Anthropology FINAL

Sapir

Language is a guide to a social reality Conditions our thinking processes and problems Particular languages in societies are mediums for communication No two languages are ever the same to represent the same social reality

The Handbook: Notes and Queries on Anthropology (Urry 1972)

Photographs Measurements Ethnographic fieldwork is not a "team" area of study They never socialized with the locals (good fieldwork requires social relationships with the locals They relied on each other for their social lives

"Man Without Pigs" : FILM

Portrays return of Dr. John Waiko to his home village of Tabara after completing his PhD • First Paupa New Guinean to earn a PhD • Educated Villager returning home to show relatives and neighbours what he had accomplished o Tensions between village and migrant successful in outside world o Conflicts between village factions come to the surface • Themes o Indigeneity: how important is the evocation of tradition or custom or indigeneity in the film? What are the indications here? o Dance drama with Tapa cloth costumes - compare the relationship as instinces of traditions and culture o Environment: the rainforest ♣ Carving of ancestral figure from the bush ♣ Ritual Phases conducted in the forest o Who is the film made for? ♣ What is the audience reaction? FILM (Summary) The movie starts with Dr. John Waiko returning to his home village in Tabara. He is met by his Uncle (from his mother's side) Ernest, and was given a letter by him which essentially says that he has no remaining relatives except him. Ernest seems to signify an anchor of some sort for John, as he is at this point an outsider being introduced into his culture. The elders in the community seem to be interested in making a custom framework to give a reputation of some sort to John, however there seems to be a time-crunch and the rituals take a long time to complete. John's family seems to be less high class among three groups of clans within the region, to balance expectations and be accepted without conflict John needs to offer resources (In this case a pig) however upon surrendering a pig to one group, his ceremony was still not initiated. As he did not agree to take Ernest's pig (since it was originally for another purpose), he is facing a dilemma in providing the necessary resources. As his family is recommending they have to offer more pigs as a public statement of his indebtedness with the hope he gets accepted into their society. The pure clan arrives in John's village with a gifts baring, and he has prepared "red soil" to exchange with them. He complains that the Bosida (other clan's) demands are too high and he has since fallen short in attempting to provide for the guests. He has been unable to plant gardens to feed the guests, and an elder steps in and asks the Bosida to be contempt with John's offerings. From there on in, they accept John's proposal and continue on with the dance ceremony. As they continue to prepare for the dance-drama ceremony which is a second ritual planned for the next week, unexpected rainfall caused a slowdown in preparations for the Bosida clan to offer their gifts and rituals for John's celebrations. A representative of the Bosida clan complains that pigs are given by the The Kumski and Pure clans are better, and that's making them look bad in comparison and that they should join together in unity to accomplish the task at hand. The society is generally very competitive with allies and there are those in other clans who hope others will fail, in order to demonstrate their best work. For this reason, each clan must show their best generosity and service to a ceremony as to attempt to "not appear weak" in the face of other clans. John's clan begins to extract sago from a tree to complete his ceremony and the elders begin to rehearse their dances. Soon enough, they prepare a pig (given by the John's family) for the ceremony (which is given to Richmond, John's brother in law) who takes the lead in recommending the next course of action to follow to accomplish the ceremony. The villagers largely attribute rainfall to the "rainmakers" who in one way or another seem to be divine beings who control when rainfall occurs, and this leads to a larger discussion about Karma (Don't say certain things, because they may harm you) "Kiap": Refers to Australian government official who records on the affairs of the people of papa new Guinea, historically they have had problems understanding the natives. The people's of papa new Guinea often entertain themselves by making comedic sketches in which they imitate the Kiap's lack of knowledge in dealing with the affairs of the people. Bosida Ancestors have a ritual in which they are rehearsing to practice for John, where two men attempt to search and capture a spirit in the shape of a child, it's part of the local custom and a ceremony of sorts the Bosida people's will attempt to demonstrate in the Dance-Drama. When the interview team speaks to some members of the community, they communicate their insecurities regarding the future of the forest and surrounding environments, John has instructed them to carry on with the Rituals as soon as possible in order to avoid the "big business" corporations that they fear are going to be destroying the environment and killing the surrounding spirits. John tells the interviewing team that his people have high inspirations for those seeking higher education outside the village, they often want him to be many things (I.e. - A doctor, a magician and politician) In a way they want him to be everything they're not. The ceremony date finally comes by, and John wear's his PhD gown however the Taire people and Tabara's people erupt in a riot during the ceremony as one member of the clan is unable to see and begins pushing other people out of the way. It takes a couple minutes for everyone to calm down as John has to intervene and attempt to tell everyone to "calm down and enjoy the feast". In addition, he separates the groups, to avoid future conflict. As the ceremony continues, the elders cheer as they see John's degree certificates being paraded around the village. An elder stands up and announces that they're all very proud of his accomplishment and this achievement will help serve the clan very well as they finally have a member that can communicate and demonstrate the interests of their people to the government and "large corporations". Towards the end of the film, an ironic scene occurs. Even after achieving a PhD, John seems to mistakenly carry out the pig sharing ritual. The ceremony is accomplished; the movie credits roll.

White Room Research

The researcher has complete control over the experiment All external things are excluded Clear vision, direct

Field Research

The researcher has to adapt to the environment at hand Getting to know people and their environment (building a repour) Ample free time for recording

Sir Henry Maine

Status - A person's rights and relationships are determined by the position in society assigned at birth o Contract - A person's rights and relationships are determined by negotiated but legally binding agreements with others

Maisan Daa

There explainations for when something happens is that there has been a slight or mistake - we have taken something away from someone (things are supposed to be balanced) o If something bad happens to someone it is because of someone else's "Daa" o "Daa" is like a grudge, karma o Not something active o People need to look inside themselves and heal what happened

Totalization

Trying to sum up the meaning (of human history) Things are more complicated Nothing is simple

How many words does a language need?

Words don't tag things, they tag categories and concepts Categories and concepts overlap and are multidimensional

Onomatopoeia

Words for sounds: the word that expresses a feeling Table doesn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't know the English word table Meow is universal (an icon: something that immediately has meaning to you without you knowing the language) Bang, clash, meow

Linguistic Rights

a document signed by the International PEN Club, and several non-governmental organizations in 1996 to support linguistic rights, especially those of endangered languages.] Linguicism: refers to discrimination based on the language one speaks (unequal division of power and resources)

Metaphor

a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated but share some common characteristics. Example: Laughter is music to the soul "She is a walking dictionary"

matrilineage

a multi-generational group of relatives who are related by matrilineal descent. Matrilineages usually consist of a number of related nuclear families descended from the same woman.

patrilineage

a multi-generational group of relatives who are related by patrilineal descent. Patrilineages usually consist of a number of related nuclear families descended from the same man.

Individual

a person cannot be divided, stable, constant regardless of context (identity is context free)

Footing

a stance we talk upon ourselves to take up the production and reception of utterances

2 ways that peasants differ from tribal or foraging societies

a) produce more than they can consume b) they are at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy which is not present in tribal or foraging societies

Problem of Essentialisms

age, gender, prospective (ie. Division of labour) Variation in culture (boundaries - Boaz believed things could be crossed) , boundaries provide limitations, cultures are incompatible, translation: from language to language, most people are bilingual—speaking one language is unusual

Cultural Identities

defining the linguistic boundaries between social groups

Comparative

differences and similarities

consciousness of kind:

does not only rely on the ideology of kinship o basing group identity on shared descent seems to be the most used o most important social group is not based on kinship but is based on community - communities formed due to of co-residency and the interaction proximity o entails that one is shaped by their surroundings and anyone in the surroundings are shaped similarly

caste system:

every person is born into a group that has a monopoly over a particular occupation o a person takes a spouse only from within their group o groups are ranked with respect to one another o supported by an elaborate meaning and belief

Status Titles

everyone bears one of several graded status titles and must be accorded defence and respect by those below them and must over deference and respect to those above them

indigenous

Originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native

How did Malinowski revolutionize the ethnographic method?

Participant observation (interacting with the locals) Maintained detailed notes and journals chronicling his experiences

Arapesh

Patrilineal class system Blood is important (through birth, through food) Fix the male clan ♣ Girls are married to other members of the clan ♣ Adopted into the clan of their husband ♣ They ensure she is properly fed It is believed the males "grow" their own wives ♣ Blood letting from the initiators (gathered into leaf bowls and the boys of who are being initiated must drink it - they must eat lots of food) Feed and nurture the women

Pinker

People are guided by their senses more so than by the language that surrounds them

Essentialism

People who go to places - fixed, there is this notion that culture never changes How people characterise people of different cultures Rooted in identity (they will never change) Outside the time and space that we live in Lots of people and lots of places represent different things ♣ Cultural myth ♣ Framework of ideas that people form themselves ♣ Similar logic to race

Mauss

Personnage: People are conceived as parts of a larger whole. And are defined by positions within that whole. This often means that each social unit may have its own stock name

collective effervescence

experience of communities or societies coming together to communicate or to participate in the same action

Social Deixis

give an indication not only of where the speaker stands in time and space, but also of the status in the social structure

Cultural Stereotypes

group identity is not a natural fact, but a cultural perception (conditioned, focused and diffusion)

Contextualization Ques

guiding learner's interpretations leading to situational inferences

Traditional Society (DURKHIEM)

held together because all members were alike, self sufficient = mechanical solidarity

Ian Mackenzie spent many years compiling a Penan dictionary but his task fell short because

his documentation was more useful to linguists then to Penan

Cohesive devices

hold words together (its, this, and)

Literacy event

interaction of a reader or community of readers with a text defined by member's common social practices with written language Situational Context: content, intended audience, purpose, function, point of view, prior texts

Written language

is a derivative of spoken language fundamental to world religions enables asynchronous communication

Linguistic Relativism, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism

is a principle that holds that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition. It encompasses two versions.

Teknonymy

is a system in which parents are named after their children

Functionalism

is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalism, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of.

Narratives

o (stories) shifts of perspective and time and space ♣ Identity, when, where and how shift references ♣ How do the shifts relate to the present situation in which a speaker is in?

