Cultural Anthropology Test #1

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Four Subfields of Anthropology

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-physical/biological
- archaeology
- socio-cultural (including medical)
- linguistic

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Physical/biological anthropology

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study of human and primate evolution and physiological adaptation over time

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socio-cultural anthropology

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holistic study of human societies both past and present with a specific focus on culture

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linguistic anthropology

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the study of language in its social and cultural context

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What Makes Cultural anthropology Unique?

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- Approach: holistic
- Unit of Analysis: small scale
- Focus: culture
- Method: participant observation

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Key distinction of cultural anthropology

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-Macro-scale research: the researcher sends underlings into the field to gather data
o Micro-scale research: the researcher personally goes into the field to gather data (participant observation)

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Ethnography

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dsecriptive account of a particular community, society or culture

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old school ethnography

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highly descriptive and holistic approach

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contemporary approach

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"problem oriented research"
- less holistic

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Ethnology

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Examines, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnographies—the data gathered in different societies.

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Evolutionism and the Roots of Anthropology (McGee and Warms)

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Idea that all human minds work the same way and thus evolve the same way. Consequently they evolve similar social structures and similar times
- Degenerationism, progressivism

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Heliocentric Diffusion

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all cultural traits originate from a single source
- ethnocentric bias - people in the new world incapable of independent invention

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Culture Circles

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cultural traits originated at multiple sources

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Progressivism

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o Progressivism: human history is characterized by advances from primitive to civilized. Differences emerge from different experiences.

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Degenerationism

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we were all once civilized, but after dispersing (Tower of Babel) some degenerated while others remained civilized.

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Uni-lineal evolution

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• All societies follow the same evolutionary trajectory (economics, political institutions, social institutions, religion, rationality, etc.)
• European societies represent the pinnacle of social evolution; all others lagging behind

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Jean Lamark

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geographic or climatic changes pressure life forms to adapt

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Darwin

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o Concept of natural selection. Some variations more beneficial for survival and reproduction than others

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Herbert Spencer

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o Human societies analogous to biological organisms. Identify function or “organs” in maintaining society

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Comparative Method

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Assumption 1: psychic unity of mankind
Assumption 2: all societies undergo parallel but independent evolutions
Step 1: place all societies on a scale from primitive to civilized
step 2: analyze living fossils (primitive societies) as evidence of evolutionary changes
Step 3: Compare institutions to understand evolutionary trajectory

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Louis Henry Morgan

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Focus on social institutions
savagery --> barbarism --> civilization

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Edward Burnett Tylor

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Focus on Religion
animism --> polytheism --> monotheism

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Social Darwinism

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some societies are more fit that others
Justification for European powers to dominate other societies (a moral imperative)

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Franz Boas

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- Helped develop anthro as a methodologically rigorous field of inquiry
oCritiqued grand theories on race, evolution, and cultural determinism.
- Cultural similarities can arise through diffusion, adaptation to similar environments, and/or historical

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Boas and rejection of scientific racism

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used to classify races on cranial dimensions
- 1908 study: cranial dimensions in immigrants and their kids.proved that immigrant kids had different skull shapes than parents as a result of diet, habits etc. DISPROVED scientific racism

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Franz Boas

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- Helped develop anthro as a methodologically rigorous field of inquiry
oCritiqued grand theories on race, evolution, and cultural determinism.
- Cultural similarities can arise through diffusion, adaptation to similar environments, and/or historical

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Adaptation example: Tibetan People

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Challenges: oxygen depravation, extreme cold
Biological adaptations: Genetic (larger chest), physiological (growth and development), spontaneous physiological
- Cultural Adaptations (clothing, economics, technology)

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Franz Boas

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- Helped develop anthro as a methodologically rigorous field of inquiry
oCritiqued grand theories on race, evolution, and cultural determinism.
- Cultural similarities can arise through diffusion, adaptation to similar environments, and/or historical

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Boas and rejection of scientific racism

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used to classify races on cranial dimensions
- 1908 study: cranial dimensions in immigrants and their kids.proved that immigrant kids had different skull shapes than parents as a result of diet, habits etc. DISPROVED scientific racism

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Boas and rejection of scientific racism

