Intro to Cultural Anthropology Lecture 1, October 1, PDF

Intro to Cultural Anthropology- Lecture 1, October 1 QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? CONCERNS? Any good tv show recommendations? What comes to mind when you think of the word “anthropology?” What does culture mean to you? From left to right: Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Boas, M...

Intro to Cultural Anthropology- Lecture 1, October 1 QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? CONCERNS? Any good tv show recommendations? What comes to mind when you think of the word “anthropology?” What does culture mean to you? From left to right: Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Boas, Margaret Meade, and Ruth Benedict https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/gili-kliger-be-not-afraid-find- them-wanting/  Franz Boas, 1928- “What is Anthropology?” Saw anthropology as study of where individuals fit within broader social groups, the distribution and range of differences between people, and the characteristics of the groups to which they belong ○ “The group, not the individual, is always the primary concern of the anthropologist.” (13) Anthropology translates to “science of man”: tries to see where people fit within the whole of social sciences He emphasized the physical aspects of anthropology–while this is one aspect that is studied, it is not the entirety of cultural anthropology Accept for a fact from the hard sciences what they prove to be true, try to understand the implications of these facts within a social group as a whole Some anthropologists will study an individual within the group, but ultimately the aim is always what is happening  He emphasizes how the environment/external factors influence people. ○ “Many examples can be given showing that people of essentially the same descent behave differently in different types of social setting.” (13) Poses question of whether generalizations can be made, if there are valid laws that exist that govern the life of society ○ Concerned with interrelations between observed phenomena To what extent is anthropology a science, if at all? Emphasizes the knowledge of interaction of factors such as racial descent and economic condition of parents, and their general well-being ○ “A knowledge of the interaction of these factors may give us the power to control growth and to secure the best possible conditions of life for the group.” Another question anthropologists often face: to what extent  Lee D. Baker, “The Racist Anti-Racism of American Anthropology” (03-04-2021) To prove that the so-called races of Europe were not legitimate, Boas chose to emphasize the enormous gulf between the white and non-white races, which the press extensively covered. Boas’s scientific work and advocacy were viewed as anti-racist, even though he based much of it on assimilation and amalgamation. The next year W. E. B. Du Bois invited Franz Boas to give the final lecture at the conference where the N.A.A.C.P. was officially incorporated. Boas presented “The Real Race Problem” and argued that the real problem was the “difference in type.” To solve it, the Negro needed to amalgamate by “encouraging the gradual process of lightening up this large body of people by the influx of white blood.” (Hutchins Center)  Carol Delaney, Ch. 1, “Disorientation and Orientation” → I encourage you to take an anthropological approach to your own topics of interest as suggested in the book. How would an anthropologist interpret a social phenomena you might have picked up on? How about a news article/book? What would an anthropologist take into consideration and how would they go about studying it? “You will learn about anthropology and about culture by learning how to think like an anthropologist.” Aim is to explore ways aspects of environment connect to and represent concepts, values, and structures of the wider culture Prerequisites: open mind and willingness to take nothing for granted, anything is available for inspection Items and events are clues you can use to investigate your sociocultural system, providing a window into much larger  “I’m a student” Hope someone gets this ref erence.  People often assume anthropology is about the study of “stones and bones” or with studying an “elsewhere” Some ascribe to four-field anthro, others instead feel the defining element is not so much what one studies but the theoretical stance one takes toward the material one studies Many people conflate the nature and cultural categories by assuming peoples with best natural gifts produce most advanced cultures ○ But who makes these judgements about “advanced” and “primitive” cultures? Whose scale is used as the standard? And what does advanced mean? 19th century: British and American social theorists ranked peoples of world on evolutionary, progressive, unilinear, and universal scale of cultures that ended, not coincidentally, with themselves at the top. ○ 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades [es], Rhet orica Christiana  Now accepted that homo sapiens developed from ape-ical ancestors to modern form, but also that culture was part of their development ○ “Cultural resources are ingredient, not accessory, to human thought” (Geertz) People took Darwin’s notion of evolution and, drawing analogies from animal to inhuman, by drawing beliefs from human society and imposing them on animals, and then reading them back into human society ○ Even Darwin found it too easy to project human behaviors on to animals and back again Example: Ideas about “survival of the fittest” being misused and applied to people (see image on next page regarding social Darwinism.) ○ Herbert Spencer was an anthropologist who was a proponent of this approach.  