Tekonyms

parents referred to and addressed as father or mother of their first born child, using its personal name; this changes with first grandchild at which point they become grandmother/grandfather of that child. This is the most common form of address and reference

Performatives

part of the context they refer to (directly change the reality, that are a part of that reality. Saying those words make them true (immediate: time, place and context) Ex: I now pronounce you husband and wife

Institutions

patterns of behavior and ideology become descrete, enduring and autonomous (self governed)

Dividable or Relational Person

people are conceived only in the context of specific relationships to other people, places ie) Telefomin the person can have various characters, someone who can behave in completely different ways - can have many personality traits

Speech Community

people of the same linguistic code

Kuwait ancestors are believed to make people sick in order to protect Kastom tradition. this is especially likely if:

people talk a lot about some departure from customary behaviour

Affiliation

people who associate with a certain group develop common attitudes and norms (re-enforced in schools and religion)

The least favoured chinese form of address

pronouns

A linguistic sign consists of

the combination of a signifier and a signified

Common Law or Case Law

the cumulative result of precedents set and principles derived from previous decisions in specific cases (detail of context is important)

Semantics

the dictionary meaning of words

Risk to Enthographic fieldwork

the ethnographer may represent communities frozen in time and outside of a historical context

The Matrilineal Puzzle

the husband is more of a friend, the uncle is more like a dad A puzzle? Why does this happen? What happened to men? Example: The Dobu: Communities consist only of a single clan o Problem: living arrangements, where will they live? o They end up alternating back and forth until one of the people dies o There is a burial, where they are buried where they originated and the spouse moves back home o How do people die? Either by someone else, or sorcery, the husband or wife kill each other o After death, the other spouse is unable to visit the village again

Epistemology

the study of knowledge. Epistemologists concern themselves with a number of tasks, which we might sort into two categories. We have to figure out how we know things We are faced with the problem: Not only why do I know, but how? We must contend with different perspectives

Signifier

the word

Benefict Anderson

traces the rise of nationalism to the development of print capitalism

Kwio

traditional, live in the interior, ancestral cult: embodiments are kept in shrines to monitor the activities of the living, the have resisted Christianity to avoid punishment from their ancestors, childbirth is frowned upon in the hospital (ancestors are not seen or known, they make things happen: sickness, difficulty and inconvenience) Talking about things creates a problem If people don't talk about something, the ancestors won't notice it Talk inflates things and makes them important Ancestors are amplifiers of community conversation (typically the negative things) Once an issue as arisen, that's when the ancestors intervene and make someone sick The talk will be alerted and start problems Kwio's do not make a big deal of things, they keep quiet and to themselves Dispute Settlement: deal with it in a small group, locally Authority: talking and not talking

Context of Culture

tribal economies, social organization, kinship patterns

Brittle Marriage (how do anthropologists explain it)

when the uncle is seen more of a father and the bio father is seen more like a friend to the wife the marriage has difficulties, relationship is an obstacle often the reason for high divorce rates wife often jealous of sister because she has to come first in his life

Deictics

word specifying identity, spatial or temporal location from the perspective of a speaker or hearer in the context in which the communication occurs

Meek

• Chapter 1 (Ruptured) o Kaska tribal center attempts to revitalize the language o The people who speak it the most are those of the ancestors o How will the language be revitalized? What were they accomplishing? What could they accomplish? o Assimilation has been a focus on language (marriage, status and education) o Students of aboriginal culture have been sent to schools by the government, they strip their culture from them (clothes, hair, religion and language) replacing them with what the adults deemed appropriate o English was enforced (national unity) o Indians gained status as Canadian citizens, however lost their Indian status (marriage, enfranchisement) o Students were restricted from speaking their first language, if they were caught they were punished (scrubbed the floor with toothbrushes or tied to each others waist) o Yukon assimilation was forced on the Indigenous population because they believed they couldn't survive within the Canadian system any other way o Shamed by their traditional languages (stereotypes) o Heritage language even diminished in the house: parents didn't want kids to face scrutiny • Chapter 2 o Loss and revitalization are themes in indigenous communities o The loss is due to the discourse of language o Forced assimilation through institutionalized education o Dominant languages are being acquired at the home and endangered languages are being learned at school o The goal of language revitalization: to create new language speakers o an analysis of social practices, beliefs and contexts through which language and ideologies are formed is needed to understand a language shift o Michael Krauss: predicted that 4000 languages would disappear by the end of the twenty first century o Why should we care about the languages that are dying? o What are the complexities involved in saving endangered languages? o Successful revitalization requires: sociolinguistic practices, materials, support, teachers, resources o Kaska: mainly speak English-kaska at Watson Lake ♣ Domains have increased ♣ Text, radio, TV o Revitalization recognizes all generations of speakers ♣ Categorizing them through language ability ♣ A process of language socialization (a rebirth, renewed through the community and networks) ♣ 1) Socialization: cultural socialization through language use and (2) language development through everyday use ♣ environment, ideology and interactions of childhood affect this ♣ sex differences: girls encouraged to be generous and reciprocate, males encouraged to make refusals and demands (social context) o "duplex quality": the presupposed and entailed taken for granted and coded context of language use o "sociolinguistic disjuncture" (a separation or disconnection): can appear between ideas and practices, groups and across them: not only the discontinuity of language in mass cultures or its globalization, but the everyday inconsistencies that cause people to pause on pronunciation, word choice or educational technique ♣ alter practices of language development ♣ language is endangered not only by assimilation but an affect of practices, ideologies and disjuncture ♣ Holistic perspective

Monahan (Author)

• Discusses peasants • They exist in market economy • Never form the whole society • They are a part of a large society • Keep cities alive • They are the farmers (before commercial) • Always producing for more than their consumption (similar to maisin) Maisin: when they have more food than needed, they give it away (reprocity) Peasants part of a system of exchange they can not control Bottom of the hierarchy Kinship: don't depend on large scale people Families for themselves: Amoral Familism: your only commitment is to your family, you don't owe anything to anyone else They are over worked and compete with themselves Range of cooperation contracts

The Story of "Afeck": Telefomin

"Afeck": when the village was first built they didn't have to worry about planting anything, she was able to produce taro - she would whistle and wild animals would flock to her - her brother didn't understand how this was happening His presence scared away the animals He never found out how she got the animals, but because he scared them she never got the animals She ended up killing her brother and used his bones for a spirit house If bones are not in the spirit house they cannot communicate with the living

Gemeinschaft

"community"

Gesellschaft

"society"

Blum 1997 - Naming practices and the power of words in China

- Article examines use of kinship terms in china - Names are one-time labels for objects - Language acts are continuous with other sorts of actions - Ming = name; and refers to both proper and common names - Routine of being introduced involves three people (e.g. a parent introducing their child to their grandparent) - The middle person who introduces is zhongjianren. They are the intermediary who gives the instructions and initiates the exchange - In china, friends and patrilateral cousins call one another by sibling names, friends of the family are called aunt and uncle, older women are called godmother - Only by speaking kinship terms does the relationship emerge - Use of kinship terms is mandatory for the closest relationships, it is preferable for medium-distance ones, and is usable even with strangers - Kinship terms may be too intimate in some cases, a junior may use a proper title instead - Reciprocity in naming - A senior can use the junior's name, but the junior can only use the proper (kinship) term - It falls on the junior to name the relationship and assent to the hierarchy - Names are by nature hierarchical - Kinship term are inevitably hierarchical - Changing a name can change the relationship ● Nicknames - Small names that are reduplicated syllables from a child's personal name - Upper class man often have many nicknames e.g. pen names, courtesy names, studio names, style names - Parents and grandparents choose the child's name according to a given set of criteria - The name governs the child's fate in some ways - People are accustomed to being addressed and referred to by an assortment of names and they do not necessarily retain any of them as their "real" name, or as the one that they feel reflects their identity - Personal names play very little role in the actual exchanges of everyday life - Pronouns (he, she) are names in the sense that they "stand in for names" - Sometimes using a pronoun instead of their real name is sort of insulting - E.g. "she gave me a C on my paper" is kind of insulting to the professor who marked it - Pronouns convey lack of respect - Use of pronouns are neutral with respect to their hierarchy of the relationship - In china they avoid saying words that sound like "die" (or si, in chinese) - Words that name people also name and create relationships among speakers, hearers and persons named - Americans usually seek the most egalitarian forms of address (i.e. Professor Jones, can i call you Linda? - Chinese usually seek to be told about their status relative to one another through the help of a mutual acquaintance In china even when speaking with and of one's closest intimates, choices may be made about the term that embodies the proper relationship

People and Their Things

- Holiday feasts held by mayordomos, a man and a woman, usually husband and wife, who are in charge of organizing the feast and providing meals - Rely on a system of reciprocity → saa sa'a - Before couples hold their own fiesta, they go to other fiesta's and when their own fiesta approaches, the couple expects that what they have given will be returned in kind - This links households to many other households in a complex cycle of exchanges - People arrive at the fiesta as separate households, but through sharing food are transformed into one - Nuyootecos characterize themselves as 'people who eat the same tortilla" - Rotation of credit and debit è effective way to finance large lump-sum expenditures - Fiesta exchanges are used to maintain and transform relationships (e.g. putting a corpse's hair in the tortilla) - People definitely expect to be repaid - Story: Biamese couple refused to eat a feast given to him at the Donggo because either the food wasn't halal or because he didn't want to have to repay them back. - Giver seen as superior to the receiver - Social relation crucial between giver and receiver to determine the meaning of the gift - Some people can't reciprocate with a material good... they repay in obedience, loyalty, ect. - Society classified based on their productive relations: o Primitive, feudal, oriental, capitalist, socialist

Fernando Seeks a Wife: Sex and Blood

- In western society our values and expectations about marriage and family are built around notions of romantic love between a man and a woman, their formation of a nuclear household, jointly sharing all of life's joys, sorrows, and responsibilities - Marriage, family and household o In many cultures, romantic love plays a very small role, if any in marriage o Households lacking a compliment of adult male and female labourers is destined to fail o Brideprice is often used to compensate the bride's kin for their loss of her productive capacity and also to secure the husband's kin's rights over the children of that marriage § Frequently involve cash, but can also be "wealth items" (ex- estates) o Marriage is associated with transfers of wealth among parties involved § Legitimate the marriage § Acknowledge that a transfer of rights (in labour, in future children) has taken place o Brideservice is a transfer of labour from the male's group to the females o Dowry represents the woman's share of the inheritance children receive from their families o When a man wants to get married he is often dependent on senior members of his kin to provide the items needed to make payment § They are happy to help if the man has shown he is responsible and loyal § Bridewealth items are special items that money cant buy · Very valuable o Marriage does not require both partners be living, and doesn't require that partners be of opposite sex § In Africa sometimes warriors would marry young boys who would perform wifely duties, including those of sexual nature § In Benin, a woman would marry a much younger woman who was expected to have sex with other men to produce heirs o Polygyny § Man with multiple wives § Increases population growth o Polyandry § Woman has multiple husbands § Less common § Slows population growth o "Marriage is a transaction and resulting contract in which a person (male or female, corporate or individual, in person or by proxy) establishes a continuing claim to the right of sexual access to a woman, and in which the woman involved is eligible to bear children" - My milk, my blood: Kinship and Descent o All societies to some extent imagine the facts of sex differently and may use those imagined facts as much metaphorically as literally o Partible maternity and paternity § An individual can have more than one biological mother or father § When an individual is born by one woman and breastfed by another § Assumes children and parents are linked by their sharing of blood § "my milk, my blood" § In order to become pregnant a woman must have sex many times · Multiple fathers o A lineage is a group of people formed by their descent from a common known ancestor o Clans are groups of lineages o For patrilineal groups, decent is in terms of the male line o For matrilineal groups, descent is in terms of the female line

Tribe

- Larger groups (ties of descent) - More horticulture Capacity to preserve food

Cheifdom

- People divided based on social groups - Have irrigation technologies - Larger societies

State

- Urban and rural components - People want things so they can show they are unlike anyone else

the logic of segmentary lineage systems

I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger

The Great Divide

between oral cultures and literate cultures

Language Audio (???)

