In Mexico, anthropology focuses on culture and indigenous heritage.
In Canada, anthropology combines sociology and anthropology, mirroring the British social anthropology model.
Culture: A set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared, forming an integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeway.
Six characteristics of culture:
Humans are born with the capacity to learn any social group's culture. Culture is learned directly and indirectly.
Culture changes in response to internal and external factors.
Humans can conform to or change culture.
Culture is symbolic; individuals create and share the meaning of symbols.
Reliance on culture distinguishes humans from other animals and shapes evolution.
Human cultures and biology are interrelated, impacting growth and development.
Anthropology evolved from Eurocentric exploration and philosophical inquiries to a systematic, scientific discipline in the 19th century.
Driven by European imperialism and advances in evolutionary theory.
Key figures include Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski.
Key Concept: Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s culture is superior to others.
The Age of Enlightenment privileged science, rationality, and experience, critiquing religion and authority.
Holism: Anthropologists use a holistic approach to reveal the complexity of biological, social, or cultural phenomena.
Cultural Relativism, Comparison, and Fieldwork
Cultural Relativism: Understanding beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture.
Comparison: Comparing ideas, morals, practices, and systems within or between cultures.
Fieldwork: Ethnography is the process and result of cultural anthropological research.
Scientific vs. Humanistic Approach: Tension exists between using the scientific method and relying on interpretations.
Social: Anthropology encourages viewing things from others' perspectives.
Political: Anthropology is useful for coping with a multicultural, multi-racial society.
Economic: Insights from places like Nigeria highlight the power of traditional structures and family systems in managing economic conditions.
Week 2: Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is the study of humanity.
It encompasses everything that makes us human.
Four subfields:
Archaeology
Linguistics
Biological anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropologists study:
Similarities and differences among living societies and cultural groups.
Social groups different from our own.
Subcultures in our own societies.
Applied anthropology.
Subfields of anthropology:
Biological Anthropology: Human origins, evolution, and variation.
Archaeology: Study of the material past using excavation.
Linguistic Anthropology: Study of human language.
Applied anthropology: Application of anthropological theories, methods, and findings to solve practical problems.
What is Culture
Beliefs: All mental aspects of culture.
Practices: Behaviors and actions.
Symbols: Meaning of culture objects and ideas.
Dynamic, synergetic (characterized by combinations of different beliefs and practices).
Week 3: The Concept of Culture
"The Other": Term to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are different from one’s own.
Lemuel Gulliver's travels offer lessons about cultural differences, conflicts in human society, and the balance of power.
Armchair Anthropology: Measuring culture from a distance, often with the anthropologist's culture seen as superior.
Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s own group or culture is better than any other.
Sir James Frazer: Known for "The Golden Bough," a study of comparative religion, later changed to magic and religion. Relied on accounts of travelers, scholars, missionaries, and government officials.
Sir E. B. Tylor: First professor of anthropology at Oxford University. Defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, custom, and other capabilities of society.” Influenced by Darwin.
Cultural evolutionism: A discredited theory suggesting societies evolve through stages from simple to advanced.
Bronislaw Malinowski and Cultural Relativism
Bronislaw Malinowski used innovative ethnographic techniques, including participant-observation.
Participant-observation: Traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day-to-day lives.
Functionalism: An approach emphasizing how parts of a society work together to support the whole.
Cultural relativism: Understanding beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture, not our own.
Structural-functionalism: Social structures (such as family) create social stability over time.
Problem: These theories do not explain social change.
Cultural relativism differs from ethnocentrism by emphasizing an insider’s view.
Boas' Contributions and Ethical Issues
Boas studied every aspect of culture: tools, clothing, and shelter.
His students explored the psychological effects of culture and how culture could spread or diffuse.
He redirected the field toward relativism and participant-observation.
Enculturation: The process of learning culture.
Ethnic issues arising from anthropological research led to the Nuremberg Code.
American Anthropological Association developed a code of ethics for research in various settings.
Stories and Exoticism
Stories reflect culture, transmitting it across generations.
Anthropology became a social science by defining concepts and methods related to culture.
‘Exoticism’: Attributing stereotypes based on appearances, often out of the ‘norm’.
Commodification of ‘race’, ethnicity, or other cultural ‘otherness’.
Development of Theories of Culture
Central assertions about cultural relativism:
Culture determines our worldview, so there is no objective basis for asserting one worldview is superior.
All cultures must be taken as equally valid.
Any object, project, or ideology must be understood on its own terms.
Week 4: Doing Fieldwork: Methods in Cultural Anthropology
Indigenous: People with long-term historical ties to a location, culturally distinct from the dominant population.