Franz Boas: founder of American anthropology ○ perception molded not just by extraneous suggestions but by long-term cultural training ○ Judgements made not because of sight but because of meanings and values supplied by the culture ○ Capacity for culture is a human universal but that doesn’t explain why cultures are so different ○ Humans cannot exist outside of culture; People are molded by culture from the moment of birth Humanities assumed that there is a constant human nature and differences  Laura Bohannan: translating difficult not because of words but because of different concepts of the Tiv in West Africa, a group she was working with (Hamlet) Anthropology in a new key: does not dismiss human universals, but discovering them is not its primary goal since they do not help us understand why different peoples do things differently What is “culture?” a slippery concept that is difficult to grasp ○ Cultures conditioned by global network of power and resources in which they are embedded, but nevertheless spring from different premises about life and from different goals and values American anthropology: culture refers to signifying or symbolic systems  American anthropology emphasizes the cultural ○ Does not assume there are universal social domains ○ Discover domains empirically as aspects of each society’s own classificatory schemes/culture ○ Rejects notion that social institution can be understood in isolation from its own context British lineage tends to draw on utilitarianism, a socioeconomic theory developed by philosophers Hobbes and Locke, and economists Malthus and Smith ○ Utilitarianism: claims that everyone (or every British man) is a rational, self-interested actor pursuing universal wants ○ Also draws on Durkheim ○ Society is a totality that operates according to its own principles ○ They believe that social anthropologists must discover  Geertz: “The concept of culture I espouse is essentially a semiotic one. Believing with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.” (15) When anthropology emerged as discipline and developed form, including split between social/cultural, arenas of study were primarily non-Western peoples on the frontiers of Western, colonial expansion Anthropologists hardly studied the colonial project, the condition of its own existence, as part of its subject matter Video on Geertz’s idea of “thick description”  Changed in 1980s: started looking at colonizers ○ Relations between centers and margins of capital, politics, and influence ○ Anthropologists became increasingly preoccupied with problems of power Anthropologists turned to different analytical models, found in theories of political economy by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ○ Marx and Engels saw modes of production as drivers of social processes and inequities, and anticipated revolutionary movements among laboring classes who would seize control of means of production and overturn power elites, leading to the creation of a utopia ○ interesting to note that in itself this was a type of  Anthropologists soon found ways to incorporate and transform Marxist concepts: reading symbolic practice into political economy, and power into culture ○ Influence of Antonio Gramsci’s concept cultural hegemony: ability of small social groups to dominate society not through coercion but by disseminating and naturalizing a consensus worldview through mass media and other practices ○ Cultural anthropologist adopted this notion to investigate the naturalization of power through media, state ritual, schooling, religious conversion, and other forms of symbolic practice  Anthropologists remain committed to methodologies of empiricism, fieldwork, and contextualization Insist on examining not only the global, grand, and spectacular, but the local, commonplace, and inconsequential, with a focus on the little routines people enact on a daily basis “In enacting these routines, actors not only continue to be shaped by the underlying organizational, principles involved, but continually re-endorse those principles in the world of public observation and discourse.” Sherry Ortner A cultural analysis should make explicit the social positions of the person doing the analyzing and the people being analyzed, as well as the differences of power and status among the individuals and groups being studied  When scholars realized that nation-states were relatively recent constructions, national cultures were also called into question as artificial constructs Nation did not always mean country, but once referred to a people bound by language, religion, and birth, not by territorial boundaries or government ○ Concept of culture need not be coextensive with that of nation-state At same time, it’s important to investigate the ways in which power, aggression, repression, and exploitation have had an important influence on the development and expression of culture Processes of cultural production: who gets to make culture and how it is transmitted, and the creative ways that cultural expression and productions persist and flourish in an often hostile environment  Need to explore ways of explaining difference other than the three R’s: Race, Religion, and Reason/Rationality (Sylvia Yanagisako) ○ incorporated hierarchical and unidirectional notions of progress and advancement, but ended by putting beliefs and values of white, Christian, Euro-American males at the top Culture is “learned not inherited; shared not idiosyncratic; particular not universal” Social differences are culturally constituted: they emerge in relation to interlocking patterns of meaning that are constructed by and struggled over by people who occupy different positions that incorporate differentials of power ○ Some meanings we inherit socially, some we can affect and change, and some we can invent, only in relation to what went before  Anthropologists conduct “fieldwork,” collecting clues to help solve the mystery of culture: why do people do things the way they do? What are their motivations and goals? How are they constrained by cultural definitions of their race, gender, age, class, and so on? Where do you find the clues? Fieldwork sets anthropology apart: must go out and live for extended periods of time among the people they study Ethnography: what anthropologists write up after completing their fieldwork ○ Not just a description of a particular society/culture, but an analysis that tries to explain why and to contribute new theoretical insights and knowledge Fieldwork is messy, contradicts the image most people might have of scientific research ○ Important to note that the “hard” sciences are also not SEE YOU NEXT CLASS!