A Christian spirit meeting o A women possessed by the holy spirit o She spoke in a combination of language and tongue (a language she doesn't command, in a voice that is not her own) o Some of the messages are clear, others are not o She tells the tale of crucifixion o When she finished the villagers clapped their hands ♣ Changes and transitions ♣ When do we applaud? At the end of something, at the opening and closing EFERBESENCE: AUDIO, THE BUBBLING

Trobians: (Matrilineal Kinship System)

A man and his sister and his wife Every married man has a relationship with 2 adult women Importance of sister relationship: siblings always belong to the same group Children belong to her clan or linage regardless of gender A man does not belong to the same clan as his children, rather his sister's children (inheritance with go to them, titles, land etc & his children, will get it from their uncle, their mothers brother) They will not work unless the bro sis relationship is maintained Built of multiple class together Yams: go to sister's family 1) sister is always more important than your wife 2) Brittle Marriage: the marriage ties seem to be an obstacle (a source of interference) Divorce rate is high = spouses come and go, but siblings are forever Famous for baby theory: people are reincarnated, come back from the dead to join the living, the ancestors come back and inhabit a descendent

Referent

A person or thing to which a symbol refers to For example, in the sentence Mary saw me, the referent of the word Mary is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, while the referent of the word me is the person uttering the sentence.

Text

A stretch of written language as the product of identifiable authorial intention as fixed and stable

Gift tags

After purchase: price tag is snipped off, its wrapped and another tag is used (the name of the giver and receiver)

Anderson

Anderson: Nationalism is a modern phenomenon that coincide with print capitalism: mass printing, invention of the printing press

Blum

Awkwardness cannot be tolerated when forming relationships, many times the relationships are not equal, status is a factor, hierarchical relationships do not equate to family relationships: not everyone has the same footing, people try to avoid the use of pronouns (impersonal quality) Relationships are meant to be personalized, knowing who each other are is important

Difference Between address and reference

speakers use address terms in face to face interactions

Where does Anthropology come from?

Before Anthropology, there were anthropology like things 500BC Greek Historians (traveller's tales) Barbarians (describing people that were from different ways of life) Roman Historians (Celts and the Germans) (uncivilization) Are there positive ways in which people do things? Grotesque and different/alternative lifestyles discovered Keeping logs and journals began in the middle ages The enlightenment: Human evolution (people are like animals) Do we all come from the same ancestor and origin? It was hard to imagine people of different species All humans (capacity of learning and physical & cultural attributes) 19th Century: systematic global information, theories (the anthropologist collected and theorised information) Anthropology was on the cusp of a revolution when it was discovered that anthropologists could collect their own data

Tribes

Bigger Compact settlements Herding groups are larger than foraging hunting groups • Fishing, agriculture and hunting • Support larger densities • Organize larger because conflict is frequent • Routine basis • Develop teams • Villages: rainforest people • Value Warfare • Young men are common so they can protect their village • Female infanticide • Often they fight over women • Build a large village o Linages pair with other linages o Exchange sisters o You can't have incest o If it works, both linages are symmetrical o If not, one of the linages gets larger (one side may have too many women, and then one has too few) The short handed side tries to recruit outsiders o The partnership either ends as a result, or they get rid of the excess people o Cost: minimal number of people to reproduce o Conflict: they are always breaking up so they argue and are left alone PEASENTS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HIERARCHY, THERE IS NO HIERARCY IN A TRIBAL SOCIETY

Kula and Potlatch

Both involve gift giving and reprocity Kula: was a trobiand expedition Potlach: A communical gift giving ceremony both involve economic exchange

Malinofsky

British Anthropology (economy, gender, sexual studies, marriages) o Gave radio lectures o Life in the present in small scale communities o Talked about intersecting events (cultural processes in operation) o Culture was alive and in the present o Tried to look at culture as a closed system (trobian culture) = something that made sense in its own terms based on their own ideas and concepts o Missionaries were active before he arrived to the trobian islands o Self contained, closed society closed culture (centralized version of how things worked) o Networks and social life Psychological interest: emotions

Barker and the Maisin

Clans are Exogamous You can't marry someone from the same clan Marriages Gifts are given = they follow the same connection that a marriage would Reciprocity=social glue, material objects = uses are practical, but that's not what its about, its about the relationships (links and ties between social interactions are built, by reciprocity)

Eskimo System (similar to inuit) Kinship System

Clusters of people are mobile Chance of seeing relatives and friends 1) inherit names (more than one) 2) people share names, not only decedents, but people who are two to three walks away - if they have the same name they are family, relatives look after each other (namesakes)

Kinship Patterns

Common Logic: the links of one set of clans is dominant over another If we are trying to see how this works - what kind of clan do they have? How does it work?

Lewis Henry Morgan

Common kinship and Common territory - The basis for collective identity

Linguistic characteristics of literacy

Communication tends to be non-transient and context-independent • Emphasis on communication of information apart from immediate context (exceptions: warning signs, no parking signs, etc.) Relation between author and audience Communication does not depend on co- presence - can be widely separated in space Is asynchronous - can be widely separated in time Absence of phatic communication Author may be invisible in the text: "it is hereby declared that all unauthorized levity is banned" Writing is not learned as a result of normal language acquisition, and usually requires specialized training or schooling by experts (scribes, teachers)

Cultural Relativism

Cultures and their pre-sets (conventions depend on what culture you're in) = the way of doing something is relative to which context of culture you're in o Do not judge other cultures based on our own (links to religion and belief systems) the principle that an individual person's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. It was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas

Denotation vs Connotation

Denotation: the literal meaning Connotation: what that object symbolizes, lots of words have different connotations Ex) Rose: the material object of a rose What does it connote? Love, Romance, passion: the material object becomes a symbol (they can be positive or negative)

Boaz Students (American Culture Anthropology)

Different ways to understand culture ♣ Culture as a tool (evolution) - we are not enough as biological entities (techniques) (learned and invented ways of learning the environment) ♣ A technology: putting together a team, military base ♣ Mental Map, Lens: culture presents a picture of what the world is, how to interpret things ♣ As rules; "software for behaviour": language, colour, understanding direction, a series of instructions on how to operate ♣ Collective Style: cultures have a certain stereotype (benedict: each culture had a personality) ♣ As tradition and Identity: heritage, persistence over time (it is a legacy)

Manning (Starbucks Reading)

Discusses the order and reference vocabulary customers are expected to use when ordering a starbucks

Properties of Language

Displacement- language allows you to talk about things that aren't present at the time Negation- the ability to take a statement and turning into a negative (adding no, not...), you can take things and invert it.

Primitive Society (MAINE)

Economic ties were subject—there could be negotiations between parties (employee vs employer)

Money and Markets

Economic value of a transaction is subordinate to the social interaction created by the transaction Money and markets are the foundation of many economies Reducing values to a common convertible standard increases exchanges in speed and volume No intrinsic volume in relation to worth - transition of exchange to abstraction is complete Disembedding Mechanisms: turning value into symbolic tokens produced and managed by expert systems, money erases local production and exchange Symbolizes strength and stability of the state that issued it ♣ Coupons, gift cards, food stamps ♣ Money economy brings medicine and consumer goods, education opportunities ♣ But the risk: too much money invested in cash crops, worse nutritional options

Max Weber

Enchantment (traditional) - People relate to the world around them as participants in an animated whole - positions and relations are determined by social status o Rationality (modernity) - People see themselves as separate from the natural world - Institutions are organized for efficiency

Pastoralists

Everyone has the same geneology Conflict is frequent (almost always resolved peacefully) • Many of the ancestors are male • Competing with other herding groups • The greater the distance relations, the more people will be involved in conflict • The closer the people, the less people involved • Conflicts within linages can be balanced • Nuer can bump into the Dinka • Have different kinship • Might rip each other off on some of their cattle • Dinka almost always lose when they face each other • The organization comes together (The Massing Effect)

Boas

Father of Anthropology (scholarly exchange, museum anthropology, racism, treatment of First Nation) o Wrote policy letters o Tried to serve as a political conscious o Important defender of the aboriginals (tried to defend their cultures and land rights) o Was not careful at chronicaling events o Concerned with culture not society o Culture was a mental phenomenon (interviewed many people) o Constructed memory culture (what do people remember about the "old days" (attempt to save the data) o Culture was in the memory (template for how to do things) o Psychological interest: impulses shaped by culture o Learned and shared = culture o Culture is unconscious (it is habitual - the way we move, adjusting to how things work, EX: stairs (right and left, Australia and New Zealand are different) How do people work? o Cultural Change ♣ Cultural Borrowing: between different aboriginal people ♣ Innovations: never an isolated world ♣ Cultural Relativism: Cultures and their pre-sets (conventions depend on what culture you're in) = the way of doing something is relative to which context of culture youre in ♣ Values of cultures should be respected ♣ Shackles of Tradition: you can't move you are bound ♣ Traditions can be binding ♣ The shackles of western tradition (anthropology had a job to make people see a variety) o Anthropology was critical (political reformation) o Trained and taught before the second world War

What could be thought of as a difficulty with the concept of cultural relativism? Give an example.