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used to classify races on cranial dimensions
- 1908 study: cranial dimensions in immigrants and their kids.proved that immigrant kids had different skull shapes than parents as a result of diet, habits etc. DISPROVED scientific racism

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Adaptation example: Tibetan People

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Challenges: oxygen depravation, extreme cold
Biological adaptations: Genetic (larger chest), physiological (growth and development), spontaneous physiological
- Cultural Adaptations (clothing, economics, technology)

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Adaptation example: Tibetan People

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Challenges: oxygen depravation, extreme cold
Biological adaptations: Genetic (larger chest), physiological (growth and development), spontaneous physiological
- Cultural Adaptations (clothing, economics, technology)

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Historical particularism

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- cultures can only be understood with reference to their particular historical developments
- cannot apply grand theories
- rejection of scientific method and comparative method in anthro
- american anthro becomes more aligned with humanities than social science

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Balance between observation and participation

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- "Dual engagement"
- must gain rapport to gather good data in order to be accepted
- need to remain detached at a certain level

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Bronislaw Malinowski

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- Argonauts of the Western Pacific
- classic in anthro about participant observation
- Kula Ring: items passed continually along that tie people into enduring trade relationships, possessing items enhances status. He demonstrated function out of something thought worthless

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Evans-Pritchard

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- British conquest of Sudan
- Studied the Nuer
- goal: to reveal nuer system of governance so they can be better controlled
- found it very hard to gather truthful and useful information
- had to learn the language on his own
- used the Genealogical Method to construct family trees...found it was hard to divide and conquer these people due to their strong kinship

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Chagnon

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Studying the Yanomamo
- Gaining rapport: canoe incident, retaliated by cutting canoes loose and stood up for himself. they liked that
- used geneological method to understand settlement fissions and territorial expansions

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Clifford Geertz

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Notes on a Balinese Cockfight
- more humanistic, provided reader with empathic understanding of another society
- demonstrates how seemingly irrational institutions and practices actually have cultural logic
- gained rapport through running from the police...wasnt working for gov.
- teasing him, knew he was accepted in Balinese society

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Empathy

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o The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another
- dont TRULY know what its like to live in a certain society, but can start to understand

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Entering the field

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- balance between being a non-person and an accepted member of society

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Impact of Geertzs narrative

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- self reflexive style was uncommon at time
- ethnographic vignette becomes standard

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Kalusner

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Going Native?
- Fools Paradise: is it possible to deny own cultural roots and totally internalize another culture?
- close ID with another culture vs. intellectual detachment
- participant observation is used to gather most but not all data...helps you understand what questions to ask

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Ethnographic Research: The Initial Process

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- read literature
- formulate research question
- apply for research question
- get IRB (human subjects approbal)
- go to it

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Role of Participant Observation in Research

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- can use it to infer things and formulate questions
- also need to look at text, economic data, demographic data, social data etc.
- Triangulation: participant observation, economic data, textual data

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Johnson (et al); The Active Participant Observer

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- The social role that you choose has a lot to do with how your research comes out
- Things to consider: type of informat relations, type of information that can be accessed, information reliability

*example: best social role to study the migratory fisherman was a carpenter

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Situating the Observer

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- must look at personal qualities and demographic information to better understand anything research they produce

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Sterk; Fieldwork on Prostitution

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Cultural relativism: does not "judge" the actions of the women
- expresses interest in their lives, passes tests to see if she keeps info confidential, reciprocates and gives them resources
- empathic understanding, reciprocity
- trusted more because she is foreign so she was also seen as an outsider from society
- the more stigmatized a culture, the harder it is to get information

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An Anthropologist on the Team (Gmelch)

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- ex-baseball player travels with the team to write about baseball
- sports is often ignored: academic arrogance?
- hard to learn how to fit in
"[While playing] I ws so immersed in the culture that I really couldn't see what was noteworthy"

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Messages from the Field (Simpson)

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• The Past: long periods of total immersion with few chances to communicate with those back home.
- The Present: communicating with those back home a daily reality.
- • “What do these interruptions mean for the anthropologist’s persona in the field and the conduct of fieldwork?”

