Encyclopedic Study Guide for Cultural, Global Economics, Politics, and Cultural Anthropology
Globalization and the Chocolate Trade in Cote D'ivoire
Cote D'ivoire, located in West Africa, is a central case study in understanding the intersection of local labor and global consumption. It is the world's largest producer of cocoa, supplying approximately of the global market.
Globalization within this context refers to the interconnectedness of world economies. Chocolate consumption in the Global North relies on the manual labor of cocoa farmers in Cote D'ivoire, many of whom have never tasted a finished chocolate bar due to economic disparities.
The commodity chain for chocolate illustrates how value is added at different stages, often disenfranchising the primary producers at the start of the chain while enriching multinational corporations.
Economic Adaptive Strategies and Modes of Production
Anthropology identifies several ways through which humans interact with the environment to meet their needs:
Foragers: The oldest human adaptive strategy. Consists of small-scale groups relying on hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild plants. Characterized by egalitarian social structures and high mobility.
Pastoralism: A strategy based on the domestication and herding of animals (e.g., cattle, goats, sheep). It involves transhumance, which is the seasonal movement of herds between different pastures.
Hoardy culture: This refers to small-scale non-intensive farming. It uses simple tools (like hoes) and techniques such as slash-and-burn to clear land. It typically relies on fallow periods to allow soil regeneration.
Agriculture: Unlike hoardy culture, agriculture involves intensive cultivation of the land. Key features include the use of plows, irrigation systems, and fertilization, allowing for permanent settlement and supporting larger populations.
Industrial Agriculture: Characterized by the use of heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. It focuses on mass production and global distribution, often leading to significant environmental impacts.
Distribution, Exchange, and Reciprocity
Distribution and exchange are the processes through which goods and services are moved through a society.
Reciprocity: The exchange of goods and services between people of relatively equal status to create and reinforce social ties.
Generalized Reciprocity: Giving without the expectation of an immediate or specific return (e.g., parents providing for children).
Balanced Reciprocity: An exchange where the giver expects a return of equal value within a specified timeframe (e.g., gift-giving between friends).
Negative Reciprocity: An exchange where parties seek to receive more than they give, often involving deception or hard bargaining.
Redistribution: A form of exchange in which goods are collected from members of a group by a central authority and then reallocated in a different pattern (e.g., tax systems).
Colonialism, the Triangle Trade, and the Industrial Revolution
Colonialism: The practice by which a nation-state extends political, economic, and military power beyond its borders to secure access to raw materials, labor, and markets.
Triangle Trade: A historical system of exchange between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Europe sent manufactured goods to Africa; Africa sent enslaved people to the Americas; and the Americas sent raw materials (sugar, cotton, tobacco) back to Europe.
Industrial Revolution: A period of rapid transformation in the and centuries where production shifted from hand-made tools to machine-led manufacturing. This drove the demand for raw materials and colonial expansion.
Economic Theory, Neoliberism, and Accumulated Production
World Systems Theory: Categorizes the world into the Core (dominant industrial nations) and the Periphery (less developed nations that provide raw materials and cheap labor).
Fordism: A model of industrial production based on social compacts between labor, corporations, and government, characterized by assembly-line mass production and high wages to enable workers to be consumers.
Flexible Accumulation: A late-capitalist strategy where corporations use communication and transportation technologies to bypass high labor costs, often by outsourcing production to the periphery.
Neoliberism: An economic and political worldview that sees the free market as the main mechanism for ensuring economic growth, emphasizing privatization, deregulation, and the reduction of government spending on social services.
Theories of Class and Social Stratification
Karl Marx: Defined class based on the relationship to the means of production. He divided society into the Bourgeoisie (owners of the factories, land, and tools) and the Proletariat (workers who sell their labor).
Max Weber: Argued that class was more complex, involving three dimensions: wealth, prestige, and power. He introduced the concept of life chances—the opportunities people have to improve their quality of life.
Pierre Boudoir: Introduced the concepts of social reproduction and cultural capital. He argued that the education system reproduces class status through the transmission of habits and knowledge that favor the elite.
Class in Rural Kentucky: A case study examining the lives of poor whites, illustrating that class is not just an urban phenomenon but a deeply systemic issue affecting rural populations through lack of infrastructure and job opportunities.
Human Migration: Push, Pull, Bridges, and Barriers
Push Factors: Negative conditions that drive people away from their home, such as war, famine, or poverty.
Pull Factors: Positive conditions that attract people to a new location, such as job opportunities, higher wages, and safety.
Bridges and Barriers: Factors that facilitate or hinder migration. Bridges include visa availability, transportation, and family networks. Barriers include walls, restrictive laws, and physical distance.
