4034 Exam 2
Captain James Cook
british royal navy office, killed by hawaiians in 1779
Edmund Leach
british social anthropologist structuralism, comparison and contrast with john the baptist/jesus worked with mary douglas (purity and pollutin - how socian boundaries were created) "Political Systems of Highland Burma" (1954) "Structuralism in Social anthropology" (1972)
Ruth Benedict
colleague/student of boas, focus on psychological anthropology literature to anthropology (for meaningful life) discovered each culture has its own personality configuration ----> gestalt promoted cultural relativism "Patterns of Culture" (1934) "Race Science and Politics" (1945) "Chrysanthemum and the Sword" (1946) --worked for us govt during WW2
Salvage ethnography
established by Boas, ethnography motivated by the need to obtain information about cultures threatened w extinction or assimilation this attracted students to anthropology
Douglas Structuralism:
focuses on content and meaning, search for cultural identity,
Brownislaw Malinowski
founded british social anthropology london school of econ then yale - 1ST PRACTITIONER OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION "Argonauts of the Pacific" (1922) "A Diary in the strict Sense of the Term" (1967)
Brownislaw Malinowski
founded british social anthropology london school of econ then yale - 1ST PRACTITIONER OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION -KULA RING theory of functionalism rooted in biology "culture functions to satisfy the basic needs, of people's biological needs, with basic responses "Argonauts of the Pacific" (1922) "A Diary in the strict Sense of the Term" (1967)
British Social Anthropology
founded by Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown made up of structuralism, functionalism,and sometimes structural functionalism based on durkheim's organic/organismic analogy
What are the 3 meanings of a Symbol?
1.) exegetical meaning (informants tell you) 2.) operational meaning (sanctioned and unsanctioned use of symbol) 3.) Positional meaning (context in which how, where, and with what under what conditions)
What are some of A.R. Radcliffe Browns major works?
1922-The Anclaman Islanders, 1952- Structure and function in primitive society
What are claude levi strauss major works?
1949- The elementary structures of kinship, 1955 Tristes Tropiques, 1958-Structural Anthropology, 1964-68 Mytholoqiques, 1988- The Jealous Potter
What are some of the major works of Mary Douglas?
1966- Parity and Danger, 1970- Natural Symbols, 1980 How institutions think, 1993 Wilderness
What were some of Victor Turners major works?
1967- The forest of symbols, 1969- The ritual process, 1974- Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors
What are some of Edward o wilson major works?
1975- Sociobiology: The new synthesis, 1992- The diversity of life, 1998- Consilience: The unity of knowledge.
"floor"
A form of college faculty meeting analyzed by Susan Gal to illustrate patterns of symbolic domination and resistance among women and men.
heritability
A genetics statistic defined as the percentage of variation in a trait, including a behavioural trait, caused by variation in genes rather than environments.
False
A key assumption made in Neo-Materialism is that parts of societies are unrelated; when one part changes, it has no effect on other parts of society.
vulgar materialism
A label for cultural materialists who, according to their critics, ignore dialectical thinking -
Synchronic Law
A law pertaining to contemporaneous events
Diachronic law
A law pertaining to events through time, or an historical law (Saussure)
social darwinism
A loosely used term referring to social philosophies based on Darwinian evolutionism, especially the mechanism of natural selection.
medical personage
A member of the medical profession, who, according to Michel Foucault, is thereby an instrument of power and control over those in need of medical attention.
jeweler's-eye view of the world
A microscopic view, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, needed as an antidote to the macroscopic view of grand theory.
didn't and couldn't
A pair of words that capture the essence of Jonathan Marks's observation that just because a culture did not invent something does not imply that it could not have invented it.
structure of the conjuncture
A phrase describing Marshall Sahlins's idea that cultural structures are rooted in and change through historical events
structure as historical object
A phrase describing Marshall Sahlins's idea that cultural structures are rooted in and change through historical events.
human subjects and human objects
A phrase describing the circumstance wherein people can be both scientific investigators and scientifically investigated, according to Marvin Harris necessitating the theoretical distinctions between emics and etics and mental and behavioural realms
myth and moral offence
A phrase representing Edmund Leach's view that myths are about moral offence and can be analyzed accordingly
East is East and West is West
A phrase that according to Eric R.Wolf evokes an historically inaccurate vision of Eastern and Western cultures as separate and distinct.
depth psychology
A psychology, such as Freudian psychology, that presupposes unconscious hidden meanings for actions at variance with their surface meanings.
Basic colour terms
A reported finding that basic colour distinctions are universal across languages
ironic mode
A self-conscious literary mode signalling that an author does not necessarily believe his or her own statements, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, characteristic of some postmodern ethnographic writing
Neo Evolutionism
A shift back to evolution. Interest in technology and environment influenced by Marx. Wanting generalizations and causality; patterns and laws.
nation-state
A sovereign territorial entity, according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma a product of transnational cultural forces threatening that sovereignty.
hegemony
A term for the capacity of one social group to impose particular beliefs or political and economic conditions upon another group
mythological sets
A term used by Edmund Leach to describe his view that myths do not occur in isolation but instead are structural transformations of one another.
Saussurean synchrony
A term, used by Marshall Sahlins, referring to Ferdinand de Saussure's focus on synchronic rather than diachronic linguistic regularities
Polynesian theory of divine kingship
A theory that according to Marshall Sahlins is part of the structural explanation of the killing of Captain James Cook by Native Hawaiians
state
A variously defined geopolitical entity traditionally linked to the nation, according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, in the era of globalization, challenging the territorial sovereignty of the nation-state
Bicetre
A venerable Parisian hospital, orphanage, asylum, and prison studied by Michel Foucault.
IQ
Abbreviation for Intelligence Quotient, a ratio of measured intellectual to chronological age, figuring prominently in public and anthropological debates about nature versus nurture.
Book that Mary wrote?
Abominations of Leviticus
public culture
According to Clifford Geertz, all culture, whose prime characteristic is that it is acted out in public
general theory of cultural interpretation
According to Clifford Geertz, something challenging to formulate, because theory can be neither very abstract nor very predictive.
fictions
According to Clifford Geertz, things made, not discovered, notably anthropological writing and interpretations.
structure
According to Edmund Leach, a patterning of internally organized relationships, subject to multiple forms of expression and transformation
syntagmatic chains and metaphor
According to Edmund Leach, sequential speech sounds that, when combined in other sequences, generate linguistic meaning through metaphor
knowledge and power
According to Edward W. Said, two properties of a relationship wherein knowledge is, or creates, power, notably in the context of colonial rule.
modernization theory
According to Eric R.Wolf, sociological theory favouring societies considered to be modern and being critical of societies thought to be not-yet modern.
ghost of Marx
According to Eric R.Wolf, the historical context in which the social sciences developed with the political-economic theories of Karl Marx in the background.
microcosmic study of populations
According to Eric R.Wolf, the study of one culture with the intent of having that culture represent all cultures of the same sort.
sociology (Wolf)
According to Eric R.Wolf, the study of social relations without reference to their political-economic context.
grand theory
According to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, the type of anthropological macro-theory that in postmodern times is being superseded by theories more micro-focused on context and indeterminacy.