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Advantages of Long-term fieldwork

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- get to know more people, increasing rapport
- get to see a society year round and not just during a particular season
- seasonal perspective
- longitudinal perspective: repeat surveys to see how things go over time, track from a benchmark survey

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Genealogical Method

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- demographic survey
- constructing family trees
- Chagnon, Evans-Pritchard

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Surveys

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- same questions given to everyone
- answers can be quantified
- cross sectional (data at one point in time)
- can give them over time to show longitudinal data
- reveals more about what is happening and less about why it is happening

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Key Informants

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- in depth interviewing of somebody with especially good knowledge about a particular aspect of life

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Semi-Structured interviewing

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- use of an interview schedule
- everyone is asked the same questions
- guided yet flexible, tangents are sometimes important

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Person Centered interviewing

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can interview someone as an informant of as a respondent

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Informant

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interviewee as expert witness (key informant/cultural consultant)
- often gives you information of "ideal" culture

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Respondent

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Interviewee as object of study
- often get information of "real culture"

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Cultural Domain Analysis

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- a set of items that are generally accepted as being the same type
- perceptions...NOT preferences
- can be physical, observable things or could be conceptual things
- How do people group things?
- combination of survey and in-depth interviewing techniques

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Fact or Fiction (Benedict)

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Studied the Sechelles and their culture of black magic
- struggled with whether to write in first person or not, how to make it interesting, how to protect these people
- ended up making up some parts and creating a story
- is ethnography fiction? how do you make it interesting?

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Establishing reliability of ethnographies

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- correlation between intimate data and length in residence - tell reader how long you were there for
- writing in the first person - bolsters credibility
- language proficiency
- good data is contingent on good rapport - the "achieving rapport" story

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Moral Dilemmas and Ethical Controversies (Kirsch)

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Diamond printed a story stating the following:
• Father-in-law refrains from killing the man accused of killing his family members.
• New Guinea man organizes attack to avenge killing of his uncle.
• Conclusion: state suppresses desire for revenge; no such constraints exist in non-state societies.
- Ended up not being true
- Criticism: using single anecdote to generalize a whole society
- have to assume nowadays that research publications will be read by research subjects

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Ethics in Anthro

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- personal: need to get along with people
- professional: need to get good information
- there may be outside interest groups
- how will publications effect the perception of subjects of the study?
- reciprocity: can get sticky...purpose is to study not help them
- advocacy/ involvement: same things...when is it appropriate to intervene?

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Society

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group of people who interact more with each other than with others

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culture

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distinctive ways of life of such a group of people

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Theories of Why People Differ

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Environmental determinism
Biological determinism

- neither are right

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Culture is...

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traditions and customs that...
1) are transmitted through learning
2) influence behaviors and beliefs
*always changing, what differs is the pace of change

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Enculturation

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• The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted within generations, across generations, or across societies.
*Direct and Observation

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Direct Transmission

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- corrective actions
1. norms of enculturation change because culture is not static (spanking vs. time out)
2. enculturation within generations (not just across)

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Transmission through Observation

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mimicking behavior without knowing consequences of behavior

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Symbol

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Something, verbal or non-verbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no natural connection.
- provide order to society

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Culture is integrated...

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if one part of the system changes, other parts change as well
i.e. what happens when it becomes socially acceptable for women to work outside the home

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Culture is shared

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- unifies through common experiences, beliefs, balues and memories

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Shakespeare in the Bush (Bohannan)

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- Hamlet in two different cultures
• Can a story written in one cultural context be interpreted the same way across cultures?
- interpreted very differently in different cultures (leadership, marriage customs

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Culture and the individual: agency and practice

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culture influences, but does not determine the behaviors of individuals
- still have agency
- narrows window of options but can act within that window

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Agency

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The capacity of human beings to affect their own life chances and those of others and to play a role in the formation of the social realities in which they participate.”
o Capacity is variable (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.)
• Cultural rules are subject to interpretation, manipulation, and contestation.

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Practice theory

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individuals within every society have different...
motives, intentions, degrees of powers and influence (agency)

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Mechanisms of Culture Change

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1. Agency and practice
2. Diffusion
3. Acculturation
4. Independent Invention

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Agency and Practice

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incremental change over time due to the cumulative actions of individuals

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Diffusion

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borrowing between cultures either directly or through intermediaries

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Acculturation

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The exchange of cultural features (e.g., language, clothing) that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct.

