Anthropology 203 Midterm 2
Who created the first anthropological definition of culture and when?
E.B. Tylor, 1871
What is notable about Tylor's definition?
It was the first comprehensive definition, identifying culture as a tangible phenomenon necessary for social membership.
Who built upon Tylor's definition to emphasize contextual dependence?
Franz Boas
How did Boas expand Tylor's definition?
He acknowledged culture as learned and transmitted but emphasized its dependence on historical, environmental, and technological contexts.
How did Clifford Geertz further develop the definition?
He introduced the idea of symbols, arguing that meaning and communication shape culture beyond mere functionality.
What do the definitions of Boas, Geertz, and Tylor have in common?
They create predictability and commonality within a group.
What did Durkheim say about shared social mechanisms?
The standards or regulations make life predictable, that make members of a group have something in common.
How is learned behavior transmitted?
Through transgenerational means (parent-to-child, teacher-to-student) or horizontal means (peer groups, clubs).
What is an important function of culture?
It unifies people while also differentiating them from other groups.
What is the relationship between unity and differentiation?
They are interdependent—unity creates differentiation, and differentiation reinforces unity.
What factors create a unified culture?
Beliefs, language, values, norms, and worldviews.
What institutions teach culture?
Political, social, kinship, economic, and religious systems.
What was the original belief about cultural acquisition?
It was thought to be biologically determined.
What disproves the biological basis of culture?
Children's behavior varies across societies, showing cultural influences shape acceptable actions.
How do social structures shape individual beliefs and actions?
Cultural norms influence what we believe, do, and support.
What can create friction between cultural groups?
Differing definitions of moral values, such as inclusivity.
How is society defined in class?
Any grouping of people who has a specific learned or social kind of behavior that is different from other people, and it identifies different from other people.
Why is this definition important?
It allows for the study of smaller, niche social groupings beyond state-defined societies.
How do Mann and Gellner view culture?
Through the lens of nationalism, examining how diverse people form collective identities.
What did Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown contribute to cultural theory?
The concept of norms—rules governing behavior to achieve desirable results.
How is perception and cognition inherently social?
Social structures influence what information we prioritize and how we interpret it.
What is the Anthropology of Ethics?
A sub-discipline examining personal choice in ethical living, rejecting rigid social obligations.
What philosophy is similar to the Anthropology of Ethics?
Neo-Aristotelianism, which revisits Aristotle's concept of Telos (ideal virtuous self).
What is the class definition of Telos?
The imagined ideal of a successful or good person.
Why is the Anthropology of Ethics important?
It challenges the idea that social structures are obligatory, emphasizing individual choice.
What does the Ethnology of Ethics study?
The meaning and significance of choices as symbolic and communicative acts.
What is an example of rejecting social norms?
The 60-70s punk movement.
What is the importance of Saba Mahmood's ethnography?
In 'Politics of Piety', she looks into how the significance of choice can apply within the feminist movement, in the global feminist movement, specifically within an Islamic State, which a lot of times are contradictory or oppose Western feminist ideas.
What did Abu-Lughod introduce?
The resistance of power or resistance as a diagnostic of power.
What is the diagnostic of power?
Not the opposition or escape from an existing power system, but the reapplying of alternative forms of power.
What is the purpose of the female Mosque movement?
Not the destruction of the mosque or the complete overturn of patriarchal laws, but it will now become more inclusive. It is to create a new power structure that allows people who were previously excluded from receiving dignity and power from the specific system to be able to achieve it.
What is the key to remember about the diagnostic of power?
When identifying movements, like the Female Mosque movement, it is not an opposition or escape from existing powers. It is not revamping, but rather it is reaffirming alternative forms of power. It is the creation of new pockets of power, new pockets of social capital production that allow people who didn't have access to it before to now have access to it within the existing system.
What confused colonial explorers about other societies?
The unfamiliar kinship structures of the people they encountered.
