Download Cultural Anthropology

V Y TAU TA S M AG N US U N I V E R SI T Y
FAC U LT Y OF H U M A N I T I E S
DE PA RT M E N T OF C U LT U R A L S T U DI E S A N D E T H NOL O G Y
Rasa Račiūnaitė-Paužuolienė
Cultural Anthropology
DIDACTICAL GUIDELINES
Kaunas, 2013
Reviewed by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Egidija Ramanauskaitė
Approved by the Department of Cultural Studies and Ethnology of the Faculty
of Humanities at Vytautas Magnus University on 27 November 2012 (Protocol
No. 11)
Recommended for printing by the Council of the Faculty of Humanities of
Vytautas Magnus University on 28 December 2012 (Protocol No. 8–2)
Translated and edited by UAB “Lingvobalt”
Publication of the didactical guidelines is supported by the European Social Fund
(ESF) and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. Project title: “Renewal
and Internationalization of Bachelor Degree Programmes in History, Ethnology,
Philosophy and Political Science” (project No. VP1-2.2-ŠMM-07-K-02-048)
ISBN 978-9955-21-366-6
© Rasa Račiūnaitė-Paužuolienė, 2013
© Vytautas Magnus University, 2013
Table of Contents
1. Conception of Anthropology, Historical Background,
and the Branches of Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Field Research and Ethnography: Traditional and Modern Ethnographic Technique. Multi-Sited Ethnography
and Dimensions of Global Cultural Flow . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. Conception of Culture and Research Strategy . . . . . . 25
4. Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology . . . . . . . 35
5. Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection . . . . 49
6. Ecology: Understanding Environment and Technology 63
7. Discourses of Economical Anthropology . . . . . . . . 71
8. Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control 77
9. Sex and Gender in Different Societies . . . . . . . . . . . 90
10.The Family and Marriage in Different Societies . . . . . 95
11. Kinship: Terminology, Descent and Alliance . . . . . . . 100
12.Anthropology of Religion: Belief, Ritual and Symbolism 110
13. Visual Anthropology and its Applied Aspect in Anthropology Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
14.Perspectives of Applied Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . 134
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
1 Lecture. Conception of Anthropology,
Historical Background, and the Branches
of Anthropology
Schedule of lecture
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What is anthropology?
Historical background of anthropology.
Anthropological societies.
The main branches of anthropology.
Specialisations of anthropologists.
Cultural differences and human universals.
Anthropology and the other human sciences.
What is anthropology?
Anthropology [Greek anthrōpos, man + Greek logos, science, concept]
is social science about people, their origins, lifestyle, behaviour and
cultural as well as biological diversity. It describes and analyses cultures of both previous and modern ages, i. e. socially acquired traditions, behaviour and thinking of people, diversity and reasons of culture’s adaptation to the environment. Anthropology is distinguished
by its global, holistic and comparative nature. Anthropologists are
never restricted to research of one population, race, tribe, class, nation, period or location. Anthropology requires the conclusions based
on the research on one separate group of people or civilization to be
verified by comparing them with research material of other groups
and civilizations. This way anthropologists expect to avoid being
biased with regard to gender, class, race, nation, religion or culture.
All nations and cultures are equally worth researching in the eyes of
anthropologists. Anthropologists believe that acquisition of correct
knowledge about humanity is possible only through research of both
far and near regions in respect of ancient and modern times. Perhaps
we, as human beings, can get rid of stereotypes developed through
our lifestyle and see ourselves in the real light by applying this broad
approach towards to the entirety of human experience.
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Cultural Anthropology
Historical background of anthropology
Anthropology began in the middle of the 19th century as an intellectual hobby for professional men, especially lawyers. In the 19th century anthropology mostly focused on the anthropology of human
beings as biological species, as well as cultural findings. Initially it
was associated with a collection of museum exhibits. Collection of
museum exhibits and descriptions of groups of people collected by
missionaries and travellers as well as global linguistic database accumulated by applied linguistics has become the foundation of anthropology as of a comparative science about the people of the world.
By the 1920s social anthropology had become professionalised.
The first trained anthropologists taught in universities or worked in
museums. Instead of relying on the accounts of explorers and missionaries, these anthropologists began to do their own fieldwork.
Professionalisation brought with it both new skills in fieldwork and
new understanding of human society. (Barnard 2000: 20)
Anthropological societies
First anthropological societies have been established in the first half
of the 19th century. The first anthropological society was the shortlived Société des Observateurs de l’Homme founded in Paris in 1799.
The most significant British learned society was the Ethnological
Society of London (1843) which in 1871 joined with the Anthropological Society of London (1862) to form the Royal Anthropological
Institute (RAI) (www.therai.org.uk) which continues to the present.
It is one of the most numerous professional organizations in Europe.
In 1946 the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth (ASA) (www.theasa.org) was founded to represent the interests of professional anthropologists in Britain and abroad (Urry 2012:
55). It publishes the conference series ASA monographs.
In America the American Ethnological Society was founded in
1842 and in 1879 the Anthropological Association of Washington
whose members were associated with the Smithsonian Institution
and the National Museum. The incorporation of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 1902 reflected the increasing
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Conception of Anthropology, Historical Background…
professionalization of the discipline in Norh America (Urry 2012: 56).
This Association (www.aanet.org) has grown into a massive organization (above 11 000 members). It is the most numerous the anthropological association in the world.
In Asia an anthropological society was established in Japan in
1804 and another in Bombay in 1887. In Australia regional state societies were founded from 1926 (South Australia) and in 1973 the Australian Anthropological Society was established to represent professional anthropologists (Urry 2012: 56).
The main branches of anthropology
The main branches of anthropology are as follows: sociocultural, biological-physical anthropology, archaeological anthropology and
anthropological linguistics. Combined approach of all the areas is
called general anthropology. Various branches of anthropology examine different aspects of human experience. Certain branches examine evolution of our Homo sapiens species from previous species.
Others examine how Homo sapiens have acquired the unique human
ability to speak, how languages have developed and have become
diverse as well as how modern languages meet the communication
needs of people. Some others are interested in the acquired human
traditions of thought and behaviour, known as cultures. They examine the development of ancient cultures as well as the reasons for
alternation of modern cultures and absence thereof. Anthropology
reminds us that we all represent the same species and share common origins and destiny independently of differences between our
languages and cultures.
Cultural or social anthropology means intercultural research on
social life of people, ethnic groups and society. It describes and analyses societies and cultures of people, socially acquired traditions, behaviour of people, social and cultural similarities and differences, as
well as variety of and reasons for culture’s adaptation to environment.
Until the midst of the 20th century, the term cultural anthropology
was widely used in the USA, while in the United Kingdom the more
popular term was social anthropology. British social anthropology
was concentrated on social structure (social institutions and organi7
Cultural Anthropology
zation) while cultural form, i. e. cultural differences, was all that mattered to the cultural anthropology in USA. The American tradition
of cultural anthropology places greater emphasis on aspects such as
material culture and is less concerned with the ethnographic analysis of particular elements (e. g. law or kinship) than with presenting a
rounded portrait of all aspects of its subject. „The twentieth-century
British anthropological tradition (as opposed to American cultural
anthropology) in which the focus trended to be on the ethnographic
description of a group (usually a small scale society or non-western)
through its social relation and practices. The distinction between
“social“ and “cultural” approaches has become less marked recently”
(Moris 2012: 54; 232).
Cultural anthropology has two aspects: ethnography (field work)
and ethnology (cross cultural comparison). Ethnography is the data-gathering part, consisting of field research in a particular culture.
Today the term of ethnography is used ambiguous. The word ‘ethnography’ has a double meaning in anthropology: ethnography as
product (ethnographic writings – the articles and books written by
anthropologists), and ethnography as process (participant observation or fieldwork) (Sanjek 2012: 243). Ethnography, as a field research,
seeks for thick description in the way of detailed and thorough portrayal. That is achieved by living among the research subjects for a
year without a break and by learning their language and lifestyle.
Ethnology – the theoretical, comparative study of society and culture; examines and compares the results of ethnography – the data
gathered in different societies. Ethnology try to identify and explain
cultural differences and similarities, to distinguish between universality, generality, and particularity (Kottak 2012: 310; Kottak 1991: 9).
Archaeological anthropology (prehistoric archaeology) and
cultural anthropology embody similar aims, but are different in
terms of methods and researched cultures. Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behaviour and
cultural patterns through material remains (Kottak 2012: 307). We
would not be able to understand the past without archaeological
findings, particularly where people have not left any written monuments of the past. We would not be able to understand the present
without understanding the past.
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Conception of Anthropology, Historical Background…
Linguistic anthropology: The descriptive, comparative, and historical study of language and of linguistic similarities and differences in time and space, including interrelations between language and
culture; includes historical linguistics and sociolinguistics (Kottak
2012: 312; Kottak 1991: 17).
Anthropological linguists seek to examine history of all known
language families. They are interested in the way language affects
other aspects of human life and their influence on language itself,
as well as in the relation between the language evolution and that of
Homo sapiens, our species. They are also interested in the relation
between the evolution of languages and that of different cultures.
Biological, or Physical, antropology. The study of human biological variation in time and space; includes hominid evolution,
human genetics, human biological adaptation, and primatology
(behavior and evolution of monkeys and rapes) (Kottak 2012: 307;
Kottak 1991: 17).
Physical anthropologists seek to reconstruct the process of human evolution by examining the remains of fossil excavations similar to ancient species of human beings. Physical anthropologists also
seek to describe the distribution of inheritable changes between current inhabitants and to sort corresponding changes in human life
regarding inheritance, environment and culture.
Applied anthropology employs the data, methods, anthropological theories and prospects of previously discussed branches of
anthropology in order to determine and solve today’s practical problems related to human health, family planning, education, security
and economic development.
Anthropology can answer many important questions about human existence due to its biological, archaeological, linguistic, cultural, comparative and global aspects. Anthropologists describe specifically human features in the nature of human beings that distinguish
them from animals. Anthropology examines the importance of race
in the evolution of cultures and current life behaviour. It can describe social inequality arising from racism, exhaustion, poverty and
backwardness of nations. Therefore anthropology can significantly
contribute to understanding of the main subjects.
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Cultural Anthropology
Specialisations of anthropologists
Modern anthropologists typically have two specialisations: regional
and theoretical. Regional specialisation concern a specific part of the
world or specific groups of people. For example: Southeast Asia, West
Africa, Arctic hunters and reindeer herders, Gypsies. Theoretical specialisation concern an aspect of society, a branch of anthropology, or
approach to the study of society in general. For example: ethnicity,
urban anthropology, gender relations, family and kinship, economic
anthropology, applied anthropology.
Cultural differences and human universals
There are some examles of how people greet each other in different
societies:
1. In Japan it is customary to bow, whereas in Europe people
shake hands when they meet for the fist time.
2. In Eastern Europe men hug and kiss each other, whereas in
Western Europe they generally don’t.
3. In many European countries, kissing on the cheek or off the
cheek is common when greeting between women, or between
people of opposite sex. There are different ways of doing this:
for example, twice (once just off each cheek) in France, three
times in The Netherlands.
4. Within the UK there are similar differences. Men shake hands
more frequently than women. Muslims shake hands more frequently than Christians. Hindus greet with the namaste (placing the palms of one’s own hands together and bowing), rather
than with a handshake (Barnard 2000: 21–22).
Classifying the world in different cultures
Classifying is part of language and culture. Many anthropologists
argue that learning a culture is like learning a language. Animals
and plants are classified differently in different cultures. A knowledge of this adds to cultural understanding. Animals may be classified by appearance, activity, or how they rear their young. In many
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Conception of Anthropology, Historical Background…
African cultures bats are classified as ‘birds’ because they are flying
animals. In European cultures bats are classified as ‘mammals’ because female bats feed their young through their mammary glands.
People classify plants in a similar way. There may be differences
even within the same society. Tomatoes are considered as vegetables
in the Western culinary world. However, in biological science they
are considered as fruits because they are the seed-bearings parts of
the tomato plant.
There are different ways of classification of relatives. Terms like
“uncle” or “aunt” are not universal. In many societies, a person’s
mother’s brother is called by a different term from their father’s
brother, and is treated quite differently (Barnard 2000: 22).
Human universals are modes of thought or behaviour which are
the same everywhere. Long ago anthropologists came up with the
idea of a psychic unity or psychic identity between all peoples. Cultural differences between people are not significant enough to prevent them from understanding each other. Our cultural differences
mask innate similarities in the way we think and act.
Social anthropology helps us to distinguish differences from universal matters. For instance: language classifies objects differently
(bats, uncles, etc.), but all languages are made up of the same basic
elements (nouns, verbs, sentences, etc.). We can translate ideas from
one language to another, because we humans, at a fundamental level,
are all the same.
Those anthropologists who emphasize cultural differences are
called relativists. Anti-relativists reject the emphasis and concentrate
on advantages or universal matters of people. Cultures are different
from each other, and somehow all similar.
Anthropology and the other human sciences
The basic difference between anthropology and the other fields that
study people is holism, cross-cultural, and comparative perspectives.
A social science is a field of study whose object is understanding
some aspects of society. Sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and at least certain branches of geography, education, history
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Cultural Anthropology
(as well as anthropology) qualify as social sciences. There are some
links between social anthropology and the other social sciences.
Sociology and social anthropology are both concerned with the
study of society and share an interest in social relationship, organization, and behavior. Among differences between them, social
anthropology emphasises cultural difference and therefore implies
more of a comparative or cross-cultural perspective.
Psychology includes the study of child-rearing and the relation between culture and personality. So does the area of cultural anthropology known as psychological anthropology. Most psychologists do research in their own society, anthropologists use the cross-cultural data.
Political science involves the study of power relations, also an important topic in political anthropology.
Geography and social anthropology both include the study of
settlement patterns and culture contact. Cultural ecology is a related
field, often treated as part of social anthropology.
History also has links, especially economic and social history. The
difference is that history is essentially diachronic (looking at things
through time), whereas most anthropologist prefer a synchronic approach (looking at things at one point in time) (Barnard 2000: 26).
Summary
Anthropology is social science about people, their origins, lifestyle,
behaviour and cultural as well as biological diversity. It describes
and analyses cultures of both previous and modern ages, i. e. socially acquired traditions, behaviour and thinking of people, diversity
and reasons of culture’s adaptation to the environment. The main
branches of anthropology are as follows: sociocultural, biologicalphysical anthropology, archaeological anthropology and anthropological linguistics. Combined approach of all the areas is called
general anthropology. Various branches of anthropology examine
different aspects of human experience. The basic difference between
anthropology and the other fields that study people is holism, crosscultural, and comparative perspectives.
Anthropology requires the conclusions based on the research on
one separate group of people or civilization to be verified by comparing them with research material of other groups and civilizations.
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Conception of Anthropology, Historical Background…
These way anthropologists expect to avoid being biased with regard
to gender, class, race, nation, religion or culture. All nations and cultures are equally worth researching in the eyes of anthropologists.
Modern anthropologists have two specialisations: regional and
theoretical. Regional specialisation concern a specific part of the
world or specific groups of people. Theoretical specialisation concern
an aspect of society, a branch of anthropology, or approach to the
study of society in general.
Study questions
1. What are the branches or subdisciplines of general anthropology? What features unify them into one discipline?
2. How does anthropology differ from other human sciences?
3. Give some examples of differences and similarities between
cultures?
4. How cultural differences might affect people? Think about
your own experiences from abroad or in dealing with people
of different background?
5. Which form of greetings dominates within different social
groups (men, women, teenagers, Muslims, Christians, etc.)
2 Lecture. Field Research and
Ethnography: Traditional and Modern
Ethnographic Technique. Multi-Sited
Ethnography and Dimensions of
Global Cultural Flow
Schedule of lecture
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Ethnography: anthropology’s distinctive strategy.
Traditional ethnographic techniques or field methods.
Understanding the structure of an ethnography.
Anthropological comparison.
Regionalist anthropology and global cultural flow.
New approach to field research. Multi-sited ethnography in
contemporary research.
• Contemporary ethnography and ethics in anthropological research.
Ethnography: anthropology’s distinctive strategy
Ethnography means writing about peoples. The object of ethnography is to get inside another culture, and ultimately compare the
results to ethnographic studies of other cultures. The tradition of doing ethnography dates from 19th century.
Anthropologists use the word ethnography in two ways. On the
one hand it refers to doing fieldwork and taking notes in a particular
culture. On the other hand, it refers to the practice of writing or to
the finished writings themselves. (Barnard 2000: 29). The great ethnographers often made contributions to theoretical ideas through
their ethnography.
Traditional ethnographic techniques or field methods
The characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer include the
following:
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Field Research and Ethnography…
1. Direct, firsthand observation of daily behavior, including participant observation.
2. Conversation with varying degrees of formality, from the daily
chit-chat that helps maintain rapport and provides knowledge
about what is going on to prolonged interviews, which can be
unstructured or structured.
3. Inteview schedules to ensure that complete, comparable information is available for everyone of interest to the study.
4. The genealogical method.
5. Detailed work with well-informed or key informants about
particular areas of community.
6. Life histories. In-depth interviewing, often leading to the collection of life histories of particular people (Kottak 1991: 23).