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Independent Invention

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The process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems. The same invention can occur in different places at different times.

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Functions of Culture

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• Provides people with orientations toward deeper problems (death).
• Perpetuates group solidarity.
• Regulates our lives – constant pressure to follow certain behaviors.
• Satisfies biological needs.

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Levels of Culture

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1. international
2. national - anthems, flags, group solidarity
3. subcultures - religious, ethnic etc.

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Ethnography and Culture (Spradley)

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- ethnography is about learning form people, not studying them
1. reject naive realism - notion that people throughout world define world in same way
2. understand 3 fundamental aspects of human experience
- cultural behavior, cultural knowledge, cultural artifacts
*For Spradley, culture = cultural knowledge
"The acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior"
*We use cultural knowledge to interpret and evaluate a situation

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Explicit cultural knowledge

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Cultural knowledge that people can talk about or communicate with ease
- kinship, clothes

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Tact cultural knowledge

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cultural knowledge that people lack words for or lies outside explicit awareness
i.e. speaking distance

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Ethnocentrism

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tendency to view one's culture as superior
i.e. Mahakala god, seen as the devil by missionaries in Nepal
i.e. what is family? monogamy?

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Cultural Relativism

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behavior in one culture should not be judge by standards or another culture
* cultural relativism IS NOT moral relativism

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Views on Culture: Anthro

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• Culture is continually changing;
• Culture incorporates competing repertoires of meaning and action (culture is contested – think agency!)
• Cultural relativism is NOT moral relativism
• culture is responsive to external forces (e.g., colonialism); culture incorporates “competing repertoires of meaning and action” (culture is contested).

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When Does Life Begin? (Morgan)

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*Argument: in US society, personhood is conferred at birth. Social status (person) ascribed following biological event (birth)
- "viability"
- pre-natal ritual (designing nursery, naming etc)
- varies cross culturally
- personhood is symbolically conferred in different ways
*argues personhood is contingent upon social recognition

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Culture and nature

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1.cultural traditions convert natural acts into cultural customs
i.e. ritualization of death, moving about (males - car is an extension of identity)
2. culture affects how we perceive and interact with out natural surroundings (i.e. mountain climbing vs. mountain worshiping)
3. culture affects how we perceive our bodies and our abilities

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Body Rituals of the Nacirema (Minder)

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- American backwards
- obsession with appearance, fundamental belief that the body is ugly
- point: to show how cultural conceptions of the body shape everyday lives

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Beauty and culture

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perceptions of beauty change over time and vary cross culturally
- venus vs. new models who are dark and thin
- dark as attractive vs. unattractice

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Eating and culture

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- culture influences what we should or should not eat
- what part of the animal should we eat and how should we serve it?
- round or rectangular tables? manners?

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You Are How You Eat (Cooper)

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- "Food habits communicate symbolic messages"
- hierarchy, inclusion/exclusion
- indicate interest by accepting bowl with both hands, bring bowl to mouth
- express deference

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Eating Christmas in the Kalahari (Lee)

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- research to see how a foraging community can make a living
- egalitarian society that had heard about christmas through missionaries --> neighboring pastorals
- Lee caught a big ox and gave it to them as an offering, but they told him it was small and scrawny. Did not waant him to get arrogant or be in a position of power. Threatening to their egalitarian society.
*Cultural template: belittle hunter's results
*Agency: criticizing ox = opportunity to humble arrogance

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Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive

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- culture allows humans to continually adapt new social, ecological, economic, etc environments
- failure to adapt can be devastating (what constitutes food? agriculture? etc)

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Kinesics

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study of communication through body movements, gestures and expressions
i.e. politicians, clothing, diet commercials

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Language shapes how we view the world

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• The knowledge that language shapes the way we view the world can be used strategically in politics, advertizing, and other venues.