What was the early anthropological view on kinship?
It was seen as a biological, divinely appointed reality.
What marks the transition from old to new kinship studies?
A shift from biological to social interpretations of kinship.
What was kinship originally focused on?
A Biological Reality.
What is an example of biological reality of kinship?
We are family because of blood and understanding how that blood was transmitted from person to person or from generation to generation.
Who famously say that there is no such thing as kinship?
Needham (1971) and Schneider (1972)
What do Needham and Schneider mean by saying that kinship doesn't exist?
The form of kinship as a universal biological, universal reality, does not exist. It is something that is fabricated and something that we had tried to superimpose on other people.
What is 'New Kinship'?
The view that kinship is socially constructed, rather than purely biological.
What are two justifications of rationale for how we imagine our families to be constructed?
Social Structures and Biological Structures
What things combined make up Kinship?
The order of nature versus order of law.
What is the 'Order of Nature'?
The biological reality of kinship. Who comes out of who?
What is the 'Order of Law'?
Who does the law or the state or the organization recognize as being from who?
How does Jon Snow represent the 'Order of Nature' versus the 'Order of Law'?
He is believed to biologically a consequence of Ned Stark's actions(Order of Nature) in the first season, and yet legally not recognized as his child according to Westeros Culture(Order of Law).
What are the three large subsets to how societies or groups are constructed?
Familial (Kinship), Political Organization, and Economic Structures or Exchange.
How has social reality to nature become more apparent?
The traditional family has changed, as our ability to manipulate the biological process has changed, as the legal parameters around who is related has changed, there is a lot more protection for people.
Why has there been a resurgence in the interest of kinship?
For the first time, we are challenging even more the biological aspect of it.
What is are examples of other things that challenge the inherently biological nature of family to put more emphasis on the social aspect of it?
Adoption and Alternative families.
With the introduction of 'New Kinship', despite incest being a universal taboo, how does this new study complicate it to some degree?
Who qualifies to this changes from Society to Society, who is actually related to you, who is not related to you, changes from society to society.
How does the wealth in people compare to the monetary exchange that can occur during marriage?
What does the professor consider what 'New Kinship' really is?
It's looking at kinship as a cultural expression. That kinship, or who we believe is related to us or who we believe as our family is no different than any other form of cultural expression as belief systems, of religious systems, as language that they are taught to us.
What is the importance of the ethnography about Equatorial Africa published by J. Guyer in 2009?
It supported the idea of an information society where what accumulation is directly power that gave birth. To look at kinship as a form of exchange. If we're to look at it as rules and regulations of who is entitles to resources, who isn't entitled to resources. Looking at marriage at the end that regulation of exchange. To look at people who have different ideas of where does wealth and power come from, that isn't just dollars and cents.
What is a form of monetary exchange that can occur during marriage?
When there is a dowry or a bride price or literal money being exchanged.
What is the key to understanding kinship as a form of exchange?
Its a regulatory system in which we determine who can and cannot have access to the resources we have, who is entitled to who or who is deserving of peace and who isn't.
What is an example within a modern Canadian society of the wealth of people exchange?
Marrying above your station, and the social implications that are attached to them. There is a significant amount of social faux pas associated with that. (Ex. Gold Digger, Sugar Baby, etc.)
What are examples of sodalities?
Clubs, Sports Teams, and Unions.
If not blood, what aspect binds sodalities to each other?
Legal aspects, maybe constitutionally. It is defined by some sort of interest and usually some sort of minimum threshold of knowledge to be able to enter into them.
What is another way we can create groupings without a blood aspect?
Age, Gender, Caste and Class (Not necessarily directly by blood relation, but blood influence), etc. Think about the different categories on a census.
How should we view Nationalism?
As a forum, looking at the specific project of the state. A state system that is a very unique form of organization.