Gender and feminism, :Female Genital Mutilation in Africa and how since it's not our culture, it's not our 'business'

Reciprocity consists of three obligations (MAUSS)

Give Receive Repay

People and Their Gods

Human beings are dependent on God's good will, which in turn may depend on their behaviour - Religion and society are both models of each other and models for each other - Anthropological approaches to religion have tended to be concerned with the everyday practice of religion and how it connects to the rest of social life - Emilie Durkheim ○ Suggested that it was in religion that one finds basic social categorizations and that is was through cosmology that people represented their society to themselves ○ Causal connection between society and religion ○ "Religious rituals are instances of society worshiping itself while at the same time creating intense personal communal experiences that confirm social solidarity" - Religion mobilizes groups and individuals to get through crises and other difficult events - Arnold Van Gennep ○ We think of society as a large house with many rooms, and each room symbolizing a different social status ○ Rites of passage move people from one room to the next - All societies have some ritual means for helping people through transitions in life Belief systems - Religion or belief help us deal with problems of human life that are significant, persistent and intolerable o This is achieved by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune - Many societies believe in magic and witchcraft, which should not be viewed as irrational or superstitious Religious Movements - In times where religion or belief held by a society cannot explain what is happening, an intense religious movement may arise, led by a prophet, who seeks to provide an explanation or solution o Millenary movements Charisma and Routinization - The key to long term success of a movement is a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement o Routinization Religious Belief and Economic Behaviour - Ideology and beliefs are not simply a side effect of economic processes

Consumption

Humans need basic essentials Based on consumption - is the person wealthy and important? Values differ from culture to culture

Primitive classification

Image metaphor (cultural blindness) (Check image)

Chiefdom

Inequality Gender and age Hierarchy Nobody is equal to anyone else Elder and youger people: it was more important to know someones rank rather than the gender Chief was the highest ranked (Polynesian Chiefdom) • Greatest threat to the chief: the next in line • Chiefs became disengaging (Hawaiian) • Class system developed = states (Hawaiian)

Rationalization (WEBER)

Institutions are organized around the tasks the preform rather than the social relations contained within them "community" (Gemeinschaft) "society" (Gesellschaft) Present-day versions of this process are termed "disembedding"

Taxonomy of the animal kingdom

Inventing different words, making fun

Primitive Society (WEBER)

It is a person's ability to perform tasks that counts more than other aspects of his or her social self (WEBER) *procedure itself, not the culture or tradition *We do not do things this way because we have always done things this way; We do things this way because it is the best way to get the job done.

Kinship

It is not genetics People use ideas and concepts from human biology Connections to people- how people form relationships and what they owe • Everybody has a kinship system • Wide variation between systems Examples: Mother, Father, Brother, Son Couple: people, relationship that may be intimate Pair: people who are not intimate? Linking networks together ♣ The variation is pattered; it is not random A framework of organization Each kinship has its own properties • Our system focuses on individuals and links • Often our families are small • We have large scale institutions (university) • Our state is impersonal, less kinship relationships Kinships focus on small groups You count relatives on your mother's side and dads side Often brother and sister links are important Nuclear families

Language in reference

It is possible to refer to something in language that is true independently of the speaker's position: "Santa Clause eats cookies" There is no here nor there, or now/then

Production

Karl Marx: classified society based on economics and means of production What environment they had What technologies were of use Foraging: small, subsistence technologies, hunting and gathering, range over large territory Tribes: horticulture, can store and preserve food Chiefdom: people are divided and ranked into social groups State: urban and rural components, division of labour, developed agricultural technology

Telefolmin Myths

Key Elements: characters named or unnamed? Locations named or unnamed? Witnessed by the narrator? Is it a relative? Knowing through hearing and seeing The importance of what one hears and what one sees: Direct report of own experience Tangible signs ie) cult relics, marks on landscapes: place-names and the anchoring of stories in an experienced present (mountain of the dead: new guinea) The production of events as outcomes of a story (performative aspect)

Armchair Anthropology

Kula and Potlach have a lot in common Marcel Mauss (the gift) They both involve gifting Economic transactions (loans) What you give, bounds you to the recipient (return the favour) The scale of gifts expands over time (challenging someone, can you match this? Mauss- despite differences, gift giving is a way of establishing links and gaining prestige • Reciprocity (give and take) o Give o Receive o Repay Important to receive gifts In modern day: we buy things from random strangers (give money) and we don't leave anything owing - end of the relationship In societies they are more dependent on the relationships Gifts and Commodities Maiasin: Tapas (tree bark) - utilities: sit and wear it, give it away when something important happens, something they manufacture for sale (hybrid object) Elaborate and impressive

Kula (Papa Nuguena trade)

Kula: those who return with items are famous Reciprocity (give and take, some places there is no legal code, all you need is a responsive community. This is the key to understanding social life) and conduct Yams (male farming, half of crop has to go to his sister) and economic rationality

Language

Language is a system of signs (cultural value) •Unique to humans, isn't a human group that doesn't have language •Language is not any communication system o(call system for animals- system of communication with meaning, one word or sound that conveys the meaning) •Any infant can learn any language •Languages are only learned from other humans •What was the original human language? *Egyptian Ferro- took two infants and had them separated from others, no one could speak around them. They never learned to speak any language. *James 4th of Scotland- sent kids to live with mute woman, no one could speak in front of them. After a number of years, the kids spoke Hebrew (much skepticism)

Characteristics of Languages

Language is systematic- series of pieces and how they are put together Conventional- there is no God-given way it has to sound Multiple layers Set of pieces, set of rules for combining them= numerous ways in combining them Open-ended system Language is more than all the words in the dictionary Learnable- systematic, & flexible- once you get the hang of the rules you can apply them in multiple ways Crucial in human evolution- contributed to the development of abilities.

Language Acquisition

Language learning by infants before they even understand what language is Infants is construct their own theory of what language is Begin with babbling, which diverges toward native language. Reshapes their sound system before they understand language. The shape of the sounds they are producing mimic the sounds of those around them Understand turn- taking, the rules of conversation, start learning rules, mimicking 18 months 2 years- start constructing two word sentences Few months later- End word sentences, add words onto the end of the two word sentences Mistakes they make by creating their own words- not just imitation Repeating what someone says isn't learning language

Linguistic Anthropology

Languages have always been in the process of being built, constantly changing. Relationship between ancestral and new languages (like an ancestral tree- greater diversity with the branches) -How is it that they change? How can they change? -Language is inherently created -You need language, it is invisible because you are never without it -Suggests linguistic relativity: not just a tool for communication but a tool for thinking -Habitual thought, operating normally, where language becomes powerful -More than one way to think about things -How can you get outside the window to learn new languages? •Language structured by sound system (building blocks, recognizable shapes)- need to be complex •Rules for combining words, to generate meaning •How you string words together in phrases, paragraphs, conversations

Limiting Conflict

Leopard Skin Chief: not a member of any linages, have power to curse the soil and the earth. Commit violence in their presence, causes a halt to the action - forced to talk things out Marriage: you can't marry anyone in your lineage (forced into inter-marriage) Linage: an organization of people who are linked by a common ancestor o It is important to trace the specific links between ancestors o You must keep track with the name so you know who is going to "side with you" o Specific individuals are ancestors • Initiation

Gumperz & Levinson

Linguistic relativity: language through culture affects the way we think especially through our experienced world

Max Weber (charismatic leadership)

Making religion a personal entitlement (individuality as a self contained being)

Time and the virtues of being an Enemy Alien (Malinofsky)

Malnofsky was in the field for a long time 1914: start of the first World War (he was polish) : he was an enemy alien Technically he should have been in an internment camp He stayed on islands where he "couldn't do any harm" He had to stay put, he could not explore or go on other voyages talking, watching, doing Participant observation "Off the Veranda" (take part) "Vacuum-cleaner ethnography" and functionalism

Off the Verandah (Film)

Malosofsky marked a revolutionary period in Anthropology 1900- anthropology began to form as an academic discipline o many British philosophers did not do any fieldwork o Missionaries wrote about religion o Gardeners wrote about economic o Missionaries wrote about maintaining peace and political organization o The reports were all fragmentary (incomplete, some didn't match with others = no holism) o Missionaries focused on communication = essential to converting people

Trobiand Island Notes (FILM)

Manofski arrived in England (1910) Anthropologist/Teacher New Guinea - first fieldwork Visiting the places they were studying was revolutionary •"From the armchair to the Veranda" •To begin, he was not living their way of life- he realized he had to do this in order to do his best work •It was difficult because he didn't speak their language •To start fresh, he moved to the eastern tip of New Guinea studying the Trobiands •He began to establish himself in the village life (housework and labour), spent time with children •Villagers sold him food and tools •Food, Shelter and Reproduction=functionalism •The functional methods: biological meaning, economic exchange •He wanted to observe the present. What is here and now? What are the biological, symbolic and economic aspects? •What does it do in society? •Magic (important to Trobiand Life) •Magic is the unknown, stirs mysterious possibilities •Events that provoked magical behavior could be anything (love, food production) •Why did they need magic for such fundamental tasks they were already expert at? Magic is seen necessary because it is a frame of mind, that eventually leads to the positivity and the best things can be o"Fertilizer is our magic" oScience: research, validity, results oMagic: Hope cannot fail oKnowledge: ideas of logic •Manophski was an able linguist, he spent so much time close to the locals he could speak to them in their language •Participant Observation: Intense record keeping, learning their language and way of life of the community (traditions and rituals) •"Kula": To go, elaborate and dangerous expeditions: the goal was to return with valuables, generally found in between circuited islands (red and white shells) = rules and conventions for exchange oKula provides an opportunity for contact with neighbors of other cultures, the whole community takes part, increasing trade oHow many arm shells are there? Are there any famous ones? oAfter the expedition the goods are carried to the chief's village o If the arm shells are kept by the locals and not given to the chief, they are poisoned by the chief because he has been challenged. oKula brings people together (an alliance) oIf you found a necklace or bracelet that was famous, it would make you famous •Mourning Rituals: Beads, shaved heads and ashes Video 2: Franz Boas (Kwakiutz BC Coast) Potlach •The Shackles of Tradition •Boaz arrived in the Canadian Arctic oCame to map the coastline oStudy culture (Arctic and Eskimos) oWore caribou and used dogs o3000 miles on foot and sled owork was to change the way we think about culture and ourselves oborn in 1858 ofather was a business man ostudied geography at university o1881 - decided to study the Eskimos and their environment (language, customs and habit) oAnthropology was beginning to take form in Boaz's time oMap uncharted areas in Baffin Island oOnly way to the Artic was by boat (Gemonia?) oTrip is remembered for the observation of Eskimo life (ambitions and hardships of life, travel and relationships) oEnthographic work and mapping oEskimos had detailed knowledge of the landscape and Geography (they have a clear conception of directions and distance of travel) oMaps are drawn in snow oLife of eskimo was determined by their environment - this couldn't be the case oHunting was difficult (use of spear) rarely catch anything (seals) oSkins and lamps decorated the igloos oEskimos dependent on their environment oHe realized that the environment didn't determine culture •Inuit oMost of the inuit lived in towns oThey believed that the person must serve to promote truth, and kindness cultivates in the heart •Boaz struggled to find an academic job in Germany, so he moved to America •1893: Boaz arranged for eskimos to show their culture at an exhibit •North West American Inuits were examined: they wanted to preserve their material culture •Boaz hoped that the differences between the tribes as he moved from area to area would show more how the culture was shaped • PART 2 oBoaz found the Hunt Family (George Hunt) oGeorge was close with Boaz as an interpreter and resource person (together they documented a disinigrating Indian culture) oHe later organized a museum display (they were not only a collection, but healthy entertainment and instruction) oHe taught and was responsible for documenting and collecting hand made objects of the various tribes oHow was it made? What was it made for? oBoaz wanted to place the objects into original Indian context oEagle helmet (closed mask when someone died) oTiles could be bought or sold (copper) = token of exchange oThe potlatch: the indian had no system of writing so this was a social agreement of transactions (blankets and copper) ♣is a gift-giving feast practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States, among whom it is traditionally the primary economic system. ♣Totem poles: keep traditions alive, they record culture oDo your racial genes determine your potential? oare certain races that are superior? oAffected both black and white people oBoaz lobbied for many black people oBlacks were not inferior oBoaz introduced a new way of looking at race - the first distinguished white social science oStrived for a more established fieldwork with a variety of races oRace was an awkward category = it is undefined; one is not more stable than another oBy the time of his death he was regarded as the founding Father of Anthropology