Romance/Tragedy/Comedy
According to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, three strategies of literary emplotment designed to circumvent the ironic mode characteristic of some postmodern ethnographic writing.
moving ground
According to James Clifford, the constantly shifting vantage point that makes it difficult to maintain a single framework for evaluating ethnographic representations.
law of cultural development
According to Leslie White, E x T > P, or energy times technology yields cultural product
negative entropy
According to Leslie White, the opposite of entropy, or the creation of universal order in the organic realm.
energy (E)
According to Leslie White, the universal basis of organic existence and the prime mover of the thermodynamic law of cultural development
True
According to Marshall Sahlins, the interaction between different prescriptions and performances structures can lead to cultural change
Prescriptive and performative structures
According to Marshall Sahlins, two different ways that structures are realized in culture, the prescriptive more by form and the performative more by action
speech acts
According to Marvin Harris, acts that can be regarded either emically or etically, depending on the circumstances.
linguistic distinction
According to Pierre Bourdieu, along with correctness, one of two properties that characterize the perceived excellence of legitimate language
legitimate language
According to Pierre Bourdieu, language deemed to be official and correct and thereby occupying a position of symbolic domination.
linguistic market
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the arena, or field, in which linguistic groups exchange linguistic capital.
linguistic capital
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the body of meanings, representations, and objects held to be prestigious or valuable to a linguistic group.
practice/praxis theory
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the concept that society is constructed by purposeful, creative agents who bring society to life through talk and action.
linguistic field
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the dynamic configuration, or network, of objective relations between linguistic agents.
symbolic domination and resistance
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the tendency of dominant social groups to create and sustain a world view in which all members of a society, including subjugated members, participate
symbolic domination and resistance (Bourdieu)
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the tendency of dominant social groups to create and sustain a world view in which all members of a society, including subjugated members, participate.
sociology of language and sociology of education
According to Pierre Bourdieu, two inseparable sociologies pertaining to legitimate language.
practice-system interaction
According to Sherry B. Ortner, the critical nexus by which different practice, or praxis, theories can be evaluated.
theory of motivation
According to Sherry B. Ortner, what is needed for a theory of agency, self-interest being the perceived dominant motivation
silence
According to Susan Gal, a condition that in relations between women and men can represent power or resistance to symbolic domination.
difference and domination
According to Susan Gal, two feminist approaches to characterizing the relationships between women and men.
paradigms
According to Thomas Kuhn, an intellectual framework for "normal" science, which is superseded by another paradigm in a scientific "revolution."
unification of disparate signifcata
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they interconnect disparate meanings by analogy or association.
situational suppression of conflict
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they keep feelings of social dissatisfaction from coming to the surface and causing real social conflict.
polarizations of meaning
According to Victor Turner, the property of dominant ritual symbols whereby they possess both ideological and sensory, or emotional, meanings, which can vary.
condensation
According to Victor Turner, the property of ritual symbols whereby they represent many objects and actions in a single formulation.
ritual symbols
According to Victor Turner, the smallest units of rituals defined as formal behaviours for occasions not connected with technological routine that retain the essential properties of those rituals.
a posteriori
After the fact, or based on experience, contrasted with a priori
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald british social anthropologist ----> founded british social anthropology natural science to anthropology, introduced it to Cambridge uni --> "Cambridge school" -set new standards for fieldwork, more scientific basis in anthro - similar to Durkheim's thoughts on society like the structure of biological organisms "The Andaman Islanders "(1922) "Social Structure" (1958)
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald british social anthropologist ----> founded british social anthropology natural science to anthropology, introduced it to Cambridge uni --> "Cambridge school" -set new standards for fieldwork, more scientific basis in anthro - similar to Durkheim's thoughts on society like the structure of biological organisms "The Andaman Islanders "(1922) "Social Structure" (1958) The Subject, Method, and Scope of this Inquiry (1922)
Kroeber Superorganic
All men are totally similar. There's no higher or lower.
development of underdevelopment
André Gunder Frank's theory about the systematic exploitation of underdeveloped nation-states and regions by developed nation-states and regions.
"Functionalism is ahistorical (synchronic); it doesn't even explain culture change. No theory is going to handle every theory, but this is Malinowski's problem. It doesn't deal with time."
Another big problem with Malinowski's theory of Functionalism.
Configurationalism
Anthropologists are responsible to identify the predominant culture personality (party animal? Bookworm?)
Malinowski Fieldwork Point
Anthropologists much do long-term fieldwork. A minimum of a year.
Edward Evans Pritchard
Anthropology is a humanity. Anthropology is an art because we work as translators of culture; we get caught in the translator's dilemma. History is the best model for anthropology. Primary subject was religion which is hard to take a hard science approach with.
Sociobiology-
Any behavior is no different than human behavior.
Cultural-historical archaeology
Archaeology as practiced in the area of Franz Boas's historical particularism
Descriptive Linguistics
Are almost like a lab tech's study of language. You isolate sounds, meanings, syntax, language-you pretty much isolate the language to study it.
Sapir
Argued that any language is as fully developed and just as complex as any other.
Kroeber Superorganic
Argues that culture lives and breathes and changes on its own and has no relationship or response to its carriers.
Cultural Patterning
Argues that each individual only manifests certain pieces of culture. To study culture, you would actually have to study everyone in the world.
Sapir
Argues that every language is unique and that every language expresses its culture distinctly. Just as every poem is a struggle for an individual to express their individuality, every language is a struggle for a culture to express their individual cultural makeup.
John the Baptist and Jesus Christ
As analyzed by Edmund Leach, two famous historical figures related by structural similarities and differences.
bedouin poetry
As interpreted by Susan Gal, poetry that expresses resistance to symbolic domination by Bedouin men.
cultural strength
As referred to by Edward W. Said, the broad context from which the concept of Orientalism draws its power.
political unification
As referred to by Pierre Bourdieu, a vehicle for the creation of legitimate language.
cultural construction of language
As referred to by Susan Gal, the idea that language categories, including categories of masculine and feminine, are culturally constructed as a means of creating identities.
variationist sociolinguistics
As referred to by Susan Gal, the study of linguistic variables correlated with the sex of the speaker.
mentalism
As understood by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the view that structures of thought cause culture, a view that Lévi-Strauss himself denies
structural linguistics
As understood by Edmund Leach, the school of linguistics that views speech as a manifestation of grammatical and phonological structures, not as a simple response to a linguistic stimulus
Culture like a language
As used by Edmund Leach, a phrase that refers to the structural similarities between culture and language.
True
Based on what we known about the evolution of social patterns in humans and non-humans, we can conclude that symbolic systems most likely originated in the context of intense sociality.
Functionalism
Basic Needs
Malinowski
Because of reading Sir James Frasier, he leaves Poland and goes to England to study at the London School of Economics (LSE).
British occupation of Egypt
Beginning in 1882, a British colonial venture launched to quell an Egyptian nationalist rebellion.
Culture Patterning
Believed that our job was to trace and track this culture.
Culture-at-a-distance
Benedict Couldn't go over to Japan due to WWII, but she looked at their movies, writings, media and pop culture and so on to interpret their culture from a distance.
Rainbow Culture
Benedict described Quaquiotl Indians as 'Dionysian', meaning they were party animals. XD On one end of the rainbow spectrum.
7 Basic Needs
Bodily comfort
What were Mary Douglas's views on Body Symbolism?
Body Symbolism is universal, all cultures apply body metaphors as a way to associate with themselves. The boundaries of the body vary through the culture. The way a culture teaches its people how to take care of their bodies reveals the health of the group.
Arthur James Balfour
British Conservative prime minister with Orientalist views on British colonial relations with Africa.
oriental
Broadly, pertaining to the geographical and cultural East, or Orient, contrasted with the geographical and cultural West, or Occident
How is a Society Structured?
By institutions which are considered collective representations. Ex. Laws, Morals, Religion, Economics, government, Education, Kinship.
Primordial Thought Patterns
Can include prayers and speeches used to raise the crowds. Meaning something innate; something that appears to be conditioned within the person and makes you act that you're not conscious of. (Sapir)
No.
Can you compare cultures in Configurationalism?
Captain Cook
Captain James Cook, a famous English explorer killed in an encounter with native Hawaiians
True
Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edmund Leach believed that myths do not occur in isolation but instead are structural transformations of one another.
interpretive theory of culture
Clifford Geertz's semiotic theory of culture based on the ethnographic practice of thick description
blurred genres
Clifford Geertz's term for ethnographic writing that freely borrows literary ideas and methods from other disciplines.
True
Cognitive anthropologists believe that there are universal cognitive processes that reflect the innate structure of the human brain.
Harold Conklin
Color categories; we all have the same equipment to see color, but we categorize/distinguish them based on our culture; we are taught how to perceive it; not every culture has the same category.
Kroeber Superorganic
Did a study on women's clothes for an example. -He found that women's fashions don't show personal choice. Rather, they cycle through time.
Linton
Did not get along with Boas. Was not chosen to be a student of Boas. Demanded REVEEEENGE. (...Jackass.)
Mead
Didn't integrate fully into the culture like most, but did get to know those in the culture very well.
Mead
Didn't use a lot of technical anthropological terms so that people outside the field (the public) could understand her readings.
Kroeber
Differs from Boas, since Boas is Darwinian and seems to think the individual matters greatly. Kroeber is anti to this stuff. Boas says anthropology is a science; Kroeber says anthropology is a history.