What are the key points for Gellner's perspective on Nationalism?
a) Nationalism is where you effectively communicate when culture is a precondition for effective communication where we don't know people inherently before we interact with them. We are not necessarily from the same place.
b) Systematized education-learned behaviour (how to process information, how to process history, how to be a good person, your social obligations, what is a good person, how to reject the world, the language associated with it past, etc.)
c) There is a specific language associated matters~meaning associated with certain words.
What are the key points for Anderson's perspective on Nationalism?
a) Nationalism as a way to effectively communicate.
Nationalism is produced by creating a collective imagination, an imaginative unity.
b) It is an imagined function-everyone is doing the same thing, that we’re all living the same life.
c) The way to achieve the imagined state is through PRINT CAPITAL or PRINT CAPITALISM.
d) Print Capitalism=Words. Anderson specifically points to the moment of the printing press in which spoken language was transformed into written language. When we did that, we had to come up with a standardized common language.
What are the similarities between Gellner and Anderson's view of Nationalism?
They both look at nationalism as a way of effective communication, as an expression of culture in the sense that it enables it as as a learned and shared behavior. Specific attributes attached to this national identity are learned, they're taught to us.
What is the difference between Gellner and Anderson's view of Nationalism?
Gellner is saying that the language that we learn that creates cohesion. The standardizing of language through systematized education is what creates this cohesion. Anderson on the other hand, says that Nationalism is an imagined reality. This imagination of what it means to be Canadian that teaches us together, this imagination that we superimpose on other people that allows us to believe we have some common or similar experiences, even in and through capital or the proliferation of text to speech, the transliteration of spoken language that allows this to happen.
How do anthropologists look at economic organization?
Through the Anthropology of exchange.
What does exchange mean in social anthropology?
"Exchange" refers to the transfer of goods, services, or other valuable items between individuals, groups, or societies.
What do anthropologists study in economic systems?
They look at the social aspect, asking questions like: How is this form of organization influenced by a social reality? It is looked not looked at through a purely market phenomenon, but rather these exchange systems are influenced by underlying social cultural structures which give certain things prestige over other or certain objects or items desirability for others.
What book introduced sentimental vs. venal value?
'The Gift' by Marcel Mauss, which provides introduction that emotional and small significance changes the value of objects. Objects themselves have emotional and symbolic significance which allows us to carry additional value.
What determines an object's total value?
Both its venal (market) and sentimental (emotional) value.
What are the different types of exchange systems that were discussed in class?
1. Reciprocity: Giving without expectation of return.
2. Redistribution: Centralized collection and distribution of goods.
3. Barter System: Direct exchange of goods.
4. Market System: Commodification of labor and currency-based exchange.
What is Adam Smith's concept of labor?
Money is a commodification of labor. It is the direct or representational. It is the direct representation of your worth, how much you and the person are worth compared to other people.
What is earmarking in economics?
Even if money is completely representational, not all money is the same. The way we treat it, the way we categorize it, places different significance onto them. Some money goes into separate chequing, savings, TFSA, College fund, vacation fund, etx. When you make or label certain money as special, and that this money can only be used for certain things, makes it different from common money.
There is significance to money beyond it's market value?
Personal as shown through earmarking, and then the legal frameworks care about where our money comes from. (Ex. Dirty vs. Clean Money.)
What exchange system was the Kula Ring?
Surface-level sentimental, but underlying venal value.
What type of system occurs on the China-Russia border?
Surface Level- Venal Behind the Scenes- Sentimental
What was the function of potlatch ceremonies?
The reciprocity was actually for the consolidation of power. As gift giving created social obligations, they created indentured servitude and debts from one tribe to another.
What is the key takeaway about exchange systems?
No matter what form of exchange system we have, no matter how we may look at it through romantic or utopian ideas, they all have the same negative aspects. They all have a combination of sentimental and venal value. And at the end of the day, they are institutions that allow certain people to gain advantage over others. The same negative things that exist within our market system exist in these other forms of exchange.