Land tenure: How property rights to land are allocated.
Cacique: The chiefdom/political leader.
Contested identity: A dispute within a group about the collective identity.
Fieldwork: The primary method for gathering data in cultural anthropology.
Mead's career as an anthropologist was very well-known in the United States.
Franz Boas was her mentor.
She researched adolescent girls and sexuality in Samoa.
She documented a lack of sexual jealousy and casualness among Samoan adolescents.
Ethnography and Participant Observation
Ethnography: The in-depth study of the everyday practices and lives of people.
Thick description: Detailed description that explains behavior and context, along with anthropologist interpretations (coined by Clifford Geertz).
Participant observation: Observing while participating in the same activities.
Week 5: The Importance of Human Language to Human Culture
Language is a culture’s most important feature.
Language and culture are inseparable.
Human culture could not exist without language.
Language could not exist without culture.
Language impacts and shapes how we think, perceive, believe, and behave.
Language relies on symbols.
Language Variation: Sociolinguistics
Language- standard variety of speech.
Dialect- often for subordinate variety of a language (result of colonization).
Registers- Formality.
Code-switching- Use of several varieties of language in interactions.
The Biological Basis of Language
Larynx (voice box or Adam’s apple) is lower in humans than in Great Apes
Pharynx (throat cavity) is longer
Tongue and palate (roof of mouth) are rounded
Brain structures for language are unique to humans
Universal Grammar- innate ability for developing children to acquire language.
Critical Age Range Hypothesis- child will gradually lose ability to acquire language.
Open vs. Closed system.
Apes use gestures- call system.
Non-verbal communication of human includes:
Kinesics (body language).
Proxemics (use of space).
Paralanguage (background features of speech or sounds that convey meaning).
Human Language Compared with the Communication Systems of Other Species
Huckett’s Design Feature- Describe characteristics of all communication system.
Humans language shaves all characters and includes these features
Discreteness
Duality of Patterning
Displacement
Productivity/ Creativity
Week 6: Economic & Anthropology
Multiple forms of economic production and exchange structure our daily lives.
Central goal of economic anthropology is to support equality.
Community economic frameworks may decrease economic inequalities by recognizing out interdependence.
Economic Anthropology
How humans work to obtain the material necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter.
How produce, exchange, and consume material objects.
The role that immaterial things such as labor, service, and knowledge play in our livelihood.
Economic anthropologists describe what people actually do and why.
3 Modes of Production
Domestic (kin-ordered)
Foragers and small-scale farmers, egalitarian.
Organized by kinship relations.
Tributary
Societies with classes of rulers and ‘subjects’.
Farmers/herders produce for themselves and give portion to rule as tributes.
Production is controlled, relationships often= conflictual.
Capitalist
Private property owned by a capitalist class.
Workers sell their labor, are separated from the means of production.
Keeps wages low in order to sell products for more than it costs to produce.
Generates a surplus… wealth!
Modes of Production: Examples
Fair-trade Coffee Farmers: 21st Century Peasant
Small- scale, semi-subsistence farmer in highland Guatemala (Maya(
Salaula in Zambia: The informal Economy
Global clothing recycling business
Modes of Exchange
Reciprocity- giving gifts create relationships
generalized -exact value of the gift and time is not specific (Halloween)
balanced - something of equal value and time period is expected (Kula ring)
Negative- attempt to get something for nothing
Ex: christmas giving
Redistribution- the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person or institution for the purpose of dispersal at a later date
Requires a centralized political body to coordinate and enforce
Found in all societies
Ex: potlatch
Markets- social institutions with prices pr exchange equivalence
Regulated by supply and demand
Based on transactions, often impersonal but not always
Ex: Maine lobster markets
Money- general purpose money
Medium of exchange
Tool for storing wealth
Way to assign interchangeable values
Increases opportunities for unequal exchange
Ex: Tiv spheres of exchange
Ex: Ithaca Hours
Consumption and Global Capitalism
Consumption- the process of buying, eating, or using a resource, food, commodity or service
Forms of behaviors that connect our economic activity with the cultural symbols that give our lives meaning
Commodity- a good that is produced for sale or exchange for other goods
Objects have a “social life”
In the the developing world, worries that westernization around the world would change values has been challenged
Global supply chains move commodities around the world
Ex: Darjeeling Tea Production and Consumers
Political Economy: Understanding Inequality
Political economy- contextualizes economic relations within state structures, political processes, social structures, and cultural values
Structural violence- a social structure or institution harms people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs
Ex: the politics of aid Haiti
Week 7: Political Anthropology
All cultures exercise social control over their members.
