Anth 203 Course Review PDF

ANTH 203 – COURSE REVIEW What is Anthropology? [1, 4] Social/Cultural Anthropology The study of the full extent of living groups to understand social process and try to conceptualize them within the universal experience of being human. Readings to extend knowledge: - The Mushroom at the End of...

ANTH 203 – COURSE REVIEW What is Anthropology? [1, 4] Social/Cultural Anthropology The study of the full extent of living groups to understand social process and try to conceptualize them within the universal experience of being human. Readings to extend knowledge: - The Mushroom at the End of the World – By Anna Tsing - Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street – By Karen Ho - Climate Change and Tradition in a Small Island State – By Peter Rudiak-Gould - The Avatar Faculty – By Jeffery G. Snodgrass Ethnography The scientific description of individuals or groups collected through participant observation. - Ethnology: The comparative study of cultural differences and similarities. - Ethnographies: Extensive detailed research/studies in which an anthropologist observes/talks to/lives with the people they are studying. o Emic Approach: derived from “phonemic,” referring to an insider view, aiming to describe another culture in terms of categories, concepts, and perceptions of the people being studied. o Etic Approach: derived from “phonetic,” referring to an outsider view, aiming to describe another culture in terms of categories, concepts, and perceptions of the researchers. Standard for Participant Observation: conducted by interacting with the people you observe and participating in their social process over an extended period. Other Key Terms: - Qualitative Data: Data that cannot be represented by numbers - Quantitative Data: Data that can be represented by numbers. - Ethnocentrism: “Nation-centre-theory” the view that one society or group is better than another. - Cultural Relativism: the suspension of judgement of other people’s practices to understand them in their cultural terms. o Examples would be Genital Cutting, Eating Insects/animals, Religious garment requirements, etc. - Holism: Culture is not a collection of parts. Aka. All subjects and subcategories of anthropology are interconnected. To understand kinship, you must also understand gender and religion, and vice versa. - Comparative Approach: We do not look at societies in isolation, we compare and contrast them to each other - Similar to Holism. The History of Anthropology Darwinism: Charles Darwin Darwinism in anthropology is the belief that natural selection not only shapes us biologically but also shapes our emotions and social instincts. Aka, behaviour and culture have a biological basis. (Outdated) UCE: E.B Tylor & L.H Morgan UCE stands for Unilinear Cultural Evolution (Social Evolutionism) Evolutionism: The 19th-century theory that culture evolved from ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism.’ Degenerationism: The fall from God’s grace caused other groups to degenerate from a more civilized state. Diffusionism: argues that cultural differences can be explained by the diffusion of cultural traits from one society to another. (ex. Ancient Apocalypse) Diffusionism ignores the exchange of culture as a mutual activity, as well as human originality, work, and brilliance. “Primitive Culture” by E. B. Tylor and L. H. Morgan was one of the first theories on anthropology. Applying Darwin’s theory to further their colonial mindset - ‘social evolutionism.’ (Outdated) Historical Particularism: Franz Boas Historical particularism is the introduction of cultural relativism and changing the relationship between theory and case studies. Historical Particularism argues that… - Society is the product of its own history and environment. - Societal evolution is not a straight line. - Culture is heavily context-dependent. - Ethnographers should use the emic (insider) approach/perspective. Cultural Materialism Material conditions determine human thoughts & behaviours. - Is your perception of the world impacted by the quality of your home, food, clothing, technology, etc.? Symbolic Anthropology: Clifford Geertz The belief that culture is fundamentally a symbolic system. The goal of anthropology is the meaning or interpretation of symbols. - Depending on the culture, wearing a cross can be a sign of faith or a death sentence. - Coined Thick description Interpretive Anthropology: Webs of significance surround us; those webs are our culture. - [M]an is an animal suspended in webs of significance he has spun himself’ (Geertz 1973) Functionalism: Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski, & Emile Durkheim Social institutions are integrated and function to maintain or satisfy the biological needs of the individual. Durkheim – cultures provided various means for fulfilling societal and individual needs. - To ensure those needs are met, we must have horticulture, economics, and marriage. - Ex. society as a whole needs its people to behave, so the function of law is to keep people in