
Plant & Animal Domestication Middle East—Wheat, Barley China—Millet, Rice, Hemp Mesoamerica—Maize (Corn), Legumes, Cotton, squash South America—Potatoes, Tomatoes West Africa—Sorghum East Africa—Coffee New Guinea—Sugar Cane
Southwest Asia—Sheep, Goat China—Pig*, Silkworm Mesoamerica—Turkey Andes and Amazonia—Llamas, Guinea Pig Africa—Guinea Fowl Indus Valley—Humped Cattle Egypt—Donkey, Cat
Dog Domesticaiton Dogs are the only known forager domesticate. Evidence suggests that they were first domesticated around 14,000 B.P., in southeast Asia.
All of today’s domesticated dogs can be traced to wolves from this region.
Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene
In the millennia before the advent of agriculture, the earth was in the grip of a severe ice age.
It was also a time of extreme climate volatility. By twelve thousand years ago the most recent glacial period began to recede.
Humans had to adjust to radically new environmental conditions they’d never faced.
Rising Global temperatures.
Increased rainfall.
Rising ocean levels (changing coastlines).
Loss of many large herbivores and other large animals (“megafauna extinctions”).
New floral environments. -Emerging human habitats in the northern latitudes.
Human Adaptions
Broadening of the resource base (megafauna being replaced by other food sources).
More intense exploitation of a smaller number of resources (in some regions).
Groups often became more sedentary. Radiation into many environments not before exploited by humans.
Increase in socio-cultural complexity.
Environmental conditions allowed for rise in human populations worldwide.
In some regions, this meant that foraging alone did not provide sufficient food and other resources.
Local environmental downturns (sometimes caused by human over-exploitation) reduced wild foods in certain regions.
In some regions, increasing land yields became one potential adaptation to these changes.
Forager Land Manipulation
Deliberate burns. Selective plant stripping. Irrigation. Seed scattering. Selective foraging (with both plants and animals).
Untenable and Incompatible
It has been proposed that agriculture is not viable long-term lifeway.
It puts a great deal of stress on wild ecosystems and has greatly reduced the world’s biodiversity.
It is only with modern transportation and storage technologies that nutrition has attained (in some places) the levels of many past forager groups.
Agricultural Implication
Human populations begin to grow.
Societies become much more sedentary.
Nutrition and health declines / diseases profligate. Life expectancy declines.
The concept of private property begins to develop. Specialization and stratification emerge.
Ecological knowledge declines.
Wealth disparity develops, eventually to massive degrees.
Technology becomes much more sophisticated and complex because:
Of the necessity to solve practical problems. Some people come to have more time for thought and contemplation.
Societies have the energy base to power these activities/inventions.
Horticulture
“Garden cultivation.”
Horticulturalists grow crops in absence of permanently cultivated fields.
Generally, involves relatively simple technologies. Cultivated plots are usually small and scattered.
Horticulturalists societies generally feature relatively low populations.
They are usually mobile, changing locations once the soil of their gardens has been exhausted.
They generally do not rely on their crops alone—they usually also forage.
Geography Today horticultural groups are found largely in tropical regions of Africa, South America and southeast Asia.
They also exist in some of the world’s arid regions, as well as in some more temperate environments.
Dry-Land Agriculture Groups such as Native American Puebloan societies farm in areas that are dry.
Rainfall is highly localized and unpredictable. They plant many small, fields scattered over wide areas.
This allows for largely sedentary societies.
POLYCULTURE & MONOCULTURE Many horticulturalists rely on multiple crop types, which is called polyculture.
Some rely on only a small number of crop types. A small number practice monoculture, which is the reliance on only one crop.
Pastorialism
Pastoralism is a narrow type of agriculture. Pastoralists keep and breed animals from which they (directly or indirectly) obtain sustenance.
Some groups regularly eat the meat from their animals.
Often, they are primarily used for milk (cheese) and blood, a protein source.
Pastoralists often use the hide and wool from animals both for their own clothing needs and for trading with other peoples.
They have been evolving alongside more sedentary agricultural communities for centuries and are dependent upon them in important ways for their survival.
TEXTBOOK
Engaged Anthropology — includes participation in social movements, collaborating with activists, and nongovernmental organizations, advising lawyers, writing affidavits, and producing expert reports
Anthropocene — describes the current geological epoch in which major transformation in climate and all life processes on earth are driven by the activities of human beings
Positivism — the production of objective knowledge, undistorted, and thus, universally valid, knowledge about the world. applying scientific methods in any area of anthropological interest, confident the combined results of these efforts would produce a genuine "Science of Man"
Modernism — liberation from outdated traditions that prevent people from building better lives for themselves and their children
Post-Modernism — the criticism of modernism, accompanied by an active questioning of al the boundaries and categories that modernists set up as objectively true
Reflexive Anthropology — refers to when anthropologists carefully scrutinized both their own contribution to fieldwork and interactions and the responses these interactions elicited from the subjects of their research.
Socialization — the process of learning to live as a member of a group
Enculturation — the process by which people come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are considered apprpriate
Cultural Universals — institutions designed to achieve the same overall goals for the group's members. Equal humanity.
Ethnocentrism — using the practices of your own "people" as a yardstick to measure how well the customs of other, different peoples measure up.
Cultural Hybridism — The mixing and reconfiguring of elements, from different cultural traditions — is acknowledged and even celebrated
Indigenization — of cultural features that may have originated in the West or in America but have been adopted by local people for local purposes
Empirical — Evidence used to support a theory is the product of hands-on experience and can be inspected and evaluated by observers other than the original researcher
Biological Determinism — also known as scientific racism, refers to the claim to have empirical evidence that supported both the existence of biologically distinct human populations, or races, and the relative rankings of these races on a scale of superiority and inferiority.
Diffusion — The spread of various cultural items from group to group
A.L. Kroeber — one of Boas' students that argued culture was a superorganic phenomenon (to be contrasted with inorganic matter and organic life)
Superorganic — Despite culture being carried by organic human beings, it existed in an impersonal realm apart from them, evolving according to its own internal laws, unaffected by laws governing nonliving matter or the evolution of living organisms, and essentially beyond the control of human beings whom it molded and on whom, in a sense, was parasitic
Cultural Materialism — Refers to behaviors that are selected because they confer the greatest utility for either a particular individual (behavior ecology) or the group (cultural materialism)
Historical Materialism — Refers to the role of the material forces of history
Note
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