The Massing Effect (Pastoralists)

Massing effect is what happens when members / groups band together to oppose stronger threatening groups or take advantage of weaker groups - in both cases, seen as farther away kinship wise The massing effect tends to be useful in times of economic shortage. Remember my cattle example? If there's scarce resources, then massing together with your ally not only protects you and your herd from opposing groups but allows you both to monopolize the limited resource. Then when resources are plentiful and larger threats are minimal, groups will split apart

Gifts

Material goods are personified Ex) Pigs have personal names, they are part of the family, bears the traces of the giver

Sociocultural Anthropology

Material is considered an extension of who you are, they are every day objects All kinds of sources and input, instead of trying to get a lot of information out of one thing, we look at many Almost all based on field work

Barker: Gifts and Commodities

Modernization: a movement from a traditional past based upon local ties to the land and to kin towards a modern society integrated into national and global financial, political and social systems Economic system based on direct reciprocal exchange of goods and labour, money produces both types of commodities Hard to accumulate wealth (egalitarian) Inequality does exist in society (men dominate women) Money disrupts the obligation to return a gift: can be stored away to accumulate Evolution: Reprocity to transaction mediated by money, self reliance to dependence on wages and employers, egalitarian to stratified Many commodities have made life easier and predictable Maisan believe they have enough money for what they need The more they become accustomed to things, the more they view things as necessities rather than supplements Want to make more money When masiain relatives stay with each other they must bring a massive accumulation of gifts - that is the expectation of thanks - reciprocity - hostile environment if this is not done Money and commodities that come into villages get consumed Once they are shared, they cease acting as elements of a market economy and take on the function of gift and reprocity Inequalities are leveled out through village exchange networks A great deal of money and goods have entered exchange networks that originally carried locally produced items Villagers are used to using money They continue to share food and support others They need money and there is no turning back

Voltaire

No society? But a family A family is natural Societies are created Individuals, families = society

Holistic Approach

Observing things as a whole, how certain aspects are interconnected, building a frame to understand a whole

Orality and common law

Oral systems of law tend to be based on the same principles as common law, and this means they depend on the memory of specific contexts that are then sifted for applicability. Crucially, everything does depend on memory - and on forgetting. Issues which are no longer relevant to present concerns drop out of memory, with the effect that the "law" is always changing according to circumstances Such systems are, then, more flexible than statute law or law by legislation - their validity depends rather on consensus Now can you understand why it might make sense not to have a departmental constitution?

Lucien Levy-Bruhl

Pre- Logical Thinking - The thought of primitive people as mystical and associative o Logical Thinking - Modern thought is dominated by logic and the scientific method

Trobianders and Babies

Pregnancy is never an accident Coming back from the Kula expedition and your wife being pregnant would suggest in our culture that she was unfaithful with out her husband, but because of the spirits that is why she is pregnant o Pigs: they castrated their pigs - why are females still getting pregnant? • Yams: something they personify, its not just an object o It is one of their major crops o They put a lot of work into it o Yams have spirits

The Politics of Exchange

Reciprocal transactions are not always symmetrical Giver is seen as superior to the receiver Receiving a gift can be hostile if it is not seen as an exchange Exchanges can be motivated by something other than bonds of communal solidarity Potlatch ceremony: gifts will rival each others - possibly not be able to repay - represent social and economic power "Warring with Property" : when people received an influx of material goods competitive exchanges occurred, even from people who were unable to do so before When people can not reciprocate with material goods it is usually repaid with obedience or loyalty Non-Market transactions can be equally as significant as market ones in the economy

Barker (Religion)

Religion is always in flux Tracks maisian historically and through fieldwork Maisian society as been changing Christianity is well established among them Everyone understands it is from the outside, but they regard it like their own Sorcery: "The Dark Side" of Egalitarianism (everyone should be at the same level) Someone could get sick because someone has a grudge Others have power over us, our emotions are important In a small community where everyone counts on each other, when people die, this sorcery could be the cause Sorcery accusations begin with gossip • Who did this person have trouble with? • Who would wish them ill? • You are looking for the people who are the source of trouble • A breakdown in relationships (reprocity failures, adultery) Look for changes in social reality before anything else

Emilie Durkhiem

Religions are shared through communication and most importantly participation and action Action was a platform of criticism of his contemporaries To some, religion is a fantasy a mistaken attempt to how explain how the world works (Tyler) If its true that religion is based on illusion, how is it that it is everywhere? If the whole experience of humanity may be a big a mistake Elaborate institutions built on fantasy? Wouldn't provide you with how stuff works We should assume that religion is reality Something that emerged out of doing activities together Religious events were not going on all the time Ritual: Structure of repetitive events that people collaborate on in various ways Participation in rituals changes the state of a person Somehow participating makes people healthy, yet the effects are not a result of material evidence The most primitive (hunter and gatherers) has patterns of movement that fluctuate with the seasons • A rhythm of movement The Secret and the Profane (the ordinary and the normal vs the special, the different form in way people conduct themselves and do things) • Example: walking and dancing, talking and singing Someone can do something more than what they would do - where does this come from: the activity 1) Purely themselves 2) the shared things of the people around them (the social) Religion is about empowering the people Look at the behaviour of the people: don't ignore it, you have to understand what people do A lot of the time symbols and material objects try to form abstract concepts

Telefolmin

Reminding/ remembering talk ("Weng do") Indirect talk: says one thing by talking about or pointing to another thing Avoid confrontation Appraisable denial ("no I wasn't talking about that") Cloaked warning signs or hints If a direct warming is presented: the attack may come sooner and start problems Signals Some of the warnings have to do with predation (an attack is disguised by an predator-prey relationship with animals) Talking about dreams could be just that, or trying to convey a message If a man meets a woman in his dream: can mean: there is game to be caught today My dead brother visited me last night: can mean: beware, pay attention, something might happen Children They never strike their kids They do not monitor them Initiations: they are secluded, they are dry and uncomfortable, they sometimes act out (skits) People will act out things (guessing game) Boys are targeted in the house (who is this story about? Who did this?) "Stalking with Stories"

Sinane and Arapesh initiations

Sinea: boys are bled and made to vomit, fed food grown on clan land, getting rid of their mothers blood (becoming an individual) Arapesh: initiators are bled, boys are given blood to drink (grown by initiators becoming blood brothers) WHY? the vomit is seen as a detoxification from the mother, server ties with the money, feeding the clan the purist blood from the male clan to nourish

Telefomin initiation

Six stages ♣ Ages 7-8-early 30's ♣ They have to take place at the telefolmin ♣ Bonds the males ♣ Nuer effect: enemies who do not have initiation practises, so they don't have the bond, they don't have any back up - so if someone from the telefolmin gets hurt or dies they have everyone from the initiation there to raid (raiding party) ♣ Division of labour (Peace chiefs and war chiefs) ♣ Initiation has nothing to do with kinship • Fathers can never be involved in their sons initiation • Initiation Fathers and Mothers (fathers are the fighters, the ones who are teaching them the law, the mothers shelter them and give them food) • Sleep in the men's house, less time in the nuclear home • the male clan members look after them • they have a wider set of loyalty ties o Built on the same spot (a reference spot) o "Afek" founded the first house and initiation system o Where do babies come from: much similar to ours ♣ Secretions from male and female ♣ Create a fetus ♣ Spirit (personality) ♣ Women: why do they stop menstruating during pregnant? The menstrual blood makes the bones

Foraging Community

Small, flexible monadic groups - Hunting and gathering wild foods

Money and Markets

Social relationship created by transaction - E.g. Trobriand islanders engaged in an elaborate 'ring' of exchanges è 'kula ring' - Each exchange and object acquired a unique life story - Reducing values to a common, standardized, convertible standard immensely increases the efficiency of exchanges both in speed and volume → paper money - Anthony Giddens calls money 'disembedding mechanisms' - Money erases local particularities of production and exchange

Genre

Social sanctioned communication event Related to text type and language choice Influences the definition of culture Learning discourse, defining society and meaning: looking at names it gives for genres Invention of the printing press radically changed writing and language 2 ways of looking at language: 1) a fixed and stable product (text) 2) a process between a text and the reader (a discourse) Through the education system and institutions *what is socially acceptable?