Mead
Dimestore Anthropology
entropy
Disorder in the universe, increasing according to the second law of thermodynamics
Sapir
Drives us to the emotive and affective parts of culture.
A cultural product
E ×T > P , or energy times technology yields
Malinowski
Earned his degree in (Physical Sciences?). Fascinated by Psychology.
False
Edmund Leach and Claude Lévi-Strauss were NOT concerned about what culture is; instead, they were both only concerned with how it changed.
napoleonic adventure
Edward W. Said's term for Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798
orientalism
Edward W. Said's term for the culturally constructed characterization of British colonies, notably Egypt, as incapable of functioning properly without colonial oversight.
tropes
Embellishing figures of speech sometimes encountered in ethnographic writing.
Ethnoscience; New Ethnology; Cognitive Anthropology
Emic driven; how cultures perceive their reality; want to develop theories of culture because they want to develop of Theory of Culture (one standardized model); kind of up against Boas because they want to compare cultures; the ultimate goal is for anthropologists to think like a native.
people without history
Eric R.Wolf's phrase for non-literate people studied as if they had no history of political-economic involvement with Western colonial powers or global capitalism.
False
Eric Wolf viewed civilization as synonymous with culture, having no specific social or political divisions.
True
Eric Wolf, in his work Peasantry and Its Problems, argues that the primary interest of peasant households is their own support and sustenance.
Franz Boas
Father of american anthropology physicist turned cultural anthropologist, empiricist, inductivist (focus on facts rather than generalizations) curator of Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago believed Freud was ethnocentric/culture bound "American Anthropologist" "The Races of Mankind (1943) "The Methods of ethnology" (1920) Cultural historicism (US)
Malinowski
Fieldwork Methods
Kroeber
First Columbian PH.D in Anthropology
Malinowski
First chapter of Argonauts, the fieldwork expertise shows. Went WAY beyond Boas in terms of description.
Benedict
First female anthropology professor(?)
Edward Sapir
First linguistic anthropologist. Descriptive linguistics: a laboratory study of linguistics using grammar and syntax. Every language, like every culture, is fully developed; you can't have a primitive language; one is not easier than the other; they are all equal. Language is a symbolic guide to a culture; they are in a relationship; two separate things that are linked. Poetics: anthropologists need to study poetry because it shows primordial (gut) thought patterns; it is condensed and nothing but favor; it is deeply expressive.
Configurationalism
First time emotional ever actually gets brought into anthropology.
Benedict
Focused particularly on the concept of deviance.
Structuralism:
Focuses on structure, Searches for a universal pattern, extreme etic
False
Following the argument of Marshall Sahlins, the phrase "gifts make friends" emphasizes prescriptive structure in culture.
Configurationalism
Following up that, look at how the culture personality affects each person in it. The individual COULD have an imprint on culture, but generally culture still gets the first shot.
Social Institutions
For Malinowski, all of these have their own specific technology to achieve their purposes.
Social Institutions
For Malinowski, these all have a charter (an explanation; a reason for being there.)
Social Institutions
For Malinowski, this is a group of people united or organized for a purpose.
Individual
For Malinowski, what is a psycho-biological intellect? It is affected by three things.
milk tree
For Victor Turner, a dominant ritual symbol of the Ndembu people of Zambia.
symbols and signs
For Victor Turner, the best possible expressions of unknown facts (symbols), and analogous or abbreviated expressions of known facts (signs).
Leslie White
For this individual, human cultural evolution was best understood as a process of increasing human control over the natural environment:
Kroeber
Founds Department of Anthropology at (University of California?), which is known to be one of the best in the country
J Philippe Rushton
French physician Philippe Pinel and the hospital, La Salpêtrière, where he supervised mentally ill patients, studied by Michel Foucault
Philippe Pinel and La Salpetriere
French physician Philippe Pinel and the hospital, La Salpêtrière, where he supervised mentally ill patients, studied by Michel Foucault.
Malinowski
Functionalism
What is Bronislaw Malinowski known for?
Functionalism
Mead
Gender studies in Anthropology
Kroeber
Genius Clusters/Genius Periods
Kroeber Superorganic
Genius Clusters/Genius Periods
crisis of representation
George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer's term for the self-reflection and self-doubt brought about by the postmodern realization that no single ethnographic representation can be authoritative.
Sapir
Good friend of Benedict. Worked closely with George Peter Murdock.
7 Basic Needs
Growth
Functionalism
Growth -Cultural learning -"Apprenticeship"
Bourdieu
Habitus
Benedict
Had a very strong father-daughter relationship with Boas.
Malinowski
Had four major points of his fieldwork: -Anthropologists much do long-term fieldwork. A minimum of a year. -You must speak the language fluently. You must not rely on a translator. Boas tried to do this, but Malinowski says it's non-negotiable. -We must keep detailed and daily field notes. -You must take account of the natives' point of view.
Kroeber Superorganic
He argues that we go through historical periods when we find "genius clusters."
Sapir
He is the first one who drives anthropology to looking at the emotional issues.
Kroeber Superorganic
Heredity is not important since that's on an individual level.
Linton
Hired on as the head of the Columbia Department of Anthropology after Boas. (...*******.)
Malinowski
His approach of ethnography is sometimes derogatorily thought of as the 'vacuum cleaner approach'. You suck up everything you can about the culture.
What isnt Brown interested in?
History. Moreso interested in the present, wants to know how the society is structured now.
Max Gluckman
How conflict produces order. Rites of reversal legitimate social order (Mr. Mom sees how the mother role is important because he went through it during the rite; Halloween.) You have to "buy in" to your culture.
Questions for Structionalism Functionalism:
How is Society Structured? How do these pieces function?
Kroeber Superorganic
Human beings are carriers of culture.
What is culture the actual mediation of, and expresses?
Humans and Nature.
structuralism
In British social anthropology, the synchronic concern with social structure, sometimes called social morphology; in French structural anthropology, the concern with the elementary forms of minds and cultures.
structuralism (Ortner)
In British social anthropology, the synchronic concern with social structure, sometimes called social morphology; in French structural anthropology, the concern with the elementary forms of minds and cultures.
Trickster
In Claude Lévi-Strauss's analysis of Northwest Coast Native American myths, a figure who is structurally transformed from one myth to another
Clam siphons and goat horns
In Claude Lévi-Strauss's analysis of Northwest Coast Native American myths, two structurally opposing means that lead to two structurally opposing ends
Binary Oppositions
In French structural anthropology, the universal logic of dualities -
mental and behavioral fields
In Marvin Harris's theory of cultural materialism, the realms of thought and action, either of the scientific observer or of the scientifically observed.
Deviancy
In Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict challenged the definition and cultural identification of:
Sign
In Saussure's linguistics, the pair formed in the relation of signifier to a signified, the essence of relations among meaningful units in a language
informants
In anthropological fieldwork, someone who provides information
Secondary institutions
In psychodynamic anthropology, these are projections of basic personality structure and help people cope with the world.
thick description
In the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz, the process of interpreting culture as text
state in transnational context
In the postcolonial analytic framework of Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, the state viewed in the context of neoliberal, globalizing forces that threaten nation-state sovereignty.
welfare and empowerment
In the postcolonial analytic framework of Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma, two different approaches to government social programs, one traditional (welfare), and the other neoliberal (empowerment).
transformational axis
In the structuralist theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the connection between binary opposites that serves as the basis for structural transformations of those opposites
environment
In the theoretical framework of Leslie White, the natural setting for culture, relatively unimportant in cultural evolution.
False consciousness
In the theories of Marxism and cultural materialism, the capability of people to misrepresent the meaning of their behaviour to themselves and others
Core (World Systems Theory)
In world-system theory, Western nations and regions that expropriate and control resources of non-Western nations and regions; contrasted with periphery
Functionalism
Individual level -All these things are met by and created for the individual level.
How does the social structure express society?
Individuals, Occupy roles, roles exist within an institution, together institution create social structure.
Noam Chomsky
Influential linguist who promotes the theory that grammaticality is innate in the human mind
Kroeber
Initially studies the Arathaho Indians, but then as a major general contribution, studied the Californian Native Americans (most whom are now gone.)
emic and etic
Insider vs. outsider POV
Genius Period
It's a little disturbing. If you look into history, there ARE spurt periods of genius , innovation, and invention, and then well suddenly seem to get...dumb all of a sudden. O.o;;
partial truths
James Clifford's characterization of ethnographic truth, owing to his view that ethnographies are inherently incomplete.
scientific dressing
Jonathan Marks's term for ideas presented with a scientific gloss that either misrepresent science or do not hold up to closer scientific scrutiny.