Observation. Ethnographers must pay attention to hundreds of
details of daily life, seasonal events, and unusual happenings. They
observe individual and collective behavior in varied settings. They
should record what they see. Things will never seem quite as strange
as they do during the first few days and weeks in the field. The ethnographer eventually gets used to, and accepts as normal, cultural
patterns that were initially alien. Many ethnographers record their
impressions in a personal diary, which is kept separate from more formal field notes. Later, this record of early impressions will help point
out some of the most basic aspects of cultural diversity. Such aspects
include distinctive smells, noises people make, and how they gaze
at others. So, ethnographers should be accurate observers, recorders,
and reporters of what they see in the field (Kottak 1991: 23–24).
One of ethnography’s characteristic procedures is participant
observation, which means that we take part in community life as we
study it. As human beings living among others, anthropologists cannot be totally impartial and detached observer. They must also take
part in many of the events and feasts of observing community life.
Conversation. Participating in local life means that ethnographers constantly talk to people and ask questions about what they
observe. It’s important to understand not only the common ideas,
but also an informal knowledge.
Interview schedule. With the interview schedules, the ethnographer talks face to face to informants, asks the questions, and writes
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Cultural Anthropology
down the answers. Questionnaire procedures tend to be more indirect and impersonal; the respondent often fills in the form.
Genealogical method. Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols (Kottak 2012: 310). Early ethnographers
developed genealogical notation to deal with principles of kinship,
descent, and marriage. In the contemporary society most of our
contacts outside the home are with nonrelatives. However, people in
nonindustrial cultures spend their lives almost exclusively with relatives. Anthropologists even classify such societies as kin-based. Anthropologists must record genealogical data to reconstruct history
and understand current relationships. To record genealogical data
anthropologists use symbols such as triangles for males and circles
for female.
Well-informed or key informants. An expert on a particular aspect of local life who helps the ethnographer understand that aspect.
Every community has people who by accident, experience, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life. These people are well informed informants or
key cultural consultant.
Life histories provide a personal cultural portrait of existence
or change in a culture. Often, when anthropologist find someone
unusually interesting, they collect his or her life history. This recollection of a lifetime of experiences provides as more intimate and
personal cultural portrait than would be possible otherwise (Kottak
2012: 312; Kottak 1991: 23–28).
Anthropological techniques used in complex society. Anthropologists can use field techniques such as network analysis, participant observation, and firsthand data collection in any social setting.
However, anthropologists use modified ethnographic techniques to
study complex society.
Understanding the structure of an ethnography
When you read ethnography, think about its structure. Often this
will help you to understand the authors approach and follow what he
or she is trying to say. Alan Barnard shows 3 examples: 1) Ethnogra16
Field Research and Ethnography…
phy with a seamless narrative; 2) ethnography structured on the life
cycle; 3) ethnography structured on social system.
Ethnography with a seamless narrative
The ethnographies published between the first and second world
wars are generally long. Many are poorly organised. Their authors
often tried to weave the details of social life into a seamless ethnography. A good example is the Polynesian ethnography We the Tikopia
(1936), by Malinowski’s student Sir Raymond Firth. We will show an
example of the first hypothetical ethnography:
Ethnography with a seamless narrative
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
The environment of the people.
Village life.
The household.
Family and kinship.
Sex and marriage.
Youth and old age.
Rituals of life and death.
Ethnography structured on the life cycle
Another method is to emphasize the life cycle – from childhood to
old age. One example is Australian ethnography Aboriginal Woman
(1939), by Phyllis Kaberry. She alternates between the sacred and the
profane (secular) aspects of each period of life for the women of the
Kimberleys (in Western Australia). More recent example is Lila AbuLughod’s Writing Womens Worlds: Bedouin Stories (1993). These focus on women’s lives, both in relation to men and in relation to other
women. There is an example of the second hypothetical ethnography:
A) It begins with an overview of the fieldwork itsef. Such a personal touch is most typically associated with ethnographies which
present a culture through the eyes of individuals.
B) There is an emphasis on activities, notably activities related to
age. Often this kind of ethnography emphasises gender distinctions.
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Cultural Anthropology
Ethnography structured on the life cycle
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Doing fieldwork with the people.
Birth and the naming ceremony.
Growing up.
Initiation and marriage.
Adulthood and raising children.
Old age.
Death and funerals.
Ethnography structured on social system
It is common for ethnographies to be structured around the idea of
social systems. Evans-Prichard’s ethnographies are examples. We
will show an example of the third hypothetical ethnography:
Ethnography structured on social system
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
History of the people.
Economic activities.
Political relations.
Law and social control.
The kinship system.
Ritual and belief.
Social change.
The presumption of social stability is related to the concept of the
ethnographic present. This means the time of the fieldwork, and anthropologists frequently refer to happenings in other cultures in the
present tense even when the time of fieldwork was long ago (Barnard
2000: 33–34).
Reading recent ethnographies
Most recent ethnographies concern specific themes - economic activities, political power, rituals of death, kinship, initiation, marriage.
They do not aim to cover everything. Many anthropologists today
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Field Research and Ethnography…
believe it is better if ethnographies portray individuals more as characters in fiction than as units of social structure. Abu Lughod’s Writing Women’s Worlds is a good example (Barnard 2000: 35). Another
characteristic of recent ethnography is the emphasis on reflexivity;
the ethnographer reflecting on her role as ethnographer. Increasingly, ethnographers are more subjective, regarding ethnography less as
an objective account of an alien society and more as an attempt to
bridge the divide between cultures. Reflexivity today is more than
an activity undertaken during fieldwork. It is also style of writing.
Reflexive ethnographers put themselves into this picture (Barnard
2000: 35).
Anthropological comparison
Ethnographies exist as source material for comparative studies.
Through comparison, anthropologists can answer questions like
how people are related, the extent to which certain phenomena are
natural or cultural (for example, the incest taboo), or how changes in
environment or technology affect society.
Alan Barnard anthropological comparison divides by three
groups:
1) Illustrative comparison. This kind of comparison involves description. The emphasis is on highlighting some aspect of culture. For example, we might choose an example of a culture in
which men are dominant and compare it to one in which men
and women are more equal.
2) Controlled comparison. Anthropologists are trying to explain
something by narrowing the range of variables. We might look
at several closely-related societies to see how differences in one
aspect of culture might affect other aspects.
3) Global comparison. This form of comparison takes a large
sample – from all over a region, from all societies of a certain
type (such as hunter-gatherers), or all over the world indiscriminately (Barnard 2000: 37–38).
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Regionalist anthropology
Regionalist anthropology emphasizes the importance of differences
across regions and the concept of ‘culture area’. Historically detailed
scientific discourse allows to more-or-less objectively understand local life from geographical, linguistic and ethnic categories. Regionalist specialization has been the main component in the European and
American teaching and practice for almost a century. The emphasis
has been put on ethnographic research and observation from the regional perspective.
The concept of ‘culture area’ intrinsically points to regions which are
variously restricted to ethnographic schools in different national traditions of this century. ‘Culture area approach’ has been initially used in
Germany and USA as a structure classifier for museum exhibits.
Regionalist anthropology is a global cognition of a place and
globalization was the foundation of anthropology. It encourages reviewing anthropological areas, to define the ‘field’ (the new space of
our initial research) by considering the meaning of local importance
which is harmonized with the old practice of ‘culture area’ (Lederman 2008: 310–325).
Since 1990 regions have been viewed differently and ideas of a
representative of social-cultural anthropology, Arjun Appadurai,
have played an important role in that process. He claimed that globalization must be studied in an empirical way and suggested research guidelines for the global cultural flow.
Dimensions of the global cultural flow
1) Ethnoscape is a global demographic configuration embracing
human migration, independently of borders and cultures, and
both mobile flows of tourism, migration, exile, business trips
and stable societies.
2) Technoscape affects flows of cultural meanings and also embraces unequal distribution of technologies in the world.
3) Finanscape is a flow of financial capital which is increasingly
dissociated from fixed areas.
4) Ideoscape.
5) Mediascape.
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Field Research and Ethnography…
The last two flows are very closely related and involve both national and international creation, as well as dissemination of information and images. Mediascape comprise media, such as television,
radio, newspapers, etc. which forms an ‘imaginary world’ and where
stories and images usually form opinion about places and cultures.
Flow of ideologies concentrates on governmental ideologies and on
the ones who oppose the government and is usually very dependent
on the audience (Lederman 2008: 310–325).
New approach to field research
In the end of the 20th century, internal review of discipline of anthropology was already of a significant importance. In particular, the fact
how different researchers define their main research areas and how
they are perceived by their readers had to be taken into consideration. Anthropology has been mostly a ‘cabinet’ activity for almost
all of the 20th century and it was in the end of 20th century when
anthropologists realised that they have a possibility to carry out field
research in more than one area. Anthropologists use to compare relations, skills and identities between regions and within them in the
texts published by themselves or other ethnographers prior to the
initial (field) research.
Many anthropologists attempted to redraw spaces (or ‘fields’) of
their initial research and thus concentrated on the comparison of
people, objects and thoughts present in socially and geographically
different areas.
Multisited ethnography of George Marcus
George Marcus has significantly contributed to the new ethnography and helped to propagate ‘multi-locale’ as well as ‘multisited’ field
research. This strategy is based on approaches of global culture or of
culture in the global world. It is based on the belief that cultural isolation does not exist and that local conditions and any local culture
which seems to be isolated on the outside is never isolated from global factors. Therefore field research may and must be carried out not
only in a certain location or site, such as inaccessible village, island
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or ghetto, but in other environments, such as political and business
centres, different countries, etc. Field research can be launched in
the USA city’s immigrant society by later extending it to the environment of migration institutions and including countries from which
immigrants have arrived, as well as local communities.
Contemporary ethnography and ethics in
anthropological research
Contemporary ethnography is changing fast from its traditional
forms, both from within the discipline and through the appropriation of fieldwork by other social sciences. Both developments have
forced anthropologists to rethink of ethnographic methodology and
find new ways to capture the present. To follow these movements
ethnographers have to devise flexible form of fieldwork that generate ‘openness’ and reflection on their informants’ part, and which
may take them to the mobile grounds of their action wherever it take
place (Gefou-Madianou 2010: 152).
Ethnographic present deals with contemporary ethnography
in a variety of interdisciplinary contexts – anthropology with history, linguistics, medicine, psychoanalysis, ethnology – and ‘mobile’ fields – corporate social responsibility, transnational refugees,
trans-regional ‘associations’, AIDS responses, international airports.
Ethnographers reflect on the ethics of the ‘new’ ethnography, on the
role of memory in ‘retrospective’ or ‘post-fieldwork fieldwork’, on the
practical challenges of mobility to a discipline classically premised
on stasis (Mitchell 2010: 1).
Science exists in society of law and ethics. Anthropologists can’t
study things simply they happen to be interesting or of value to science. Ethical issue must be considered as well. Anthropologists typically have worked abroad, outside their own society. In the context of
international contacts and cultural diversity, different ethical codes
and value systems will meet, and sometimes challenge one another.
Anthropologists must be sensitive to cultural differencies and
aware of procedures and standarts in the host country (the place
where the research take place). The researcher must inform officials
and colleagues in the host county about the purpose, funding, and
22
Field Research and Ethnography…
likely results, products, and impacts of their research. Informed
consent (agreement to take part in the research – after having been
informed about its nature, procedures, and possible impacts) should
be obtained from anyone who provides information or who might be
affected by the research.
American anthropologist Conrad Phillipe Kottak emphasises the
main rules of ethics for anthropologists. “It is appropriate for North
American anthropologists working in another country:
• to include host country colleagues in teir research planning;
• establish truly collaborative relationships with those colleagues
and their institutions before, during and after fieldwork;
• include host country colleagues in dissemination, including
publication, of the research results;
• ensure that something is “given back” to host country colleagues (Kottak 2012: 53).
American Anthropological Association (AAA) offers a Code of
Ethics, which helps anthropologists in making decisions involving
ethics and values. This code points out, that anthropologists have
obligations to their scholarly field, to the wider society and culture,
to the human species, other species, and environment. Like medics who take the Hippocratic oath, the anthropologist’s first concern
should be to do no harm to the people being studied. The full Code
of Ethics is available at the AAA webside http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/Code-of-Ethics.cfm.
Summary
Anthropologists use the word ethnography in two ways. On the one
hand it refers to doing fieldwork and taking notes in a particular culture. On the other hand, it refers to the practice of writing or to the
finished writings themselves. The great ethnographers often made
contributions to theoretical ideas through their ethnography.
Contemporary ethnography is changing fast from its traditional
forms. Current anthropologists rethink of ethnographic methodology and find new ways to capture the present. Ethnographers have
to devise flexible form of fieldwork that generate ‘openness’ and reflection on their informants’ part, and which may take them to the
23
Cultural Anthropology
mobile grounds of their action wherever it take place. Ethnographic
present deals with contemporary ethnography in a variety of interdisciplinary contexts and ‘mobile’ fields – corporate social responsibility, transnational refugees, trans-regional ‘associations’, AIDS responses, international airports. Ethnographers reflect on the ethics
of the ‘new’ ethnography, on the role of memory in ‘retrospective’ or
‘post-fieldwork fieldwork’, on the practical challenges of mobility to a
discipline classically premised on stasis.
Anthropologists typically have worked abroad, outside their own
society. In the context of international contacts and cultural diversity, different ethical codes and value systems will meet, and sometimes challenge one another. A Code of Ethics helps anthropologists
in making decisions involving ethics and values.
Study questions
1. What are the characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer?
2. What are the differences between questionnaires and interview schedules?
3. What is participant observation?
4. Read old as well as recent ethnographies. Pay attention to the
structure of a monograph. Think why it might be organised
the way it is.
5. What are the differences between traditional ethnography and
current ethnography?
6. What is the main issue of ethics in anthropological research?
3 Lecture. Conception of Culture and
Research Strategy
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is culture?
Limitations of the concept of enculturation.
Differencies between ethnocentrism and cultural realitivism.
Diffusion.
Two research strategies of culture: emic and ethic.
Cultural materialism.
What is culture?
Culture is related to the obtained and socially acquired traditions
of thinking and behaviour which are observed in human societies.
Animals, primates in particular, also have some elementary culture
forms. When anthropologists refer to human culture they usually
infer common and socially acquired lifestyle which is characteristic to a group of people including patterns of thinking, feeling and
behaviour that they copy or imitate. It should be noted that all this
suggests not only achievements of a ‘cultured’ elite in literature and
art since anthropologists consider the research on ordinary people
just as important as research on famous and influential people.
British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor defines culture,
as follows:
‘Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society“. Therefore culture may be
researched as laws of human thought and activity.
Many anthropologists tend to regard culture as a purely mental
phenomenon which is composed of ideas how to think and act. Culture
is equated to computer software which always directs how to behave
under different circumstances. However, there is a risk to wrongly perceive the relation between ideas and behaviour. When culture changes
rapidly, which is the case in many parts of the world, behaviour usu25
Cultural Anthropology
ally alters prior to change of ideas and it can be stated that behaviour
programs human ideas as easily as ideas program human behaviour.
For instance, in 1970, married women with children of school age in
the USA have been certain that wives must be dependent on their husbands who provide for their families. However, many women have
acted against their ‘program’ and started to work due to rising prices
and a wish to have more income. Today most married women work.
Many working married women are the mothers of school-age children.
Overall it is believed that such practice fits and suits women.
Other obstacle for culture to be regarded as a solely mental program and as the one, including both mental and behavioural aspects,
is that many of the most topical social problems of today have no
program at all. For instance, traffic jam is a well-established phenomenon which exists independently of a program that makes drivers to move. Poverty is another example of the entire set of actions
which people program themselves not to take.
Society, subculture and sociocultural system
Every society has a common culture. However, situation is more
complicated since human societies, particularly the ones possessing
the state as a form of political organization, usually have subgroups
that are characterized by more or less different lifestyle. Anthropologists usually use term subculture while referring to cultural patterns
characteristic to such groups. This term emphasizes that culture of
the society is not equal to all of its members. Therefore, even small
societies have male and female subcultures, while in larger and
more complex societies subcultures are related to ethnic, religious
and class differences. The term sociocultural is an abbreviation of
the term ‘social and cultural’ and reminds that society and culture
forms an entirety or a system.
Enculturation
Culture of the society that is transferred from one generation to
another tends to stay similar in many respects. Such continuity of
lifestyle is partly determined by the so-called enculturation. Encul26
Conception of Culture and Research Strategy
turation is partly conscious and partly unconscious teaching experience which is used by the older generation to invite, encourage and
press the younger generation to take over traditional ways of thinking and behaviour. Chinese children use chopsticks instead of forks;
they speak a tonal language and do not like milk since they have been
encultured into Chinese culture and not to the one of USA. Enculturation is firstly based on a diversion that is carried out by the older
generation by applying encouragement and punishment measures for
children. Each generation is trained not only to repeat behaviour of
the previous generation, but also to compensate the behaviour which
meets the pattern of its own enculturation, and to punish for any other behaviour or at least not to encourage it. Concept of enculturation
is the most important in the special view of modern anthropology.
Ethnocentrism is an approach which states that one’s own behavioural pattern is always deemed normal, natural, good, great and
significant while the borrowed patterns, due to them being different,
are barbarous, inhuman, hideous or irrational. People do not tolerate
cultural differences and ignore the following fact: if they would be
encultured by the other group, most of the allegedly barbarous, inhuman and irrational matters would be considered as acceptable ones.
Cultural relativism
Anthropologists strongly emphasize an approach known as cultural
relativism. This concept has many meanings. For some anthropologists cultural relativism means not judging moral values of other nation cultures. It means rejecting any absolute and universal norms of
morality and refusing to judge cultural faith and customs as good or
bad. Most of the anthropologists judge cultural patterns of a certain
nature in an ethical way and try to minimize the effect of such partialities and beliefs on the research.
