Cultural Anthropology: Theory

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empirical approach

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reliance on experience and observation following the scientific method

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theory

Back 2

broad statement of how 2 or more facts are related

good theories can predict or explain things

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"Fixity of species"

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common belief before Renaissance that life forms couldn't change and the earth was "full"

biblical interpretation

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Cultural Evolutionism

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world cultures pass through a series of evolutionary stages

E.B. Tylor, L.H. Morgan

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Biological Determinism

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AKA "Scientific Racism"

races can be ranked on superiority and there are ethic periods of lower, middle, and upper savagery, barbarism, and finally civilization

L.H. Morgan

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What are the problems with biological determinism?

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Ethnocentric

Deductive approach that cherry-picked specific cases as "evidence"

Evolution only in one direction

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pyschic unity

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Morgan's belief in the unity of mankind, all men want the same things and want civilization

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Diffusionism

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humans are essentially uninventive and clever cultures diffuse ideas or behaviors

Grafton Elliot Smith, W.J. Perry, Wilhelm Schmidt

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American Historicism

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cultures do change, but not in confined "stages" and it is wrong to claim humans as uninventive, fieldwork emphasized

Franz Boaz

Inductive Reasoning with scientific structure

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Functionalism

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First-hand study to learn the functions of things in society

Bronislav Malinowski, Emile Durkheim, Radcliffe Brown

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Individual Function

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Malinowski's idea that classified social practices according to function and find meaning in them no matter how bizarre

Debunked "savage" stereotype attempt

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Societal Function

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Brown's idea that customs function in preserving social structure

Structural-functionalism

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social determinism

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European school of thought that how people physically situated themselves provided meaning

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Cultural Determinism

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human behavior shapes culture, psychology as a way to understand individuals and their culture

Rorschach's ink blot tests

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psychological anthropology

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The relationship between cultures and psychological phenomena such as personality, cognition, and emotions

How development and enculturation shapes mental health, motivation, cognition

Ruth Benedict, Margaret Meade

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configurationalist approach

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describing a culture as a personality

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Structuralism

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meaning is produced and reproduced in a culture through various practices, phenomena and society's creation is an outward manifestation of our brains

Binary oppositions

Claude Levi-Strauss

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binary oppositions

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feature of Structuralism that the mind universally structures things into two opposites that then balance each other out, and this is recreated with the world through "dual organizations" (Ge Tribes marriage structure)

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What are the problems with the Structuralism school of thought?

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-Hard to prove scientifically

-Reduces all of culture down to brain structure with essentially mimics biological determinism

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Neoevolutionism

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Including evolution and Darwin in anthropology while discarding previous racist dogmas

Adaptation to environment brings social change, ecological approach

Julian Steward, Leslie White

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White's "Turning Points" of Neoevolutionism

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Help increase energy a culture can harness annually

1. Plant and Animal Domestication

2. Industrial Revolution

3. Atomic Energy

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Steward's "multilinear evolution"

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technology/economics, environmental evolution, political systems, and ideologies/religions work together to push societies in different, shifting directions

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Cultural Materialism

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The impact of the material world on culture and difference is a response to the practical problems of existence

Karl Marx, Tylor, Morgan, White, Steward influence

Marvin Harris coined term (utilitarian approach)

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Ethnoscience

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understand culture from the POV of those being studied to make understanding more accurate

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What are the challenges of Ethnoscience?

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-Time-consuming

-Confines to small segments of culture

-Hard to compare data that is subjective

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Postmodernism

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switching from cultural generalizations and laws to more descriptions and interpretation in a search for meaning

deconstruction without assumption to rebuild something's meaning

Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz (literary analysis)

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Clifford Geertz's "thick description"

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find the local meaning in cultural texts

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Feminist Anthropology

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gender is bound up with other markers of social difference like class, ethnicity, and race that all affect the experience of gender

Morphed into gender studies

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What do today's anthropologists think in regard to theory?

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-extreme schools of thought are bad

-determinism, cultural relativism, postmodernism