Telefolmin Talk & Stories

Some words are used for insults and altercations When telefomin fight, they fight to kill (this is a serious matter) Well versed in deception: they expect that people do not always mean what they say

Kramsch Chapter 7

Texts 23, 24 Current Issues - The notion that our sense of social reality may be but a construction of language or "language game" is disturbing - hot topic of our time - The politics of recognition: the political debates surrounding the right of minorities to be legitimately recognized and accepted as members of a culture that is different from the dominant culture. Who is a Native Speaker? - Linguists have relied on native speakers natural intuitions of grammatical accuracy and their sense of what is proper language to use to establish a norm against which the performance of non-native speakers is measured. - They not only embody the "authentic" use of the language but as representing its original cultural context as well - Ex: turkish children bearing a turkish surname, being born, raised, and educated in Germany may have some difficulty being perceived as native speakers of Germany when applying for a language teaching job abroad - Therefore, the native speaker is a monolingual, monocultural abstraction - he/she who takes on only their standardized native tongue and lives by one standardized culture Cultural Authenticity - The main discussion surrounding native speakers is 2 concepts: authenticity and appropriateness - 2 factors are putting the notion of authenticity and appropriateness in language learning into question: - 1) diversity of authenticities within one national society - depending on contextual variables like age, social status, gender, and race. What is authentic in one, may be inauthentic in the other - 2) the undesirability of imposing on learners a concept of authenticity that might devalue their own authentic selves as learners. - Cultural appropriateness may need to be replaced by the concept of appropriation - learners make a foreign language and culture their own by adopting and adapting to their own needs and interests - Multicultural communication, intercultural, cross-cultural : the ability to acquire another person's language and understand someone else's culture while retaining one's own is one aspect of a general ability to mediate between cultures and several languages Cross cultural, intercultural, multicultural - Cross cultural or intercultural refers to the meeting of two cultures or two languages across the political boundaries of nation states. - Predicted on the equivalence of one nation- one culture-one language - The term intercultural may also refer to; communication between people from different ethnic, social, and gendered cultures within the boundaries of the same national language. - Used to refer to the existing opposites within society may it be homosexuals, heterosexuals, between men and women..etc. - The term multicultural is used in 2 ways - 1) Societal sense: indicates the coexistence of people from many different backgrounds and ethnicities - 2) Individual sense: characterises persons who belong to various discourse communities and who have linguistic resources and social strategies to affiliate and identify with many different cultures and ways of using language. The politics of Recognition - Recognition, tolerance, acceptance, empathy from all cultures - As individuals they deserve respect and human rights protection given to all members within the rights of a democratic society but as members of a cultural group they deserve to be given special rights and recognition - The struggle of recognition is expressed as "we are equal but different" seems to be based on the assumption of equal worth of working towards a common goal and ideal. But these are different in various contexts of ruling power and legislation - Large scale migration across the world has been faced with multicultural issues - Communicative practises reflect institutionalized networks of relationships defined by the family, the school, the workplace, the church, each with its own power hierarchy with expected roles and statuses, its characteristic values and beliefs, attitudes and ideologies. - The plurality and multiplicity of cultural identities within one individual might be violently rejected by people from a different intellectual tradition for whom categories of identity are much more stable consensual affairs. Text 23: current issues: braj, b kachru "The alchemy of english, social and functional power of non-native varieties" - English has a "alien" power base is less of an issue more of its englishness and americanness in a cultural sense - The new nativized (non native) varieties have acquired an ontological status and developed localized norms and standards - The "monomodal" approach for english in the world context is neither applicable nor realistic Text 24: Charles taylor - multiculturalism - The politics of equal dignity - what is established is meant to be universally the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities- with the politics of difference, what were are asked is to recognize the unique identity of this individual group, their distinctness from everyone else. - Finding the midway point between cultures and equal worth - The presumption of equal worth: herder had a view of divine providence - which all this variation of culture was not a mere accident but was meant to bring about a greater harmony - We need a willingness to be open to comparative cultural study of the kind that must displace our horizons in the resulting fusions.

Ethnographic Revolution

The ability to be surprised is a precondition for good ethnography

Literacy and Identity

The administration of the machinery of government in widely understood vernaculars (local languages) that quickly became official languages The emergence of national literatures in these languages The emergence of mass print media-primarily newspapers-read by widely separated members of the public who come to share common views on matters of concern Imagined communities: people who do not know each other, but believe they have something in common (generally this is language) The print revolution gave rise to a nationalistic view Your identity became how you were a member of a state Literacy is more than a task, but a source of empowerment The higher the birth rate the lower the literacy rate The higher the literacy rate the lower the birth rate

Syllogisms

The farmers responded to an abstract (but unrealistic) question by: • Inserting contextual information based on their own experience And • Treating the question as real, rather than hypothetical (or "pretend")

Literacy, Identity, and Nationalism

The historian Benedict Anderson argued that nationalism is a modern phenomenon that coincides with what he calls "print capitalism" - the rise of widespread literacy in conjunction with the invention of the printing press. This development gave rise to three related elements that he found crucial • The administration of the machinery of government in widely understood vernaculars (local languages) that quickly became official languages • The emergence of national literatures in these languages • The emergence of mass print media - primarily newspapers - read by widely separated members of the public who came to share common views on matters of concern

Interpretation Requires Context

The words themselves are not confusing, it is the context that determines the relationship Understanding messages is not just the text, it is the text plus context Alerting people to pay attention: to who? Where? What happened before, what happened after?" Telefolmin believe the world is not transparent the way it is presented to you ♣ How to see, how to understand ♣ Lies are told during initiations (learn to distinguish what you see and what you hear)

in comparison to small scale societies what is true about complex societies with formal institutions

There is a shrinkage of the role of kinship

Naming objects and things

There is no inherent connection between the sound and the thing

why is it hard to accumulate wealth in a maisan society?

They are on a reciprocal cycle and debt is more likely to accumulate because of this

Telefolmin

They do not have clans Structure of the marriage system ♣ Inner bond between male and female ♣ Brother and sister pair marries brother and sister pair This is an ideal house composition 2 nuclear families duel alliance system Village endogamy: ♣ You can't marry someone from another clan ♣ You can't marry a first cousin, but you can marry a second ♣ This is good for building a tight nit group of people ♣ A weakness: you do not build village relations and connections o Everyone speaks the same language o Centralized initiation

Boas and Malinowski

Trained people Public intellectuals: they addressed the public about anthropological issues

Linguistic characteristics of orality

Transient and context-dependent: takes place in the here and now, and is then gone People-centered: involves phatic communication (elements of speech that serve to underscore or reinforce speaker- listener relation, eh?) Redundant or copious: repetition, lots of restatement Loosely structured: meanders, backtracks, goes off on tangents and (sometimes) returns

Australian Aboriginals (Kinship Example)

Travel on foot Form groups (marriage classes) Nuclear foraging families Ceremonies and rituals: each group is left to look after a natural species Rules that forbid them to eat the species You need to full set of people to complete the ritual Marriage classes: members must marry others of certain classes 2, 4 and 8 section systems to make society reproduce you need your group at at least 7 other groups to be together (larger connectivity) if you don't participate you do not marry

Vinik

Vinik→ 'individual', 'people of my nation' Personhood is something that is the property of collectives - E.g. Duo Donggo regards rice (food crop) as a sentient person

MEEK (2)

Wasn't about language of Kaska, it was an ethnographic project • Is the language revitalization of the Kaska a success? No o Various indicators that suggest that Kaska is treated like a tradition o Limited to experts (the elders), they are taught to respect them and not speak in their presence- this is not effective when learning a language, it only enhances their authority o The aim of Language revitalization is to increase the amount of speakers o The focus has to be on the learners: critical about its use in the classroom ♣ Kaska is taught as a subject and then ends, it does not extend, like an emersion experience ♣ As a special occasion language it can survive, even if the language is preserved though, it is not used as the common language ♣ Language to the language learners ♣ It is not the language of the highest concern, but the people ♣ Disconnects: Institutional context, historical, social context • The fit or lack of in two concepts • In the community (non-fluent speakers and speakers, generation) o Youth and elders • Target population: the ones who are not good at speaking Kaska, are not the ones in the schools ages 16-35 • Institutions are separate from every day life o "the university world" : institutions are separated from the general flow of life o the school experience may be an obstacle o separating speakers and non-speakers • MAP OF DISJUNCTION o 1) speakers and non speakers ♣ elders and youth ♣ what defines an elder? Someone who is retired? ♣ Program sits between the community and the government (who instituted the program) o 2) Experts ♣ know how to document languages and writing systems ♣ authentication and assessment (is the language in danger) • Hyperbolic evaluation: an exaggeration of value • Language Revitalization is a success when speakers are increased • "Folkloristic" the traditional beliefs, legends, customs, etc., of a people; lore of a people. • Culture: dance, tradition, every day basis, how you live and conduct your life • "Custom": everyday practices, activities, vary from culture to culture

Ethnocentric vs Relativism

We can find patterns of how people live and with our families we are reciprocal with our goods.

Historical Approach

We should treat religion as a matter of belief What is the difference between belief and knowledge? ♣ Knowledge is more concrete ♣ Belief is not the same ♣ Religion depends on the contents of one's heart, mind and soul (a mental disposition) ♣ Protestants and Catholics

Law

What looks like a fair outcome? (Consensus) Memory of specific context is important and forgetting Oral systems of law tend to be based on the same principals of common law Issued which there are no longer relevant to present concerns drop out of memory and the effect is that the law is always changing due to circumstances

Money differs from valuables common in gift economies and can be exchanged for a wide range of goods and uses. Why?

When a money transaction occurs and something is purchased reprocity ends, there is no tie or relationship needed to repay the debt. The material product exists solely on its own, without having to worry about repayment

Magic and Risk

When people lived in caves, spirits ruled the world Religion developed: it was god who was responsible for the world The Enlightenment: Science, physics Human History= progress of reasoning Evolutionary Sequence Exam Magic? (gets the best grade) Yam Magic? (grows the biggest and most yams) The more anxiety the more magic they will have Magic in a particular area states what people are worried about Who and How? Tracked through time Customs and Beliefs: culture is a way of life in motion (Malonowfsky) ♣ Language (kept a diary) ♣ Diary: tracking events in real time

Context of Situation

Why they said what they said and how they said it

Bonahm: (Telefomin)

Worn as decorations Object is part of the person Used in transactions Given to people who are mourning - they can be given away at another funeral or be passed back at weddings You cannot buy anything with them If you're desperate you can give Bonahm for a pig This is considered crazy • Bonahm is kind of like money (valuable) Money: you can use it for anything, no limit - but as soon as you make a purchase it ends the transaction and relationship o Money synthesizes things o Money is scarce - it provides open ended possibility Copper and Gold: tea plantation, cocoa plantation = made lots of money (consumption boom) o Bonahm sources dried up, the trade collapsed because people began to prefer store bought tobacco (no trade partners) o Money traded for Bonahm o With cash: people could start buying things o Remember: economy is not only about money, but a social relationship

Orality and Literacy

Writing is derivative of speech: secondary to speech, depends on speech as a source Speech and writing differ in significant ways: Speech is dialogic and depends on the compresence of speaker and audience Conversations are characterised by overlapping speech, pauses as speaker and listener take turns and improvise in response to each other Communication theorists refer to this as synchronous communication: communication between speakers and listeners in real-time When you stop talking it is gone, the role of memory is important Orality is people centred, parts of speech you may not find in written work at all Varies by culture, settings and class Exceptional Contexts: Speech-making, sermons, lectures, dramatic performances, poetry readings and prayers Digital technology has given writing a new form

What/How do myths explain?

You can't steal someone else's story Often people deliberately leave out parts of the myth so people can't steal them Political tools - secure property rights Arguments do not last long when it comes down to this Not things of the past, their activity is not justified

Ethnography

a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.