It is important to clearly understand the difference between relativity of values and relativity of truth. The first concept states that there
are no universal moral values while the second one claims an objective
truth about incomprehensible human thoughts and actions. According
to some anthropologists, an objective truth is unattainable, since all observers, even the ones applying research methods, are affected by their
27
Cultural Anthropology
own enculturation experience and values as well as aspects related to
their race, nationality, ethnic group, class and gender. Anthropologists
do not need to refuse their values in order to objectively examine culture phenomena. They can condemn environmental, genocide, sexism,
racism, poverty, cruelty towards children or nuclear war and still be
able to maintain scientific objectivity in respect of these phenomena.
Scientific objectivity does not rise from impartiality as we are all
partial, it rather rises from a concern that partiality can affect research results. Admittedly, science is a system of knowledge and its
main feature is an objective to deflect influence of any partiality on
the research. Scientists do that by clearly informing each other what
they have achieved while collecting and analysing data and creating logically consistent theories which can be verified and re-verified
by researchers. Those who claim that scientific methods cannot be
applied to sociocultural phenomena are fundamentally wrong: they
claim that objective truth stands for an absolute, final and unquestionable truth. However, scientific outcome is different. That’s a temporary objective truth. Science is a never-ending creation and verification of new and increasingly better theories. All truths are equally
partial (Collins, 1989; Harraway, 1989; Lett, 1991; Watson, 1990).
Limitations of the concept of enculturation
Under current global conditions, it is not hard to notice that lifestyle
of many social groups cannot be explained by enculturation. It is
clear that copying cultural patterns from one generation to another
is never an all-embracing process. The old patterns are not always
faithfully repeated by the later generations. New models emerge on
a regular basis. These days the adults within industrial societies are
worried about the extent of implementation of innovations and noncopying, since they have been educated to expect that their own children will copy their behaviour. This loss of continuity of generations
was called the generation gap. Margaret Mead explains, as follows:
‘In today’s world there are no older ones who know everything
what their children know, independently on how distant and ordinary
are the societies, where their children live. In the past, certain older
people used to know more than any child due to their experience in
28
Conception of Culture and Research Strategy
a particular culture system. Today such adults are absent. That’s not
only because parents are not their mentors, but because they have no
mentors in general, whether in their own country or abroad. There
are no elders who would know everything that is known about the
world to those raised over the last twenty years”.
In other words, enculturation can explain continuity of a culture,
but it cannot explain evolution of a culture. Enculturation has significant limitations even in respect of continuity. Each repeated pattern is not necessarily a programmed outcome of transfer from one
generation to another. Many repeated patterns are an outcome of reaction of exchanging generations to similar conditions of social life.
Sometimes acquired programmes can disagree with actual patterns.
In other words, people can be encultured to behave in one way; however, conditions that are not under their control may compel them to
behave in a different way. For example, traffic jam and poverty.
Many poor people live in houses, eat food, work and raise families
according to the patterns repeating subculture of their parents not
because their parents have educated them to follow these patterns,
but because poor children face educational, political and economic
conditions which eternalise their poverty.
Diffusion
Enculturation means transfer of features of culture from one generation to another, while diffusion means transfer of features of culture
from one culture and society to another. This process is common to
the extent that many features which are characteristic to any society
can be seen as having derived from any other society. For instance, it
can be said that many elements present in the management, religion,
law, food and language in the United States have been ‘borrowed’
from other cultures. Judaism and Christianity descended from the
Middle East, while parliamentary democracy has been taken from
the Western Europe; our food grains, such as rice, wheat and maize,
originate from the far ancient civilizations; the English language has
also emerged from a mix of several different European languages.
In the beginning of the 20th century, many anthropologists considered diffusion as the most efficient explanation for sociocultural
29
Cultural Anthropology
differences and similarities. The everlasting effect of this approach
can be seen in attempts to explain similarities between the main civilizations as an aftermath of their descent from one another, such as,
Polynesia from Peru or vice versa; China from Europe or vice versa;
New World (America) from the Old World, etc.
However, in the recent years diffusion has become obsolete as a
principle of explanation. In fact, the closer societies are more similar
by their cultures. However, such similarity cannot be simply attributed to a certain automatic trend of diffusion of features. It should
not be forgotten that geographically close societies live in a similar
environment; therefore their similarity can be determined by an influence of similar environmental conditions. More than that, there
are many cases when societies that have maintained close relationships for ages choose radically diverse lifestyle. For instance, the
Incas had imperial administrative system while neighbouring forest societies had no centralized authority at all. Residents of pueblos, the apartment-like structures, and their marauding neighbours
Apache in South East of America can be named among other wellknown cases. In other words, resistance to diffusion is as common
as surrender. Otherwise, there would be no fight between Catholics
and Protestants in the Northern Ireland, Mexicans would speak
English (or Americans would speak Spanish), and Jews would recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ (or Christians would deny him).
Besides, if we would consider diffusions as an explanation, the
question remains why the common subject has become widespread
before. Finally, diffusion cannot explain many significant matters,
such as why nations which have never established any relationships,
have invented similar tools and technologies and have explicated
incredibly similar marriage and religious faiths. The most evident
examples of such independent inventions are discoveries and inventions which emerge both independently and almost contemporary.
If human social life would be determined solely by diffusion and
enculturation, we should expect all the cultures to be identical and
to stay that way. Obviously, that’s not the case.
However, it cannot be stated that diffusion has no effect on sociocultural evolution. Proximity of one culture in respect of another one
usually affects the pace and direction of alteration, as well as forms
30
Conception of Culture and Research Strategy
specific details of sociocultural life, even though it does not form basic
features of the two cultures. For instance, a custom to smoke tobacco
has emerged in Aboriginal nations from the Western Hemisphere
and has spread to further regions of the Earth after 1492. This would
not have happened if Americans would have stayed separated from
other continents. However, single contact does not explain everything,
since hundreds of features of other Native Americans, e.g. living in
wigwams or hunting with bows and arrows have not been adopted by
the colonists who used to live near the Native American tribes.
Cultural anthropologists apply a range of methods in order to
examine cultural patterns. This includes survey questionnaires,
population census data, life stories, genealogies, official and unofficial interviews, video and audio recording and writing (Sanjek, 1990;
Bernard, 1993). The aim of the field research is to learn about both
mental aspects and aspects of culture of behaviour. Mental aspects
include the world of thoughts and feelings that exist in various levels
of consciousness:
a) People might not be able to comprehend their own ‘body language’. For instance, they might not be able to define the rules
which determine the distance they should maintain while
speaking to each other.
b) Other culturally patterned methods of mind-set are conceived
more easily, but people reveal them only when questioned by
a field researcher. Thus people can usually state their values,
norms and adopted rules which control activities, such as
baby weaning, romance with a partner, selection of a leader,
medical treatment, guest treatment and classification of relatives, worship of God and thousands of other daily matters.
c) There are also many completely conscious, clearly defined and
formal rules of behaviour and statements about values, norms
and aims which can be discussed in usual conversations and
included into legal codes or announced in public meetings
(rules of hygiene, processing of bank deposits, game of football, border passage, insurance, etc.).
Lastly, this subject is more complicated since cultures have rules not
only for behaviour, but also violations thereof: for instance, expecting
to avoid a fine when parking your car under a sign ‘No parking’.
31
Cultural Anthropology
Recognition of the inner world is not the only achievement of the
field research. Anthropologists are also observing, measuring, filming and writing down what people do for days, weeks or years. Anthropologists observe childbirth, participate in funerals, go hunting,
observe wedding ceremonies and participate in hundreds of other
events and activities. These events and activities comprise the aspect
of culture of behaviour.
Two research strategies: emics and ethics
Difference between mental and behavioural aspects does not answer
the question of adequate description of culture as entirety. The problem is that thoughts and behaviour of the participant observers can
be viewed from two different positions: from the position of the participant and from the position of the observer. In both cases there is a
possibility of scientific and objective explanations in the mental and
behavioural areas. In the first case, concepts and distinctive features
that are meaningful and relevant to participants are applied, while
in the other case concepts and distinctive features that are meaningful and relevant to observers are applied. The first culture research
method is called emics and the second one is called ethics.
While carrying out emic research, anthropologists seek to find the
categories and rules that are required to think and act as aboriginal
people do. For instance, they seek to find out what is the rule on which
the usage of the same kinship term used for mother and mother’s sister
of the representative of the researched culture is based, when it is appropriate to shame house quests among Kwakiutl people, when it is appropriate to ask a boy or a girl on a date among teenagers in the USA.
Ethic approach helps to form scientific theories about the reasons
for sociocultural differences and similarities. Instead of using concepts that would be realistic, meaningful and relevant in respect of
aboriginal people, now an anthropologist apply categories and rules
that have been derived from scientific language, which usually includes assessment and comparison of activities and events that are
considered as inappropriate and meaningless by the informers of
aboriginal people. Comparison of ethic and emic versions of culture
reveals some significant and interesting anthropological problems.
32
Conception of Culture and Research Strategy
Universal pattern
While intending to compare cultures, an anthropologist has to collect
and manage information about a culture taking into account what repeatedly occurs across cultures or what is a part of social and cultural
entirety. Such repetitive aspects or parts are called a universal pattern.
Anthropologists agree that each society is concerned about behaviour and thoughts which are related to acquisition of means of
living from the environment, having children, organising exchange
of things and work, living in groups of houses and in bigger communities, as well as related to creative, expressive, playful, aesthetic, moral and intellectual aspects of human life. However, it is not
agreed how many subdivisions should these categories include and
how they should be prioritized when a research is initiated.
Concept of cultural materialism
Cultural materialism is a research strategy that implies that the main
task of cultural anthropology is to explain the reasons for differences
and similarities of a thought and behaviour between groups of people.
Cultural materialism emphasises that this task can be best fulfilled
while examining material limitations which stipulate human life.
These limitations arise from the need to prepare food, build a shelter,
tools, produce machines and reproduce human populations within
the limitations set by biology, technology and the environment. They
are considered as material limitations or conditions in order to distinguish them from restrictions and conditions arising from ideas and
other mental or spiritual aspects of superstructure of the society, such
as values, religion and art. When it comes to cultural materialism, the
most credible reasons for change of mental and spiritual aspects of
human life are changes occurring in the infrastructure of society.
Human society is not able to exist without ideas and values, as well
as without tools and dwellings. In fact, moral values, religious faiths
and aesthetic norms in some sense are the most significant and exceptional features of a human being. Their significance is unquestionable. The problem is that we have to explain why individual group of
people has one system of values, beliefs and aesthetic standards, while
others have other systems of values, beliefs and aesthetic standards.
33
Cultural Anthropology
Summary
Culture consists of socially acquired thinking and feeling of members of an individual society. Cultures maintain their continuity
through enculturation measures. While carrying out a research on
cultural differences it is important to beware of a habit called ethnocentrism, which arises from an inability to understand the effect of
enculturation on human life. However, enculturation is not able to
explain the reasons for alternation of cultures. More than that, not
all the recurrences of a culture in different generations is a consequence of enculturation.
Enculturation means a process during which culture is transferred from generation to another, while diffusion means a process
during which one society transfers its culture to another society.
Culture consists of body activity patterns, as well as of human
thoughts. Anthropologists apply a wide variety of cultural research
methods, including the most popular one, i. e. participant observation. Differently from social animals that have certain cultural elements, people can describe their thoughts and behaviour following
their own approach. While studying human cultures, it should be
clearly stated which approach was chosen: the one of an aboriginal
human being, i. e., of a participant (emic approach), or the one of an
observer (ethic approach).
Both mental and behavioural aspects may be research by employing both emic and ethic approach. Emic and ethic versions of reality
are usually extremely different and similar at the same time. In addition to essential, mental and behavioural aspects, all cultures have
a universal pattern.
Study questions
What is enculturation? Give an example of enculturation.
What is the distinction between emic and ethic?
Give an examples of emic and ethic research strategies.
What is ethnocentrism?
What are the differences between ethnocentrism and cultural
relativism?
6. What are the differences between enculturation and diffusion?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
34
4 Lecture. Psychological and Cognitive
Anthropology
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is psychological anthropology?
Review of Culture and Personality studies.
Theoretical questions on Culture and Personality.
Basic and modal personality.
Cognitive anthropology.
Evolutionary psychology.
What is psychological anthropology?
Psychological anthropology attempts to understand similarities and
differences in behavior, thought, and feelings among societies by focusing on the relationship between the individual and culture, or the
process of enculturation. One question that psychological anthropologists focus on is the degree to which human behavior is influenced
by biological tendencies versus learning. Today, most anthropologists
have adopted an interactionist approach that emphasizes both biology and culture as influences on enculturation and human behavior.
Psychological anthropology examines the relation between cultural and mental processes. It deals with human development and
enculturation within a certain cultural group which has its own history, language, conceptual categories, practices and forms processes
of self-recognition, emotion, motivation, comprehension and mental
health. It also analyses how certain psychological processes inform
about or restrict our patterns with regard to the way the social and
cultural processes work.
Psychological anthropology includes several schools and each of
them approaches the aforementioned topics in one’s own way (Psychoanalytic, Culture and Personality, Ethnopsychology, Cognitive Anthropology and Psychiatric Anthropology schools).
Psychological anthropology (a branch of anthropology) can also
be referred as ‘Culture-and-Personality’ studies, which seek to de35
Cultural Anthropology
termine a certain method of relation between an individual and
his culture.
Psychological anthropology and its relevant field of interest were
closely related to an American anthropology. Psychological anthropology is related to the rise of the original ‘Culture and Personality’ studies.
It is also related to the socialization theories, psychoanalytic approaches, ethnosemantics, ethnopsychiatry and cognitive anthropology.
Psychological anthropology examines psychological conditions
which influence or even accelerate changes in social systems in order
to make comprehension of relationship between culture and an individual clearer. It approaches to anthropological research through
psychological conceptions and methods.
Richard Bock (‘Rethinking Psychological Anthropology’, 1988) defines the following schools of psychological anthropology: Psychoanalytic Anthropology, Culture and Personality, Social Structure and
Personality, Cognitive Anthropology and Behavioural.
This school of psychological anthropology is based on psychological insights of S. Freud and other psychoanalysts that are applied for
social and cultural phenomena. Supporters of such approach used to
think that raising a child forms personality of an adult. Meanwhile,
cultural symbols (dreams, rituals and myths) can be interpreted
based on psychoanalytical theories and methodology (interview
methodology was based on impartiality while interviewing, TAT,
Rorschach tests have been used, etc.).
Review of Culture and Personality studies
Anthropological school of ‘Culture and Personality’ (Psychological
Anthropology and Ethnopsychology) has been established in USA,
in 1920–1930’s. ‘Culture and Personality’ school is considered as a
subdiscipline of cultural anthropology. It comprises elements of psychology, biology, psychiatry, anthropology and sociology.
The main problem analysed by this field was the relation and interaction between personality and culture as well as between culture
and personality. School of ‘Culture and Personality’ has sought to
determine features of behaviour and thinking dominating in a specific culture, i. e. how individual person is affected by a culture. It
36
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
has attempted to interpret cultures psychologically. Major attention
is focused on psychological factors (personality, emotions and character) and cultural conditions, particularly on socialization, gender
roles and values.
Its origin is related to the beginning of ethnopsychology in Europe. In the second half of the 19th century, new terms have emerged,
such as ‘National Character’, ‘Psychology of Nations’ and ‘Ethnographic Psychology’. Origin of the Culture and Personality school is
related to the 19th century mythological-folkloristic school in Germany. This school suggested that myths have Earth-bound roots and
include archaic spiritual cultural forms that reflect in a soul of a nation. According to brothers W. and J. Grimm, a nation has a soul, its
own morals, and rights and is in itself an individual.
The rise of psychological anthropology in the USA is related to
the name of F. Boas (1858–1942), who has transferred the experience
of many European researchers to the American school. He referred
to the works of the Europeans, Tarde and Wundt. The culture and
personality field was essentially a follow-up of ideas of F. Boas, the
founder of the American anthropology. It has continued developing
ideas of a holistic approach towards culture and cultural relativity.
S. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory had a significant influence on
the rise of the psychological anthropology. Freud’s theory has transferred the belief that the core of one’s personality forms from the experience and impressions of one’s childhood. Therefore, major attention has been paid to the communication between adults and infants,
as well as with minor children. Attention has been paid to cultural
symbolism and symbols of sexual image.
In the 1920’s, formation and further development of ethnopsychology has been significantly affected by the works of G. Roheim,
‘Ethnology and National Psychology’ (1922); ‘The Study of Character
Development and the Ontogenetic Theory of Culture’ (1934); ‘Psychoanalysis and Anthropology’ (1950). The ‘Culture and Personality’ school has also employed concepts developed by Carl Jung, E.
Fromm, K. Horney and A. Maslow that have radically modernised
psychoanalysis by refusing to prefer human sexuality.
Gestalt psychology (field of psychology that considers mental
processes as seamless and irresolvable elements), philosophy of life
37
Cultural Anthropology
of O. Spengler and F. Nietzsche, as well as Dilthey, a representative of
Neo-Kantianism, have paid attention to certain aspects of the ‘Culture and Personality’ studies.
The ‘Culture and Personality’ school in fact started around the
end of the 1920’s and the beginning of the 1930’s, following the publishing of the works of Margaret Mead, intended for psychology of
children of Oceania (Coming Age in Samoa. N. Y. 1928; Growing Up
in New Guinea. N. Y. 1930), Benedict R. Patterns of Culture. Boston.