line. - Analogy: The heart pumps oxygen to the body = The function is to keep society alive. Malinowski – no matter how ‘exotic’ the culture, it fulfilled a genuine need for its people. Structural Functionalism: Alfred Radcliffe-Brown A school of anthropology and a type of functionalism that examines how parts of a culture function for the well-being of society. (Emphasis on social functions.) Structuralism: Claude Levi-Strauss Cultures are the product of unconscious processes of the human mind. - There are universal structures that shape how we as human beings understand our world. - All people tend to think in binaries. (Old vs. young, left vs. right, nature vs. nurture, etc.) Culture & Personality Personality is largely a part of cultural learning, yet there is no modal cultural personality type for a particular society. - Also analyzing personalities & behaviours that are a biological fact, not a cultural influence. o Ex. Analyzing child-rearing practices from a cross-culture perspective, analyzing how these practices may change the personality of the individual, and how that shapes culture. MCE & Neoevolutionism Multilinear Cultural Evolution: Examines our origin instead of evolution. - Contests Tylor and Morgan. - Culture = evolution x technology (C=ET) Neoevolutionism: Similarities between cultures could be explained by parallel adaptations to similar environments. - Similar cultures could be explained by observing similar solutions to the challenges of similar environments, such as finding food, shelter, etc. Post-Modern Period Post-Modernism: Advocates for the switch from cultural generalization and laws to description, interpretation, and search for meaning. - Modernists find themselves detached from science. - Post-modernists frown upon the arrogance of modernists. Fieldwork and Post-Modernism: Fieldwork is the primary means by which Anthropologists gather and present their data. - Ethnographies should be written from several voices to avoid bias. Listed Case Studies/Readings - Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter – By Talal Asad ★ - Is Anthropology Art or Science? – By Michael Carrithers - Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? – By Sherry B. Ortner Doing Anthropology [3, 5] Cultural Anthropology The study of the full extent of living groups to understand social process and try to conceptualize them within the universal experience of being human. Ethnography Continued… Participant Observation/Apprenticeship Living and interacting with a group for an extended period. [Anthropology → Ethnography → Participant observation] Structured vs. Unstructured Data Collection Structured Data Collection: Pre-determined/planned and uniform questions. - Ex. Online questionnaire Unstructured Data Collection: Not predetermined nor uniform questions. - Ex. Participant observation - ‘Focus on the mundane, minute details of life’ (Malinowski) Thick Description: Qualitative research that provides in-depth descriptions and interpretations of situations observed by a researcher. Applied Anthropology The application of anthropological knowledge, concepts, theories, and methods to the solution of specific problems. - Problem-oriented research: Study of serious problems and the application of strategies in an attempt to solve those problems. The Anthropological Perspective The Anthropological Perspective is the way anthropologists look at and understand peoples and cultures. Holistically: Anthropologists try to see the larger picture and how one aspect of life connects with others. - Ex. An anthropologist studying agricultural practices would also analyze the influence of political policies, family structure, religious beliefs, and so on. Relativistically: All behaviour takes place within a particular social and cultural context, and can best be understood from within that context. Naturalistically: The practice of studying people in their natural settings such as hospitals, businesses, local villages, agricultural fields, and so on. Comparatively: The practice of analyzing how behaviours and attitudes vary from one society to another to understand why differences exist. Globally: The practice of studying how global forces impact local cultures and how those local cultures adapt to these forces to understand how any proposed change may impact a culture. Bio-culturally: The practice of analyzing the relationship between human biology and culture and how cultural practices may affect biology. - Ex. Cultures without a history of raising cattle tend to have increased lactose intolerance or an inability to drink milk. Reflexively: Anthropologists are aware of how gender, race, or social position may influence not only the data they gather but also how it is applied. Listed Case Studies/Readings - Body and Soul – By Loic Wacquant ★ - Making It For Our Country – By Charlotte Linton ★ - Social Science Goes to War: The Human Terrain System In Iraq And Afghanistan – By Montgomery McFate Culture & Identity [2, 6] What is Culture? Culture is a learned and shared behaviour in humans, that acts to unify and differentiate social groups. - Beliefs, language, value systems, norms, values, and worldviews. - Is socially transmitted and learned from other members. o Political organizations, social structures, kinship structures, economic systems, religious systems, belief systems, and the mechanisms that produce and control social capital. - EB Tylor: ‘the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society’ - Franz Boas: sets of customs and habits that are transmitted from group to group and influenced by both the environment and historical context. - Clifford Geertz: ‘a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms... which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life.’ Society is a collective of people who share a specific set of learned behaviours, or culture, that differs from other groups. Culture & Nationalism Both Gellner and Breuilly argued that nationalism is a learned behaviour/identity, not biological. - Gellner: ‘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.’ - Breuilly: ‘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 the point? Culture gives us a sense of unity and the ability to better communicate and understand our peers; as well as create rules and a sense of direction for our society to follow to better function. - Mann: ‘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’ - Gellner: ‘In larger societies... one's 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) that is employed, become crucial’ - Weber: The social organization (Culture) of ultimate knowledge and meaning is necessary to social life - Durheim & Radcliffe-Brown: Rules of good behaviour, the creation of guidelines, or norms, of how people should act. Perception & Cognition Perception (Biological): The ability to acquire information from our surroundings Cognition (Social): Interpretation of the data we collect. - Lambek: ‘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.’ o Ideal virtuous self - Laidlaw: ‘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.’ Anthropology of Ethics - Mahmood: ‘This is due in part to the historically contentious relationship that Islamic societies have had with what has come to be called ‘the West, but also due to the challenges that contemporary Islamist movements pose to secular-liberal politics of which feminism has been an integral (if critical) part... Women’s participation in, and support from the Islamist movement provokes strong responses from feminists across the broad range of the political system.’ o White feminism struggles to understand and accept why some women support Islamist movements that reinforce and emphasize traditional gender roles. - Ibid: Women’s agency and the ‘unbreakable chains of religious and patriarchal oppression.’ - Abu-Lughod: Resistance as a ‘diagnostic of power.’ o Even the smallest acts of resistance can unravel how power operates in society, by examining forms of resistance, we can better understand how power shapes behaviour. (and for some, how to challenge that power.) What is Identity? The understanding and expression of individual and group identities within cultural and social frameworks.\ Inter-societal identity: Age, gender, sex, profession, and so on. Intra-societal identity: religion, nationality, ethnicity, and so on. Kinship: A biological and social process of relationships. Communication & Culture Nonverbal Communication: - Kinesics: The study of body movement (hand gestures, facial expressions, body posture.) - Haptic Communications: Physical touch. - Proxemics: Study of space and how it is used (negative vs. positive space.) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language creates mental categories which influence how we see and experience the world. Listed Case Studies/Readings - Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture – By Clifford Geertz Social Organization [7, 8, 11] How societies or groups are structured. Kinship: A biological and social process of relationships. - Bilateral: descent from both mother and father’s line. - Unilateral: descent from one side of the family. o Patrilineal: Descent from father’s line. o Matrilineal: Descent from mother’s line. - Needham & Schneider: Argue that kinship is a nonsubject. - Levi-Strauss: 'No matter what form it takes, whether direct or indirect, general or special, immediate or deferred, 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' - Sutton & Levi-Strauss argued that marriage is an exchange. o Exogamy: The practice of marrying outside one’s social group. o Endogamy: The practice of marrying inside one’s social group. Non-kinship: Non-familial relationships such as colleagues, friends, neighbours, and so on. - Sodalities: A non-kinship community such as trade unions, professional colleges, sports teams, social clubs, and so on. - Caste System: One of the oldest forms of social stratification that organizes based on non-kinship groups. Political Organization Political Systems: The way power and authority are allocated, distributed, and embedded into society with the intent of keeping it