Download Anthro - Mrs Norris` website!

Welcome to Challenge
and Change in
Society!
To begin…some important things to know
My website http://www.norrismalvern.weebly.com
My email address: [email protected]
I think that grammar and spelling are very important.
If you are here, it’s because you want to be, please act
like it. If you don’t want to be here, please figure that
out…!
Social Science
DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS
What is Social Science?
Social science is, in its broadest sense, the study of
society and the manner in which people behave and
influence the world around us.
It tells us about the world beyond our immediate
experience, and can help explain how our own society
works - from the causes of unemployment or what
helps economic growth, to how and why people vote,
or what makes people happy. It provides vital
information for governments and policymakers, local
authorities, non-governmental organisations and
others.
Social Science overview, animated 4mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSIdaTSG2Gg
Why Study Social Science? What can it teach us?
We study social science because social phenomena
affect people’s lives in profound ways.
Think about this list and how the study of social
science affects each of these things:
Families, Schools, the Economy, Mass Media,
Attitudes, Social Networks
Why do we need social scientists to study things we
already know are true?
 Answer this question: if a society brings in the death
penalty, does the murder rate decline?
 Many of us may answer yes, obviously! We think we
know the answer because our INTUITION is telling us
what to believe. Intuition refers to knowing something
through our own logic and emotion.
 We need social scientists to study life around us to either
prove or disprove what our intuition tells us is right.
They test commonly held beliefs of a society to help us
see whether or not what we ‘know intuitively’ is right.
Families
What makes families more or less
successful? What makes marriages more
successful? What makes them fail? What are the
effects of divorce? Does divorce hurt
children? How much, in what ways, and for how
long? A medical doctor can treat the effects of
family dysfunction and divorce—say, with antidepressants or therapy and so on—but we can
learn and know more about how to prevent some
of this dysfunction from doing social science.
 Families.
Schools
 Schools. What
are effective means of
educating children? What makes for good
teachers? How can we measure and
evaluate teaching and learning? How can
we overcome inequalities in educational
achievement created by socioeconomic
status and other factors? The “hard”
sciences and medicine might be able to help
a bit here, but these too are mostly questions
for social science.
Fundamentally, what makes it
grow or shrink? Few things are as central to
people’s quality of life as economic
prosperity. Here again, there is synergy
with, say, medicine: getting sick affects your
ability to be economically productive. But
doctors are not going to be able to shed
much light on this question. Economists
and other social scientists can.
 The economy.
Mass Media
The information conveyed through
mass media—cultural, political, and
otherwise—can profoundly influence how we
understand the world. How is that information
produced? What are the incentives and norms
that govern media organizations? How does
that information affect people? How does that
information help or hurt people—for example,
by dismantling or reinforcing stereotypes, or by
mitigating or fomenting outright
violence? Social scientists spend a lot of time
trying to figure this out.
 Mass Media.
Why do people develop particular
attitudes about social and political
phenomena? How do those attitudes affect
subsequent behaviour? Whether people like
or dislike social groups, for example, has an
impact on the quality of life for those
groups. So we must understand the origins
and evolution of attitudes like prejudice.
 Attitudes.
The networks which
people are embedded—which
encompass families and schools as well
as other institutions—can affect many
things about them. Whether they are
healthy, whether they are prejudiced,
whether they can survive natural
disasters, and so on.
 Social networks.
Anthropology
The study of all aspects of human life and culture.
Anthropology examines such topics as how people live,
what they think, what they produce, and how they
interact with their environments. Anthropologists try
to understand the full range of human diversity as well
as what all people share in common. Anthropologists
ask such basic questions as: when, where, and how did
humans evolve? How do people adapt to different
environments? How have societies developed and
changed from the ancient past to the present?
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmnoxmVNW2
Y
 What is Anthropology? (6mins)
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and the
mind. This definition contains three elements. The first is
that psychology is a scientific enterprise that obtains
knowledge through systematic and objective methods of
observation and experimentation.
Second is that psychologists study behaviour, which refers
to any action or reaction that can be measured or observedsuch as the blink if an eye, an increase in heart rate, or the
unruly violence that often erupts in a mob. Third is that
psychologists study the mind, which refers to both
conscious and unconscious mental states. These states
cannot be seen, only inferred from observable behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4pMVb0R6M
What is psychology video
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human social
relations or group life. Sociologists examine the ways
in which social structures and institutions such as
class, family, community and power and social
problems such as crime and abuse, influence society.
Social interaction, or the responses of individuals to
each other, is perhaps the basic sociological concept,
because such interaction is the elementary component
of all relationships and groups that make up human
society.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5pp_fZDU8I
What is Sociology video
Let’s put our new knowledge to use…
 Now that we understand the basics about Social
Sciences, let’s put this knowledge to use.
 After watching the Documentary “Age of Anxiety”,
we are going to think about how thinkers in each of
the social sciences would view this topic.
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episodes/age-of-anxiety
Physical Anthropology
 Physical or biological anthropology deals with the
evolution of humans, their variability, and
adaptations to environmental stresses.
 Using an evolutionary perspective, they examine not
only the physical form of humans - the bones,
muscles, and organs - but also how the body
functions to allow survival and reproduction.