1932); Sapir E. Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry. 1932).
What is the difference between this school and previous anthropological schools?
It returns to comprehension of individual psychology and personality as of the most important component, original unit which
determines the structure of entirety. Major attention is paid to a formation and development of personality from early childhood. Particular attention is paid to sexual field.
Theoretical questions on Culture and Personality
In the 1930’s, the ‘Culture and Personality’ school of the USA emphasizes 3 most important theoretical questions, in the light of
which the analysis of a certain ethnographic material has been
carried out. 1) Research on the national character. 2) Relation between pathology and standard in different cultures. 3) Child psychology and importance of early childhood for the formation of
personality.
1) Research on the national character was based on the comprehension of ‘basic personality’ and ‘modal personality’. ‘Basic personality’ expresses fundamental features of individuals from different ethnic groups. It is believed that each ethnocultural community
must have specific features that are common for all of its members.
‘Basic personality’ is an average character of separate culture and its
features are fundamental features of the researched nation, yet features of personality are also considered as subjective.
Term of ‘modal personality’ has been found while carrying research on personality based on the psychological test of Rorschach. It
has been determined that each cultural group includes a big variety
38
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
of types. (Modal means the one referring to the way the object exists
and related to way the facts are confirmed in the statements).
Different types of personality describe different societies. It has
been noticed that there is an undeniable connection between the facts
that culture affects education and the way the individuals are educated, as well as personality and national character type is formed.
Culture has its own psychological pattern. F. Boas has proved that
culture is not inherited, but rather acquired and taken over in the
way of socialization. Representatives of the Culture and Personality
field have claimed that culture is an integrated psychological pattern of common values and practices. This pattern is created by a
certain structure of character and is constantly repeated through
socialization. According to A. Kardiner, this pattern is expressed by
the basic personality structure, while R. Benedict and M. Mead that
is expressed by a pattern of culture.
2) Normal and Abnormal. The research has been carried out by
referring to the following concepts by S. Freud: Analogy (equalization) of a neurotic person with a primitive man and relative boundary
between standard and pathology. In 1934, R. Benedict has reviewed
the mentioned Freud’s postulates in her article ‘Anthropology and
Abnormal’. According to them, each researched nation and its culture are carriers of psychopathology. R. Benedict notices that the society considers that something is normal if it meets its standards. It
is clear that human standards differ from each other across different
regions of the Earth. It depends on a certain historical destiny of a
nation, its ideology (firstly, its religion), geographical location, as well
as natural conditions (climate, productivity of land and ecology).
During the analysis of the relation between pathology and standard, ethnopsychologists have dealt with human behaviour aspects in
different ethnocultural systems. Standard and pathological behaviour
of human beings is related not only to psychosomatic diseases, but
also to a problem of intercultural change and comprehension of other
cultures. It is important to define interrelationship between standard and abnormal behaviour between an individual and ethnosocial
community. The following two criteria can be singled out: Individual-empirical and common system of standards and values adopted
in the ethnic society. It is the individual-empiric criterion of pathol39
Cultural Anthropology
ogy and diagnosis of psychosomatic disease that can alter in different
cultures. Organic and mental damage depends on climate, natural
conditions and characteristics of a body. The fact that a diagnosis of
psychosomatic disease can vary in different culture proves that different social systems have different standards for normal behaviour.
A person may have a psychosomatic disease and might need medical aid in order to eliminate his behavioural disorder. Such a person
does not necessarily violate common system of standards adopted
in the community and, on the contrary, a person can fall outside
all standards, violate values which are observed in his ethnosocial
community, yet stay mentally healthy at the same time. His or her
behaviour is unacceptable; therefore she/he may experience isolation
and reformation by serving his or her sentence in prison instead of
receiving medical aid. However, there are cases when human behaviour is considered as abnormal both in social community and individually when one has a psychosomatic disease. Ethnopsychologists
emphasize the uniqueness of cultures by stating that each culture
has its individual logic.
Research on criteria of standards and pathology of an individual
has encouraged the rise of ethnopsychiatry or intercultural psychiatry. Research of traditional and modern societies has proved that
psychopathology is dependent on ethnocultural needs.
3) Representatives of the Culture and Personality school have
claimed that early childhood experience determines personality
of an adult through socialization and enculturation (a process of
acquisition of a culture during which children take over the way of
thinking, feeling and behaviour, which is considered as appropriate
for adults in the same culture). In the research on childhood major attention has been paid to an early experience of a child, i. e. regularity
and duration of infant feeding, methods and duration of swaddling,
bathing, toilet training, sex education and other methods of a child
care. Relationship with a child in his early childhood has influenced
him or her and left certain personality marks for the remaining period of life. Thus, characteristics of a personality have been determined from different elements of relationship with a child and have
been used to determine characteristics of national character of the
entire nation. However, it cannot be agreed that separate elements of
40
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
childhood experience are sufficient in order to determine character
of the entire nation. Therefore, representatives of psychological anthropology have deserved to be criticized in this respect.
Research by Margaret Mead
In her first works Margaret Mead analyses behaviour of children,
their thinking and actions. She attempts to reveal the formation of
child’s ability to comprehend and reflect the surrounding world in
the Islands of Oceania. Her aim is to reveal the all-embracing portrait of an inhabitant of Oceania and compare it with a representative of the Western civilization. She mainly focuses on processes
of cognition and comprehension, as well as on ways of thinking in
traditional societies. Mead notices that animistic way of thinking is
determined by culture, potency of human intelligence, but it is not
a stage of mental development. She persuasively demonstrates that
child’s way of thinking is more realistic than the one of adults in
traditional cultures. During her field research, she has never noticed
that children would believe that an accident (e.g. a boat carried away
to the ocean) happened due to a supernatural cause.
Margaret Mead did comparative studies of culture and personality in the Pacific islands, focusing on childhood and adolescence. Her
early book Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), based on 9 month study of
Samoan girls, compared Samoan and American adolescence. Mead’s
hypothesis was that psychological changes associated with puberty
are not biological based but cultural determined. She described Samoan adolescence as relatively easy period, lacking the sexual frustrations and stresses characteristic of American adolescence.
Later researchers in other Samoan villages reached different conclusions. A study Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (1983) by Derek Freeman offers a
particularly harsh judgment of Mead’s ethnography. Rather than the
carefree sexual experimentation Mead described, Freeman found a
strict virginity complex. Instead of casual and friendly relations between the sexes, Freeman found male-female hostility. His Samoan
boys competed in macho contests that involved sneaking up on girls
and raping them with their fingers.
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Cultural Anthropology
How do other anthropologists evaluate Freeman’s findings and his
criticisms of Mead? We know that in any culture, customs vary from
village to village and decade to decade. Mead and Freeman worked
at different times (50 years apart) and in different villages. Freeman’s
Samoans may well have differed from the people Mead observed in
1930. Furthermore, anthropologists have particular interests, skills,
and biases which affect their interpretations. Ethnographers (even
those from the same culture) have different schemata, which influence the way do field work and the conclusions they reach.
Culture and personality research has been criticized more than
most other aspects of ethnography. Anthropologist Haris had faulted
Mead‘s work for being too impressionistic. Mead relied heavily on her
own impressions about the emotions of Samoan girls. Although she
did report deviant cases, Mead focused on the typical adolescent experience. However, because she presented little statistical data, the ratio of normal to deviant could not be established. (Kottak 1991: 358)
Ruth Benedict: Cultures as Individuals
Ruth Benedict’s widely read book Patterns of Culture (1934) influenced research on culture and personality. Using published sources
rather than personal field experiences, Benedict contrasted the cultural orientations of the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast of North
America and the Zuni of the American Southwest. The Kwakiutl are
an usual foragers. The Zuni, tribal agriculturists, are a Pueblo group
in the American Southwest.
Benedict proposed that particular cultures are integrated by one
or two dominant psychological themes and that entire cultures –
here the Zuni and the Kwakiutl – can be labeled by means of their
psychological attributes. Thus, she called the Kwakiutl Dionysian
and the Zuni Apollonian, from the Greek gods of wine and light, respectively. Benedict portrayed the Dionysian Kwakiutl as striving to
escape limitations, achieve excess, and break into another order of
experience. Given these goals, they valued drugs and alcohol, fasting, self-torture, and frenzy. In contrast, Benedict’s Appolonian Zuni
were noncompetitive, gentle, and peace-loving. She found no Dionysian traits (strife, factionalism, painful ceremonies, disruptive psy42
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
chological states) among the Zuni. They valued a middle-of-the-road
existence and distrusted excess.
Benedict’s approach was configurationalism. In this view, cultures
are uniquely different from all others. She thought that cross-cultural
comparison of particular features is less feasible than demonstrating each culture’s distinctive patterning. However, later scholars have
faulted Benedict for having overly stereotypical views of cultures – for
ignoring cooperative features of Kwakiutl life and strife, suicide, and
alcoholism among the Zuni. Unfortunately, Benedict’s risky use of
individual psychological labels to characterize whole cultures influenced later descriptions of national character (Kottak 1991: 360).
Other representatives of psychological anthropology: Georges Devereux, Abram Kardiner, Melford Spiro and Gananath Obey­ese­kere.
Georges Devereux (1908–1985), a supporter of psychoanalysis.
Born in Hungary, has acquired his education in France, and has
practised in the USA for a long time. His field research among Mojave people has provoked long and fruitful discussions of Freud’s
concepts (transference and counter-transference) and their application in the setting of anthropological field research. Devereux has
carried out research of sexual life of Mojave people and talked about
their abortions. His study (1955) has shown that abortions have been
practised by more than 300 modern non-industrial societies. He
treated mental disease in an intercultural manner.
(The most important works of Georges Devereux: Reality and
dream (1951), Realität und Traum: Psychotherapie eines Prärie-Indianers, Mit e. Vorw. von Margaret Mead. (1985); A study of abortion in primitive societies; a typological, distributional, and dynamic
analysis of the prevention of birth in 400 preindustrial societies. (1955);
From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences. (1967); Essais
d’ethnopsychiatrie générale. (1970); Ethnopsychanalyse complémentariste. (1985) Ethnopsychoanalyse: die komplementaristische Methode in d. Wiss. vom Menschen / Georges Devereux. Übers. von Ulrike Bokelmann. 1984.)
Abram Kardiner was born in New York (1891–1981). He was an
American doctor, psychoanalyst and supporter of psychoanalysis,
who has significantly contributed to psychological anthropology. He
has combined psychoanalysis with anthropological field research. In
43
Cultural Anthropology
his book ‘The Individual and His Society’, he developed a separation
between primary and secondary institutions and basic personality
structure in a given society. He was Freud’s apprentice and analyst
and spent most of his career as a clinical analyst. From 1959 to 1967,
he has served as a director of the Institute of Psychology and as a
psychiatry professor in the Columbia University.
(Abram Kardiner’s works: The Individual and His Society (1939);
The Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945); My analysis with Freud:
reminiscences. (1977)’; The People of Alor: A Social-Psychological Study
of an East Indian Island. Volume I & II by Cora, with analyses by
Abram Kardiner and Emil Oberholzer. Du Bois and map. (1961); The
Mark of Oppression; Explorations in the Personality of the American
Negro by Abram Kardiner (1962)).
Melford Elliot Spiro (born in 1920) claimed that dichotomy of
nature and history is misguided. Even radical cultural determinism
does not mean radical cultural relativity. Many societies can be different. They all must be able to cope with similar biological characteristics of human beings. According to the author, culture signifies
a cognitive system, but it is not the only source of cognition. Individual human experience may be the other source. He has argued
that culture is not the most significant determinant of human beings.
The culture is rather engaged and unified with an individual through
psychodynamic processes of identification and internalization.
(The most important works of Melford Elliot Spiro: Spiro, Melford
E. (1986) Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology. Cultural
Anthropology: Vol. 1, No. 3, 259–286; Spiro, M. E. (1987) “Religious
systems as culturally constituted defense mechanisms.” Pp. 145–160
in Culture and Human Nature: Theoretical Papers of Melford E. Spiro,
edited by B. Kilborne and L. L. Langness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Spiro, Melford E. (1992) “On the strange and familiar in
recent anthropological thought.” Pp. 53-70 in Anthropological Other or
Burmese Brother? Ed. by M. E. Spiro. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Press; Spiro, Melford E. (1993) “Is the Western conception of the self
“peculiar” within the context of the world cultures?” Ethos 21: 107–153).
Gananath Obeyesekere is a professor emeritus of anthropology
in Princeton University. He is famous due to his psychological studies about property and culture work in South Asia.
44
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
Many of his works have been carried out in his homeland Sri Lanka. In 1990, he has started intellectual debates with Marshall Sahlins
about rationality of local/indigenous inhabitants. In 1990, G. Obeyesekere was engaged in field research in Sri Lanka and India.
Originality of Gananath Obeyesekere’s works and his basic ideas:
While carrying out a research on religious innovations of females
in his work ‘Medusa’s hair’ (1981), the author was worried about a
new symbol he has found, i. e. tousled hair of an ecstatic woman in
a jungle temple of Katagarama. He sought to trace the way from individual trauma to symbolic innovation and from this point to new
cultural forms. Main fields of interest for the researcher are psychoanalysis, anthropology and the ways that relates personal symbolism
with a religious experience.
(The most important works of Gananath Obeyesekere: Land Tenure In Village Ceylon: A Sociological And Historical Study. (1967); Medusa’s Hair: An Essay On Personal Symbols And Religious Experience
(1981); The Cult Of The Goddess Pattini. (1984). The Work of Culture:
Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology. (1990).
The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. (1992); Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian,
Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. (2002). Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating
Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. (2005); Karma and Rebirth (2005); The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience (2012)).
The school of psychological anthropology includes researchers
who were previously known as psychoanalysts, but later started to
practice field research, as well as those who have analysed the material collected by anthropologists by employing psychoanalytical
techniques: Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud, Eric Erikson, and Geza
Roheim.
Cognitive anthropology
Cognitive anthropology is the study of cognition and cultural
meanings through specific methodologies such as psychological experiments, computer modeling, and other techniques to elicit underlying unconscious factors that structure-thinking processes.
45
Cultural Anthropology
Cognitive anthropology developed in the 1950s and 1960s through
systematic investigation of kinship terminologies within different
cultures. However, more recently, cognitive anthropology has drawn
on the findings within the field of cognitive science, the study of the
human mind based upon computer modeling (D’Andrade 1995; de
Munck 2000). Cognitive anthropologists have developed experimental
methods and various cognitive tasks to use among people they study
in their fieldwork so as to better comprehend human psychological
processes and their relationship to culture. Through cognitive anthropology, we have learned that human mind organizes and structured
the natural and social world in distinctive way (Scupin 2012: 74).
Cognitive anthropologists have discovered that human mind organizes reality in terms of prototypes, distinctive classifications that
help us map and comprehend the world. Not only humans think in
prototypes, but also we use schemas to help us understand, organize,
and interpret reality.
The concept of shemas was introduced by Jean Piaget to discuss a
particular cognitive structure which has reference to a class of similar action sequences. Schemas are constructed out of language, imaged, and logical operations of the human mind in order to mediate
and provide meaning to social and cultural reality. Thus, shemas
are more complex than prototypes. The shemas may vary from one
culture to the next. For example, the shemas writing in English and
kaku in Japanese have some similarities, and these terms are usually
translatable between languages. The shema writing in English, however, always entails the act of writing in language, whereas kaku can
refer to writing or doodling or drawing a picture.
Cognitive anthropologists investigate how narratives are used to
coordinate thought processes. Narratives are stories or events that
are represented within specific cultures. There are certain types of
narratives, such as story of little Red Riding Hood, that are easily
retained by an individual’s memory and told over and over again
within a society. Thus, certain forms of narratives have easily recognizable plots and can be distributed widely within a society. Cognitive anthropologists are studying religious mythologies, folktales,
and other types of narrative to determine why some are effortlessly
transmitted, spread quickly, and are used to produce cultural rep46
Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology
resentations that endure for generations. Cognitive anthropological
research has been fruitful in providing interactionist models of the
ways that humans everywhere classify, organize, understand, interpret, and narrate their natural social and cultural environment (Scupin 2012: 75).
Evolutionary psychology
A recent development that draws on cognitive anthropology and attempts to emphasize the interaction of nature (biology) and nurture
(learning and culture) in understanding the explaining enculturation, human cognition, and human behavior is the field known as
evolutionary psychology. Some anthropologists draw on ethnographic research, psychological experiments, and evolutionary psychology to demonstrate how the human brain developed and how it
influences thinking processes and behavior.
Evolutionary psychologists contend that the mind uses different
rules to process different types of information. For example, they
suggest there are innate modules that help humans interpret and
predict other people’s behavior and modules that enable them to understand basic emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy,
and love. In addition, these specialized modules influence malefemale relationships, mate choice, and cooperation or competition
among individuals. So evolutionary psychologists tend to emphasize
the commonalities and similarities in culture and behavior found
among people in different parts of the world.
In The Adapted Mind (1992), anthropologist Jerome Barkow asks
why people like to watch soap operas. He answers that the human
mind is designed by evolution to be interested in the social lives of
others – rivals, mates, relatives, offspring, and acquaintances. To be
successful in life requires knowledge of many different phenomena
and social situations, innate predispositions influence how we sense,
interpret, think, perceive, communicate, and enable adaptation and
survival in the world.
Some anthropologists have criticized evolutionary psychology for
not emphasizing the richness and complexity of cultural environments (Scupin 2012: 76).