Types of Immigrants: Includes labor immigrants, professional immigrants, and refugees (who flee persecution or conflict).
Environmental Anthropology and the Anthropocene
Anthropocene: A proposed geological epoch characterized by the significant global impact of human activities on the Earth's ecosystems.
Hollow Holocene: A term used to describe the current state of the Holocene epoch where human-driven extinctions have left the biological world "hollowed out."
Multi species ethnography: An anthropological approach that studies the interactions between humans and other species (e.g., plants, animals, microbes). Example: Florida's Everglades, where researchers look at how humans and alligators coexist and impact one another.
Environmental Injustice: Illustrated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, where the impact of the disaster was disproportionately felt by poor communities of color due to systemic neglect.
Standing Rock: A movement against pipelines (e.g., Dakota Access Pipeline) that highlights the intersection of settler colonialism, global oil interests, and indigenous environmental rights.
Human Ecological Footprint: A measure of human demand on Earth's ecosystems, often expressed in terms of the amount of land and sea needed to regenerate the resources a population consumes. Average footprint for a US citizen is significantly higher than for someone in the Global South.
Political Anthropology and Power
Four Basic Political Systems (Elman Service): - Bands: Small, kin-based, egalitarian groups. - Tribes: Larger groups based on horticultural or pastoral production with limited hierarchy. - Chiefdoms: Ranked societies where power is concentrated in a permanent leader (the chief). - States: Highly centralized entities with a pmonopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Hegemony: The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use of threat or force.
Civil Society Organization: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that link citizens to the state and advocate for social changes.
Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone: A study of how power and the state involve youth in conflict, exploring the complex agency of children caught in war.
Social Movements and BLM: Black Lives Matter (ABLM) uses framing to highlight systemic racism and mobilize collective action. This relates to agency, which is the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices.
Religion, Ritual, and Belief
Emile Durkheim: Defined religion through the distinction between the Sacred (anything set apart as holy) and the Profane (the ordinary, mundane elements of life). He emphasized ritual—the social acts that reinforce collective identity.
Sam Smith and "Unholy": Viewed through an anthropological lens, performances like these challenge traditional boundaries of the sacred and profane, using religious imagery in a secular, provocative context.
Rites of Passage: Rituals that mark a change in status. They include three stages: separation (detachment from the original status), liminality (the in-between phase), and reincorporation (re-entering society with a new status).
Michael Falkhaft and the Panoptikion: Based on Jeremy Bentham's architectural design, this concept explains self-discipline. When people feel they are being watched, they internalize surveillance and discipline themselves.
Shamanism: A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between the human and spiritual worlds.
Magic: The use of spells, incantations, and rituals to influence the natural world. Anthropologists study how magic provides individuals with a sense of control over the uncontrollable.
Medical Anthropology
Multiple Systems of Healing: The co-existence of different medical traditions within a single society (e.g., Western biomedicine vs. traditional herbalism).
Lia Li Case: Based on the story of a Hmong child in the US, this study explores the cultural clashes between Hmong spiritual healing beliefs and American biomedical practices during childbirth and seizure treatment.
Critical Medical Anthropology: Examines how health and illness are shaped by economic and political power.
Kuru Disease: A neurological disease caused by prions () among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. It was spread through ritual funerary cannibalism (eating the brains of deceased relatives) and was initially mistaken for a genetic disorder.
Art, Media, and Identity
What is Art?: Anthropologists define art not just by aesthetics but as a form of communication and social interaction. Fashion is seen as a form of art that communicates identity, status, and resistance.
Fine Art vs. Popular Art: Fine art is often associated with elite class status and museums, while popular art is mass-produced and accessible to the public.
Universal Gaze vs. Primitive Art: The "universal gaze" is the idea that there is a standard of beauty that all people can recognize. Anthropologists critiqued the label "primitive art" as a colonial invention that devalued non-Western artistic traditions.
Black Girls' Playground Games: A study of how music and movement socialization in games (like double dutch) helps build cultural identity and social skills among young Black girls.
Global Media Scope: Includes how media worlds and social media influence human behavior and global perceptions.
Indigenous Media: The use of media by indigenous groups to preserve culture and advocate for rights.
Performance and Subculture: - Todrick Hall's forbidden videos: Explores themes of race, sexuality, and performance. - Paris is Burning: A documentary about 1980s NYC ball culture, highlighting the intersections of race, class, and gender performativity. - Kiki videos: Modern ballroom culture and youth resistance. - Rastafarians and Holy Ghost People: Examples of religious subcultures that use specific aesthetic and ritual practices to differentiate themselves from the status quo.