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Focal vocabulary

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specialize sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups
- can insinuate what is important in any given culture

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sociolinguistics

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relationships between social variations (ethnicity, status, gender etc) and linguistic variations (dialect, slang, tone etc)

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style shifts

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choice of words, intonation, body language all influenced by relative statuses of speaker in listener
- discordance and social disruption: failure to follow norms may get you into trouble

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Symbolic Capital

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- Bourdieu
- skillful use of linguistic practices can be converted into social and economic benefits
- some forms of speech are stigmatized and others are more prestigious

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speech and social stratification

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can judge people on how they talk
i.e. southern accent is not regarded as intelligent, Univ. of Alabama commercial

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Rapport Talk and Report Talk (Tannen)

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gendered language
- women use RAPPORT talk to forge social connections with others
- men use REPORT talk to establish themselves in a hierarchy or determine relative ranks

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Email My Heart (Gershon)

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- how do people use new technologies to sever relationships
- options evaluated in relation to face-to-face communication
- what media outlet best displays intent?

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Transformative speech acts

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An effect (e.g. status transformation) is carried out via an utterance (speech-act)
i.e. Obama and presidential oath

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Semantics

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a language's meaning system
- how one word can have two meanings in different cultures

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Language, Race, and White Public Space (Hill)

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*Code-switching: use of more than one language in a conversation
- inner sphere: code-switch
- outer sphere: pressure to keep languages in order
*linguistic order becomes a marker of race
- using spanish in outer sphere is a site of racialization
- using mock spanish in inner sphere is a site of racialization, but with peers it is congenial
*ARGUMENT: elevation of whiteness by directly indexing congeniality of speaker and indirectly indexing negative stereotypes. Yet is not meant as a racist discourse

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Semantic Pejoration

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- obscene words for euphimisms
- suffices and modifiers to create pejorative forms
- hyper anglicized representations of words

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Racial dimensions of mock spanish

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• Direct Indexicality: indexes that are understood (e.g. “I’ll do it mañana” signals you as congenial, down-to-earth, folksy person.)
• Indirect Indexicality: reliance on stereotypes (typically negative) to make sense.

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The Potlatch (Harris)

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*originally thought to be a display of conspicuous consumption, irrational behavior
*Harris came to the conclusion --> the status rivalry was bent to the service of the economic system
* leaders craving for status ensures production and distribution of wealth in a non-centralized political system
*has functional dimensions!!

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Mode of Production

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*way of organizing production
* a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools skills and knowledge

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Balance Reciprocity

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- giving entails expectation that something of equal value will be returned (immediate or delayed)
- i.e. birthday car, buying a round at the bar

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General Reciprocity

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- giving something to another person without the expectation of an immediate return
- parents investing in children's education

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Negative Reciprocity

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attempt to get something of greater value than what you give

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Adaptive Strategies

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foraging
horiculture
agriculture
pastoralism

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Foraging

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- band organized society, mobility
- egalitarian
- gendered jobs

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horticulture

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- no intensive usage of any factors of production (land, labor, capital, or machinery)
- slash and burn

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Agriculture

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- labor intensive
- irrigation, terracing, technology
- organized societies

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Food production and population

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population density correlated with strategy
- low density - foraging
- high density - more organized

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Pastoralism

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- interdependence with agriculturalists
- dependence on animals
- nomadism: movement of whole group through year
OR
- transhumance: part of group moves with herd, part stays in village

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market principle

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- values determined by supply and demand
- goal is to maximize profit

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redistribution

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movement of goods to center, then redistributed
i.e. cherokee or taxes

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Boaz

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• historical particularism
• study cultures within their own histories
• started American anthro
• denounced biological determinism
o 1908 study of immigrants

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Malinowski

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• Circle of Kula
• Functionalism in culture
• Methodological transparency
• Participant observation
• Argonauts of the Western Pacific as landmark:
o Participant observation as key method

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Evans-Pritchard

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• “The Nuer” – Africa
• Geneological method
• Study funded by government – Sudan

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Chagnon

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• Yanamamo
• Rapport story – canoes
• Respect and rapport lead to good data
• Genological method
• Cannot pronounce the name of the dead

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Geertz

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• Cock fight – ran away
• Enthography – humanistic
• Self reflexive
• Empathic understanding of a society
• Rapport story

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Clyde Kluckhohn

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• Queer customs
• You are how you were raised
• Value-orientation theory
• Denounced biological and environmental

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Miner

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• Nacirema
• North America
• Hate body, weird customs

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Harris

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• Potlatch
• Harry potlatch
• Economic distribution
• Functionalism
• Conspicuous consumption