47
Cultural Anthropology
Summary
Psychological anthropology attempts to understand similarities and
differences in behavior, thought, and feelings among societies by focusing on the relationship between the individual and culture, or the
process of enculturation. Today, most anthropologists have adopted
an interactionist approach that emphasizes both biology and culture
as influences on enculturation and human behavior.
Psychological anthropology examines the relation between cultural and mental processes. It deals with human development and
enculturation within a certain cultural group which has its own history, language, conceptual categories, practices and forms processes
of self-recognition, emotion, motivation, comprehension and mental
health. It also analyses how certain psychological processes inform
about or restrict our patterns with regard to the way the social and
cultural processes work.
Schemas are constructed out of language, imaged, and logical operations of the human mind in order to mediate and provide meaning to social and cultural reality. Thus, shemas are more complex
than prototypes. The shemas may vary from one culture to the next.
Cognitive anthropology is the study of cognition and cultural
meanings through specific methodologies such as psychological experiments, computer modeling, and other techniques to elicit underlying unconscious factors that structure-thinking processes.
Study questions
1. Give an example of how your own personality has been affected by enculturation.
2. Describe a pattern of human behavior that is “normal” for your
society, but might be considered “abnormal” in another society.
3. What is cognitive anthropology, and what is its value?
4. What is schema theory, and how does it deal with similarities
and differences within cultures?
5. What does Derek Freeman’s criticism of Margaret Mead teach
us about ethnography and psychological anthropology?
6. Are emotional expressions universal? Are human emotions such
as anger or jealousy similar or different around the world?
48
5 Lecture. Biological Diversity, Race, and
Natural Selection
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
Race as a social construct.
Rase in biology.
Explaining human biological diversity.
Natural selection.
Non-human culture.
Creationism and its critics.
Race as a social construct
Scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity
from 2 main directions: racional classification and explanation of
specific differences. Because of widespread confusion between the
social and and biological meanings of the term race, it is important
to distinguish between them. Most people believe that the “races” are
biological categories. Instead, “white” and “black” designate social
races – categories that are defined by American culture. American
racial classification ignores both phenotype and genotype. Children
of mixed unions are automatically classified with the minority-group
parents. Racial classification in Brazil demonstrates that the American system is not inevitable. Brazilians recognize more than 500 racial categories. Futhermore, in contrast to the United States, race in
Brazil can change during person’s lifetime, reflecting phenotypical
changes. It is also varies depending on who is doing the classifying.
In theory, a biological race is a discrete group whose members
share certain distinctive genetic traits inherited from a common ancestor. The belief that races exist and are important is more common
among the public than it is among biologists.
We will show that the races are not biological but cultural, or social, categories. Social race is a group assumed to have some biological basis but actually defined in a social context – by a particular
culture rather than by scientific criteria.
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Cultural Anthropology
Race in biology
The scientific validity of race as biological term is questionable. Early
scholars attempted to define race by outward appearance, for example, as phenotypical differences. European and American scientists
tended to assign priority to skin color. Thus, many encyclopedias
still proclaim the existence of three races: the white (Caucasoid), the
black (Negroid), and the yellow (Mongoloid). Even scientists who believe that there are three major races recognize that human populations are difficult to classify.
Problems similar to those involved in basing racial classification
on skin color emerge when any single trait is used. An attempt to base
racial classification on facial features, height, weight, or any other
phenotypical trait is fraught with difficulties. For example, consider
the Nilotes, natives of the Upper Nile region of Uganda and the Sudan. Nilotes tend to be tall and to have long, narrow nose. Certain
Scandinavians are also tall and have similar nose. Given the distance
between their homelands, to classify them as members of the same
race little sense.
Would it be better to base racial classifications on a combination
of physical traits? This would avoid some of problems mentioned
above, but others would arise. First, skin color, stature, skull form,
and facial features (nose form, eye shape, lip thickness) do not go together as unit. Traits determined by genes located on different chromosomes are transmitted independently to offspring. For example,
people with dark skin have hair ranging from straight to very curly.
Furthermore, there are dark-haired populations with light skin. The
number of combinations is very large, and the amount that ancestry and genes (versus environment) contribute to such phenotypical
traits is often unclear.
There is a final objection to racial classification based on phenotypical traits. Genes and the environment work together to create
phenotype. The relative contributions of genes and environment to
human biological differencies are often unclear. Phenotype is the
changing product of a long-term interaction, particularly important
during growth and development, between the organism’s hereditary potential and its environment. Therefore, as the environment
50
Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
changes, the range of phenotypes characteristic of given population
can also change independently of genetic change. The environment’s
influence on the organism reflects both the nature of the stress and
the individual’s age when exposed. The younger the individual, the
greater the impact of the environment tends to be.
There are several examples. In early 20th century, the anthropologist Franz Boas described changes in skull form among the children
of Europeans who had migrated to the United States. The reason for
this was not a change in genes, for the European immigrants tended
to marry among themselves. Some of their children had been born in
Europe and merely raised in the United States. Something in the new
environment, most probably in the diet, was producing this change.
Changes in average height and weight produced by dietary differences in a few generations are even more common (Kottak 1991: 68–71).
Explaining human biological diversity
Although the problems involved in categorizing human beings according to race are immense, it is obvious that biological differencies
exist among people. Human biological diversity can be explained.
There are links between generally determined traits, such as hemoglobins, and natural selective forces, such as malaria. Infectious diseases may have influenced the distribution of human blood groups.
Selective forces, genetic adaptation, stresses during growth, and biological plasticity contribute to such compex traits as lactose tolerance,
skin color, facial features, size, and body build. Biological similarities between geographically distant populations may reflect similar
but independent genetic changes or similar physiological responses
to similar stresses during growth rather than common ancestry.
Some people believe in genetically determined differences in the
learning abilities of races, classes, and ethnic groups. However, environmental variables (particularly educational, economic, and social
background) provide much better explanation for performance on
intelligence tests by such groups. Intelligence tests reflect the cultural biases and life experiences of the people who develop and administer them. When tests devised by Americans or Europeans are
translated into other languages, they retain Western cultural concept.
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Cultural Anthropology
All tests are to some extent culture-bound. Many stress competition
and speed of completion, values of a society that emphasizes time,
individual achievement, and self-reliance. Equalized environmental
opportunities show up in test scores (Kottak 1991: 84–85).
Natural selection
Human ability to create culture is a consequence of biological evolution processes. The most efficient process of evolution is called a
natural selection. Natural selection takes place due to unlimited reproductive forces of life and certain limited space and energy which
life depends on. Natural selection affects the inheritable genes which
exist in multiplying cells of each body. It performs this function by
increasing and decreasing the frequency of repetition of genetic variants. The main source of genetic variants is mutation, i. e. ‘errors’ that
occur in the process of reproduction of genes. Some genetic variants
improve the fitness of individuals who have them, while others impair the fitness. Fitness means a number of descendants who feature a certain genetic variant. Genes that determine better fitness are
called ‘selected for’, while genes that determine worse fitness are said
to be ‘selected against’.
Fitness is related to many different factors. It can be related with
body’s ability to resist disease, to acquire and to better maintain
space, or to energy that is acquired in bigger and more reliable quantities. It can be associated with an increased efficiency and reliability
of a certain aspect of the reproduction process itself.
Due to varying success of reproduction, natural selection can fundamentally change frequency of genotypes in several decades. The
example of natural selection’s power to increase a frequency of rare
gene is the evolution of bacteria strains that are resistant to penicillin.
Genes that provide resistance exist in standard populations of bacteria, but only few individuals have them. However, due to distinct
success of reproduction of such individuals, bacterium’s susceptibility to resistance eventually becomes the most common genotype.
Natural selection and ‘battle for existence’. Charles Darwin and
Alfred Wallace have formed fundamental principles about the way
the organic revolution could become a result of natural selection.
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Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
They have recognised the ‘battle for existence’ concept of Thomas
Malthus as the main factor for the success of reproduction. Hence, in
the 19th century natural selection was incorrectly perceived as a direct
battle between individuals for poor resources and sexual partnership,
and what was even more misinterpreted – as hunting and destruction of organisms belonging to the same species among each other.
Although competition sometimes matters in biological evolution, but
the factors determining the success of reproduction are mostly related to the body’s ability to destroy other members of its population.
Today biologists recognise that natural selection affects collaboration and altruism within the species, just as it affects the competition.
Reservation of genes of an individual within social species usually
depends on the success of reproduction of his close relatives and on
his survival, as well as reproduction. For instance, many social insects even have sterile ‘castes’ which ensure genetic success of species
by ‘altruistically’ raising descendants of their productive relatives.
Natural selection and behaviour. Natural selection forms not
only anatomy and physiology. It also forms behaviour. For instance,
certain genes determine that some types of fruit flies, seeking to
avoid hungry birds, fly upwards, while others fly downwards, or that
certain wasps lay eggs only to certain types of caterpillars. Genes
also directly determine fish mating rituals, cobweb weaving, workers bees feeding the queen bee and many other attractions and instincts in behaviour of different animal species. Such behaviours,
just as all genetically determined characteristics, emerge from errors
and copying in the replication of genotype. For instance, wasp’s attraction to a single type of caterpillars was an error (mutation) which
was selected since it increased fitness of a wasp. Hence, new behavioural model based on new genotype has become a part of the wasp’s
instinct programme.
Although it is very useful to have a genetically coded minor programme of behavioural responses, there is also another type of behaviour which is not programmed and has many advantages. Such
behaviour is acquired and programmed in body’s nervous system
and brain. For instance, terns learn to recognise fishing boats and
follow them; they learn to find fast food restaurants, city dumps and
other waste aggregates, and they acquire the behaviour without a
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Cultural Anthropology
change in its genotype. None of these actions is coded into the genes
of their descendants. Further generations of terns may acquire such
behaviour only by learning individually.
Ability to acquire new behavioural patterns through learning is
the basic feature of multicellular bodies. Learning allows individuals to adopt or use new abilities without waiting for the new genetic
errors to occur.
Non-human culture
Selection prepares the ground for a rise of culture due to increasing
learning ability. This ability has neurological foundation; it was determined by the formation of larger and more complex brain of more
perceptive animals. Evolutionary novelty represented by culture is
that abilities and habits of cultural animals are acquired through social heredity, rather than through primitive biological inheritance.
Social heredity means formation of social animal behaviour following the information existing in the brain rather than in the genes of
other members of community (however, it should be noted that the
real cultural responses always depend on a partly genetically determined abilities and attractions.).
Many animals have acquired traditions which are transferred
from one generation to another and which can be considered as primordial cultural forms. As we will soon see, chimpanzees and other
primates have acquired elements of traditions. However, it was only
among hominids who are representatives of humanity, as opposed
to simian family, where culture has become a more important source
of adaptive behaviour than biological evolution based on changes
in frequency of genes. By being able to stand and walk in upright
position and by having arms independent from motion and support
functions, the early hominids could possibly use to make, carry and
perfectly use tools as the most important means for survival. On the
other hand, monkeys are doing just fine with the simplest tools. Both
ancient and modern hominids have been always dependent on a certain cultural form in order to survive.
Tools and learning. Experiments with behaviour show that most
of the birds and mammals, in particular monkeys and apes, are suffi54
Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
ciently ‘perceptive’ to learn to make and use simple tools under laboratory conditions. However, under natural conditions the ability to
make and use tools occurs rarely, since most of the animals can easily get along without artificial means. Natural selection has adapted
them to a certain living environment by providing body parts, such
as trunk, nails, teeth, hooves and tusks. Hence, although primates
are sufficiently perceptive to make and use tools, but their anatomy
and traditional lifestyle do not stimulate to develop complex skills
for the use of tools. Monkeys and apes are not able to make full use
of their paws for taking tools, since their front limbs are important
for walking, running and climbing. It may explain why the most
common tool usage behaviour among monkeys and apes is defence
from intruders by using nuts, cones, branches, fruits, droppings and
stones. In order to start throwing things they only need to lose a possibility to run away or climb somewhere in case of danger.
Chimpanzee is the most skilful tool user among the free monkeys and apes. Jane van Lavick-Goodall and her colleagues have
examined behaviour of a freely wandering population of chimpanzees within Tanzania’s Gombe National Park for a number of years.
One of the most significant revelations is that chimpanzees are ‘fishing’ ants and termites. They catch termites by breaking branches or
climber plants, tearing leaves and sidings and then shoving them to
the nest of termites. Chimpanzee scratches off the thin coating and
puts in a branch. Inside, termites bite the end of a branch and chimpanzee pulls it out and licks off the termites. The most impressive
part is that chimpanzees carry the detached branch in their mouth
from one nest to another while looking for a tunnel entrance. Ant
catching is an interesting variation of such behaviour.
Chimpanzees can create a ‘sponge’ and absorb water from tree
cavities. They use similar ‘sponge’ to dry fur, clean sticky materials
and wipe baby chimpanzees’ backsides. Gombe’s chimpanzees use
sticks as levers to scratch off ant nests from trees and as spades to
broaden apertures of underground hives.
Observers in other location of Africa inform about similar behaviour, i. e. ‘fishing’ of ants and termites, as well as scratching and rooting out nests of insects. They have seen how chimpanzee splits and
smashes shells of fruits, seeds and nuts by using sticks and stones.
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Cultural Anthropology
In Tai Forest in Ivory Coast, chimpanzees break hard shells of nuts
with stones as with hammers. In the forest ground, they look for appropriate picks of stone of around 0.5–20 kg of weight. Chimpanzees
carry stones under an armpit while jumping on three legs for even
200 meters of distance. They put nuts on thick branches of trees or on
stones and furiously smash them. In the West Senegal, chimpanzees
use hammers of stone to crack baobab fruits.
Inspired by such inventiveness of chimpanzees, Nicholas Toth
from the Indiana University has taught a chimpanzee called Kanzi
to make tool of stone (Gibbons, 1991).
Is this culture? It appears that there are no specific genes which
would determine hunting of termites or ants and other behaviour
of chimpanzees mentioned above. In fact, young chimpanzees must
have genetically determined abilities to learn, manipulate things and
eat insects in order to acquire such behaviour. However, these common biological abilities and dispositions cannot explain the catching of termites and ants. If there would be nothing, except of young
chimpanzees, branches and nests of termites, catching of termites
and ants would be extraordinary. The information about catching of
termites and ants present in the brain of adult chimpanzees would
be the missing constituent of the behaviour of young chimpanzees.
Gombe River’s chimpanzees do not start catching termites until 18 or
22 months of age. They start clumsily and with much difficulty and
become skilled only at the age of 3 years. Jane van Lavick-Goodall
has noticed multiple times that juniors have observed mature animals catching termites. Juniors often tried to do the same by grabbing sticks dropped by the mature ones. The learning process to
catch ants that bite painfully lasts longer. The youngest chimpanzee
that has acquired such skill was of around 4 years old.
The conclusion that catching of ants is a feature of culture is confirmed by the fact that in other locations chimpanzees do not eat
ants-carriers, although this species is widespread in Africa. Meanwhile, other groups of chimpanzees catch other species of ants than
those caught by Gombe’s chimpanzees, by using different methods.
For instance, chimpanzees in Mohale Mountains, located 170 km to
the south from Gombe, use branches to tear up a nest of ants living
in trees, while Gombe’s chimpanzees do not touch such nests.
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Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
Broad research on non-human culture has been carried out with
Japanese macaque. Primatologists of Primate Research Institute of
Kyoto University found a big variety of customs based on social acquisition. They even noticed how new behaviour is transferred from
one individual to another and it becomes a culture of majority of
monkeys, independently on genetic transfer.
Kyoto researchers have spread sweet potatoes on seashore by seeking to attract monkeys to the sea in order to make their observation
easier. One day, young female began washing sand from sweet potatoes by dipping in a littoral brook. Washing has spread to the entire
group. After nine years, 80–90 percent of monkeys have been washing sweet potatoes both in the brook and in the sea. After spreading
wheat on the seashore, Koshima monkeys had hard time scratching
sand off the grains. However, soon one of them has learned the way
to easily remove sand and her behaviour has been taken over by other
monkeys. They started dipping wheat into water (Harris 1998: 25–26).
Start of a culture. Approximately 45.000 years ago culture entered into the ‘starting’ period. 40.000–45.000 years ago, material
culture of Western Eurasia has changed more significantly than in a
million year prior to that. Such blooming of technological and artistic culture means a concurrent rise of the first culture, which can be
today recognized as exceptionally human, since it has characteristics
related to relentless inventing and variety.
Prior to that period, cultural and biological changes have been
closely related. After the start of a culture, cultural evolution has
grown to an impressive extent, while human biological evolution
has not developed. Start of a culture confirms the opinion expressed
by most of the anthropologists that major attention should be paid
to cultural rather than biological processes in order to understand
the cultural evolution during the last 40.000 years. Natural selection
and organic evolution validate a culture, but when culture becomes
completely accessible, many cultural differences and similarities may
arise from or decline independently on the changes in genotypes.
An exceptionally human ability to speak and possess systems of
linguistic thinking is closely related to the ability of cultural behaviour. Other primates use complex signal systems in order to facilitate
their social life, while modern human languages are qualitatively
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Cultural Anthropology
different from all the rest of communication systems. Unique features of modern human languages have evidently emerged from
tribal adaptations related to increasingly growing dependency on social collaboration and culturally acquired lifestyle. Babies of modern
human beings are born with a certain nervous scheme which makes
the learning to speak as natural as learning to walk (Bickerton, 1990).