Linton
Just know that this guy was a jackass. Seriously.
ndembu women
Key participants in the dominant milk-tree ritual analyzed by Victor Turner
Boas School
Kroeber, Benedict, Mead, Sapir
Sapir
Language and Linguistics was a major contribution!
Sapir
Language clues us in to what is important to a culture.
Sapir
Language expresses culture.
Sapir
Language forces a person to slow down so they can force a person to understand.
Sapir
Language illuminates the culture and brings culture to life.
Sapir
Language is a reflection of culture.
Sapir
Language preserves culture. It breaks change; it slows down change in a culture.
False
Leslie White agreed with Julian Steward that environment was extremely relevant and important to cultural evolution.
Sapir
Linguistics may be the key to theory.
Sapir
Lived in Ottawa for a while. The importance in this, it created isolation and alienation from academics and Boas.
Pre-existing force could affect and influence culture-underlying suggestion to the theory.
Name one of the five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism.
All individuals are affected by cultural reactions.
Name one thing Malinowski's individual is affected by.
Bodily Needs
Name one thing Malinowski's individual is affected by.
We're all affected by environmental influences.
Name one thing Malinowski's individual is affected by.
What is the most primary tension in society?
Nature and culture.
Rainbow Culture
Normally culture determines how you act from the day you are born. It molds and shapes you into the person that you are, and you hardly know who you are outside of your own culture.
Mead
Not a theoretical giant.
7 Basic Needs
Nutrition
Signifier
One of the two units making up the sign, the word or image that represents a concept, the signified
Signified
One of two units making up the sign, the concept generated in our minds when represented by a sound or image, the signifier
tools (T)
Or technology, according to Leslie White the means by which people capture and transform energy, producing culture.
domestication of plants and animals
Or the Neolithic Revolution, according to Leslie White the second of three energy-capturing revolutions in human history
Culture-at-a-distance
Part of National Character Studies
product (P)
Part of law of cultural evolution (According to Leslie White, E x T > P, or energy times technology yields cultural product)
Genius Period
People play it out, but they don't show any changes in it.
Semantic
Pertaining to semantics the study of linguistic meaning
Syntactical
Pertaining to syntax, the ways in which words form phrases and sentances
semiotic
Pertaining to the relationship between symbols and what they represent
habitus
Pierre Bourdieu's term for the capacity of individuals to innovate cultural forms based on their personal histories and positions within the community.
Sapir
Practiced poetry because it was necessary to his psychology. It was the only place he really found his individual voice.
structural Marxism
Proponents of a theoretical blend of Marxism, dialectical philosophy, and French structural anthropology.
Neo Materialism
Purely empirical approach to culture. Etic approach; to the brink of dismissing the emic. The science of society based on material evidence (if you can't see it or hear it, it doesn't exist). Not a place for feelings/beliefs.
samuel tuke and the retreat
Quaker physician Samuel Tuke and the institution, the Retreat, where he treated insane patients, studied by Michel Foucault.
Marvin Harris
Quantifiable theory; not culture bound (universal). Regulated through the mode of reproduction and the mode or production. All societies are structures the same. Infrastructure: ecological technological and demographic; etic because it can be studied without the emic meaning; level one: etic behavioral mode of production (subsistence); level two (etic behavioral mode of reproduction (limit extreme increase and decrease of the population). Structure: domestic and political economy (internal and external relationships; social institutions); level three: etic behavioral domestic and pilitical economy; institutions exitst to serve productive and reproductive means. Superstructure: symbolic or ideological area of culture; level four: the emic behavioral superstructure (symbols, aesthetics, art, rituals, taboos, sports, science). Four biopsychological constants that make us all the same animal regardless of culture: food (people choose more over less), physical exercise (people choose less over more), sex, love and affection (people choose more over less).
Functionalism
RB: his theory of how parts of society contribute to the whole society M: his theory of how culture responds to biological needs in a hierarchically organized way
Malinowski
Realized during that time that you learn a lot more when you stay a lot longer.
7 Basic Needs
Referred to as "psycho-biological needs"
Idiography
Related to the study or discovery of particular scientific facts processes, as distinct from general laws
7 Basic Needs
Relaxation/health
7 Basic Needs
Reproduction
True
Ruth Benedict argued against the concept that American norms were somehow more "natural" than norms of other cultures.
domestic cattle of india
Sacred Hindu cattle whose existence and sex ratio Marvin Harris explains in terms of cultural materialism.
7 Basic Needs
Safety
Structure of the conjuncture
Sahlin's phrase describing the space of intersection between different cultures, where contingency produces historical change the contact precipitating change to both cultures, creating a hybrid structure
Sapir
Said poetry is very important to us because its source is "a primordial thought patterns".
Mead
Samoa in adolescence was interpreted to be much more relaxed and enjoyable. This would be due to the overall relaxed culture, far less harsh punishments, many adults for a child to turn to, and relaxed sexual taboos before marriage.
True
Sapir believed that patterned behavior was unconscious because, if it were conscious, it would be too time-consuming to enact.
Linguistics and Language
Sapir does a great deal of work interpreting language and poetry. He interprets his own poetry, but he also focuses on the concept of poetics himself. Poetics being how language is used; the meanings behind the words.
Linguistics and Language
Sapir is the first who introduces us to poetry specifically as having a singular impact.
Functionalism
Seven Basic/Primary Needs
Configurationalism
She advocates that cultures are like personalities (writ-large?)
Mead
She held publishing for and interacting with the public in great importance.
Anything people do
Sherry B. Ortner's broad definition of what practice, or praxis, theory encompasses.
Not Marx
Sherry B. Ortner's term for various anthropological theories united primarily by their wish to be seen as non-Marxist.
Derived Needs
Social institutions.
Rainbow Culture
The concept of deviance is when a person is born into a particular cultural personality and cannot fit. There's nothing wrong with the person, they're just in the wrong place and can't made right with their culture.
specifacation of discourses
The concern in post-modern ethnographic writing to specify who is writing the ethnography, when, where, and under what historical and institutional constraints.
emplotment
The construction of literary plots, characteristic of some postmodern writing
Psychological Anthropology
anthropology concerned with the relationship between cultures and personalities
moral content of religion
The dimension of religion that according to Michel Foucault makes religion an instrument of social domination and control.
ethnographic writing
The ethnographic activity most subject to postmodern scrutiny, owing to the postmodern dictum that ethnographic writing is literary text.
ethnohistory
The ethnographic study of non-literate people with reference to historical records, according to Eric R.Wolf promoting the proper view that non-literate and literate peoples share a common history.
cultural ecology
The examination of interactions between cultural and environmental variables.
What was Strauss total social fact?
The exchange of the women.
globalization
The expansion of Western institutions and lifeways into non-Western cultures and the emergence of new forms of cultural practice that are global in scope.
empirical science
The foundation of Marvin Harris's theory of cultural materialism
capitalist world-economy
The global network of capitalist relations investigated by theorists such as André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.
False
The goal of New Archaeology was to find specific laws that would explain the similarities and differences among cultures.
Parsonian sociology
The grand, synthetic, and abstract theory of sociologist Talcott Parsons, out of favour in postmodern times.
invention of cultures
The insight, popular among postmodernists, that ethnographers do not so much record and report cultures, but, through ethnographic writing, construct them.
Boasian paradigm
The intellectual framework for American anthropology promoted by Franz Boas, including a strong emphasis on nurture over nature.
rhetoric
The literary device of argument and persuasion, thought by some postmodern theorists to characterize ethnographic writing.
psychiatry
The medical profession that treats abnormal behaviour, thought by Ruth Benedict to be ethnocentric in its definition of abnormal and by Michel Foucault to be an instrument of social control and conformity.
Stephen Tyler
There were two modes of thought: change and development and static description; people who think change/time matters vs. change doesn't matter (the outcome is still the same product).
Teach-ins
These events, led by Eric Wolf and Marshal Sahlins in the 1960s as a protest against the Vietnam War, had students and faculty together debating and questioning the responsibility and activism of the war and society:
Abominations of Leviticus:
Things that are in place are clean, things that arent and are missing characteristics are unclean
Kroeber
Thinks you just have to study instincts. Anthropology should only be two fields, not four: psychological and biological. We live in response to culture, and have no effect on it. Therefore. Superorganic.
