Anthropology Notes

Family and Marriage

  • Rights, Responsibilities, Statuses, and Roles in Families.

  • Kinship and Descent.

  • Kinship Terms.

  • Marriage and Family.

  • Families and Culture Change.

Race and Ethnicity

  • Is Anthropology the "Science of Race?"

  • Race in Three Nations: The United States, Brazil, and Japan.

  • Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups.

  • A Melting Pot or a Salad Bowl?

  • Anthropology Meets Popular Culture: Sports, Race/Ethnicity, and Diversity.

Gender and Sexuality

  • Introduction: Sex and Gender According to Anthropologists.

  • Foundations of the Anthropology of Gender.

  • Contemporary Anthropological Approaches to Studying Sexuality and Gender.

Religion

  • Defining Religion.

  • Theories of Religion.

  • Elements of Religion.

Globalization

  • Overview and Early Globalization.

  • The Acceleration of Globalization.

  • Selective Importation and Adaptation.

  • Globalization in Everyday Life.

  • Globalization and Neoliberalism.

  • Responses to Globalization.

  • Implications for Anthropology.

The History of Anthropological Ideas

  • Central Concepts.

  • The Fall of Colonialism and the Rise of Newly Independent States.

  • Specialization – A Wide Range.

Culture and Sustainability: Environmental Anthropology in the Anthropocene

  • Living in the Anthropocene.

  • Cultural Ecology.

  • Ethnoecology.

  • Political Ecology.

  • Additional Approaches to Environmental Anthropology.

  • Applying Anthropology in Conservation.

Performance

  • Overview.

  • Everyday Performance.

  • Constituting Social Reality.

  • Bounded Performances.

Media Anthropology: Meaning, Embodiment, Infrastructure, and Activism

  • A Brief History of Media Anthropology.

  • Meaningful Media.

  • What Makes Media Possible?

  • Participatory Media and Media Activism in Anthropology.

Health and Medicine

  • Anthropology and the Biocultural Perspective.

  • Ethnomedicine.

  • Mental Health.

  • The Experience of Illness in Place.

  • Biomedical Technologies.

Seeing Like an Anthropologist: Anthropology in Practice

  • Anthropology and Development.

  • “Harmful Traditional Practices”.

  • We Never Asked About It Before.

  • Seeing Like an Anthropologist.

  • I Will Not Eat It Until I Die.

  • An Isolated Case?

  • Reflections.

Public Anthropology

  • Introduction: Two Puzzles.

  • Defining Public Anthropology.

  • Putting Present Concerns in Perspective.

  • Public Anthropology’s Relation to Applied Anthropology.

  • The Ups and Downs of Public Engagement.

  • Taking Stock of Where We Are and Where We Are Heading.

  • A Framework for Reshaping the Discipline.

  • Facilitating Social Change.

  • Concluding Questions.

Preface

  • Introduces Perspectives and Open Access Anthropology as a novel textbook.

  • Highlights that each chapter is written by a different author, offering a personal touch.

  • Emphasizes a holistic approach to cultural anthropology, highlighting interconnectedness and comparison of cultures.

  • Mentions Laura Nader's observation that cultural differences shouldn't be seen as a problem.

  • Suggests cultural diversity can be a source of conflict resolution and health.

  • Notes Katie Nelson's reminder that anthropology exposes familiarity in bizarre ideas and practices.

  • Advocates for anthropology empowering people and facilitating good, as per Robert Borofsky.

  • Encourages students to see possibilities and instructors to easily share anthropological knowledge.

Why This Book?

  • Promises readable and interesting writing for students.

  • Chapters contain links to support use and enjoyment.

  • Invites instructors to build their own book by choosing specific chapters.

  • Acknowledges overlap in chapters due to multiple authors writing about interconnected topics.

  • Highlights that overlap reinforces the holistic approach.

  • Provides teaching resources on the Perspectives website, including video lectures.

Changes in the Second Edition

  • New Introductory Chapter: Places cultural anthropology in a four-fields context and offers career information.

  • Enhanced E-Book Experience and Pagination: Reformatted for readability with consistent page numbering.

