Social Construction of Community + Difference

Other

a person or group defined as being excluded of another group; non dominating

Colonial definition of anthropology

“science of the colonial Other”

What was colonial anthropology?

a Western science; the field consisted of White people studying conquered peoples

What were the Other to the West?

“primitives”, “natives,” “without history”, “without writing”

What is “folklore”?

the exclusion of the study of Western civilization in anthropology

What was the Orient?

• “non-primitive” people → who had writing systems

• China, Persia, India, Islam, South Asia & South East Asia

metropolitan

centred in the colonizing countries

What are the Four Fields of Anthropology?

1. physical/evolutionary anthropology

2. archaeology

3. cultural

4. linguistic

physical anthropology

study of characteristics and physical appearance

archaeology

study of material culture

cultural anthropology

study of customs, ideas, social organization

linguistic anthropology

study of spoken languages

ideology & representation

• the makings of meaning

• culture & language

political economy

• interrelationships among people and groups

• the “body politic” → the makings of society

What is culture?

What is learned from each other

What is language?

• tool of social construction & social transmission

• communication

• identity formation

What is affect?

emotion; the conscious emotion that occurs in reaction to a thought or experience

sameness in identity formation

affect → community

differences in identity formation

affect → othering

What is an important law of language?

every language has nouns, verbs, and word order

• languages have more in common than not

  • geographical proximity

  • nouns & verbs

  • word order & grammar

Culture & Language in Universals and Particulars

• culture & language are human universals

• specificity in culture & language are human particulars

define niches

specific languages and cultures developed to cope with specific environmental and social contexts