Compliance is vital.
The bigger and more complex societies become, the more they exert control over their members.
Political anthropology seeks to understands these forms of control
Basic Concepts in Political Anthropology
Power- the ability to induce behavior of others in specified ways by means of coercion or physical force
Authority- the ability to induce behavior of others by persuasion
Legitimacy- the perception that a individual has a valid right to a leadership
‘Sociocultural integration’
Study of social structures, cultural beliefs and practices to understand how these function as a whole, mesh together, are interconnected
Study of how individuals element of a culture function together, create a unified system, and maintain social order
Study of how individuals and groups share cultural norms, interact with one another, adapt to culture
Levels of socio-cultural integration
Levels of Socio-Cultural Integration
Eleman service (1975)- four levels
Band
Tribe
Chiefdom
State
Egalitarian (equal), ranked (“Hierachy”), and stratified (more distinct within the hierarchy )
Egalitarian Societies: Bands
Few differences between members in wealth, status, and power
Bands
Foragers
Nomadic
Lack of formal leadership or adjudication
Modesty is valued
Interpersonal arguments created conflicts
Egalitarian Societies: Tribes
Tribes
Defined groups linked together
100-5,000 people
No centralized government
Leadership roles open, not hereditary (e.g Big Man of New Guinea)
Social integration through sodalities (age connections), men’s houses, formal gift exchange, and marriage
Law in Tribal Societies
Use negotiation, mediation, or divine (supernatural) events to resolve conflicts
Warfare consists of raids or feuds both internally and externally
Ranked Societies: Chiefdoms
Greater differentiation between individuals and their Kin groups, hierarchy of prestige
Permanent political office of chief, may be hereditary
Economic redistribution
Social integration through marriage and secret societies
Stratified Societies
Elites (a numerical minority) control stragetic resources that sustain life
Ex: caste system
Membership is determined by birth, no movement from on to another (such as in class systems); endogamous marriage
Stratified Societies: State
State
Political power is centralized in a government that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force
Large, diverse populations
Complex economic (often market economy)
Social stratification
Intensive agriculture or industrial subsistence
Defined geographic territory
Heads of of state, often with councilors
Administrative bureaucracy handles public functions
Taxation or tribute
Ideologies maintain the elites power
Nation is not synonymous with state
Nation is a group connected by language, territorial base, history, political organization
How do States Form
Elite minority controls resources of majority
Increased agricultural productivity
Peasant farmers were the original subject of state society formation, i.e state controls peasants resources
Loss of land
Law is formal and codified, adjudication
Warfare is widespread
Led to acquisition of resources by taking control of adjacent populations
Tendency toward instability
Extreme disparities in wealth, use of force, stripping of peoples resources, harshness of laws
The Islamic State: A State in Formation?
ISIS formed in 2014 in Iraq and Syria, a military organization based on theocratic ideals
Has features of a state society
Armed force
Resources and revenue
Administrative structure
A body of law
Uses the internet to spread ideology
Week 8: Family and Marriage
Rights, Responsibilities, Statuses and Roles in Families
Words used to describe family members (“mother” or “cousin”) indicate rights and responsibilities of family members
Status- a culturally-designated position a person occupies in a particular setting (“father” or “younger brother”
Role- the set of behaviors expected of a person who occupies a particular status
Kinship and Descent
Kinship-culturally recognized ties between members of a family
Both blood (consanguineal) and marriage (affinal), as well as “chosen kin”
Descent- how people reckon their kinship
Patrilineal- through the father’s line
Matrilineal- through mother’s line
Bilateral- through both lines
Lineage- descent from a common ancestor
Matrilineage (descent) does not mean matriarchal (power)
Example: Nayar of Southern India
Men and women did not live together after marriage
Husbands were seen as “relatives”since they were not part of the matrilineage
Kinship Terminology
The terms used in a language to describe relatives
Differences provide insight into how people think about families and their roles
Example: Hawaiian kinship terminology
Croatia
Uncles: father’s brother (stric) is an authority figure, while mother’s brother (ujak) is nurturing
China
Different names for family statuses reflect different roles
Navajo
People are “born to” their mother’s clan
United States
Bilateral, equally related socially and legally
Marriage and Family
Nuclear and family- two generations
Extended family- at least three generations
Stem family or Joint family
Serial monogamy- marriage to a succession of a spouses, one at a time
Polygamy- plural marriages of either multiple wives or multiple husbands
Polygygny or polyandry
Who can you marry?