(def sheet)
Ted Talk
 https://www.ted.com/talks/zeresenay_alemseged_l
ooks_for_humanity_s_roots - t-10986
 Article on Charles Darwin, read, discuss and
summarize
 Article on Homo Neledi
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150910
-human-evolution-change/
 Interactive human evolution timeline
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/humanevolution-timeline-interactive
Cultural Anthropology
 Cultural anthropology is the study of the human as
an individual, a product of society, and a maker of
history and culture. It’s the nature of humans to live
within structures of symbol, belief, and power of our
own design such as religion, art, gender, war,
ecosystems, race relations, kinship, science,
colonialism, language, nations and states, play, mass
media, illness, pain, and pleasure.
In a word, culture.
Ted Talk- different cultures
 https://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endan
gered_cultures - t-138393
Read and summarize article - “One Hundred Percent
American” pg 40 in duotang
Portraits of the World’s Most Remote Tribes
http://guff.com/10-astonishing-portraits-of-theworlds-most-remote-tribes/nenets
Rites of Passage
A rite of passage is a ceremony and marks the
transition from one phase of life to another. Although
it is often used to describe the tumultuous transition
from adolescence to adulthood, it does refer to any of
life's transitions (Births and Beginnings, Initiations,
Partnerings, and Endings or Death).
 http://youtu.be/uYdZImhoA9o?list=PL70723E3C02
224708
Reflection
 In your notebook answer the following questions:
~ why study other cultures?
~ what can other cultures teach us about the world?
~ what can other cultures teach us about ourselves?
~ how has knowledge of other cultures benefited us?
~ what do we know that we would not have known
without this exposure? (specific examples)
Linguistic Anthropology
 Language is part of what makes us human. Linguistic
anthropologists study language, and how language is
used in order to understand culture. Linguistic
anthropologists are interested in how many
languages there are, how those languages are
distributed across the world, and their contemporary
and historical relationships. They are also interested
in language variation, why variations exist, how the
variations are used (i.e., do you say ‘tomAto’ or
‘tomahto’?!), and what they mean when they are
used in various contexts.
The Andean people- linguistic and cultural
anthro
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6I6L8b6mQs
 Read and summarize article “Are there superior and
Inferior Languages?” duotang
Read article: Do our words influence the way we
think?
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/29
/how-words-influence-thought
Archaeology
 Archaeology is the scientific study of historic or
prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of
their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other
such remains, especially those that have been
excavated.
Indiana Jones
 http://youtu.be/Pr-8AP0To4k
Forensic Anthropology
Definition
 http://youtu.be/L101Bvj0lAA
 Forensic anthropology involves the application of
methods to modern cases of unidentified human
remains. A forensic anthropologist can aid law
enforcement in establishing a profile on the
unidentified remains. The resulting profile includes
sex, age, ethnicity, height, length of time since death,
and sometimes the evaluation of trauma seen on
bones.
Definitions of Culture
 Culture is referred to the learned, socially acquired
traditions of the thought and behaviour found in
human societies. Animals have simpler forms of
culture too. (add def. to definition sheet)
 Culture could be compared to a computer program,
the ‘software’ that tells people what to do under
certain circumstances. It is therefore mental, with
the ideas guiding behaviour. BUT- behaviour can
also guide ideas. For example, the experience of
poverty is an example of behaviours people are not
programmed to do.
Society
 The term ‘society’ means an organized group of
people who share a homeland and depend on one
another for their survival and well-being.
(add to definition sheet)
 There can be various cultures within societies.
Anthropologists call these groups sub-cultures- they
can be groups based on ethnic, religious or class
distinctions.
‘What is culture’ video.
http://youtu.be/Me2HlTQPS40
How Anthropologists conduct their work
 Participant Observation (def. sheet)~
Anthropologists commonly live with their subjects
for long periods of time, participating as a
community member and recording their
observations.
 They believe that living in groups for a long period of
time will ensure that they are accepted by the group
and that their observations will be the same as they
would be if the community was going on without
them there.
 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23758087
 Kenneth Good, Yanomami
Margaret Mead
 One of the most famous cultural anthropologists who
fully immersed herself in another culture was
Margaret Mead. Her most famous book is titled
‘Coming of Age in Samoa’, where she studied the
experiences of adolescent girls in Samoa.
‘Margaret Mead: Coming of Age’
 http://youtu.be/K2FhWyulpb8
Dian Fossey
 Another excellent example of someone who devoted
their life to living with her subjects was Dian Fossey.
She was encouraged by the famous Anthropologist
Louis Leakey to study Gorillas to possibly give
insight into human behaviour.
 http://youtu.be/EFndwaCDvF4
Ethnographies
 What do Anthropologist do with their findings once they
have them?
 They write books, papers, articles, journal articles…
 Without these ETHNOGRAPHIES (def. sheet), we would
not know as much as we do about the world.
 (introduce ethnography assignment)
THANKS ANTHROPOLOGISTS!!!
Other important concepts in Anthro…
 One way that anthropologists compare culture is
through the concept of KINSHIP (def. sheet).
Kinship refers to a family relationship based on what
a culture considers a family to be.
 What may be accepted in our culture (that a half-
brother and sister are related, for example) are not
accepted ideas in all cultures.
 Kinship is broken down in two ways:
Mating or marriage~ some parents who are not
traditionally married may be rejected by others in
the family
Birth~ adopted vs. natural vs. foster children
 ‘Ficitive kinship’ is defined as acknowledging people
who are not related to you as your family. An
example of this is god parents.
Why do Anthropologists care about the concept of
kinship? What does this tell them about different
cultures?
Schools of thought in Anthropology
 Complete the worksheet ‘Schools of thought in
Anthropology’ by reading pages in your duotang