On its part, this nervous scheme represents a certain ‘layout of wires’
which is characteristic to species that must constantly receive and
transfer plenty of new information about their lives. However, it
should be noted, that it is not clearly known when our homidic ancestors acquired completely modern languages.
One of the ways to summarize characteristics of a human language is to say that we have reached ‘semantic universality’ (Greenberg, 1968). Communication system that has semantic universality
can transfer information about prospects, domain, property, locations or events from the past, present or future.
Apes and speech. In recent years, some experiments have shown
that the gap between human beings and apes, in terms of their ability
to speak, is not as big as it was previously thought. However, the very
same experiments have shown that natural factors specific to the species hinder to eliminate this interval. There have been many unsuccessful attempts to teach chimpanzees to speak human language. As
soon as it has been found that vocal tract of apes cannot form sounds
necessary for human language, they have been taught to use sign language, read and write. Female chimpanzee Washoe learned standard
signs of an American Sign Language, Ameslan. Washoe have used
the sign in an efficient manner. At first, she learned how to associate the sign ‘to open’ with different doors and later spontaneously
expanded its use to all the closed doors and then to the closed objects,
such as a refrigerator, a cupboard, drawers, boxes and jars. When
research assistant stepped on the Washoe’s doll, the chimpanzee had
many ways to express her thoughts: ‘Upwards, my, please upwards;
give the baby; please, the shoe; more my; upwards, please; please upwards; more upwards; the baby downwards; the shoe upwards; the
baby upwards; please, lift it” (Gardner and Gardner, 1971, 1975).
Both Washoe and Lucy, chimpanzees raised by Rogerio Fouts,
have learned to develop a sign ‘dirty’ from a sign ‘droppings’. Lucy
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Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
used to apply the sign ‘dirty’ to Fouts when he failed to fulfil her requests! Lucy has also invented combinations ‘to cry-raw food’ for a
radish and ‘candy-fruit’ for watermelons.
Female gorilla Koko, trained by Francine Patterson, holds a record of learning 300 words of Ameslan. Koko used ‘finger bracelet’
for a ring, ‘white tiger’ for zebra and ‘eye hat’ for a mask. Koko has
also talked about her inner feelings, such as happiness, sorrow, fear
and shame (Hill, 1978, 98–99).
These research studies have shown that chimpanzees can transfer
the skills of sign usage to other chimpanzees without human intervention. Washoe adopted Loulis, a 10 month old chimpanzee. She
sheltered the junior and soon started teaching him to show signs.
When Loulis was 36 months old he used 28 signs that Washoe taught
him. In about 5 years he has learned 55 signs from Washoe and other
two chimpanzees that were using signs without human intervention.
Even more impressive is the fact that Washoe, Loulis and chimpanzees who were using signs, also constantly used sign language
when communicating with each other, with no humans present. The
‘conversations’ of monkeys have been taped and have taken place
from 118 to 659 times per month (Fouts and Fouts, 1985, 1989, 301).
But it was Kanzi, the talented male pygmy chimpanzee who
learned to make extraordinary tools of stone. Kazi has completely
mastered 150 spoken English words without being educated. Kanzi
started understanding spoken words just by listening to conversations he had been hearing since his babyhood, just like a human baby
(Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1990, 247). By using keyboard and voice
synthesizer, Kanzi can talk in English about different matters. During the research on Kanzi’s ability to comprehend symbols, all safety
measures have been taken in order to avoid deliberate suggestions
and scolding from his mentors.
However, it is clear that linguistic gap between human beings and
apes remains eminent. Despite all the efforts to teach apes to communicate, none of them has acquired linguistic skills that are deemed
characteristic to 3 year old children. All these experiments have shown
absolute probability that natural selection determines human semantic universality, intellectual skills which have been characteristic to
our ape-alike ancestors in rudimentary form (Harris 1998: 27–28).
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Cultural Anthropology
Creationism and its critics
Anthropology’s attempts to examine human physical and cultural origin in the aspect of evolution and based on natural condition, seems
doubtful to creationists, who were literally referring to the ideas of
the Old Testament. Scientific creationists claim that everybody used
to speak one language prior to the Flood; after that, languages used
by each group were suddenly incomprehensible for other groups.
On its part, this incomprehension has forced people to move from
their homeland to distant regions of the Planet. However, there are
no facts approving such version, while history of linguistic also contradicts it. Science of historical linguistics has reproduced primitive
forms of linguistic families of the great languages of the World. The
languages we currently use have developed from the proto-languages of the primitive ones. Evolution of new languages has not caused
migration or separation of the old habitants. Rather, the migration
and separation of the old habitants have stimulated the occurrence of
new languages. Creationists state that the Palaeolithic Age has lasted
only 3000 years, since the spread caused by the Tower of Babel, till
the occurrence of advanced civilizations in the Middle East, rather
than two million years (or more) as claimed by archaeologists. They
explain that if the Palaeolithic Age would have lasted two million
years, habitants of the Earth would be by far bigger. Anthropological
research shows that pre-historic nations have maintained extremely
low increase of population by practising abstinence, abortions, longlasting nursing and direct or indirect infanticide.
Theory of creationism states that all civilizations may be derived
from the Middle East and does not consider the most important
archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, such as that pre-Colombian state communities in Mexico and Peru have evolved from
hunter/gatherers, independently of significant influence of the Old
World. Archaeologists have gradually collected facts pointing to the
process that plants and animals which were unknown in the Old
World, such as lamas, alpacas, guinea-pigs, potatoes, cassavas, maize
and pigweeds, were included into the pre-historic cultures of the
tribes of Native Americans. These plants and animals have provided
the ground for nutritional evolution in the pre-Colombian Ameri60
Biological Diversity, Race, and Natural Selection
ca from small groups to villages, from villages to chiefdoms, from
chiefdoms to states and from states to empires.
Summary
The scientific validity of race as biological term is questionable. Anthropologists show that the races are not biological but cultural, or
social, category. Social race is a group assumed to have some biological basis but actually defined in a social context – by a particular
culture rather than by scientific criteria.
Human ability to create is a result of natural selection. Natural
selection changes genotypes through unequal success of reproduction. Natural selection is not just a battle for existence. Adaptation of
human beings can be determined by collaboration and altruism as
often as it can be determined by battle and competition. Anatomical and behavioural features can be formed by natural selection or
can be coded in genes. However, changes of behaviour arising from
learning are different from the ones arising from natural selection.
Learning allows bodies to adopt and take advantage of occurring
possibilities and coincidences, independently from genetic changes
and is the ground for cultural traditions. Even if the ability to master
traditions was formed by natural selection and that happened just
after development of the brain, culture is coded in the brain and not
in genes.
Cultural behaviour, such as making and using tools, is characteristic to many non-human species, to monkeys and apes in particular. However, tool usage traditions even among monkeys and apes
remain rudimentary. The reason behind this is that monkeys and
apes use their front legs to climb and walk, thus are not able to easily
carry tools.
Human ability to expand semantic universality is a crucial cultural component. As shown by the experiments, chimpanzees and
gorillas can be easily taught to use several hundred signs. However,
comparing to a 3 year old human baby, apes have only rudimentary
abilities for linguistic productivity.
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Cultural Anthropology
Study questions
1. What is social race? Give an example of social race?
2. How do social and biological definitions of race differ ?
3. What is the difference between cultural and biological racial
classifications?
4. What kind of racial classification system operates in the community where you grow up?
5. What are the problems with racial classification based on phenotypical traits?
6. What explanations have been proposed for the distribution of
human body sizes and shapes?
7. Describe the theory of creationism.
6 Lecture. Ecology: Understanding
Environment and Technology
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is ecological anthropology?
How environment influences society?
Key concepts in ecological anthropology.
Technology as a social force.
Making a living.
Ecology and globalisation.
What is ecological anthropology?
Anthropolgy always has been concerned with how environmental
forces influence humans and how human activities afect the biosphere
and the Earth itself. The 1950s-1970s witnessed the emergence of an
area of study known as cultural ecology or ecological anthropoly.
Those anthropologists who specialise in the study of relations between environment and society are called ecological anthropologists.
They called their subject either ecological anthropology, cultural
ecology or social ecology.
Ecological anthropology as is usually dated to the publication of
Theory of Culture Change (1955), by American anthropologist Julian
H. H. Steward. Ethnographers, especially those working in huntingand-gathering societies, had long notices that environment was important. What Steward did was to put together examples of how environment and technology affect social organization, compare these
in an evolutionary framework, and encourage his students to do
studies focusing on these things.
Ecological anthropologist today frequently more interested in how
ordinary people view their environments. They attempts not only to
understand but also to find solutions to environmental problems.
How environment influences society?
There are different opinions about the influence of environment on
society. Some anthropologists argue that environment detemines
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Cultural Anthropology
social organisation, at least for those societies which rely heavily on
simple technology. Many more argue that environment merely limits
how society develops. Still others argue that there is only a loose relation between environment and society. Most cultural ecologists hold
the middle view. They argued that social organisation is formed by
combination of environmental influence and specific culture history.
Examples of environmental influence
1. Living where water supplies are scant will limit the size of
groups. Desert areas such as Sahara or the Kalahari tend to
have small and dispersed populations, or populations concentrated around meagre water resources.
2. Places with varying resources tend to be ideal for peoples on the
move or peoples wishing to trade. Native North Americans of
the North West Coast used to move within territories in search
of the best fishing and food-gathering grounds. When one group
acquired more resources than others, they would give them away
in ceremonies which conferred prestige on the givers.
3. Climates with extreme seasonal variation tend to be conducive
to social organisations with seasonal diversity. For example,
Inuit of Arctic North America have very different activities in
summer and in winter (Barnard 2000: 42).
Key concepts in ecological anthropology
Adaptation refers to ability of people to respond favourably to environmental stress.
A means of subsistence is method of obtaining a living from the
environment. These include hunting, gathering, fishing, herding
livestock, and agriculture (of various kind).
An ecological niche is a set of resources utilised by a particular
group in an environment. Sometimes different groups (say, hunters
and herders) will exploit different niches in the same environment.
The carrying capacity is the maximum number of people who
can live in a given environment. Sometimes this supposes a specific
means of subsistence.
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Ecology: Understanding Environment and Technology
Social organization refers to the activities of members of a society. It is related to the idea of society and social structure (the positions people occupy in relation to one another).
Cultural materialism is the extreme view that environment and
technology together determine the social organisation. Its leading
proponent is American anthropologist Marvin Harris, and the key
text is his book Cultural Materialism (1979). Cultural materialism
begins with the assumption that cultures are influenced by material conditions: physical resourses, plants and animals, relationships
(such as trade and war) with other groups, and systems of production
and reproduction. (Barnard 2000: 42-43)
Ecological anthropologists are interested in relations between environment and social organisation. They infer influence through analysis of
one society or through comparison of two closely-related societies.
Technology as social force
Irrigation in the ancient Near East. Agriculture is widespread in all
parts of the world, but it has different technologies. The early farmers
in the Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt have used natural seasonal
high-water and low-water cycles in the non-drying rivers for the
whole year. Later they have developed irrigative systems, which have
driven water to previously dry lands. That created a possibility to increase population and stimulate urbanisation. When cities have been
established on the riverbanks, the control of floods (high-water) has
become of significant importance. That determined increase in jobs
and development of new organisational forms for that labor.
Social hierarchy has been developed, with aristocrats and clergy
being at the top of it and slaves being at the bottom.
This pattern has been significantly defined by the German-American historian Karl A. Wittfogel in his book Oriental Despotism
(1957). Wittfogel believed that China, India and ancient civilizations
of South and Central Americas have developed in the following similar way: they have closely related irrigation, intensive food production, urbanisation, social stratification and rise of the state as of a
political institution.
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Cultural Anthropology
However, as opposed to Wittfogel, American anthropologist Robert McCormick Adams, who referred to archaeological data, claimed
that irrigative technology leads to urbanisation and complex political structures. In his opinion, urbanisation prepares a complex of
political structures and technology improvement, such as development of irrigative system.
The introduction of a horse on the Great Plains
In the 17th century, local Northern Americans acquired horses from
Spanish people and all the groups of the Great Plains have already
had horses by the 18th century. The possibility of horseback riding
and hunting was a technical innovation and allowed to directly
change social organisation.
Prior to introduction of a horse, habitants of the Plains used to be
settled farmers who lived in peace with their neighbours. After the introduction of a horse, they started practising a nomadic lifestyle and
hunting buffaloes. Incursions and wars have become widespread, therefore social values and religious ideas were supported by killing backed
up by worship of individuals and spiritual power. Finally, large tribal
groups have been formed in order to protect families against wars.
In this case, a horse was a reason for social changes. However,
people in other parts of the world have acquired horse and riding
skills without experiencing such consequences.
Making a living
Hunters and gatherers. Hunting-and-gathering peoples are those
who subsist predominantly by hunting and gathering. Hunting, gathering and fishing were the sole means of subsistence for the whole of
humankind just 12,000 years ago. Today, there are virtually no ‘pure’
hunter-gatherers left. People generally considered hunter-gatherers
include, by continent: Africa, Asia (India, Philippiners), Australia,
South and North America.
Hunting-and-gathering societies have long been of interest to
ecological anthopologists because of their close relation to the environments they inhabit. Julian Steward, founder of ecological anthro66
Ecology: Understanding Environment and Technology
pology, specialised in the study of the remnant hunter-gatherers of
California and other parts of the Americas.
One pioneering study of continuing relevance is a literature survey
by French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872–1950). First published
in French in 1904–1905, it appeared in English as Seasonal Variations
of the Eskimo in 1979. Mauss’s special concern was the strict seasonal
difference between summer and winter in northern Canada.
More generally, characteristics of hunting-and-gathering societies
are the following:
1. Seasonal migrations or nomadic movements within group territories.
2. Large territories for the size of population.
3. Flexibility in group structure.
4. Political and economic equality.
5. Gender-specific activities (men hunt and women gather).
6. Widespread sharing of goods wihin the community.
Fishing. Many hunter-gatherers also fish, but sometimes a distinction is made between these societies and those who are relatively sedentary and traditionally well-off because of their fishing activities.
Relatively sedentary fishing-hunting-gathering societies include:
Asia (Japan), North America.
Herding. Herders or pastoralists represent another type of society. Peoples generally considered pastoralists include: Africa, Asia (Mongols, Tibetans ad other groups), Europe (Saami or Lapps), South America (some
isolated Andean groups). These herders are people whose activities focus
on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and yaks.
Two patterns of movement occur with pastoralism: nomadism
and transhumance. Herds must move to take advantage of pasture
available in particular places in different seasons. In pastoral nomadism, the entire group – women, men, and children – moves with the
animals throughout the year. With transhumance, only part of the
group follows the herds while the rest remain in home villages.
Some pastoralists are almost totally dependent on their livestock.
Others are less so, but nevertheless depend on their livestock for
their social identity while exploiting a complex of resources in their
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Cultural Anthropology
environment. Evans-Prichard’s famous study The Nuer (1940) is the
classic one of such a people. The Nuer of Sudan exploit different resources, including fish and agricultural goods, seasonally. They take
their cattle with them from upland villages to large lowland camps
as the waters recede in the annual cycle.
General characteristics of herding societies are broadly similar to
those of hunting-and gathering-societies:
1. Seasonal migrations or nomadic movements, sometimes without regard to territory.
2. Large territories for the size of population.
3. Political and economic equality.
4. Strict gender division (generally, only men and boys herd animals).
Agriculture may be defined in various ways, but it useful here to
distinquish two basic types: small-scale horticulture and large-scale,
advanced agriculture. Small-scale horticulturists include: Africa,
Asia, Europe, North and South America. Characteristics of these societies are the following:
1. An emphasis on vegetable production (often with some livestock or fishing).
2. Slash-and-burn methods of cultivation (brush is burned off
and fields left fallow).
3. Mechanisms for redistribution of wealth (e. g., by chiefs).
4. Relative political and economical equality.
5. Some gender differentiation in economic activities.
Advanced agriculture. Advanced agricultural people today are
spread all over the world. This is largerly because of their importance
in defining the origins of state political entities. Such societies include: Egypt since ancient times, ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, China, etc., Europe over the last few centuries, North America
(ancient Aztecs (Mexico)) and South America (ancient Incas (Peru)).
Characteristics of these societies are:
1. An emphasis on grain production.
2. Irrigation.
3. Complex political structures.
4. Great social differentiation.
5. Great social inequalities.
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Ecology: Understanding Environment and Technology
Manufacturing and trading. Peoples engaged heavily in manufacturing and trade include: Africa (Arab traders in East Africa, Hausa
and other West Africa, modern oil and mineral producers in severl
parts of the continent), acient and modern societies in East and
Southeast Asia, modern Australia, modern Europe, modern North
and South America.
Most of these societies are similar in their characteristics to advanced agricultural societies.
Ecology and globalization
The spread of advanced technology, the production of „greenhouse
gasses“, the destruction of rainforests, and the reduction in the number of species worldwide, have all led to growing interests in the
global environment.
Globalization as a series of processes that promote change in a
world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and
mutually dependent. Its forces include international manufacture,
commerce, and finance; travel and tourism; transnational migration;
the media, the Internet, and other high-tech information flows.
Conrad P. Kottak determines definition of globalization:
Globalization – the accelerating interdependence of nations in
a word system linked economically and through mass media and
modern transportation system. (Kottak 2012: 311)
Mark Smith and Michele Doyle (2002) distinquish between two
meanings of globalization:
Globalization as fact: the spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies accross the world.