Endogamy- marriage within a cultural group
Exogamy- marriage outside a cultural group
Marriages have been arranged throughout history and across cultures
If someone dies, than rules dictate how to keep a spouse in the family
Sororate and Levirate
Families, Households, and Domestic Groups
Family- the smallest group of individual who see themselves as connected to one another
Household/Domestic Group- family members who reside together or who share resources and activities pertaining to domestic life (may also include chosen kin)
Marriage Exchanges
Marriage Exchanges- most often given to the family who is losing a member
Dowry- gift given by a bride’s family to the groom’s family or to the new couples
Bridewealth- gifts given from a groom’s family to the bride’s family
Post-Marital Residence
Family of orientation- family in which a person is raised
Family of procreation- new household for raising children
Residence patterns
Neolocal
Patrilocal
Matrilocal
Avunculocal
Week 10: Gender and Sexuality
Culture shapes sex, gender, and sexuality
Gender and sexuality organize and structure society
Gender and sexual identities vary across cultures
Anthropology is affected by gender norms
Sex, Gender and Sexuality are Different
Sex=biological
Biologically assigned at birth, biological category based on physiology
Gender = social/socially constructed:
External” social and cultural status, roles, expectations, and identities associated with being male, female, non-binary, or another gender
Internal: personal sense of being male, female, non-binary, or another gender
Sexuality= culturally shaped
Emotional, romantic, sexual attractions to others
gender(s)/ identities that a person is attracted to
Gender Ideologies, Biological, and Culture Ideology
Underpinning systems of ideas and ideals
Forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy, or cultural/social practices
Gender ideology
Set of ideas about categories of gender, and beliefs, behaviors, and meanings associated with each gender
Change throughout time and vary widely
In the 19th century and to mid-20th century U.S gender ideologies were based on biological determination
Males and females were born fundamentally different
“Naturally” attracted to one another
Women’s sex drive was les developed, and more reproductively oriented
Gender is Not a Binary Model
Sex is biological
gender= set of culturally- invented expectations
Gender is not a binary model, but a fluid and flexible
Third gender roles include two-spirited people (native americans) and hijras (India)
Heteronormativity and Transgender Identity
Also called cisnormativity
Often-unnoticed system of rights and privilege that accompany normative sexual choices and family formation
Transgender people
Experience their gender as different from their assigned sex at birth
May or not transition socially or physically
Public (Male) vs. Domestic (Female) Spheres
Public/Private gender roles:
(large, stratified societies) men dominate public space while women are associated with domestic sphere
Social separation reinforces males’ control females
Purdah: curtain
Week 11: Race and Ethnicity
Race is only skin deep…
Variations in human physical and genetic traits are ‘nonconcordant’
Race: A Discredited Concept in Human Biology
Human physical and biological variations are continuous
Clinical distribution:
Gradual variation in traits across a geographic area
Average range of skin color gradually shifts over geographic space (notable expectations based on diet)
Vitamin D and folate
Nonconcordant:
Variations in human physical and genetic traits
Each trait is inherited independent not bundled together in a “racial group”
88-92% of genetic diversity is found within people who live on the same continent
Reification of Race
reify= when an accurate concept is so heavily promoted that it seem to be unquestioned “truth”
Reification of race
1700s with Linnaeus (1735) four races and Blumenbach’s (1795) five races
These are arbitrary divisions, based on subjective criteria
How had the concept of race been reified?
No biological basis for human race
Lots of thing are ‘true’ without being biological
Race is socially constructed concept
Race as a Social Concept
Race is real as social concept with important effects on peoples lives
Racial formation
How social, economic, political forces determine the content and important of racial categories
E.g social determinants of health
Hypodescent: a racial classification system that assigns a person with mixed racial heritage to the racial category that is considered least privileged
One-drop rule: the practice of excluding a person with any non-white ancestry from the white racial category
Formation of the Concept of Whiteness
Mid- 1800s. Irish were not seen as white
Early 20th century. Jewish and Italian immigrants not seen as white
Expanded after WWll and veterans acts (expect to African American veterans)
“White privilege”- unearned benefits and advantages
Peace: The United States and Brazil
Race is constructed differently in different places/time
Race: United States and Brazil
U.S
Race has been seen and mutually exclusive categories: one-drop rule (hypodescent); arbitrary census
Brazil
5 government categories, but people use hundreds of tipos (types) to classify along a continuum
Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups
Ethnic groups claim a distinct identity based on cultural characteristics and shared ancestry
Ethnicity: identification with, and attachment to, a particular ethnic group. Can fluctuate overtime
Symbolic ethnicity: expressive limited displays of ethnic pride (for public display(
Sports, Race/Ethncitiy, and Diversity
U.S popular culture reifies athletic abilities as “natural” or “biological” in popular sports- without scientific basis
The Real Reasons?