What was the anthropological definition of Culture that was introduced by EB Tylor within his 1871 book "Primitive Culture"?
“Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a man as a member of society.” (Txtbk.CH2)
What is the definition of Culture that will be used in reference to our class?
“Culture is learned and shared behaviour in humans, that acts to unify and differentiate social groups.”
What is the definition of culture as introduced by Boas?
Culture is a set of customs and habits that are transmitted from group to group and influenced by both the environment and historical context.
What is the definition of culture as introduced by Geertz?
“Culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms… which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about attitudes towards life.”
What are the titles of two of the books that Ernest Gellner wrote relating to Nationalism that was discussed during class?
'Thought and Change' and 'Nations and Nationalism'.
What is the 1964 Gellner quote about Nationalism?
“The central mistake committed both by the friends and the enemies of nationalism is the supposition that it is somehow natural [that] ... a man has a “nationality” just as he has a height, weight, sex, name, blood-group etc ... the truth is, on the contrary, there is nothing natural or universal about possessing a nationality.”
What is the 1994 Breuilly quote about Nationalism?
“Nationalism is best understood as an especially appropriate form of political behaviour in the context of the modern nation state and the modern nation state system.”
What is a significant quote about culture by Mann (1986)?
“Culture [provides] to people who lived in similar condition over a broad region with a sense of collective normative identity and an ability to cooperate.”
What is the 1964 Gellner quote about culture?
“In larger societies… ones relationships and encounters… are ephemeral, non-repetitive, and optional. This has an important consequence: communication, the symbols, and language (in the literal or in the extended sense) the is employed, become crucial.”
What is the 2009 Weber quote about culture?
“The social organization (Culture) of ultimate knowledge and meaning is necessary to social life.”
What is Lambek's 2010 quote about perception?
“Ethnographers commonly find that the people they encounter are trying to do what they consider right
or good, are being evaluated according to criteria of what is right and good, or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good”
What is Laidlaw's 2002 quote about perception?
“Wherever and in so far as peoples conduct is shaped by attempts to make of themselves a certain kind of person, because it is as such a person that on reflection they think they out to live to that extent their conduct is ethical and free”
What is Schneider's 1972 quote about kinship?
“Kinship like totemism is a nonsubject… Since it does not exist in any culture known to man.”
What is Needham's 1971 quote about kingship?
“There is no such thing as kinship, and it follows that there can be no such thing as kinship theory.”
What is the ethnography that Saba Mahmood published in 2004?
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
What is the Levi-Strauss 1970 quote about Kinship?
“No matter what form it takes, whether direct or indirect, general or special, immediate or differed, explicit or implicit, closed or open, concrete or symbolic, it is exchange, always exchange that emerges as the fundamental and common basis of all modalities of the institution of marriage.”
What is the 2022 Sutton quote about marriage?
“Each society has a set of rules that govern marriage and is based on the kinship ties defined by each society.”
What is the 2016 Anderson quote about political organization?
‘An American will never meet or even know the names of more than a handful of his 240 000 000 odd fellow Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. But he has complete confidence in their steady anonymous simultaneous activity’
What is the 1964 Gellner quote about political organization?
“When relationships are fairly well-known (because the community is small, and because the types of relationships are small in number), shared culture is not a precondition of effective communication.”
What is Gellner’s quote about systematized education?
“In larger societies where 'ones relationships and encounters - in fact, they are more frequently encounters rather than relationships - are ephemeral, non-repetitive, and optional. This has an important consequence: communication, the symbols, and language (in the literal or in the extended sense) that is employed, become crucial.”
What is Smith's quote about the value of commodity?
“The value of any commodity ... is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or
command. Labour therefore is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.”
What is Douglas' 1982 quote on how to study money?
“Looking at money through a purely market model is too narrow of an approach.”
What is Zelizer' 2017 quote on money?
“Money exists outside of the modern market influenced by social and cultural structures.”