Ethnographic present
This anthropologically constructed concept implies that the present is timeless, ignoring major changes to Native cultures brought about by colonialism and capitalism
Spencer
This anthropologist, (whom Boas was completely against) believed that culture was a living organism (refers to it as society rather than culture, too). Kroeber defines it in an extreme way. He takes this term and says that he agrees with his own different spin on it.
Claude Levi-Strauss
This individual almost single-handedly developed the field of structuralism
Derek Freeman
This individual argued that the results from Margaret Mead's work in Samoa was factually incorrect.
Gregory Bateson
This individual challenged the concepts of social relations by investigating the "vicious circle" of symmetrical and complementary relationships.
Carleton Coon
This individual improperly and actively sought to support racism in their 1963 publication that ranks evolution of Homo sapiens based on race
Fredrik Barth
This individual proposed a model that explained how forms are generated through transactions between two or more actors as "each party consistently tries to assure that the value gained is greater than the value lost"
Zore Neale Hurtson
This individual's work reflects the concept of indigenous performance as a means of understanding what constitutes a culture
Marvin Harris
This individual, almost single-handedly, developed and promoted of the theory of cultural materialism:
Julian Steward
This individual, when looking at the influence of environment on culture, divided culture into core and secondary features to cross-culturally describe culture types
Culturology
This is Leslie White's term for the nomothetic study of culture:
An emic account
This is a description of behavior or a belief in terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to a person within a culture:
linguistic determination
This is the idea that language affects your ability to perceive and think about things, as well as to talk about them
Mentalism
This is the view that structures of thought cause structures of culture
correlation and causation
Two kinds of relationship between scientific variables, commonly conflated but in fact distinct.
twitching and winking
Two names for a behaviour that Clifford Geertz uses to illustrate the need for a thick description of culture.
Sapir
Ultimately establishes descriptive linguistics.
What are some totemic theories before Strauss?
Universalist explanation, Particualist theory, Metaphoric System- kinship=alliance does not = descent. Alliances are between wife-givers and wife-takers.
Kroeber Superorganic
Used the term 'civilization' over culture many times(?)
dominant and instrumental symbols
Victor Turner's term for a symbol with multiple, and sometimes contradictory, meanings. AND Victor Turner's term for those symbols that can be consciously wielded in ritual as a form of technology in order to achieve particular ends.
Kroeber Superorganic
Wanted to be clear that the individual having no historical value was a diffused element out of context.
Sapir
Was definitely a Boasian in every sense of the word. Anti-evolution. Saw every culture as a whole and particular to its surrounding environment.
Benedict
Was set to become the head of the Columbia Department of Anthropology after Boas, but the university was already hesitant to hire a minority (a woman). So instead, they hired an outsider by the name of Ralph Linton.
Cultural Patterning
Was sympathetic to Ruth Benedict's configurationalism. Interested in psychoanalysis (all the Boas students are heavily affected by Freud.)
Kroeber
We just carry culture as it does its own thing. IT'S FATE!
Cultural Patterning
We should be able to see the movements of these patterns.
Culture -Culture is made by man. -In a given place and time (it is dynamic and living, but not apart from people.) -It is unique from other cultures. (Cultural Particularism) -Culture is more than the sum of its parts. -(Pre-existing force could affect and influence culture-underlying suggestion to the theory.)
What are five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism?
-"Each culture is unique, but each individual is not." -"There are complex relationships between society, culture, and the individual." -Culture is the stuff, society is the people that stuff is going on with. -"The grounding of culture in the human organism. Culture is grounded in biology." -"Systematic culture; like a web. Culture is like a system; a feedback system. Everything affects everything else." -"The institution as a unit of analysis."
What are the five main points of the core of Functionalism?
Malowski's approach is "so convoluted that there's no need to separate basic needs from derived needs." These were so inseparable that there is no need to divide them up.
What is a major criticism of Malinowski's approach?
Too reductionistic.
What is the problem with Configurationalism?
Culture
What is the product of this coordination by an organization of all of Malinowski's institutions?
Derived Needs
What spawns from Malinowski's basic needs?
Technology
What would drive the social institution in Malinowski's theory?
Genius Period
When culture decides that it's time for a one of these periods, it will happen.
innate release mechanism
When someone yells fire in a crowded room, the triggered response decision of 'fight or flight' is called a(n)
Genius Clusters
When we find these things, we start to invent things. It's not the individual, but the TIME for these geniuses. Einstein should not be applauded for his own mind, just that he was a sort of carrier of this genius. He does not have a different brain from anyone else's, he just gets randomly picked to carry the genius.
Derek Freeman
australian ethnographer criticized Mead's work in Samoa, called it superficial ---- "Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth" (1983) AND again --- "The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of her Samoan Research" (1999)
Fred Eggan
boasian anthropologist, Interacted with Radcliffe-Brown and partially converted to structural-functionalism
Max Gluckman
south african, oxford founded social anth dept. at manchester manchester school "Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa" (1963) rituals of rebellion
Superorganic
idea established by Kroeber, the idea that culture is distinct from, and above biology relates back to H. Spencer and Durkheim nurture over nature, culture over biology
Ishi
last surviving member of native american "Yana" clan found in the wilderness in norther Cali, by Kroeber, named Ishi for "man" died of TB, put in the San Fran museum of Anthro, brain sent to new work, dc, then buried in cali
Pheromones and chemical signals:
limbic system hypothalamus
Sexual Strategies:
males- "quantity strategy" high reproductive, low investment. females "quality strategy" low reproductive, high investment.
Nomothetic
related to the study or discovery of general scientific facts
Marshall Sahlins
structuralism resolution between cultural structure and historical change structure of the conjuncture - hawaiians and captain james cook "Islands of History" (1980)
Marcel Mauss
student and nephew of Durkheim meticulous attention to theoretical issues total social facts, general mental structures (reciprocity - gift giving), the glue and logic that binds and unifies social institutions "The Gift" (1924) (french structural anthropology)
Alfred Louis Kroeber
student of boas at berkeley, german american literature to anthropology departed from Boasian theory --- "superorganic" ----but went back emphasized cultural patterns (trends) over cultural laws "Anthropology" (1923)
Robert Lowie
student of boas at berkeley, german american rejected one sided explanations of cultural evolutionist and extreme versions of diffusionism redoing ethnographic work - "program of ethnology" "primitive Society" (1920)
French Structuralism
the concern with the elementary forms of minds and cultures
National Character
the dominant personality of a country
Colonial encounter
the historical encounter between the European colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the world who were more than often marginalized or oppressed by colonialism
What is culture relativism?
the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than judged against the criteria of another.
Culture at a distance
the study of cultures without the benefit of fieldwork, practiced by american anthropologist during WWII - grandiose generalizations by anthropologists (caused national character studies to lose credibility
Participant-observation
the style of anthropological fieldwork requiring the fieldworker to see things from both the "native" and fieldworkers's points of view. ETHNOGRAPHIC UNDERSTANDING THRU INSIDER PARTICIPATION, heavily theorized in anthropology today (Malinowski)
Structuralism (British)
the synchronic concern with social structure, sometimes called social morphology
Four-field approach
the traditional approach of american anthropology and divides the study into: - archaeology -biological -cultural -linguistic
What are Claude Levi Strauss major contributions?
totemism, alliance theory, structuralism, believes cultures are universal.
moroccan drama (1912)
An event, recounted in 1968, that Clifford Geertz uses to illustrate the need for a thick description of culture.
patois
An unofficial, provincial, non-prestigious, or marginal language variant.
Marvin Harris
Developed cultural materialism in an effort to purge modern anthropology of some of the legacy of Boas
Malinowski
Theory of Functionalism
cognitive ability
The comprehensive mental capability whose variation is purported to be measured by quantitative tests such as IQ tests
positivism
The view that science is objective and value-free
What are the 3 properties of Symbols?