Socio-economic factors create access and opportunity
Cultural values
Society that supports youth sports
Degree of prestige assigned to various sports by different communities
Week 13: Globalization
In the modern era, begins after WWll and creation of IMF, WB, WTO
Not new…
Speed of global flows of exchanges (5 ‘scopes’)
Dynamic processes: people, ideas, things
Often causes contact with people from the developed and the developing worlds
“Underdeveloped” parts of the world, Rodney 1972
Conflict over resources, opportunities
Globalization in Everyday Life
Advantages
Activism to rectify socia, economic, or environmental injustices;
Solidarity movements, humanitarian efforts
Micro-loans, crowd-source fundraising
Disadvantages
Public health, epidemics
Intensified racism and prejudice, scapegoating
Effect of neoliberalism…
Neoliberalism
Political philosophy, free market capitalism
Reductions in government spending, deregulation
Limited welfare state, privatization
Growth in wealth gap, huge increase in poverty, urban poverty
Neocolonialism
Economic, political, cultural, or other pressures
Control or influence other countries, especially former colonies/dependencies
Appadurai’s Five “Scapes”
Ethnoscapes: movements of people
Ideoscapes: movements of beliefs systems
Mediascapes: movements of representational & communicative practices
Technoscapes: movements of technologies
Financescapes: movements of capitals
Week 14: Culture and Sustainability
Living in the Anthropocene
Geological period
footprint/efforts of human activities (deforestation)
Turning forests into fields and postures
Large scale burning oil, gas, coal
= shift in fundamental biogeochemical cycles of the earth
Human and the Environment
Climate change led to bipedalism in hominids, development of Homo Sapiens
Human agriculture changed over relationships with the environment the good/bad ways
Cultural Ecology
Leslie White- cultures “evolved” through use of technologies to control the environment
Julian Steward- (Shoshane) Subsistence patterns structure culture and society
Both were influenced by materialism
Human practices are limited by ecology and the balance of nature
Ethnoecology
The use and knowledge of plants, animals, ecosystems by the traditional societies
Horticultural practices of slash-and-burn or swidden cultivation
Practiced correctly, it is indefinitely sustainable with low population density and plenty of land
Incorrectly, the entire ecological systems breaks down
Ethnobotany- studies traditional uses of plants for food, construction, dyes, crafts, and medicine
Kayapo Project showed how Indigenous groups actually make the rainforest more productive
Myth of the Ecologically Noble Savage
Native people are constructed as “opposite” of Western Society, romantic fantasy
Land claims saved by mapping
Political Ecology
Focuses on the impacts of government and corporations in establishing political and economic systems that constrain local behavior
Political Ecology and Sustainable Development
Challenges standard narrative regarding environmental destruction and conservation
Pevisionalist Environmental History- uses evidence to rewrite narratives
Ex: Fairhood/Leach and Balee’s Work
“People versus parks” Debate- should rural lands be “protected” from the people who live there, or can there be a way to include humans and still conserve nature?
Sustainable development- economic alternatives that encourage people to preserve resources
Ex: brazilian extractive resources for rubber tapping
Ex: the American Lawn
Eco-Justice
Race, Gender, and Environmental Destruction
Environmental justice advocates look at social equality, identifying impacts and risks associated with the environmental damage that have disproportionately affected socially marginalized groups
Landfills, chemical plants industrial factories, environmentally-hazardous facilities
Ecocide is linked to ethno-cide
Applying Anthropology to Conservation
Applied anthropologists work with conservation and development organization to implement projects that depend on an accurate understanding of local cultures and practices
Ex: Murray’s Haitian reforestation project
AAA Global Climate Change Taskforce report (2014)- impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect groups who have contributed the least to greenhouse gases
Week 15: Performance
Cultural Performance vs Performing Culture
Cultural performance is a performance
An authoritative version of culture
Taking place at specific times and place
High level of excellence demonstrated by performing
Performing culture
The ways in which our everyday words and actions are reflections of enculturation, which may be studied as a performance
Presentation of Self
The ways in which people manage the impressions of other (Goffman)
Individuals act differently in different cultures contexts; not necessarily deceptive
“Front” and “back: spaces
A match between the “personal front” and setting (between expectations and execution) creates acceptances
Performance of Gender
Gender performativity (Judith Butler)- Gender as a social construct is created through individual performances of gender identity
Patterns of behaviors get culturally coded as gendered representatives (“act like a man”)
Even movements of body are culturally learned and performed
Social Drama as Performance
Conflict situations between individuals mirror the action in a play (“metatheatre”)