ANT 4034 Exam 1

Culture and Personality

a theoretical position in anthropology that held that cultures could best be understood by examining the patterns of child rearing and considering their effect on adult lives and social institutions, (Mead) A development in the study of socialization that arose principally in the United States in the 1930s. The theory combined elements of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, but principally involved the application of psychoanalytic principles to ethnographic material

Kula

a trading network, linking many of the Trobriand Islands, in which men have long-standing partnerships for the exchange of everyday goods, such as food, as well as highly valued necklaces and armlets

Unilinear Evolution

belief that societies move from being simple to being complex; L.H.Morgan idea (19th century) of a single line or path of cultural development

qualitative approach

collecting information about people and social worlds, identifying patterns and unique features, and analyzing the information by using interpretive procedures and tests (detailed account of arrangements of experiment, an exact description of the apparatus used, the manner in which the observations were conducted)

quantitative approach

collecting information that is converted into numbers and then analyzing the numbers through statistics and direct comparison (their number, of the length of time devoted to them, the degree of approximation with which each measurement was made)

Armchair Anthropologist

collects data from documents written by others rather than field work

systematic approach

detailed account of arrangements of experiment, an exact description of the apparatus used, the manner in which the observations were conducted, of their number, of the length of time devoted to them, the degree of approximation with which each measurement was made; (ex. ethnographic diary carried on throughout the course of one's work in a district)

Cultural Materialism

determine all aspects of culture through materialistic means; basically it has no symbolic standing mostly derived from material

fetichism

devil-worship

Laura Bohannon

drank beer and tell stories in the rainy season;no such things as ghosts; some form of witchcraft, not ghost; younger generation must not judge or take vengeance on older generations;

Marvin Harris

emphasis on the role of environment, demography, technology, and economy in determining a culture's mental and social conditions; best explain ideas, values, and beliefs as adaptations to economic and environmental conditions. "local ppl dont know the ultimate causes of their own actions"

Infrastructure (Harris)

enviornment, food supply, technology, population size; represents the ways in which a society regulates the type and amount of resources needed to sustain the society; has the priority over the other structures because it directly relates to human survival

Critique of Culture and Personality

exaggerating the match of personality types within any given society-stereotyping;

Theories

explanations of what culture is and how societies functions; attempts to think about culture societies in a coherent way

Margaret Mead

expressed the importance of taking notes; was hired to study the Germans during WWII

Marvin Harris

he wanted one unifying theory that would explain all cultures, and even the most puzzling cultural behaviors a scientific approach; pushy guy; Professor at Columbia University; EMIC and ETIC

Realizations from Chrysanthemum of the Sword

hopefully: cultural patterns driving aggression and the possible weaknesses; not rigid or incapable of change; shame culture: one must not shame the country or family

Historical Particularism

idea that histories are not comparable; diverse paths can lead to the same cultural result; opposite of social evolutionism

thick description

interpretation of an act; analysis of the snapshot

Taboo

is a way to keep a certain group of people from doing or not doing a certain thing

Religion

is used as a justification for certain taboos

Trobrianders

matrilineal

Month of Play

month between harvesting and planting; the step between childhood and adulthood, a period where one makes themselves beautiful with painting and jewelry; sexuality is important; women have the power of choice; play of an ugly man played by a women

Critique of Symbolic Interpretive School

narrow biased view; miss the big picture

pig ecology

pigs actually prefer clean environment if offered; prefer wooded area with shade and water; can't sweat-need coolness; nearly bold- need shade; does badly in hot sunny climates

Superstructure (Geertz)

religion, ideology, behavior (ideological domain)

Symbolic Interpretive

role of thought and meaning and symbols in cultures; understand and interpret their surroundings; system of meaning deciphered by interpreting key symbols and rituals

inponderabilia of actual life

routine of a man's working day; the details of his body care; the manner of taking food and preparing it

Ruth Benedict

student of Franz Boas

ethnocentrism

tendency to view one's own culture and group as superior to all other cultures and groups; the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture

thin description

the act itself; as snapshot

cultural relativism

the perspective that a foreign culture should not be judged by the standards of a home culture and that a behavior or way of thinking must be examined in its cultural context; Boas

Critique of Cultural Materialism

there is not one theory for all cultures; one idea might not be specific or in depth

Against European & Judeo-Christian practices

this is because christains believed that they were the only one true religion; as if christianity was the benchmark on how to rate the other religions; including those of remote tribes; because they were not part of the one true religion they were less as people

Ideas of Progress

three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a natural as well as necessary sequence (savagery, barbarianism, civilization), all progress occurs in this order; great sequence of inventions and discoveries