Globalization as ideology and policy: efforts by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and other international financial powers to create a global free market for good and services.
Globalization as systemic connectedness reflects the relentless
and ongoing growth of the world system. In this current form, that
system, which has existed for centuries, has some radical new aspects. There are especially noteworthy: the speed of global communication, the scale (complexity and size) of global networks, and the
sheer volume of international transactions.
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Cultural Anthropology
Social anthropology’s contribution to globalization and the following 3 methods of assistance:
1. To provide the main information about traditional environmental users.
2. To provide fundamentals of environmental usage in order to
make a comparison through internal ethnographic studies.
3. To examine how certain societies can expect to adapt the globalization process.
Globalization spreads along with economic systems. Currently,
all economic systems are related to the trade (occupation, profession
and craft). Assimilation of cultures when they lose previous differences is another trend that stimulates the occurrence of globalization.
Loss of differences becomes important in respect of environmental
knowledge. For instance, habitants of Amazon tropical forests have
perfect knowledge on their unique environment. While ecologists
are concerned with biological differences, ecological anthropologists
collaborate in order to assist the outer world in understanding the
knowledge and local environment of local people (Barnard 2000: 52).
Summary
Ecology is the study or relations between living organisms in an environment. In anthropology, it refers to relations between people in their
environment and how they use technology to utilize that environment. Ecologycal anthropologists concentrate on how people make
living and often specialise in the study of specific kinds of society on
this basis: hunting-and-gathering societies, fishing societies, etc.
Study questions
1. What are some of the ways in which natural environments affect social organization?
2. How does technology affect social organization?
3. Give an example how the environment affects the society.
3. How do societies differ according to their means of subsistence?
4. Compare the means of subsistence of some of the societies you
know about.
70
7 Lecture. Discourses of Economical
Anthropology
Schedule of lecture
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•
•
•
•
How to live without surplus?
Ways to accumulate and distribute.
Three forms of reciprocity.
What is money?
Three theories in economic anthropology.
How to live without surplus?
Economics means literally ‘household management’. Metaphorically,
it refers to the material affairs of the society as a whole (as a giant
‘household’).
Economics is closely related to ecology, which is also based on material relations. Ecology links society to the environment, meanwhile
economics defines material relations between people. Therefore, we
can consider advanced economies of the Western and Eastern Asia
as a rich one, since, according to their own demand, they produce
surplus goods. Regardless, such a case can have absolutely different
concept of surplus.
Anthropologists tend to think that hunters and gatherers have been
spending all of their time trying to get enough food and that they simply could not produce surplus in order to subsist. Hunters/gatherers
were able to settle and improve their own economy only after somebody discovered that they can grow food instead of picking it.
This discovery has given rise to the Neolithic revolution. The outcome of this revolution is that many people started to grow plants,
settled and developed more complex forms of social organisation.
These complex forms allowed people to specialise in different activities and to have more free time.
Although this opinion is almost correct, but 2 aspects are wrong.
Since first comparative studies, American anthropologist Marshall
Sahlins stated that:
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Cultural Anthropology
1) Hunters/gatherers were spending less time making their living than the majority of farmers. 2) In many cases hunters/gatherers
could gather surplus to gain fortune, but they did not do that. They
could get as much as they needed from the environment.
Around 1950’s, many researchers of hunters/gatherers referred to
the data of Sahlins. He published his discoveries in his book ‘Stone
Age Economics’ (1972) (Chapter ‘The original affluent society’). Since
then, many new researches confirmed discoveries of Sahlins and the
current opinion is that hunters/gatherers stayed with their activities
as they saw their environment as giving rather than demanding to
use natural resources.
The question is why people started to practise agriculture, given
that life quality of hunters/gatherers was sufficient? Agriculture took
up a lot of time, but provided people with more food. Surplus could
be sold or redistributed, thus some people had the possibility to do
something else, instead of only preparing food. As a result, the division of labour becomes present in more advanced societies, i. e. with
the emergence of food production, factory based (corporate) production, servicing industry, and institutional work, etc.
Today, many hunters and gatherers are willing to move to intensive food production and accumulate fortune. Due to drought (lack
of humidity) and oppression of neighbouring farmers and pastoralists, hunters/gatherers, such as Bushmen, can no longer maintain
their surplus.
Therefore, hunters/gatherers willing to prolong their working day
in order to gain fortune and living in favourable environment can
choose whatever they want. They can spend the rest of the time for
social ritual and leisure activities. In several parts of Central Africa
and India, there are still hunters/gatherers remaining that live following the cycle of a year (Bernard 2000: 54–55).
Ways to accumulate and distribute
Reciprocity is exchange between social equals, who are normally related by kinship, marriage or another close personal tie. Because it occurs
between social equals, it is dominant in egalitarian societies – among
foragers, cultivaters, and pastoralists living in bands and tribes.
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Discourses of Economical Anthropology
Three forms of reciprocity
In the “Stone Age Economics”, Sahlins has excluded the following 3
types of reciprocity: 1) Balanced reciprocity. 2) Generalised reciprocity 3) Negative reciprocity.
1)A
B
2) A
B
3) A
B
1) Balanced reciprocity. Two parties each gain equally in the
transaction by buying and selling or through reciprocal giftgiving. ‘A’ gives something to ‘B’, and ‘B’ returns something to
‘A’, either immediately, or later. For instance, Bushman (Kung)
has a donation system and then keeps the returned gifts. Retention emphasises the nature of gift relations.
2) Generalised reciprocity is giving without the expectation of
a return gift. For example, parents give gifts to their children
and richer ones give to the poor ones.
3) Negative reciprocity is seeking to get more than one paid for,
or to get something free of charge. Sahlins includes barter,
gambling and stealing (Barnard 2000: 56–57).
What is money?
Money is a a commodity whose value lies not in what it is but what it
can buy. It is distinquished from other commodities by the fact that it
is made up of units of exchange rather than goods to be used. In price
market economy, money serves as a mediator of universal trade.
Defining money in the age of electronics
In complex societies (Western and Far East) money is a dominant
power. But what is money? Something that is considered money in
one society can be differently perceived in another one.
Money is a commodity of universal value. It has all the universally
defined values in a certain society or community. Today the European
Union emphasizes an abstract nature of money. The real unit of money is the euro, even though what circulates is paper denoted as pounds,
liras, pesetas, litas, latas, and so on. What lies in your banc account is
not a pile of pounds. It is an electronic record of electronically defined
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Cultural Anthropology
units, passed from similar bank accounts held by your student grants
authority or your parents to yours. If you have an overdraft, this is
also an electronic record. While it may have been meaningful at one
time to think of all this electronics as a cultural representation of gold
or of pounds, shillings and litas, it is probably more meaningful today
to think of the coins in your pocket as a representation of those electronic units which are exchanged between governments.
Three theories in economic anthropology
1. At the start of economic anthropology, there was a hidden
presumption that economic system works very similarly in
any culture or society. Those who supported this opinion were
recognized as formalists.
2. In the 1950’s and in the 1960’s that view was challenged by anthropologists who stated that culture affected economic attitudes and economic systems. This position was characteristic
to substantivists.
3. The 1970s saw the rise of Marxist anthropology by borrowing
ideas from the two theories mentioned above and critised the
other two positions.
The most important provisions of formalists
Classical approach of formalists was presented by an American anthropologist Melville Herskovits, in his book ‘Economic Anthropology’ (1952). Later this approach has been developed by his students
Edward E. LeClair and Harold K. Schneider, whose 1968 edited volume under the same title, ‘Economic Anthropology’. It has revealed
the differences between formalists and substantivists.
Formalists emphasise the similarity of economic behaviour in different societies. They have emphasised the fact that people are saving
money everywhere. Many economic laws are applied in all the societies
without taking their culture into account. The most important law is that
people should behave in an economically ‘rational’ way by choosing what
suits them the most and rejecting the unsuitable. For instance, people
will choose shorter workings hours over longer ones, given that, shorter
hours will provide the same economic remuneration (Barnard 2000: 62).
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Discourses of Economical Anthropology
The most important provisions of substantivists
Economics is embedded in culture. Therefore there can be no general laws of economics. This is illustrated by the existing of different
spheres of exchange which operate differently among people.
It is reflected in different approaches to work and different values
placed on the same good, as well as different approaches to exchange.
Contrary to the viewpoint of formalists, substantivists do not accept the
approach of economic rationality affecting all the rest of the cultures.
In particular, it is revealed through the contrast between market
economics and non-market economics. Rules of economics cannot
be applied in the economy without the market. Market economy can
function as it has been defined by formalists.
Marxism: economics in ideology and evolution
Marxism is the product of the thinking of Karl Marx (1818–1883).
Marx’s influence in economic anthropology, however, only emerged
long after his death. In the 1960s and 1970s, French anthropologists
Maurice Godelier and Claude Meillassoux developed ways to use
Marx’s insights into capitalist economic systems in the study of what
they called pre-capitalist societies.
By the early 1980s, Marxism became a dominant position among
economic anthropologists in the UK, as well as Scandinavia, Canada
and South Africa. Useful texts include Marxist analyses and Social Anthropology (ed. by Maurice Bloch, 1975) and The Anthropology of Pre–
Capitalist Societies (ed. by Joel S. Kahn and Josep R. Liobera, 1981).
The idea of the mode of production (e. g. foraging, feudal, capitalist) is fundamental to Marxist anthropology. The mode consists of
the means of production (e. g. hunting, fishing, horticulture) plus the
relations of production (how people organise these activities).
Marxist anthropologists also emphasise the interaction between
different modes of production. They call this interaction the articulation of modes of production. Pre-capitalist economies throughout
the world have long been in contact with capitalist economies which
impinge upon them. This was true throughout colonial times, and
is also true in the relation between traditional communities and the
modern nation states of Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America.
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Cultural Anthropology
Basic viewpoints within the Marxist position
1. Economics is fundamental to human social life (formalistic
position).
2. Economic systems can best be understood in terms of modes
of production.
3. Modes of production imply social relations, and these are often relations of power (through social class, gender, etc.).
4. Modes of production each entail their respective social forms
and cultural constraints (substantivist position).
5. Each mode of production contains a contradiction which can
lead to it breaking down.
6. That may yield a transformation of society and the adoption of
a new, more evolutionarily ‘advanced’ one.
7. Modes of production are often in articulation and should be
studied as such. (Barnard 2000: 64–65).
Summary
Economics refers to the material affairs of society. In includes production, internal distribution, and exchange with other societies. Ethnographic cases highlight cultural aspects of economic systems and shed
light on the understanding of economics in the abstract. Anthropological studies have led to diverse theories of economic institutions.
Study questions
1. Give examples of three types of reciprocity?
2. What is affluence? Give an example of affluence and poverty in
your society.
3. What is a mode of production?
4. What is a sphere of exchange?
5. Describe the differences between the three theoretical positions mentioned in this lecture.
6. Which is a main idea of Marxism theory?
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8 Lecture. Politics and Law: Discerning
Power and Social Control
Scedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
Approaches to politics.
Levels of political organisation.
Seeking the origin of the state.
Explaining social stratification.
Appreciating ethnicity and nationalism.
Is law universal?
Approaches to politics
In anthropology there are a number of possible ways to approach the
study of political systems. The basic approach are:
1. typological;
2. terminological;
3. functionalist;
4. structuralist;
5. dynamic;
6. marxist.
1. The typological approach. This involves the classification of
societies into different types. In some respects, it is the simplest approach that is illustrated in the headline ‘Stages of research on political organisation’. The types illustrated herein, are based on evolutionary development of political structures from simple to complex
ones. American anthropologist Elman Service supported this idea in
his book ‘Profiles in Ethnology’ (1978).
2. The terminological approach. It emphasises the definition of
concept over the definition of types. Jamaican anthropologist M. G.
Smith tried to describe political activity and political power, authority and administration in a book about Nigeria’s state policy ‘Government in Zazau’, published in 1960. Smith was interested in concepts
which could be applied in all political systems. It has been emphasized lately that concepts are based on human perceptions and are
additionally applied in specific cases.
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Cultural Anthropology
3. The functionalist approach. It was mostly referred by British
and South African anthropologists, such as A. R. Radcliffe-Brown,
Meyer Fortes and Isaac Schapera, writing mainly from the 1920s to
the 1970s. They emphasised methods by which politics and government are related to other aspects of social structure, such as economy,
kinship and religion.
4. The structuralist approach. It includes British, French and other
anthropologists. However, this approach has never been as notable in
the studies of politics as it has been in the areas of kinship and religion.
The book of Edmund Leach ‘Political Systems of Highland Burma’,
published in 1954, was one of the first examples thereof. Leach examines social processes which create oscillations between the following
2 types of social organisation existing in Kachin of Burma: gumsa
(hierarchic) and gumlao (egalitarian). His study is structuralistic. He
depicts social relations in the context of the Kachin faith by including
faiths related to functioning of ancestral spirits in political system.
5. The dynamic approach. South African anthropologist Max
Gluckman states in his book ‘Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa’
(1963) that the dynamic approach is more relevant. In his opinion,
rebellion is a permanent process and makes sense in political systems in which instability is regarded as normal. His approach was
an attack against simplification of functionalists, who saw politics in
traditional societies as simple and static. Even today, this example is
followed by many people.
6. The Marxist approach. Marxists, especially in the 1970’s and
1980’s went farther. They looked into what they called the “articulation
of modes of production”. In Marxist jargon, this refers to the interaction between economies which come into contact, similarly as hunters/gatherers come into contact with herders, or farmers do the same
with colonial or state capitalistic bureaucracy (Barnard 2000: 68–69).
The question arises, which of these approaches is the best?
It should be decided which of the discussed approaches suits a
specific task the best. For instance, if anthropologists are concerned
with different economic relations, the Marxist approach may be the
best to discuss the results of others. It is not necessary to a politician
or anthropological theoretician in order to determine which theory
is meaningful.
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Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control
Levels of political organization
Traditional classification of societies is determined by the fact whether the primary political unit is the band, tribe, chiefdom or the state.
Band societies
Characteristics of band societies typically include:
1. Economy based on hunting and gathering (or occasionally
fishing or horticulture).
2. Social structure based on ties of kinship.
3. Relative equality between the sexes.
4. Egalitarian way of of life: no-one has superiority over anyone
else.
5. De-emphasis on leadership, which in any case tends to be unspecialised and temporary (such as for hunting expedition).
6. Decisions taken by consensus.
A typical example is the G/wi Bushmen, described by George Silberbauer in Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert (1981). G/
wi have traditionally lived in bands averaging some 50 or 60 people.
Bands migrate within their respective territories and disperse seasonally. When there are dispute, band members discuss the issues
and co-operate in finding a solution. Even those who disagree tend
to abide by such decisions, without formal judgements or coercion.
Tribal societies
Characteristics may include:
1. Economy based on livestock or horticulture.
2. Social structure based on clans or lineages.
3. Age and gender often important factors.
4. Sometimes “headless”, without leaders.
5. Sometimes with leaders, usually ones who gain influence
through favours for others and the accumulation of wealth
(such as the ‘big men’in Papua New Guinea).
Nuer community in Sudan serves as a well-known example. Nuer is
a tribe of shepherds and farmers living among swampy pastures near
the Nile River in Sudan. Traditional Nuer community does not have
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Cultural Anthropology
a true leader or centralized political authority. E. Evans-Prichard
provides a pattern of the Nuer community in his book ‘The Nuer: A
Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of
a Nilotic People’ (Oxford, 1940). He writes, as follows: ‘Nuer people
do not have governmental bodies, ideal legal institutions and organised political life in general. The orderly anarchy they live in perfectly matches their character since it’s not possible to imagine the
Nuer people as ruling leaders while living with them. They are very
democratic and violent minded and do not recognize senior persons. Fortune has no meaning, nor does origin. Their community
does not have lords or servants and consists only of equal people
who consider themselves perfect creatures of God. They are annoyed
even by a suggestion of order. They do not obey any authority which
contradicts their interests and do not relate themselves to anything’
(Evans-Prichard 1940).
Communities, such as the one of Nuer people, having no true leaders, are always subject to danger, since their tribal bands unanimously
react to aggression against one of their members. Disputes between
individuals may be expanded. The most serious danger, arising from
disputes, is homicide. Members of such communities tend to believe
that the only adequate reaction to homicide is to kill the murderer or
any other relevant member of the murderer’s kindred band.
However, despite the fact that centralized political authority is absent, blood feud may be controlled and massacre may be prevented
from becoming a long-term discord. Part of the murderer’s kin fortune
may be transferred to the victim’s kin. This practice is common and
efficient among stockbreeders, who keep livestock as tangible assets.
Nuer people manage or at least suppress mutual disputes by
handing over 40 or more cows to marriage or blood relatives. Family
members of the deceased person tend to oppose the cow related proposal by requiring life-for-life. However, distant relatives would do
anything to persuade them to accept compensation. Their attempts
are supported by the clergymen who are called ‘Leopard-skin chiefs’.
Those are usually men from tribal bands situated in other location,
thus can easier act as neutral mediators.
A leopard-skin chief is the only person who can do a purification
ritual for a murderer. In case of a homicide, a murderer runs straight
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Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control
to the house of a chief which is considered a sanctuary respected by
all the Nuer people. Nonetheless, chief does not have any political
power. What he can do to the resistant relatives of the deceased is to
threaten them with different supernatural curses.
