Podcast/Video/Reading Notes - ANT185
The Invention of Race
Anthropology is the study of humans and cultural anthropology is the study of cultural variation among humans
Started with Franz Boas
Eugenics is the need to be “well born”
Can be depended on economic, mental, and physical traits
Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology
Boas realized that all the education that he had in Germany was not worth much there and to survive in the Artic (where he was studying at the time) he has to know real skills such as warmth and finding food
Boas saw the people living in the Artic as objects of study
As he got to know them he realized his own flaws and had a change in his outlook
He realized that we should not look down on people that have different customs than us
Boas came to the conclusion that all education is relative and all civilization and culture is relative
Each cultures have different ideas on what it means to be smart or knowledgeable based on age, location, or circumstance
The experience in the Artic that the scientific theories of race and culture could be incorrect and he began feeling doubtful
The idea that all civilization is relative is a radical theory for that time period
While he was working in a museum he began to grow even more doubtful
During that time period there was the idea that certain ethnic groups were more fit for survival based on knowledge, advancement, and physical attributes
Very Eurocentric views at the time, people believed that whites were at the top of the ethnic hierarchy
This viewpoint enabled people to believing that they are biologically and scientifically superior than those they view as “less civilized”
What made people progressive at that time is that the “backwards people” could be raised up to where the whites were at during that time
This is what made Boas so radical
These social ideas about the ethnic hierarchy provides reason for people to support Jim Crowe Laws and other discriminatory practices
Boas concluded that it is impossible to sort people into ethnic or racial categories and there are no confirmed set of rules
At the time scientific opinion states that race is only biological and inheritable
Boas said if you cannot detect racial essence based on physical attributes then how can you attribute other things to it
Trying to measure physical features to categorize people into groups and his data proved that
After this, people still ignored his findings
The US asked for Boas’s opinion but then continued to ignore his findings since they were radical for the time period
The people that we view as “privative” have the same amount of history as developed nations
Boas said that the stuff that American schoolchildren were learning in their textbooks was just as bad was what the Nazi Germans were teaching their students
They substituted Jewish with Black
Boas didn’t think that saying your nation was great, but you couldn’t scientifically prove that
One of the main objections to cultural relativism is that everyone has different cultures but some traditions can be bad or harmful to a group of people, but because it is apart of “culture” does it make it ok to ignore the issue
An example of this, is people from the US looking at the way that Middle Eastern men treat their women
Boas would say some things are wrong in a moral sense, we are able to judge other traditions even if it is apart of another culture
My Thoughts:
I agree that even in the modern world we still have a lot to improve on when it comes to Boas’s beliefs
Mostly due to the fact that there are still many people in the world who have racist beliefs when it comes to different groups of people
I believe that these different beliefs of an ethnic hierarchy are rooted in the fact that there are people who choose to be ignorant
Body Ritual Reading - Miner
anthropologists have learned so much about different cultures that even customs that seem exotic or unnatural aren’t strange to those who study anthropology
if there are customs that have not been discovered it is likely that they are occurring in a unknown tribe
the Nacirema culture has a belief that the human body is ugly and has the tendency to attract disease
the only way to get rid of the ugliness is through ritual and ceremony
each Nacireman family has at least one shrine devoted to rituals
there is a box/chest in the center of the shrine and there are charms and potions that are essential for them to live
many of the rituals that the Nacirema participate in are barbaric and masochistic due to how they cause harm/pain to the participants
Gender and Symbolic Violence - Bourdieu
people assume that to emphasize symbolic violence is to minimize the role of physical violence
he also says that it can mean to forget that there are people who are raped and exploited
symbolic violence is instituted through the adherence that the dominated cannot fail to grant to the dominant
On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below - Farmer
this is going to be talking about a research project in Haiti
Haiti is a constant state of suffering
people struggle to find food, water, and wood
life expectency is less than 50 years