02/04: Universal Being and Central Method

Naive Realism

The idea that our senses are giving us an accurate understanding of objective reality; anthropology should fight this to gain a true understanding of different culture norms

Instinct Blindness

The tendency to treat instinctual feelings and perceptions as so obvious that they do not need explanation; taking the stance of an alien

Culture

Defined in many ways; generally recognized to be a group’s shared values, beliefs, symbols, and practices — must be shared among a group of people

• Term is imprecise and contested

Fieldwork

Spending time with a group in a non-laboratory environment (the real world) for the purposes of studying and understanding that group — “deep hanging out” wherein academic must turn off biases

• Obtain permission prior to study

• Offer incentives to the group

• Spend a prolonged period of residence with them

• Build relationship of trust and rapport

Cultural Relativism

Standpoint and idea that a group’s culture should be understood first in its own context

• Initially withholding moral judgements and comparisons

• Attempt to learn how insiders of the group explain their own culture

• Understand how elements of the culture might be connected to immediate or historical challenges

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture; NOT the belief that cultures can never be morally judges by outsiders or compared to other cultures

Fieldwork Techniques

• Participant observation

• Interviews

• Questionnaires

• Non-laboratory experiments

Partipant Observation

Viewing and making record of a group’s activity while also participating in that group’s activities; typically involves living among the group for prolonged periods

• Most common and most important fieldwork technique used by cultural anthropologists

Interviews: Structured

Specific questions pre-planned in a strict order for an interview

Interview: Semi-Structured

Questions/topics pre-planned, but interview is allowed to explore other topics as they arise

• Allows for freedom to ask other questions before rounding back to pre-planned set

Questionnaires

Written sets of questions to be completed by participants, electronically or on paper

Non-Laboratory Experiments

Artificial situations created in the field for the purpose of testing a hypothesis; involves manipulating one or more variables and measuring the outcome of this manipulation

• In order to be ethical, it must be clear that the situation is created by the fieldworker for knowledge gathering

Ethnographies

Lengthy descriptions/discussions of a group’s culture, typically as a book or dissertationH

Journal Articles

Short descriptions/discussions of a group’s culture, published in academic journal

Proto-Anthropologist

The first generation of fieldworkers — self-taught and did not have university degrees

• Frank Cushing and Matilda Coxe Stevenson

Zuni

Native American group Frank Cushing and Matilda Coxe Stevenson studied as proto-anthropologists

Salvage Anthropology

An effort to salvage cultures thought to be disappearing by making comprehensive ethnographies

• Cultural practices, photographs, and artifact collections

• Motivated by the idea that Native cultures would be wiped out by more “advanced” cultures (European cultures)

Unilineal Social Evolution

The idea that all societies progress through a fixed set of stages from the most primitive state to the most civilized (which often happened to look like white European civilization)

• Implied that small-scale societies were primitive and barbaric that would be wiped out

Lewis Henry Morgan

Well-known anthropological proponent of unilineal social evolution

Franz Boas

Most famous critic of unilineal social evolution; argued for historical particularism framework

Historical Particularism

Focused on seeing each culture in the context of its own environment and history

• Real-world environmental setting

• Neighboring groups to locate similarities and differences

• History of the primary and neighboring groups

Functionalism

Attempted to understand elements of culture in terms of what purpose or function these activities served to the group

• Very broadly conceived, and not necessarily attached to reproduction or survival

• View cultures holistically

Bronislaw Malinowski

Argued that anthropologists should focus on how the basic needs (shelter, food, protection) of individual people collectively create customs and practices that fulfill these needs

• Cultural systems based on basic needs

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

Argued that anthropologists should focus on how societal customs and practices act to support and sustain the society as an higher-level entity; also known as structural-functionalism

Problem with Functionalism

Elements of certain cultures can be at odds with one another or even be dysfunctional

• Some practices overcome because they are more popular, not necessarily because they are harmonious

Theoretical Frameworks

Very broad ideas or claims about the world that inform the research questions asked by anthropologists; direct attention to specific questions, causes, and possibilities within anthropology

Evolutionary/Darwinian Anthropology

Viewing humans first in terms of their evolutionary history to generate knowledge