Tiv

tribe only familiar with tax receipts bride tax receipts, court fee receipts, and letters; Laura Bohannon

Chrysanthemum and the Sword

wanted to understand what kind of habits, assumptions, and cultural norms the japanese had; set out to understand Japanese mentality as the enemy of the US

principles of method

1. scientific aims, know the values and criteria of modern ethnography, 2. live amoung the natives, 3. apply a number of special methods of collecting and manipulating and fixing his evidence

First Contact

1982; Daniel & Mick Leahy; James Taylor; (1930's) highland tribes of Papua New Guinea; earched for gold and found 1 million highland tribespeople who had previously had no contact with the outside world

Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea

1990; Annette Weiner; The Kirwina Island; including their yam cult, fishing, life, traditions and, especially, the position of women in Trobriand society

Development

A process of improvement in the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology, In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the economic process that led to industrialization, urbanization, the rise of a large and prosperous middle class, and heavy investment in education.

the role of socialization

America has adopted European tradition of male dominance; women have come to realize their dominance and males have stumble to regain this; abolishing any expression of sex personalities is a social loss

Ruth Benedict

American anthropologist; said performance was important to interpret culture; study of cultures as collective personalities

Franz Boas

Anthropologist that went and lived with the Eskimos and learned that culture affects behavior; Father of American Anthropology; founder of Culture and Personality

Lewis Henry Morgan

Armchair Anthropologist

Bronisław Malinowski

British naturalized anthropologist. ethnography of the Trobriand Islands described the complex institution of the Kula ring, and became foundational for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange. He was also widely regarded as an eminent fieldworker and his texts regarding the anthropological field methods were foundational to early anthropology, for example coining the term participatory observation.

Current Beliefs

Culture is shaped by societal factors NOT biological factors

Franz Boaz

Ethnocentrism, culture relativism; istorical particularism

Columbia University

Franz Boas was the head of the anthropology department at this university, a university in New York City

Karl Marx

German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary. With the help and support of Friedrich Engels he wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894). These works explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form the basis of all communist theory, and have had a profound influence on the social sciences., father of Communism

Manchester School

Group of economists including Malthus and Riccardo who advocated laissez-faire economics and threatened mercantile practices.

Consequences of Social Evolutionism

Hitler; Ugenics; Selective abortion; Limited vital energy for women led to very restricted lifestyles for women; Unlimited vital energy for men

pig cultures

Pigs are totally unsuited to the environment of the Middle East (thus pigs are taboo "hated there") VS Pigs are very suited to the environment of PNG Thus pigs are "loved there"

Evolutionary Anthropology

Psychic unity of mankind Uniform stages of development Doctrine of "survivals" Comparative method

Margaret Mead

United States anthropologist noted for her claims about adolescence and sexual behavior in Polynesian cultures (1901-1978)

Lewis Henry Morgan

United States anthropologist who studied the Seneca (1818-1881), postulated theory of human development in which human societies evolved through 3 stages- savagery, barbarism, civilization; passage from one stage to the other was enabled by some technological revolution

Samoa

a group of volcanic islands in the South Pacific midway between Hawaii and Australia, Margaret Mead

Critiques of Chrysanthemum of the Sword

a historical moment mistaken for a full picture of a society; a biased outlook on the japanese the time period and their ideas of either country during that specific time period; many claimed that a lot of japanese wouldn't have committed suicide for their country

participant observation

a research method in which investigators systematically observe people while joining them in their routine activities

cultural puzzles

"Irrational" cultural phenomenon and their explanations; People are starving in India. Why do they treat the cow as sacred, rather than eating it?

Culture and Personailty

"culture is personality writ large"; humans are malleable; shaped according to culture if you teach your children to be meek, society will be meek; "national character" studies emerged

Social Evolutionism popular?

"progress" as desirable, even today; Darwins Theory-hot at the time

Clifford Geertz

anthropologists have to put themselves in the picture; interpretive anthropologist; interested in the role of thought and meaning in cultures; culture as "a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life"; NOT EMIC

Multilinear Evolution

an evolutionary model of culture emphasizing different development patterns for societies in different habitats

etic

an external or outsider's view on beliefs and customs

emic

an insider's view or the view from a native about their own customs and beliefs

Structure (Harris)

politics, economy;

Critique of Social Evolutionism

primitive contemporary societies have just as much history; any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific; promoted ethnocentrism

Natural Selection

process by which individuals that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called survival of the fittest

culture

public; visible to the observer; but must be interpreted; all events are in context