  • Chapter Order: Book divided into two parts; first section with fundamental topics, second with specialized topics led by Laura Nader's chapter.

About the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC)

  • Produced by SACC, comprising teaching anthropologists in community colleges and universities.

  • Focuses on first year students and the importance of cultural diversity.

  • Asserts ideas and skills of anthropologists can inform any career.

  • SACC has been building this book since 2012 with a writing team of college teachers and senior anthropologists.

Why Open Access?

  • Motivated by SACC’s interest in supporting a diversity of anthropology students, including first generation college learners and students with lower incomes.

  • Further, SACCers have an interest in progressive social values and believe in the power of education in anthropology to improve the living conditions and situations of people abroad and at home.

  • This book is published under a creative commons license (CC-BY-NC) which grants permission to instructors to copy, distribute, or remix the chapters to suit your educational needs as long as you credit the original author and the original source of the material.

  • The contents of this book may not be used for commercial purposes, meaning it cannot be sold in any form.

The Cover Design

  • The cover is Intended to provoke discussion without stereotyping.

  • Highlights the cover being a story that may be told in many ways.

  • Asks questions to prompt reflection and classroom engagement.

Part 1

  • Is the start of the first section of the book.

Introduction to Anthropology

  • Definition: Anthropology is the study of humanity.

  • Comprised of four subfields in the United States: cultural, archaeology, biological, and linguistic anthropology.

  • Applied anthropology aims to solve practical problems in collaboration with organizations and businesses.

What is Cultural Anthropology?

  • Study of similarities and differences among living societies and cultural groups.

  • Involves immersive fieldwork to understand other people’s perspectives.

  • Explores broad questions about humankind.

  • Often studies social groups differing from their own.

  • Jean Briggs studied emotions among Inuit people, revealing cultural specificity in emotional expression.

  • Philippe Bourgois lived with Puerto Rican crack dealers in East Harlem, contextualizing their experiences historically and socially.

What is Culture?

  • A set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared.

  • Forms an integrated whole, binding people together and shaping their worldview.

  • Varies within a group depending on age, gender, social status, etc.

  • Constantly changes due to internal and external factors.

  • Is symbolic; meanings are created, interpreted, and shared.

  • Uniquely channels urges and can impact our biology.

Characteristics of Culture

  • Humans can learn any culture.

  • Culture changes in response to internal and external factors.

  • Humans can conform to, or not, and transform culture.

  • Culture is symbolic.

  • Human reliance on culture distinguishes us from other animals and shaped our evolution.

  • Human culture and biology are interrelated.

A Brief History of Anthropological Thinking

  • Zhang Qian (164 BC – 113 BC): Military officer who documented cultures of Central Asia.

  • Ibn Battuta (1304-1369): Traveled and documented customs and traditions of encountered people.

  • Age of Discovery: Europeans explored and colonized, using ethnocentrism to justify subjugation.

  • Age of Enlightenment: Science and rationality were privileged.

  • Charles Lyell: Observed layers of rock, concluding gradual surface changes of Earth.

  • Charles Darwin: Argued life descended from a common ancestor.

  • Herbert Spencer: Used biological evolution to understand social evolution.

  • Lewis Henry Morgan: Argued societies progress through stages: savagery—barbarism—civilization.

  • Bronislaw Malinowski developed participant-observation fieldwork.

  • Franz Boas developed cultural relativism, arguing behaviors are socially learned, not innate.

The (Other) Subfields of Anthropology

  • Biological Anthropology: Study of human origins, evolution, and variation.

  • Archaeology: Focuses on the material past.

  • Linguistic Anthropology: Focuses on the language

  • Applied Anthropology: Application of anthropological theories, methods, and findings to solve practical problems.

Anthropological Perspectives

  • Holism: How various aspects of life interact.

  • Cultural Relativism (versus Ethnocentrism).

  • Comparison: Comparing human to primates.

  • Fieldwork: Ethnography is the product.

  • Scientific vs Humanistic Approaches: Depends on if the subdiscipline is biological or cultural anthro.

Why is Anthropology Important?

  • Students go on to work in a wide variety of careers in medicine, museums, field archaeology, historical preservation, education, international business, documentary filmmaking, management, foreign service, law, and many more.