1.) They are condensed, both polysemic and multivocal. 2.) They unite disparate phenoma (a symbol stands for something else) 3.) They polarize meaning into 2 distinct area: ideological meaning (group norms) and sensory area (natural processes)
Roy Rappaport
" . . . religious rituals may do much more than symbolize, validate, and intensify relationships. Indeed, it would not be improper to refer to the Tsembaga and other entities with which they share their territories as a 'ritually regulated ecosystem' . . ." This statement is a quote from [individual] in describing his analysis of complex ritual cycles to identify relations between adaptation to nature and a culture's world view.
Malinowski
"A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Word" (1967)
Growth
"Apprenticeship"
Malinowski
"Argonauts of the Western Pacific" (1922)
Mead
"Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928)
Mead
"Continuities in Cultural Evolution" (1964)
Malinowski
"Coral Gardens and Their Magic" (1935)
Malinowski
"Crime and Custom in a Savage Society" (1926)
Malinowski
"Culture change over time."
Kroeber Superorganic
"Culture has always been history. History is not concerned with the agencies producing civilization, but with civilizationists..."
Benedict
"Culture is like a rainbow."
Sapir
"Culture is what a group does and thinks, and language is its way of thinking."
Sapir
"Do We Need a Superorganic?" (1917)
Configurationalism
"Every culture is an integrated whole patterned, swirling, ever-changing in truly dynamic form which is influenced greatly in creativity...in infinite possibilities."
Mead
"Growing up in New Guinea" (1930)
Kroeber
"Handbook of the Indian of California" (1925)
Kroeber Superorganic
"It is a level entirely apart from the individuals who carry it." Culture is an entity or level completely disassociated apart from the individuals who are only carriers.
Sapir
"Language conditions our thinking because of social problems of processing. Conditioning people with how they act in society."
Sapir
"Language" (1921)
Benedict
"Patterns of Culture" (1934)
Benedict
"Race: Science and Politics" (1940)
Malinowski
"Sex and Repression in a Savage Society" (1927)
Mead
"Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" (1935)
Poetry
"Sounds of the words, rhythm of the flow, and density." (Sapir)
Benedict
"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" (1946)
Kroeber
"The Nature of Culture" (1952)
Kroeber
"The Superorganic" (1917)
7 Basic Needs
"The basic needs of every individual creates a need for derived institutions."
Kroeber Superorganic
"The individual has no historical value."
Kroeber Superorganic
"The individual has no historical value." -All men are totally similar. There's no higher or lower. -Wanted to be clear that this was a diffused element out of context.
Sapir
"The network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which expresses that civilization. It is an illusion to think that we can understand the outlines of significant culture (with only observation?)...
Sapir
"The understanding of a simple poem is not the average of the words and their significance, but the (mirror of whole society?)...overtones. (Er...Language itself is "Poetry writ(ten) large.)
Sapir
"There can never be such a thing as a primitive language." Primitive language does not exist.
Genius Period
"There's something that makes me do it. Culture made me do it."
Claude Levi-Strauss
"guru" of french structural anthropology uni of paris->brazil(ethnography)->nyc->france learned linguistics from Prague school, - binary oppositions create meaning (life vs death, culture vs nature) - structuralism "Structuralism and Ecology" (1984) "Elementary Structures of Kinship"(1949) "Structural Anthropology" (1958) (French/Structural Anthropology)
Geisteswissenschaften
"human sciences" like anthropology - concerned with mental phenomena (the core of human existence) derived by Neo-Kantians, influenced Boas
Poetry
(Not?) any form of written expression. But. It IS guttural. (Sapir)
Henry Kissinger
(b. 1923) American statesman and foreign policy expert, according to Edward W. Said with a world view similar to that of the Orientalist.
what are three parts to structural analysis?
1.) binary oppositions. 2.) Mythemes. 3.) Primary social message.
What are the 3 rules to studying myths according to Structuralism?
1.) break myths into component parts (binary oppositions) 2.) Strip the myth down to its "essential form" into mythemes. 3.) discern a primary social method.
How do these pieces function?
1.) Humans interact within a system 2.) the system is composed of institutions 3.) The institution create social structure 4.) the social structure expresses society
E.E. Evans-Pritchard
2nd gen british social anthropologist opposed seeing anthropology as a natural science - saw the role of the ethnographer = interpreter of history - east africanist (studied azande and nuer of sudan) father of symbolic anthropology -careful thought, eloquent prose, eye for detail
Functionalism
7 Basic/Primary Needs -Nutrition -Reproduction -Bodily comfort -Safety -Relaxation/health -Mobility -Growth
The Bell Curve
A 1994 book that purported to demonstrate the scientific basis for a genetic meritocracy in the United States, subject to much public controversy and criticism by anthropologists.
colonial rule
A British doctrine linked to, promoted by, and following from the concept of Orientalism, according to Edward W. Said.
subject races
A condescending colonialist term for people thought to need colonial rule for their own good
Cultural poesis
A cultural or artistic creation or fiction, thought by some postmodern theorists to characterize ethnographic writing.
the Marxist label
A description of diverse anthropological theories that claim a legacy of Marxism, according to George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer a grand theory out of favour in postmodern times.
political economy
An anthropological perspective viewing sociocultural form at the local level as penetrated and influenced by global capitalism.
Ethnographic present
An anthropologically constructed time for Native peoples before their contact with Europeans
Individual level
All these things are met by and created for the individual level.
Wilson is the one of the first to explain what?
Altruism, "Selfish Game", biodiversity "map of life"
mahila samakya
An Indian program for indigent women and children characterized by Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma as embodying the neoliberal philosophy of empowerment
integrated Child Development services (ICDS)
An Indian program for indigent women and children characterized by Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma as run by a paternalistic welfare state.
Allen Johnson
Combines new ethnography and cultural ecology; how adapted they were to the biosphere; he thought they had good, fertile land and they were well nourished and there was a lot of land (etic perspective); their distinction came not from fertility, but from how workable it was and how well the drainage was. Cultural perception plays a huge role in what resources are available to them; people think about their world, create that world, and that is where they live.
Ward Goodenough
Componential analysis as a method which develops a map of culture; formal interviews to elicit meanings and develop hierarchy of meaning.
Kroeber
Concept of Superorganic
Malinowski
Concept of an Institution
Benedict
Configurationalism
Ruth Benedict
Configurationism: a culture is a personality writ large; swirling and dynamic because of the emotions of individuals. Culture is: made by man, attached to/influenced by the environment, unique to other cultures, more than the sum of its parts. Culture is like an arch: each position has personality/qualities and the individual is a tabula rasa and can go to any of these to be formed; there is a stretch possible but not change to make room for deviants with change the system (rare) or conform. Culture at a distance method: we can study/analyze cultures through their productions, artifacts, and pop culture.
Malinowski
Considered to be one of the best fieldwork researchers ever.
Rorschach tests
Cora Du Bois used this psychodynamic method to assess basic personality structure among the Alorese of the Dutch East Indies.
Nature and culture
Core binary opposites in the structuralist theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss
Malinowski
Couldn't really find anything that interested him in the US, so he went to Oaxaca, Mexico and studied there until his death.
Mead
Criticism is that she lived with an American family, and she only lived on Tahoe Island for six months.
Growth
Cultural Learning
Kroeber
Cultural Patterning
Kroeber
Cultural Patterns/Cultural Patterning
Mead
Culture and Personality Theory
Sapir
Culture and Personality Theory
Sapir
Culture does not determine language, and language does not determine culture. However, there is a relationship between the two. Language is the vehicle by which we can understand the culture. Language is a secret decoder ring. Language is that light you put over invisible ink so you can read the messages.
Rainbow Culture
Culture has a big C, but Benedict doesn't care about this. She cares about culture with a little 'c', and says that there is human potential. You can be anywhere on that arc on the rainbow due to potential. Then it gets broken up all along as 'a', 'b', 'c', and continues until you reach one extreme or the other.
What is the meaning of "collective unconscious" according to Strauss?
Culture is a set of symbols under the symbols is the exact same meaning in every culture.
Kroeber Superorganic
Culture is a thing that is living and breathing. An organism that determines what individuals/human beings are going to do. We have no effect on it at all. We are cogs in a machine and we do what we're told. The Latin word for culture is 'sumigenerous'-it generates itself. One could technically even think of culture as God, in a way.
Configurationalism
Culture is an arrangement of parts. It is affective and emotional.
Kroeber Superorganic
Culture is apart from us.
Kroeber Superorganic
Culture is like a cloud above, and it strikes us below like lightning. But once you're struck, there's no going back.