Children sometimes say things like: "I see two mouses, or he runned to the store" Such statements are evidence of

a child's construction of a theory of language based on inference

Ong

and others argue that literacy gives rise to a shift in consciousness and that thinking operates differently once literacy is a part of the picture (Syllogisms are an example) But illiterate or barely literate rural villagers were unable to properly complete the syllogisms They would answer them with a real answer (based on their own experience) The question was not hypothetical, but real: immediate context was used for constructing the answer

Barbarianism

any use of language that offends contemporary standards of purity

Semantic network

associations that can be visible, different value for those who are bilingual

ethnicity

base collective identity on common descent - related to common regional or national origin o can also be based on language, dress, occupation and religion o since ethnic groups are defined in relation to one another, difference between groups is the most important thing o since the groups are simply based on difference, identities can shift drastically

Namesakes

certain names passed down through the lineages, if you come across someone with the same name - you take them in o in modern day: we have the same last name as someone? We may be related

Increased rates of literacy among adult women

changes in fertility rates

Pragmatics

concerned with words in use The focus is on context (time, place, participants in conversation, situation) What does this have to do with me? Why are you saying this now? It is not the words, but rather the other external factors Concerned with the choices people make when saying things, that impact its context Language strives to "get things done" (Malanofski: you can't understand what the symbols of language means without context) Relationship between speakers

Statute Law

consists of laws and acts passed by legislatures (context free and applicable for all conceivable situations)

social class:

does not rely on shared blood o does not require membership (as does religion or clubs) - new technology has increased the speed and volume of flows of people and information across regional and national boundaries o this process of globalization and transnationalism is not new - it is an extension of processes that has always been going on, as no culture has ever been completely isolated

Hegemonic

dominant cultures, authority of representing a language and speaking over another

Bali

each person has a unique birth name, highly individualized, only used in the speech of children, speaking them around adults is insulted, birth order names (cycle) (1st, 2nd 3rd 4th) , each child will have one of those names Kinship: generation system: one name for male and one term for female Generic, only separate gender, not anything

Pidgins

easy to learn, nobody's first language, pervasive part of the colonial era, bridge the colonials and the local population, acted as a template of national identity in which no specific ethnic group is dominant and so therefore provides a common language that is nobody's first language, but becomes everyone's mutual second language

Traditional Society (MAINE)

entered into relationships solely on the basis of social status they were assigned to at birth, economics was like a serf and his master

Socialization/Acculturalization:

etiquette, shaping people's do's and don'ts (how we speak, how we write)

WHR Rivers

founder of anthropology and psychology: genealogical method: interested in studying colour blindness. Did it run in families? He found.. •People were able to tell you their families geneology •Complex kinship •Track generations without written records (reconstructing time) •Statistics created

Language crossing

frequent inter-ethnic communication by crossing languages people are making acts of identity

Primitive Society (DURKHIEM)

how institutions create their own individuals who are divided into different specializations, who depend on each other = organic solidarity

Semantics

how meaning operates through language Anthropologists are concerned what people do with language, relation between language & society and language & culture

Standard Language

how national identity is expressed, when a variety of language is selected as an indicator of difference between insiders and outsiders, it can be shielded from variations

Speech Discourse

how people of a certain language meet their needs

Social Positionings

how speakers align themselves to the cultural context as we understand it

Co-operative Principle

if the information is primary, the people will only say the information that is required in that context, just enough to convey the message

Literacy in West Africa

illiterate subjects answered questions with information based on experience (syllogisms)

Icon

images of a word

Imagined Communities

in which people imagined themselves part of a larger whole defined largely by a common language and what came to be known as nationalism If he is right, then nationalism, and perhaps nation-states owe their existence to a sense of unity based on the written word This wouldn't be the first time: though nation- states are relatively new, there was already precedent for this in another form: adherence to religious scriptures which were able to be widely disseminated because their creeds could circulate in written form

"Stalking Stories" (Arapesh)

indirect comments on someones behaviour by telling stories about events at particular places

Traditional Society (WEBER)

individuals participate in groups that preform multiple, overlapping roles and constitute social selves that pertain to all aspects of their lives

Language revitalization

its goal is to increase the amount of speakers of an endangered language School-based programs are insufficent without some home of community support it depends on careful analysis of the social context of language use May be jeopardized if the indigenous language is reserved only for traditional and formal events

Linguistic Relativity

language effects our thought processes people speak differently because they think differently, they think differently because language offers them that freedom

Language and Society

language structured on age, generation, gender, (Chinese) social rank- appropriate verbs to use in terms of rank of someone you are addressing Culture- thought worlds, what kinds of things are there in the world, what is possible to talk about? Culture happens together with the invention of language Language not only helped give rise to culture but helped give us it

When speaking about language displacement refers to:

lanuages ability to refer to things, events and processes beyond the immediate here and now context

transient

lasting only for a short time ex) Speech Writing is non-transient

Pragmatic Coherence

making things meaningful through cultural and situational context, following ques How context contributes to meaning: A teacher would speak differently to his wife then we would to his fourth grade class

Pragmatics

meaning in a given context

"Shackles of Tradition" (BOAS)

meant that western culture was a binding concept You were bound to tradition and only used one way of thinking Anthropology's job to allow people to see variations and show cultures they could cross boundaries

Sinae

muscle, meat, blood (mother) korova: all clans people share this, everything grown off the territory have this (crops) when young boys reach adolescence they have initiation into the male clan: wash their eyes, kane grass down throat - they vomit (detox) getting rid of all of the things he got from his mother, bleed into the water fall, seclude them into the house and feed them korova crops and pigs Alternate procedure: if no father, the wife brings the kids to her clan and her brother brings them into theirs - clans are important to the males - this is something the forms ties and relationships between people

Literacy

non-trangent always around does not depend on the author for being in the exact time and space Phatic Communication: Absent (facial expressions or vocal cues are gone) The author can be completely absent in the writing, not tied to a person Writing has been learned and practised, generally has to be taught If you can write, it gives you prestige, without expertise you won't be as successful

Disembedding

o Exchange and Reciprocity o Exchange is unique to the individuals, entering exchange o Disembedding Mechanisms: turning value into a symbolic token this process moves various social processes out of the immediate face-to-face community (cf. Gemeinschaft) setting. This is facilitated by various mechanisms, the most obvious of which is cash (money), and has accelerated under globalization.

Ferdinand Tonnies

o Gemeinschaft (community) - Traditional rules create a sense of universal solidarity among people o Gesellschaft (society) - Society is constituted by the deliberately formulated social contract which reflects rational self-interest

Barker & The Maisan Daa

o Talks about how material success and capitalism have changed the way people perceive the world o The maisian are becoming more individualistic o Want to get rid of sorcery and the Daa o They are finding things to explain sorcery o There will always be a need to explain the human condition o Religion and capitalism are related, as they embrace the world they are moving one beyond the beliefs they used to have o There are no hierarchies as to what is wrong ♣ "Slights": oh this person died because I didn't share my cigarette with them yesterday

Okmanip's illness and Olmamsep's pigs

o Traditional Telefol diagnostic categories o (optional: ancestral travels and encroaching bush spirits: historical change and how spirits speak) o moral questions are tied to senses o Suffering happens for a reason o Emotional impact has a source over time Olmamsep wanted to raise pigs for his sons return to the village with his wife (a form of bride wealth) Olmamsep's pigs wandered off and began eating gardens of villagers and destroying the property of non-villagers (he tried to compensate by giving the gardeners planting stock, but later felt obliged to kill them) The villagers were then angry because his pigs had either been given away to strangers, or killed and not shared within the village Okamanip's Illness: she and her brother suffered from a disability (maybe caused by tending for the pigs) The situation came to a head when Olmamsep and Okmanip returned to the village because Okmanip was suffering from a lingering ailment: her condition had grown so bad that Olmamsep wanted her to be able to go to the government hospital for treatment. This coincided with the return of Kunilok, a younger brother of Olmamsep, from a long period in the bush, and Kunilok appeared to be suffering from a similar ailment. There was much speculation among the villagers as to the cause of these disabilities, some hinting that the prolonged period in the bush and the hard work of tending pigs were responsible for Okmanip's condition. In the midst of this talk were also observations that Olmamsep had become obsessed with the pigs marked for his son, and that i t was this that made him unmindful of both the welfare of his wife and the feelings of his fellow villagers. His pigs had drawn him to the bush and away from village life, exposing him to risk, exhausting the old man's energies as he tried to look after his now-dwindling herd. In his anxiety to provide a good showing and a dramatic welcome for his son he had even refused to reduce his labour by agisting his pigs, since to do so would have meant that he would have had to give a share of these pigs to the tender. 145 In a matter of a couple of days a diagnosis of both Okmanip's and Kunilok.'s illness had been arrived at:- the cause of their misfortune was to be found in the anger of the spirit (usong) of a set of relics (men amem) entrusted to Olmamsep's care. The usong was angry for being neglected by Olmamsep, who not only failed to keep it company due to his absence in the bush, but had also killed a number of pigs in the bush without returning with a portion to giveto the usong, something which Kunilok had also been negligent about. In its anger, the usong brought illness to Olmamsep's wife and to his younger brother. In order to put things right, Olmamsep had to hold an ugem kong curing rite in which a pig was killed to pacify the resentful usong, and to which villagers came to share in the pig and enhance their own well-being. With this came the advice of Olmamsep's friends, who urged him to reduce his commitment to tending his pigs in the bush and to remain in the village. Force was added to this by the hint that if he failed to do so, other villagers would refuse to give him piglets, either as gifts or merely as wards to tend. Later, when Barton eventually paid his visit home, Olmamsep feasted him with two large pigs. The welcome had been made, the contributions to Barton's bridewealth were collected in exchange for promises of repayment, and Barton again departed. In the case of Olmamsep we can see the extent to which a parent's anxieties concerning his children, preoccupation with fears of loss and estrangement, and the desire to bind them to him can take precedence over the concerns and obligations of village life, even to the extent of jeopardizing the health of himself and those close to him.

race:

o divided the human species into a limited number of categories - associated with intelligence, beauty, and other characteristics o very powerful in reinforcing inequality because it is often not questioned and even believed by those who racism is being shown towards o physical distinctions of races do not hold up because there is so much overlap that is impossible to define discrete categories - turns out that there is as much diversity within populations as there is between races - race and ethnicity are both socially constructed o ethnicity tends to emphasize culture, language, and religion o race tends to emphasize easily distinguishable physical characteristics

Commodities

objectified, there are no ties to anyone, they exist in their own right Price tag: Identifies the item with a number, no personal identity o We can convert a commodity to a gift o We can convert a gift to commodity Example: Masian tappa: an identifiable thing, can be put on the market for sale

Syntax

order in which things happen

Telefol Shells

originate from maggots in a man's rotting flesh they must be given to a brides family when she is married they must be given to mourners at a funeral

Social Identity

our set of rights and duties with respect to others who are occupying other positions in society

Linguistic imperialism

refers to "the transfer of a dominant language to other people" (considered a linguicism)

Deixis

refers to statements that can only be understood by taking the speaker or a position into account (where is someone standing? What is their position?) Ex. "look at that over there". "come here"

Trobiand islanders told Malinowski that fathers played no role in the conception of children. This is due to

reinforcing the matrilineal relationship

Sign

relationship between the two words (meaning)

remittance

sending money to someone at a distance

Code

something that cannot be separated from its meaning

Symbol

something that stands in for something else (political party leader)

the main source of cash for the maisin villagers is

tapa sales and remittances

Caste, Class, Tribe, Nation

the 'social glue' holding simple societies together is mechanical solidarity, whereas the glue holding more complex societies together is organic solidarity

Agency

the ability to act Something that restricts your agency restricts your way to act (ie restricting education, providing it would enhance it In Anthropology, we use it to understand how culture changes (make space in theory: studying different societies and comparing culture) An acting subject: someone who can actually do something

Signified

the actual object (thing the signifier is talking about)

Linguistic Nationism

the association of one language variety with the membership in one national community

Stalking with Stories: names places and Moral Narratives" (Apache, Basso)

the land is always stalking people (always there, natural spirit?) they are taught the landscapes names and history this is the space in which things happen, where stories take place when the environment gets destroyed, the story changes people are reluctant to criticize people (makes relationships difficult) so: they talk about people indirectly; by telling stories, if the story is familiar to you, and you know it is about you, you will know that people are talking about you - the places you hear, will stalk you - when you pass them by you will remember the story (the land is keeping an eye on you and the people who know the land, know you) Authority: indirectly communicating

What do Maisan people bring to new comers and what do they do when the food goes bad?

the locals bring a number of perishable gifts (BARKER) The priest redistributes the extra food and Barker reciprocated the gifts by giving his gear to several families before leaving the community

Brittle Marriage

the marriage ties seem to be an obstacle (a source of interference): Matrilineal Puzzle

matrilineal descent

unilineal descent that follows the female line. With this pattern, people are related if they can trace descent through females to the same female ancestor. Both males and females inherit membership in a matrilineal family line, but only females can pass it on to their descendants.

patrilineal descent

unilineal descent that follows the male line. With this pattern, people are related if they can trace descent through males to the same male ancestor. Both males and females inherit a patrilineal family membership but only males can pass it on to their descendants. Also known as "agnatic descent." A mother has a direct link to her child An attempt to break the tie and or replace it with food Feeding people, becomes just as important as birth Males try to upstage women (boundry line—who does this person belong to?) Individuals do not exist on their own, they come from someone else

Nature

what is born and grows organically

Culture

what is grown and groomed. "not bound by biological time"

Writing and Speech

• Writing is derivative of speech - that is, it is secondary to speech - it depends on speech as its source Speech and writing differ in significant ways: • Speech is dialogic, and depends on co- presence of speaker and audience* • Conversations are characterized by overlapping speech, pauses as speaker and listener take turns and improvise in response to each other • Communications theorists refer to this as synchronous communication - communication between speakers and listeners in real-time • Exceptional contexts: speech-making, sermons, lectures, dramatic performances, poetry readings and, sometimes, prayers *This changes with telecommunications.

"The Last Nomads" Film

•Panan can count •Do not keep track of seasons or years •They don't know how old each other are •They don't have any mirrors •Natural human condition •"Tana": the world, traditionally all the same (encompasses land) •Traditionally they had the rainforests all to themselves, but the logging companies have changed that (there is not a lot of old growth forest left) •Their knowledge of forestry is important, their language is rooted in the trees •They are able to identify every species found in the forest (28) •Hunter gathering lifestyle is difficult, the forest is disappearing •The trees today are thin •The old trees have disappeared •The loggers do not clear cut, they scout out they most valuable trees to use oThere are no safety precautions •The nomadic life ends when the farming way of life comes in oPeople began to settle down and plant food oThe panan believe everything they need is in the forest, if only it could be left alone oThey wonder what the modern society has to offer them oTheir local nomadic lifecycle was disappearing oStarch is a source of food oHe is in search of the last nomadic people •They have a clear relationship with their animals oKill the mother and raise the baby oBreastfeed the monkeys and the pigs •They can communicate from a distance oThis is unusual for a pre-literal society oThey can track enemies oA sharp stick is placed on the forest floor to direct others away from enemies •There are some panan who are trying to protect the remaining land they have from the loggers •"The last nomads" are living in the secondary forest osurrounded by plank houses and rice crops othey would not farm in the past, but they have had to surrender to agriculture othis makes Ian emotional oThe Panan want Ian to help them Politically oIt is like they are not even citizens oThe only way he can help them is to preserve the culture of their society in his dictionary oA man carries letters in his sack ♣They have received things from the government and send signed petitions and documents back using their thumbprint signature •Ian (conducting fieldwork) oThe researcher is collecting words creating a dictionary oHe would like to find the last nomads, there may be fewer than 50 left oHe wants to find the people who are living traditionally o Does his research on his own o Functional of 11 languages o The dictionary will be his life's work o Wrote about their belief system o It is rare that a linguist conducts fieldwork He believes that one day we will be in one large rich culture together, with an abundance of individuality Discussion: The people themselves, culture and language are endangered The Panan are still there, but they live in fixed settlement People who settled surrendered to the new lifestyle If you are Panan and are living in a fixed settlement: are you really Panan? Are you fake? Living in a state of shame? Kaska: if they don't speak the language or live on the land are they truly Kaska? (Meek) Page 47: Students are not speakers of the language, despite this, the philosophy that carries their education is traditional (Meek) Language loss and shift is only at risk for the Panan, he has documented their culture and language: the dictionary is like a "tombstone" There are certain parts of Ian's attitude that is problematic Salvage work: monument to a past that doesn't exist What is the value? The range of human existence? If we are Panan, what interest would we have? Kaska (Meek): If someone wanted to document our language and build a dictionary would it be useful? Panan English dictionary would be useful to someone who wanted to learn English-Panan If you cut down the trees the language disappears Redocumentation/Revitalization Preserving language 1) not useful to the people of the traditional culture that is being written about: Meeks book would do nothing for the actual Kaska speaker Kaska: speaking their own language was not a very good thing vs speaking your native tongue is important, the language is still there Weak Spot: the language is only used in specific contexts (house vs the office or social gathering) The ones who are hired to teach Kaska are the elders, they are teaching it to two audiences (grandchildren and their children) Not many people would want to have their parents teach them a language Being able to speak Kaska is prejudice, it creates a division between the young and the elders Revitalization: you have to talk about who and how the language is used and how it can be reinvigorated Remember Boaz? Concerned with a disappearing Native Cultures Created Salvage ethnographies The risk was that he was not observing the present as he was so pre-occupied with the past What was life like on the reserves now? It is good to rescue these things, but it isn't actually helping the culture - you are fulfilling your academic duty and interest but not the present human beings

My Notes on "Man without Pigs"

•Tabara Village were his family lives •Mother died •Maternal uncle offers support for his loss oBrought him a letter that signifies that when he decided to hold the ceremony all of the grandparents accepted •Relationships are difficult to form oWith males you have to keep working on the ties oHierarchy of clans and families oJohns family may not be of the highest rank oThey are all aggressive competitors as individuals •John does not accept a pig from his uncle • One of the three clans are not cooperating with John in preparation for this ceremony o He must kill more pigs o They ate the pig and did nothing o Usually they would start preparing for the dance • At the ceremonies you will be given a gift o John can help people • John was unable to feed the pigs and the clans from visiting villages • The rain caused by someone in the village? • Often the fault of one causes delight in others • John gets a pig from his brother in law (from his sister's family) Indigeneity • Resource Politics o People, government, extracting resources o No one of those parties can prevail o The only way someone can win is by forming alliances o Developers (Malaysian Logging Companies and the Government) o Involve complicated roles ♣ The government are regulators and seek revenue ♣ Seek to important and exports (royalties and shares from others) ♣ Developers have to be careful - their projects may fail if you don't have the cooperation with the public and the government ♣ The bigger the project the more difficult it is to run ♣ Social license to operate: the need to get support of local (and sometimes other) stakeholders before moving ahead ♣ Serve as gyrators for land rights of the indigenous people ♣ John Waiko: has land rights • Became an elected member of the government • Partner in Malaysian logging • Bribery or corruption? his way of protecting local interests o Lost his seat in the next election o Is he a trader? The dilemma that he faced: is one that the local people faced to - protecting the rainforest and developing the rainforest, want to have control of the process (Maisan: Barker) ♣ Mentions a law case - defendant John? • Allies are very important o Ancestors were depicted as idiots, when they met the Europeans - they became people after visited by the spirit in the forest o The locals were covered with clay and headdresses o We have transnational NGO's ♣ They run campaigns regarding campaigns ♣ Media and donations ♣ We always have to make a public appeal ♣ They have a half life - they go on for as long as the attention span last • Another may come up and the focus will shift ♣ Campaigns have had little effect ♣ The local people and small conservation needs a hand Environment: Collecting bottles and garbage (an image of not a very good way to live) • the weather the importance of the rain • Environmental issues are very important • Conservation: do not give up your birth right - don't give up the rain forest o Building alliances to protect the rainforest Audience: Who was this film made for (the product, what we saw and the making of the film in the village) • the villagers are part of the audience • the crew along side John - knowledge from the outside world • How did they get there? • Why were they there? • The purpose of John is to get things done for the people in the village • A film crew followed John: they are famous now, no one else in the village could do that, John did not have any pigs, but he had a crew Great Bear Rainforest • An agreement that involved the government, the indigenous people and resource management o What would they all be satisfied with? o Indigenous have the retain title and land for subsistence and recognition o Government is in charge of the terms o It was a gift to the world to protect the forest? o Another headline? Are the people satisfied? o Are they cutting down the trees? o Compromise?

Contestation

♣ Contest ♣ Dispute ♣ Disagreement ♣ "All Papua Niginis are short" - you're wrong ♣ tied with agency (people argue and disagree) ♣ in small communities we have this notion that everyone agrees and that isn't always true

Whorff

♣ The grammar component of language is not solely for reproducing text, but a shaper of ideas and mental activity ♣ Formulation of ideas is not an isolated process ♣ Linguistic relativity principle: "the users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally different acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers, but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world" The grammar component of language is not solely for reproducing text, but a shaper of ideas and mental activity Formulation of ideas is not an isolated process Linguistic relativity principle: "the users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally different acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers, but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world"