together. - Power: The ability to get someone to do what you want - Authority: The legitimacy of using power o Persuasive power o Coercive power Types of Groups According to Political Organization: - Band: Smallest, 20 to a couple hundred people, related by blood or marriage. - Tribe: Grouping of extended families. - Chiefdoms: Beginning or formalized bureaucratic systems. - The State: The most formal, has social control and right to coercive force. Gellner: 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. Anthropology of Exchange/Economic Anthropology The transfer of goods, services, or other valuable items between individuals, groups, or societies. - Sentimental Value: The emotional or symbolic significance that such objects carry within social relationships. - Venal Value: The economic market value of an object. Types of exchange systems: - Reciprocity: Giving goods without the expectation of return such as Christmas gifts, charity, the potlach, and so on. - Redistribution: The flow of goods from a central location out to the community. - Barter System: Exchange of goods directly for other goods. - Market System: The commodification of labour into centralized currency which is used for the exchange of goods. o Smith: ‘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.’ Subsistence Strategies: - Foraging: Living by hunting animals, fishing, and gathering wild plants - Horticulture: Small-scale farming that relies on human power. - Pastoralism: Raising livestock for food, clothing, and trade (animal husbandry.) - Intensive Agriculture: Large-scale farming and animal husbandry. - Industrial Agriculture: Commercial farming on its largest scale. Relies on complex machinery, genetically modified animals/seeds, and the distribution of products for domestic & export markets. Listed Case Studies/Readings - Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa – By Jane Guyer - The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Les structures élémentaires de la parenté) – By Claude Levi-Strauss - Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism – By Benedict Anderson - The Gift – By Marcel Mauss Religion, Ritual, and Knowledge [12, 13] Anthropology vs. Theology Anthropology: Focuses on lived reality. Theology: Focuses on ideology and beliefs. Metcalf: ‘Anthropology of religion looks nothing like theology... theologians work in libraries... anthropologists are more interested in the ritual of it... [looking at] religion as lived as opposed to mentalized.’ - Difference in subject matter: ‘more interested in the ritual of it’ - Difference in the approach: ‘lived as opposed to mentalized’ Religion A system of beliefs, practices, symbols, and rituals that address the ultimate concerns of life. Sutton: ‘Religion and ritual commonly co-occur as cultural elements (Stein and Stein 2017) but are separate concepts. Most religion is ritualized but not all ritual is religious. Thus, the two are considered separately here. - Most religions have rituals, but not all rituals have religion. (Ex. Stanley Cup playoff beard.) Prior to nation-states, religion was one of the heaviest contributors to social organization. Social Functions of Religion: Social control, conflict resolution, group solidarity. Psychological Functions of Religion: Cognitive and emotional functions. Categories of Religion Formal: Any type of religion with a coherent set of beliefs. - Standardized cosmology, practitioners, rituals, ceremonies, and set of moral and ethical standards. o Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, Sikhism, and so on. Non-Formal: A broad category of religions that do not fit into the criteria of formal religions. - Animism: The belief that objects and entities are animated by distinct spirits. o Native American spiritualism and African spiritualism. - Animatism: The belief that natural phenomena, objects, and places are believed to possess spiritual powers. o The Force, Star Wars, Melanesian cargo Cults, Japanese Shinto, etc. Separation of Church and State: - Anderson: ‘It would be short-sighted, however to think of the imagined communities of nations as simply growing out of and replacing religious communities and dynastic realms.’ - Laitcite (France): No public space can have anything religious. o Ex. Headdresses, crosses, turbans, kippahs, and so on. Key Terms: - Deity: supernatural beings considered sacred (Christianity’s Satan is considered a deity.) o Zoomorphic: Animal-based deities. o Anthropomorphic: Human-based deities. o Both. - Polytheistic: More than one God - Monotheistic: One God o Christianity is polytheistic. (holy trinity) Function of Religion… Listed Case Studies/Readings - Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor, and Memory in Melanesian Initiation Cults – By Harvey Whitehouse - The Elementary Forms of Religious Life – By Emile Durkheim - Religion as a Cultural System – By Clifford Geertz I am way too focused on getting my research and notes done for the writing portion so unfortunately, I have not digitized anything after the key terms of religion, my apologies.