Benedict
Culture-at-a-distance study (method)
Julian Steward
Cultures in similar environments have similar constraints and affordances (so similar subsistence) meaning they can be grouped into the same culture cores (technoeconomic strategy and adaptation) which can be formed into culture types. Multilineal evolution exists and you can gauge it WITHIN CULTURE TYPES; how well they are adapted is shown through their technology. Environment>>technology/subsistence>>customs/beliefs (think of this as the plow creating gender division). Develops what will be cultural ecology: the study of the relationship between humans, environment, and culture.
Functionalism
Derived Needs -You can't have derived needs without basic needs. Derived needs spawn from basic needs.
Functionalism
Derived needs
Rainbow Culture
Described the Pueblos as 'Apollonian', very quiet, very reserved, very prudish. Very extreme. On the other end of the rainbow spectrum.
Poetry
Expresses feelings, thoughts, and connections that are not always logical or rational, but they are "condensed and deeply expressive". (Sapir)
What are the 4 kinds of Social Pollution?
External boundaries threat, Internal Boundaries threat, Dangers along the margins ex. race, Danger or threat of internal contradiction ex. secret balloting.
Culture is unique from other cultures (Cultural Particularism).
Name one of the five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism.
Robert Merton
Major critic of Malinowski
"Why bother separating them if humans do not come without the social institutions?"
Malinowski Criticism
British School
Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown
Malinowski
Malinowski is a visiting anthropologist in the US when WWII broke out. Once again, he got stranded...lawl. XD
Malinowski
Malinowski was influenced by four major anthropologists (or at least, they were majored in something else and therefore amateur anthropologists): Haddon, Rivers, Seligmann, and Westermarck.
Psycho-Biological Needs
Malinowski's 7 basic needs are what?
-Bodily needs. -We're all affected by environmental influences. -All individuals are affected by cultural reactions.
Malinowski's individual is affected by what three things?
yin-yang structuralism
Marshall Sahlins's term for the structuralist concept of paired binary oppositions
Condensed
Means it's multi-layered. Onion-example! ...Though symbolic anthropologists say no. (Sapir)
Malinowski
Methodology/Fieldwork
Bronislaw Malinowski
Methodology: at least one year in the field, speak the language fluently, detailed notes, always take the emic view into account, vacuum cleaner approach, wind in the palms approach, live right in the middle, take a walk, use case studies, create a draft before leaving, use qualitative data, keep a diary, quotes in native language. Functionalism: all individuals have the same basic emo-psycho-biological needs; nutritional needs (food, oxygen, waste), reproductive needs (cultural and biological), bodily comfort (temperature, rest, sleep), safety (from humans, animals, environment, magic), relaxation and health (physical activity and rest), mobility (exercising nervous system), growth (training and apprenticeship); groups have derived needs; institutions determine how I handle my needs. Institutions: every institution exist to satisfy at lease some of the seven basic needs; cultures must conform to these needs (biological determinism); culture is a biosocial need; all organizations have a mission statement that is formally stated (purpose), all institutions have a particular technology to meet their goals; we start by looking at institutions.
perpetual judgement
Michel Foucault's term for the condition wherein, through internalized guilt and shame, insane people are always disapproved of both by themselves and by others.
liberation of the insane
Michel Foucault's term for the stated goal of physician Samuel Tuke, according to Foucault actually a justification for having mentally ill patients internalize guilt.
free terror of madness and stifling anguish of responsibility
Michel Foucault's terms for the existential dimensions of mental illness before and, in turn, after the therapeutic approach of physician Samuel Tuke.
Phonemes
Minimally contrasting pairs of sounds that create linguistic meaning
7 Basic Needs
Mobility
Culture is in a given place and time (it is dynamic and living, but not apart from people).
Name one of the five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism.
Culture is made by man.
Name one of the five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism.
Culture is more than the sum of its parts.
Name one of the five important things to remember about culture in Benedict's theory of configurationalism.
Morton Fried
Social stratification evolves due to control and distribution of resources (the haves and the have nots); this explains the source of change but not the why. Political evolution: egalitarian (there are as many positions of prestige in any age/sex as there are people to fill them; equal access), rank (positions of valued status are somehow limited; some people will be excluded even if they have sufficient talent), social stratification (members of the same sex/age do not have equal access to basic necessary resources), state (bloodless/not tied to kinship; complex of institution by which a society organizes itself without kinship).
True
Sociobiology is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution, and it attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context.
Leslie White
Some societies are ahead of others; societies go from simple to complex over time. Unit of study: quantifiable and universal. Energy growth = cultural complexity increase; for White, culture is a manifestation of energy meant to satisfy needs (not individual needs but group needs). Two kinds of needs: the need for internal resources (things everyone needs, generated by our species; stable and don't explain diversity) and the needs for external resources (how the need is met; variable because they are dependent on energy harnessed). White says the job of anthropology is to look at how the needs of external resources are met (laws and culturology); humans are basically the same, so the biology doesn't matter; just because the environment offers a lot doesn't mean people will utilize it. Law of Evolution (by White): simple to complex change; cultures change because the human instinct is to increase the abundance of life (people want more); change occurs by the amount of energy put into production increases by two ways: greater manpower and technological innovation. Levels: Technological (basic energy level) drives the sociological level (institutions) which drives the ideational attitudinal level (beliefs). White is not following the organic, inorganic, superorganic model of Spencer but the infrastructure, structure, superstructure levels of Marx. White says "it will average out" but Boas says you can't compare, and there is no standard unit of measurement for energy in the way he talks about it.
Malinowski
Started doing a study in 1914 in Mailu Island (in New Guinea)
Sapir
Started working with Native Americans, branched off into psychiatry, psychology, ethnology, folklore, and religion.
postcolonial states
States that have participated in the network of historical and cultural interconnections between colonizers and the colonized.
What is A.R. Radcliffe Brown known for?
Structional Functionalism
What are some of A.R. Radcliffe Browns major contributions?
Structional functionalism, father of British Anthropology, founded the anthropology journal oceania.
A.R. Radcliffe Brown
Structural functionalism: look at how society is structured and organized and how these pieces function. Individual>>occupy roles>>roles exist within institutions>>together institutions create social structure. Institutions: laws, morals, etiquette, religion, economics, government, education, kinship. Picture society as a house where each room is an institution and the individuals go in and out of every room playing roles to see it function. Whereas Boas is personal in asking what did your mother/grandmother do before you, Radcliffe Brown doesn't care about grandma (less personal). Radcliffe Brown says cultures are houses on a street, walk down the street and you may see how roles are played and how it functions or if it has flow, but not necessarily how the people inside feel (you don't get to know them); focus on roles not feelings. Radcliffe Brown is the university website and formal information while Boas is reviews and rate my professor. Deviants are in a holding pin, not roles, and need to be separate (prison, asylums, etc.)
What is Claude Levi Strauss known for?
Structuralism
Margaret Mead
Student of Boas, at columbia, focus on psychological anthropology literature to anthropology studied female adolescence in Samoa, South Pacific ----> the girls weren't troubled bc they were sexually permissive most famous anthropologist of 20th cent. was intimate with Ruth Benedict "Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928) "Growing up in New Guinea" (1930) "Sex & Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" (1935)
Benedict
Studies with Parsons, who recommends her to Boas. Boas waved all entrance requirements so she could work with him with no B.A., he was THAT impressed. Thought she was all that. She was very, very smart, and he saw that. She was the one that breaks down the barrier for all women in anthropology.
What was Mary Douglas Major contribution?
Symbolic Anthropology
What were some of Victor Turners major contributions?
Symbolic Anthropology "transactionalism".
Linguistics and Language
The argument that language reflects culture. Language reveals our thoughts and actions of culture. There's a relationship between language and culture.
epistemology and ontology
The branch of philosophy that explores the nature of knowledge AND the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being
Onomataopoeia
The circumstance when a spoken word sounds like what it represents (Saussure)
Mary Douglas
Symbolic anthropology. Structuralism: focus on structure, looks for universal patterns (culture with a big C), extreme etic. Mary Douglas Symbolism: focus on context and meaning (link to structure), search for cultural identity (little c culture), extreme emic. Abominations of Leviticus (Religious laws of Jews) as a symbolic system: clean and unclean refers to the whole and incomplete; people create metaphorical systems to explain what is good and bad. Body symbolism is universal: all cultures work with or apply body metaphors on the physical body as a way of talking about the social body, but the margins of that symbolism vary (they all do it, but they do it differently; by studying boundaries of the physical culture you can understand the state or wellness of the culture.; the way people take care of their bodies reveal the health of the group. Four kinds of social pollution: external boundaries threats (attack from outside enemies), internal boundaries threats (transgressing on each other, when an institution does something that really doesn't pertain to it and they transgress their boundaries, something out of order), dangers along the margins (something ambiguous like race, middle class, or bisexuality), danger or internal contradiction (something gets out of its level, fear of being watched by the government). The purpose of rituals is to demarcate/draw the line of boundaries; it is sustaining the system.