  • Studying anthropology fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem-solving.

Thinking on Culture Over A Cup of Coffee

  • Meeting Bob at a coffee shop showed language as important to cultural identity

  • Western consumerism changes cultural identity.

  • Language is a part of cultural identity.

Stories as a Reflection on Culture

  • Stories teach moral lessons, preserve ways of life, or explain mysteries

  • Used for entertainment or to discuss problems encountered in life

  • Used to discuss the anthropological concept known as the Other, which is used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own.

  • Gulliver's Travels highlights exoticism and a balance of power.

Anthropologists As Storytellers

  • Early anthropologists relied on written accounts and opinions of others; they presented facts and developed their stories, about other cultures based solely on information gathered by others.

  • Armchair anthropology is when a culture is viewed from a distance and the anthropologist tends to measure that culture from his or her own vantage point and to draw comparisons that place the anthropologist’s culture as superior to the one being studied.
    *Ethnocentrism is an attitude based on the idea that one’s own group or culture is better than any other.

  • James Frazer and E.B. Tylor are two examples of Armchair anthropologists

Anthropologists as Cultural Participants

  • Approach changed when scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead took to the field and studied by being participants and observers.

  • Bronislaw Malinowski used more innovative ethnographic techniques to study different cultures, including active participant-observation: traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day-to-day lives.

  • Going Native

  • To become fully integrated into a cultural group. However, Malinowski doing this created ethical problems.

The Development of Theories of Culture

  • European anthropologists were interested in questions about how societies were structured and how they remained stable over time which highlighted emergence that culture and society are not the same

  • Culture vs Society Social institutions such as families, political organizations, and businesses.

  • European anthropologists developed theories of functionalism to explain how social institutions contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

  • A.R. Radcliffe-Brown interested in the way that social structures functioned to maintain social stability in a society over time.

Anthropology in the United States

*American School of Anthropology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed concept:cultural relativism which is idea that cultures cannot be objectively understood since all humans see the world through the lens of their own culture.
*Differs btwn Ethnicsm because it emphasizes understanding culture from an insider view.
*Ethnocentrism, race stereotypes, and colonial attitudes.
*Franz Boas redirected American anthropologists away from cultural evolutionism and toward cultural relativism
*Benedict, Mead, and Kroeber were students inspired that reinforced learning social roles shaped by culture.

Ethical Issues in Truth Telling

*Nuremberg trials demonstrated physician/scientists that could be dangerous if they used their skills for abusive or exploitative goals.
*AAA code of ethics:
*do no harm
*be open and honest
*obtain informed consent
*protect the vulnerable
*make results accessible
*preserve records
*maintain respectful/ethical professional relationships

Finding the Field

  • Describes encountering contested identity when initiating fieldwork among the Jenipapo-Kanindé of Lagoa Encantada, Brazil.

  • Explains that fieldwork, involving daily interaction with a group, is the primary data-gathering method for cultural anthropologists.

  • Notes that “the field” can be anywhere people are located.

Making the Strange Familiar and the Familiar Strange

  • Describes cultural anthropologist’s goal to help people think in new ways about aspects of their own culture.

  • Refers to Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, showing how cultural norms shape behavior.

  • Presents Mead’s findings challenged American assumptions about adolescence.

  • Cites Horace Miner’s "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" to examine cultural assumptions.

  • Highlights essay's satirical perspective on anthropologists' exoticization of other cultures.

Emic and Etic Perspectives

  • Explains ethnography produces a “thick description”.

  • Defines emic perspectives as descriptions meaningful to people within the culture studied.

  • Defines etic perspectives as explanations meaningful to outside observer.

  • Argues ethnographers include both perspectives in their research to gain a complete under understanding of culture

Traditional Ethnographic Approaches

  • Early Armchair Anthropology:
    *Employed by people who were in libraries and were not on site
    *Used travelers to spread the word

  • Off the Veranda:
    *Bronislaw Malinowki changed this and helped advance field work so people would leave their verandas.

  • Salvage Ethnography:
    *The act of saving a language while not in the language.

Ethnography Today

  • Anthropology’s Distinctive Research Strategy: