ANTH101

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Four fields of Anth: 1) socio-cultural (concept of culture most articulated)
2) archaeology (excavation to reconstruct aspects of past vs. classical archaeology)
3) physical/biol (human evol)
4) linguistics
Origins of anth: Travel lit, exploration to imperialism. Stages of inc civ model. Humans seek coherence usu.
What is culture? Culture Shock: Learned at our parents' knees; mostly unconsc.
Diff cultural world, home seeming weird.
Culture reactions: Ethnocentrism (preferring own way of living) Chauvinism (everyone else is wrong)
How to gain knowledge: Fieldwork: Usu a rite of passage for anth. Must be long term, language, compare what they say with what they do (ex. created equal, contrad elements), partic observation.
Malinowski: This way of research (fieldwork) vs. collecting travel logs. Unstruc, inductive (evidence - larger principles). Where: wide range.
'Natural': Reality; the order of things; culture learned as if part of reality (parents' knee), Naturlize, authentic vs. artificial (culture)
Goal of anth: Familiar and Strange: Everything seems natural in daily life; denaturalize assumptions; counterex; cultural assumptions/biases; underdetermine. (ex. right vs. left, femaleness sinister; aborigines east/west)
Human nature Enlightenment view; classical anth: Geertz: Stage - cultural clothing but backstage the same. Classical anth: undermines the above idea. Decline in the uniformitarian view of man (operates same in all circumstances) replaced by classical. Stratigraphic view (classical) Layer cake, cultural, psy, soc, biol.
Geertz; culture as epiphenomenal (superficial), thse universals do not map on.: 1) Control mechanism for beh 2) Extra-genetic inheritance (from parents' knees) is human culture is nec to exist. Symbolic culture. Culture has evolved into a nec compliment to inheritance (protoculture becomes naturally selected vs apes) culture mde humans and vice versa. (pg 49, human nature not indep of culure, look to specifics for the essences of humans).
Social Fact: A way of acting (fixed or not) capable of exerting over the indiv an external constraint. General over a society with an existence of its own, indep of its indiv manifestations.
What is the subject matter of culture?: Culture often artificial over nature. Indiv act to create society and can dissolve it, or people dividing themselves from other indiv.
Durkheim, social facts: Defined in law and custom, external, imposed/coerced, nec (some struc) 1) Direct (ex. direct sancion) 2) indirect (more subtle, ex. old manufacturing tech, no profits)
Durkheim cont: Varying degrees of crystallization, social currents, collective effervescence (ex polit rallies) (not as crystallized yet); diff levels (before layer cake model, 1900s), Sui Generis (self generating: produces own reality) use of statistics (ex. suicide) Reified (created abstraction, social/as real) [Ex. suicide as a soc phenomenon, also mental (psy)]
Frank Boas: German, immigrated in 1880s, father of Am Anth, Benedict's Patterns of Culture, Sapir (genius of anth)
Sapir: Culture and personality:: Alphabet (soc fact; ex. reversing A and Z, malleable yet solid; indiv relating to larger soc facts) How does a culture provide for certain personalities (Benedict). What to accept/favor in society (single-focus/intense not nec favored in diff societies) Ex. funerals (sec burial; feast, buried after flesh is gone, mother's brother, clans, playing a role in times as emotional as deaths.
Cultural Relativism Human Variety in imperialsim/exploration of Europe. Sense of one culture (19th C): Civilization steps to savagery. Humanist side to help savages (white man's burden); Intervening (some forceful), Justified by protecting women, Idea still within Am culture to some degree.
Boas "Alternating Sounds): For same meaning, unstable language. Depended on linguist's native tongue, model above did not work (levels of evol).
Method to be relativist: Human variation; Is/Ought problem (Hume: cannot derive moral imperative from the state of things) Moral Relativism.
Relativist, take into account:: 1) colonial heritage (old model) Intervening, Today's idea of devel 2) Humanist background 3) Experiences abroad while intervening (to eval in terms of native and their values)
Boddy, genital cutting; Muslim: Islam is from Morocco to Indonesia (ranges) Grandmother's extreme view. Fertility: social, symbolic dimension separating men and women. Smooth, clean, pure.
Boddy cont.: Eggs: fertility symbols
Gulla: make food here
Hosh: interior of house
Enclosedness. What are we do think or do?
Cult. Rel is bec method; Fact that humans vary: Anth takes a moral position of tolerance:: Does not lead to moral relativism, can still hold a moral sys.
Humanist position (acceptance) History of bad interventions (violence), Rapport leads to felt ties with other peoples (respect)
Cultural Rel cont.: Stance does not preclude condemnation or intervention. Must seek to understand details. Ex. Female Genital Cutting (important emotionally, patriarchy, educate, state intervention, Sudan (was a British colony, s. vs. n. religion, custom) Human rights (Not nec sacrosanct if cultural) Ex. Aztecs human sacrifice nec for world to cont. Emphasis on indiv vs. collective, Importance of indiv culturally bound. Framing human rights in indiv tems not aligning with all cultures.
Cultural Evolution Lineaer model: Sav-Bar-Civ
19th C Victorian England/US; single pathway, progressive, research: what stage culture is in. Replaced by unique history of cultures (Boas)
Cultural Evol as progressive and unilinear: Victorian anth, bundles of traits at each stage (tech, rel, soc, subsist), idea still lingering; othres, 'simpler' like studying our past. Stone Age (still groups using stone tools)
Cultural Evol cont: Bundles of traits, soc structure still discussed. Soc discussed in various levels of complexity. State (complex)-Chiefdom(heredity for rank, chief-noble-commoners)-Tribes(hierarchy)-Bands(everyone at the same level).
Band level: 20 or 30 people; hunter gatherers, edge of existence?
Sahlins: 1) Pragmatic Argument, Economic: Cslorie counting studies (do get enough to eat), worked only 2-3 hrs/day (to rest 'leisure', not nec sep) Perhaps 6 hrs/wk by later anth (Bird); Little material wealth (nomads)
Sahlins: 2) Cultural Argument: Diff world view (strange and familiar), our sys based on scarcity (econ man), uneconomical humans with world view on abundance (do not worry they will not have enough) aberrations otherwise. Prodigality (do not save provisions: trust in the 'morrow) No storage and belief. Treatment of material goods, Bird: sharing ideology of everything. Desires tailored to what is available. Ex. Toqueville (desires will always exceed posessions/availability, 'indef perfectability', 1830s, among best Am ethnographies) Abundance (ex. in Am, culture fighting against nature) cooperation with nature.
Minority/counter view: Culture artificial; Nature to Culture (like Garden of Eden, Rousseau)
- Authentic culture left? - Are 'tribes' finished? - Who has tribes?: (pejorative) (vs. ethnic groups, nations) Darker skin, unciv people.
- Global trade - Indigenous Peoples and relations with Euro-Am: - Not new, ex. Bezoar kidney stones
- Suffered greatly, genocide, nativ am (90% died), ethnocide (intentional destruc of culture), salvage anth (save before extinction)
Globalization destroying indigenous and authentic culture?: Change may be positive, optional? (television, could continue traditions) Dynamic, changing, some aspects superficial, some dramatic/key elements, power (who's messages? who benefits), Americanizing (ex Hulk Hogan into cult hero)
Metcalf, The End of Tribes: Sav/Bar/Prim are all pejorative, as are 'modern' societies vs. 'archaic' periods. Ex. Borneo peoples' trading network. Polesian navigators. Change; disruptions of indus revol 'crit anth.' Herbert Spencer (civil for those superior, soc darwinism, however, genetics prove ability to acquire and culture) Anth and modern feminism (values of those studied vs personal convic), Balance for ethnographers (infallibility of medicine, patriotism)
Political Anth, Emergence of crit Anth (of power struc in West) usu not a conserv discipline.: Marginalized people often/usu studied, changing status quo; Reflexivity (strange familiar, reflect upon own society and seeing as strange; undermine common sense, denaturalize cultural assum, cultural order, critique of nationalism, global effects, must understand people)
Universal Gender Symbols: Response to second wave of feminism. Anth of women (1970s; largely ingored before) Ortner article.
Womb as oasis notes: The symbolic context of pharaonic circumcision in rural n. sudan. Hofriyat people, Muslim; operation prior to 1969, 40 days to recover, reasons: sexual pleasure, virginity, fertility, female soc recog; purity, cleanliness, smoothness.
Anth of gender: women not nec positioned similarly across cultures, away from univ models, third genders, masculinity: almost the study of whiteness (default, then others rel to it) Marked vs. unmarked categ, the latter sounds normal.
Women are univ subordinate to men (Ortner): US; every culture conquers nature to survive, culture thought of as superior to nature, women are closer to nature; Body: animality is more manifest; social role: breast feeding, raise children (cultural symbolism), domestic vs. public realm (the latter at a higher level with broad concerns) Psyche (concrete, subjective, interpersonal)
Strathern's article; bundles of assoc: N/C dichotomy is inconsis (Old West, domestic > public, teacher social fig in old west), Mt Hagan, New Guinea (no nature, no culture concepts: Mbo (cultivated, rooted, planted) Romi (wild, like Nature); always sep, not rel like N/C, not struggling but accomodating, cult/soc not imposed but inherent, become indiv
Culture: 1) As an anth construct/idea learned at parents' knee and innately human (everyone) 2) Euro-Am concept/category (self cons objectification of 'who we are.' Defined in contrast to nature. Artificial, imposed upon inherent nature. Ex. cultural study of science #1.
Science wars: Disagreement about #2 culture - that science is not objective but artificial bias.
Authentic vs. indigenous cultures: 1) Am culture feeling a losing native/early meaning Ex. chain stores.
Sex vs. gender: Being male/female, being a man or woman is the latter, sex: chromonsomes, hormones, genes, genitals. Gender: roles within society.
Intersex (Ambiguous genitalia, chromosomes, genes, etc.): 1) Botched Pot (kill Personality correlates of physical height) Unnatural Horror (correct error), 3) Supernatural Blessing (Ex. Navaho, nadle, gender hole) Ext nature transcending, internal constant; 'real' vs. from those pretendinh, sex.
Unnatural: Must choose within initial weeks; med intervene (Hormone therapy in utero to prevent condition, risks)
David Reimer: changed to female earlier but changed again later.
Third Gender cont: Pop of India (1 bill), Hinduism (80%), Muslim (13%, 140 mill, 3rd most Muslim pop country?) Hijra: long est role (1000 yrs). Large number of transfigure figures in stories (Arjun, Krishna, Siva)
Egg and sperm: Mutually active, (reinforcing cultural stereotypes), femme fatale (trapping males), models matter because sci metaphors are so authorative, intro to biol research. Nat sel: soc darwinism (polit ideology), feedback sys (biol returns naturalizing, cultural models) Models reinforce biol and vice versa.
Gender Config: Male/Female fullest personhood, Hinduism offers alternatives (binary is less important)
Model of Personhood: 2) Indiv personhood (separate; claim/climb in status, Am, de Toqueville, everyone is equal, humble roots of pres is symbolically important, humbled by mass of people (no one is more conformist than in indiv countries) Ex. vs. England's eccentric pop. Indef perfectability, fear of falling, risk, cultural anxiety.
Hijras: Mult genders in addition to Hijras; impotent men, intersex persons, other men, women failing to menstruate can become Hijras) Man minus Mare (cannot reproduce), Neither man nor woman (reproc), Man plus woman (behavior, exag beh) Not woman (cannot reprod, demeanor exag) Variety of people can fit into category

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