False
The Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee hearings during the 1950s were in response to biological evolutionism being taught in modern-day classrooms.
fantasy phone lines
The adult message industry in which, according to Susan Gal, women often work from positions of power rather than powerlessness.
Ethnoscience
The aim of this theoretical approach is to reproduce cultural reality as it is perceived and lived by members of society
symbolic anthropology
The anthropological school, associated with Victor Turner, espousing the view that social solidarity is a function of the systems of symbolic logic that connect people.
Habitus
The arena, the playing field. This culture can tolerate things as normal behavior. The group outside the habitus are the outsiders, those who have to deal with it. Then there are the outside patches from that second circle where they're not even able to intersect or fit in at any time. Those are the deviants.
Cultural Patterning
The only way people matter is to study culture, thinking of the people as mediums that reflect the culture.
literature as a transient category
The postmodern concept that literature, including ethnographic writing, is not grounded in a single truth but instead expresses partial truths that change from time to time and place to place.
The problem of altruism
The primary aim of sociobiology was to explain
turtles all the way down
The punch line of an Indian story recounted by Clifford Geertz to show that the process of thick description has no final end point.
second law of thermodynamics
The scientific proposition that the universe is running down, thereby increasing disorder, or entropy
microscopic ethnographic description
The small-scale, concrete focus that according to Clifford Geertz should be the basis of ethnographic interpretation.
How does Victor Turner define symbols?
The smallest unit of ritual which retains the simplest properties of a ritual.
phonemic and phonetic
The study of linguistic meaning created by sounds. AND The study of linguistic sounds that create meaning.
Phonetic
The study of linguistic sounds that create meaning
Dialectical contradiction
The tendency toward stable equilibrium between interdependent elements that is maintained through feedback mechanisms is called:
Homeostasis
The tendency toward stable equilibrium between interdependent elements that is maintained through feedback mechanisms is called:
True
The term gestalt refers to the general quality or character of something; it was also used to refer to the psychological configuration attributed to an entire culture.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The theory made with Whorf.
cultural materialism and cultural idealism
The theory of Marvin Harris that distinguishes emic from etic perspectives and mental from behavioural domains, and that advocates infrastructural determinism. AND Anthropological theorists who attach causal priority to the domain of thought rather than behaviour
What does Strauss structuralism is concerned with?
The unconscious way of life. "The natural world does not exist beyond my perception of it.
gender
The various social roles and identities attributed to individuals and groups on the basis of their biological sex.
transformational phonology
The view that a small number of distinctive contrasting features of the sounds of language accounts for all languages, according to Edmund Leach the basis of Claude Lévi-Strauss's theory of binary oppositions
Idealism
This term is used for any theory suggesting that behavior is governed by beliefs, meanings, and values that are to a greater or lesser degree independent of the material conditions of life
Connectionism
This theoretical approach argues that knowledge is linked, networked, and widely distributed in simple units that we use to access and analyze information
Substantivists
This theoretical view maintains that Western economic concepts do not apply to non-Western economies
Rainbow Culture
This was astounding in psychology. They were focusing on that and Benedict says that deviants shouldn't be called bad and be labeled, they're just in the wrong culture. It's a bad cultural fit.
Kroeber
Thought of as the 'first student' of Boas, even though he's technically the second. (The first didn't really do anything.)
E.O Wilson
Three areas of study: pheromones and chemical signal: interest in instinctual and chemically directed behavior, says all behavior can be traced to the limbic system (hypothalamus); selfish game: all life is designed for one goal (to carry on genetic material), people are temporary carriers, struggles in trying to explain "altruism" (the way of passing genes); biodiversity ("the map of life"): says we are currently living in an age of extinction and unknown species must be mapped out. Sociobiology: argues that biology has never been separated from culture; dismisses nature vs nurture because he considers them to be the same; when studying culture it is necessary to look for biological components. Sexual strategies: males (quantity strategy) vs. females (quality strategy); both maximize reproductive success.
What is the purpose of all rituals?
To demarcate boundaries.
Sapir
To him, language was the way in. Boas brought this up, but this particular theorist emphasized this.
Sapir
To this theorist, language is a symbolic guide to culture.
Claude Levi Strauss
Totems: the ritual manifestation of an ancestor to identify one's clan; before Levi Strauss it was believed to be religious; universal explanation (child like stage of religion) and particularist approaches (totems come from socioeconomic value/function) were proved to be wrong by Levi Strauss' metaphoric system (societies use totems to talk about themselves; our social relations reflected in our environment; society reifies itself) which is how why we see it today as a social taxonomy/classification system. Alliance theory: it was thought that kinship was descent but Levi Strauss said kinship is alliance; wife exchange is a total social fact; in nsocieties we have laws to reduce hostility but in tribes there is an exchange because someone from Moiety A won't attack Moiety B because his daughter lives there. Structuralism: culture is a mediation between humans and nature; the expression is how we see nature; he says we live in a collective unconscious so that we do not know what I believe and the etic perspective tells me what I believe. Symbols: culture is a set of symbols; the job of anthropologists is to understand the symbols' meanings; symbols' meanings are the same universally just the symbols are different (because our brains are the same); we don't have to study all cultures, just the ideal one; we study culture in its ideal form because all cultures follow the ideal form even if they mess up a little along the way. Structuralism in myths: binary opposition>>mythemes>>social message.e
jeeps
Transportation vehicles that according to Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma figure differently in the routines of two kinds of Indian social programs.
Victor Turner
Where Douglas says that ritual demarcates boundaries to structure the system, Turner says they allow it to breathe/change. Defines symbol as the smallest unit of ritual that retains specific properties of ritual behavior. Symbols have three properties: all symbols are condensed (polysemic: multiple meanings; multivocal: many appearances), unify disparate phenomena (connects parts for a whole, stands for something, stands in for something else), polarize meaning (into two areas: ideaological area (something that refers to the principles of society; social groups; group norms) or sensory area (areas that relate to natural processes). The more dominant a symbol, the more clear these areas are shown. Three meanings of symbols: exegetical meaning (Ask people what it means), operational meaning (The use of the symbol), and positional meaning (meaning that derives from the context in which the symbol is used). Transactionalism is the search for ritual process/decoding/widening the scope.
Gregory Bateson
Which of the following individuals was NOT a student of Franz Boas.
Population production
Which of the following would NOT be of major concern to a Neo-Evolutionist's research aims?
Malinowski
While he's in the Trobriand Islands for a short stay, WWI breaks out. If he left, he would have to be returned to Poland. He was stuck there by accident. The waters around the island were British-controlled.
True
While the 19th-century evolutionism of Spencer, Tylor and Morgan used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, Neo-Evolutionists relied on empirically measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution.
Malinowski
Writing style is considered 'wind in the palms' style. He writes so you feel like you are personally there. Opened up Argonauts with a beautiful description of his area of study.
7 Basic Needs
You can't have derived needs without basic needs. Derived needs spawn from basic needs.
Malinowski Fieldwork Point
You must keep detailed and daily field notes.
Malinowski Fieldwork Point
You must speak the language fluently. You must not rely on a translator. Boas tried to do this, but Malinowski says it's non-negotiable.
Malinowski Fieldwork Point
You must take account of the natives' point of view.
Manchester School
a circle of anthropologists trained under Gluckman at Manchester University in the 1950s and 1960s
Kula ring
a cultural and economic exchange network among inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands, studied by Malinowski theory of functionalism rooted in biology "culture functions to satisfy the basic needs, of people's biological needs, with basic responses
text
n the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz, the equivalent of culture, interpreted through a process of thick description.
Cultural relativism
the proposition that cultural differences should not be judged by absolute standards