Chiefly societies
Typically these include:
1. Economy based on livestock, horticulture and intensive agriculture.
2. Government by hereditary chiefs.
3. Chiefs having power and authority, and often inheritedwealth.
4. Chiefs serve as judges in disputes, land distribution or redistribution of production.
5. Sometimes chiefs having supernatural power by virtue of
their position (for example, as in Polynesia, where chiefs are
believed to possess supernatural power called ‘mana’).
The Trobrianders are an example. Men hold the position of chiefs,
but it is inherited following the line of mother (a man inherits the
position from his maternal uncle). In other communities of Melanesia, chiefs are distinguished for their abilities to demonstrate power.
One of the ways to demonstrate it is control over the distribution
of tubers of yams. The best way to do this is to be married to several women at the same time: wives collect yams from their relatives.
Chiefs also perform magical spells in order to control both the yams
and their respective villagers.
State societies
Among the characteristics of state societies are:
1. Economy based on intensive agriculture and often a developed
market system.
2. Relatively high density of population.
3. Sometimes extensive trade network (both internal and external).
4. Often powerful military organisation to keep control over the
population and/or to subjugate dependent populations social
stratification on class or caste principles.
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Cultural Anthropology
5. Leaders elected through the right of inheritance or in the way
of election.
6. Sometimes leaders having sacred duties or supernatural power
(such as in some African kingdoms).
One example is Kingdom of Swazi kingdom in Southern Africa. It
represents one of the many pre-colonial African kingdoms which
exist until the present day. It is one of the many that has status of nation-state (Swaziland). Others, such as neighbouring Zulu Kingdom
in South Africa, are incorporated into modern republics. Swaziland
is today a constitutional monarchy, but the king and his mother, as
well as district and local chiefs, maintain traditional authority over
many aspects of Swazi life (Barnard 2000: 70–72).
Seeking the origin of the state
There are many theories on the emergence of states. We shall discuss
several of them:
1. Hydraulic theory. It was suggested in the book by Karl Wittfogel, ‘Oriental Despotism: a Comparative Study of Total Power’ (1957).
The author claimed that early states developed because of the invention and the spread of irrigation system. These involved the necessity
to control the labour of many people.
2. Coercive theory. It was suggested in the article of Robert Carneiro, published in the ‘Science Magazine’ (1970). He proves that
states initially emerged due to warfare in places with limited agricultural land. Carneiro used an example of Inca from Peru and adds
that similar mechanisms have been found in many countries, e. g.
in the Nile and Indus valleys, as well as in the Ancient Mesopotamia. The winners subjugate the ones who form the structures of their
powers.
3. Class theory was created following the data of Karl Marx and
F. Engels, in particular following the book of Engels, ‘The Origin of
the Family, Private Property and the State’ (1884). In the new times,
F. Engels and his supporters claimed that states emerged as a result of
antagonism between social classes. The leading classes tried to retain
the myth that state is necessary for the preservation of order.
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Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control
4. Social contract theory. It started from the works of Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 17–18th century.
The idea is that primitive people decided to give up freedom in order
to have a social order and this order became the state. Anthropology
clearly separated state from the society. This theory was supported
by anthropologists who specialised in small-scale, stateless societies.
Today it is agreed that emergence of state is determined by many
factors. Ethnographic data about stateless communities, just as the
data about the states in communities, are valuable for the experts of
other disciplines related to this topic, from the archaeology to the
law. (Barnard 2000: 73)
Explaining social stratification
Class societies are one of the socially stratified groups that have characteristic specific provisions and behaviour, as well as individual access to the government and main resources. Class is not as endogamic as castes and minorities and is more open.
Origins of the class hierarchy lead to chiefdoms and communities of a ‘great person’. Chiefdoms have often kept prisoners of wars
as slaves and discerned the plebs from the governing elite following
the rank. Even the societies of a ‘great person’ sometimes had some
slaves and discerned family members of a ‘great person’ and their
closest subordinates according to their rank. However, the most ideal class systems emerged in state communities.
All state communities have at least two hierarchically orderly
classes, i. e. rulers and the ruled ones. But where there are more than
two classes, they are not necessarily arranged in a hierarchic order
in respect of each other. For instance, fishers and their neighbours
farmers are usually classified as two different classes, since they relate to the ruling class in a different way, have different patterns of
property, rent and taxes, as well as use different environmental areas. None of them have a clearly defined advantage or disadvantage
with respect to authority. Likewise, anthropologists usually talk
about lower urban class as of an opposite to the lower rural class,
although quantitative differences of authority between them may be
minimal.
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Cultural Anthropology
There is another noticeable feature of classes: they belong to relatively closed or open systems. People in the systems of open classes
can move upwards and downwards, just like in modern Western
democracies. Meanwhile, such movement in closed class systems is
subject to limitation. For instance, serfs in Medieval Europe have
remained serfs for the rest of their lives. At the very outside, systems
of closed classes are very similar to castes and ethnical groups.
Class societies are those which are divided by political power and
economic goods. Cultural aspects of classes may be related to politics
and economy only in an indirect manner. For example in England,
there are observable differences of lifestyle between workers, middle
class and upper class people. They differ in what they eat and drink,
what sports they enjoy, how they decorate their houses and how they
speak. In many societal classes membership is not as stable as it is in
England. America, where class is defined more by economics than by
culture, serves as an obvious example.
Caste societies. Their stratification is stricter than the one in class
societies. Anthropologists have paid attention to the Indian caste societies. In 1967, French author Lois Dumont published a book ‘Homo
Hierarchicus’, where he discussed caste societies.
Indian castes are closed groups of an endogamic and stratified
origin. They have many similarities with the closed classes, ethnic
groups and social races. Indian castes have not only economic, but
also ritual and religious importance. The unique features of the Indian castes are related to the fact that caste hierarchy is an integral
part of Hinduism religion followed by the majority of Indians. This
does not mean that being a Hindu is a prerequisite for belonging to
a caste. India also has both Christian and Muslim castes. In India,
there is the belief that people are not equal spiritually and that group
hierarchy has been defined by Gods. The hierarchy consists of varnas, or levels of being. It is believed that people from upper castes
are the purest and cleanest ones. And people from lower castes are
impure. Purity and impurity arise from the membership in castes.
The status of these rituals is approved by the professions that are traditionally practised in each caste. Profession of a leather miller has a
lower occupational status among men, thus leather workers are impure. Profession of a cook has an upper status and it is believed that
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Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control
some dishes, such as rice, are ritually pure. Indians seek to marry
members of their own caste or similar caste.
Following previous traditions (such as the Rigvedic hymns), four
varnas correspond to the physical parts of Manu (the first spiritual element), from which different people have been derived. Manu’s head
was turned into Brahmins (priests), hands – into Kshatriyas (warriors), thighs – into Vaishyas (merchants and craftsmen) and legs –
into Sudras (servile workers). According to the chronicles of Hindu,
an individual’ Varna is defined according to the rule of origin, i. e.
corresponds to his or her parents’ Varna and does not change for the
rest of his or her life.
The idea that each Varna has intrinsic rules for individual behaviour, or a ‘path of commitment’ (dharma) is the foundation of Hindu
morality. Once the body dies, soul trespasses to upper or lower being
(karma) determined by karma. Those who take the ‘path of commitment’ will be awarded with an upper point in Manu’s body in
their next life. Deviation from the ‘path of commitment’ will lead to
revival without any caste at all or even in the form of an animal.
One of the most important aspects of the ‘path of commitment’ is a
certain taboo related to marriage, eating and physical proximity. Marriage with a representative of lower varnas is universally considered as
impurity; food prepared and served by the ones from lower Varna is
also deemed impure; any contact between Brahmins and Sudras is prohibited. In parts of India there were not only the untouchable ones, but
also – the invisible ones, those who could leave home only at night.
The basic features of this system are accepted in the entire Hinduistic India. However, there are many regional and local-ideological,
as well as practical differences in relation between castes. In essence,
the complexity of human relations is determined by the fact that
real functioning endogamic units consist of thousands of stratified
subdivisions of varnas, known as jatis, rather than of varnas themselves. Besides, even those called jatis (e. g. ‘launderers’, ‘shoemakers’,
‘shepherds’, etc.) further split into local endogamic subgroups and
exogamic linear groups.
Other forms of stratification. Not all societies are stratified. Most
band societies and some tribal societies are essentially egalitarian.
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Cultural Anthropology
The only way to explain the stratification is the evolution of these
structures. Such developments may occur in the places where all
the groups control and manage caste structures (as in Leach’s study
of Burma, perhaps leading to caste structure) or where individuals
achieve power through control over resources (an example of a ‘big
man’ in Papua New Guinea, who leads to class structures).
Appretiating ethnicity and nationalism
Ethnicity and nationalism are closely related. Norwegian anthropologist Frederik Barth is the most important figure in the research on
ethnicity. He did fieldwork in many parts of Asia and the Pacific. In
his book ‘Political Leadership among Swat Pathans’ (1959), he reveals
that the position of leaders depends on the loyalty of the people in
agreements and on fluctuations between conflict and coalition. He
developed these ideas further in the introduction to his edited book
‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’ (1969), which inspired many to look
at ethnicity not as a given, but as something people define for themselves and negotiate like political power.
How do ethnic groups form? They form due to both – conquests
and phenomena of migration. What is an ethnic group? David Gellner
gives some examples the definition of ethnicity: 1) ‘ethnic group’ as immigrant minority (for example, Lithuanians in UK); 2) as indigenous
minority (for example, First Nations in Canada or aboriginal people
in Australia); 3) as proto-nationality (Kurds, Basques); 4) as one group
in a ‘plural society’ (Kenya, Indonesia, Jamaica) (Gellner 2012).
An ethnic group is included into a state in the way of conquest or
migration and which follows its own cultural and language traditions and has a sense of isolated uniqueness. Uniqueness of ethnic
groups is their ethnicity, which emerges from their typical customs,
faiths and folklore. However, the largest source of the ethnic uniqueness is a common language or a dialect. That is illustrated by the ethnic category of Spanish speaking people in the USA. Spanish speaking people are immigrants from Spain, Mexico and Central as well
as South Americas. Their cultures are incredibly different, although
they speak the same language. The linguistic difference is usually followed by cultural differences which actually or supposedly represent
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Politics and Law: Discerning Power and Social Control
ancient traditions characteristic to the members of that ethnic group.
Endogamy of a group is another criterion.
Anthony Smith reveals 6 dimensions of an ‘ethnic category’ in his
book ‘The Ethnic Origins of Nations’ (1986): 1) a collective name; 2) a
common myth of descent; 3) a shared history; 4) a distinctive shared
culture; 5) an association with a specific territory; 6) a sense of solidarity (Smith 1986: 22–31).
Ethnic groups can maintain their uniqueness and continuity by
having multiple combinations of these features. Representatives of
an ethnic group do not necessarily use their ancestral language. Ancestral customs are not necessarily a legacy of distant ancestors. Ethnic uniqueness may be followed due to endogamic marriage or family name that points to ethnic origin. Even frequent mixed marriages
do not necessarily hinder the continuity of an ethnic group.
Three approaches of ethnicity and nationalism
• Primordialist perspectives – view ethnicity and nationalism as
rooted in real characteristics of peoples and nations, created
by biological, geographical and linguistic factors. Nationalists
often take this view.
• Instrumentalist perspectives – see ethnicity and nationalism as
creations of political elite to serve their own purposes. Marxists often take this view.
• Constructivist perspectives – see ethnic and national identities as products of particular situations. Individuals construct
identities which are meaningful to them and which they can
manipulate. This approach is supported by Barth (Barnard
2000: 76).
Is ‘law’ universal?
Many 19th century anthropologists were lawyers. Some, such as Sir
Henry Maine, the author of ‘Ancient Law’ (1861), had a specific interest in the origin and development of law. He believed that the evolution from kinship-based to contract-based forms of organisation was
characteristic to the progress of human society.
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Cultural Anthropology
In the 20th century, several anthropologists examined the legal
systems of ‘tribal’ societies and found that they are complex and
sometimes (particularly in Africa) having many similarities with
the systems of modern national states. Thus, the question about the
universality of the law remains still open.
Three possible universals
Malinowski in‘Crime and Custom in Savage Society’ (1926) saw little
or no difference between law and custom. In this perspective, the
law would undoubtedly be a cultural universal. American anthropologist E. Adamson Hoebel, who was a qualified lawyer, did not
approve of this broad definition, yet agreed that law was universal. In
his book ‘The Law of Primitive Man’ (1954), he emphasized coercion
as the defining principle. More specifically, law entails 3 universal
principles:
1) The legitimate use of force to ensure correct behaviour and
punish a criminal.
2) The allocation of power to individuals (such as the police in
modern societies) to use coersion.
3) The respect for tradition as against capriciousness: requirements and pressure must be directed to existence of known
rules, as customs and statutes.
These principles may be applied most everywhere, though the second one may be complicated among some hunter-gatherers. But do
they really define what we mean by ‘law’ in all societies?
Later authors, such as Sally Falk Moore in his book ‘Law as Process’ (1978), have emphasised the dynamic nature of legal systems:
the pressures which provide the need for law also provide the need
for changes in the law.
Max Gluckman (1911–1975) was one of the most important legal
anthropologists. Gluckman was a South African who emigrated to
Britain and taugt for many years at the University of Manchester. Important in Gluckman’s work was the idea that anthropology should
focus on change, social processes, rebellion and conflict, rather than
stability. He wrote books ‘Custom and Conflict in Africa’ (1955) and
‘Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa’ (1963). If reading such works,
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note the distinction between rebellion (which is about displacing
people who are in power) and revolution (which is about changing
the system in which power operates). Gluckman’s main concern was
with the former.
In recent studies, some have focused on relations between different legal systems within the same country (Barnard 2000: 78).
Summary
Politics includes relations of power and authority, strategies of judgements and structures for social control (such as bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states). Political anthropology focuses on the aforementioned matters and also on issues like ethnicity and nationalism. The
anthropological study of law is related to political anthropology. It is
revealed through the comparative study of law, particularly in smallscale societies.
Study questions
1. What are some of main approaches to the study of political
anthropology?
2. What are the classical types of political organisation as defined by anthropologists?
3. What are their characteristics?
4. Could you name three perspectives on ethnicity and nationa­
lism?
5. Can you change the ethnicity or nationality?
6. Could you name three possible universal principles in law?
9 Lecture. Sex and Gender in
Different Societies
Schedule of lecture
• Comparing gender roles and attitudes to sex.
• Explaining gender: two views.
• Liberating women and men: the feminist critique.
Comparing gender roles and attitudes to sex
In anthropology, sex refers both to sexual activity and to the biological distinction between female and male. Gender refers to social or
cultural distinctions, and these differ from place to place.
Explanation of gender roles
Following the division of labour, men and women are usually engaged in different activities:
1. Men are more engaged in hunting, horticulture and fishing,
while women are engaged in preparation of food.
2. Different societies have different ways of land farming. Both
men and women are sometimes engaged in this activity.
3. In the area of family life within many societies, women are
mostly engaged in taking care of children and keeping order.
Both women and men can be equally engaged in manufacture of
wearing apparel, as well as in house-building.
Example
Among the Nharo Bushmen of Botswana, men hunt and do a little
food-gathering, while women do most food-gathering and the fetching of water and firewood. Both men and women manufacture clothes
for themselves. Mothers carry babies on their backs; however both
parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters also participate in child90
Sex and Gender in Different Societies
rearing. Men and women play different roles in rituals, but there is
equality in rights and relatively little differentiation in other activity.
Sex in Samoa. Margaret Mead
The pioner of gender studies was Margaret Mead (1901–1978), an
American anthropologist and student of Franz Boas. She did fieldwork in Samoa and Manus (in the Pacific), with Iatmul and Mundugamor (Papua New Guinea), on Bali (Indonesia).
Mead was interested in childhood and adolescence, sexuality and
relation between personality and culture. Her many ethnographies
include:
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928).
Growing Up in New Guinea (1930).
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935).
Mead propagated the employment of ethnography in the education
of the American society. She indicated the significance of culture
in creating adolescent traumas. Her most famous contribution was
her study of adolescent sexuality in Samoa. It was believed, that her
Samoan informants did not have adolescent traumas experienced by
the Americans. She noticed that an adolescent trauma, which has
been previously considered as a universal matter, is just an aspect of
the American culture. According to Mead’s account, Somoan girls
had sexual relationships with their boyfriends, and had no guilt feelings. They never had conflicts with their parents who often did not
pay attention to the matter (Barnard 2000: 93–94).
In recent years her work has been criticized, because her Samoan
adolescent female informants described their sexual fantasies, which
she accepted as truth. Derek Freeman’s book ‘Margaret Mead in
Samoa’ (1983) presents this view most strongly. For this reason, her
work remains in the forefront of anthropological debate.
Recent interests
While Mead and anthropologists of her time tended to generalise
about men and women or adolescents and adults, modern anthropologists tend to focus on specific members of the communities they
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work with. Often these people are quoted in details. Thus given the
chance to express their own cultural perception for the anthropological readership. Some of Lila Abu – Lughod writings on Bedouin
women (such as Veiled Sentiments (1986)) are good example.
This book seeks the following:
1. To allow women to talk about themselves.
2. To view women as individuals.
3. To emphasise complexity of their diverse social roles (for example as sisters, wives, mothers, women-workers and community members).
Explaining gender: two views
Anthropologists examine gender from two points of view. Some anthropologists consider gender as a symbolic construction, while the
others value it as a set of social relationships.
Gender as a symbolic construction
Sherry Ortner’s essay ‘Is female to male as nature to culture?’ is an
example of gender as a symbolic construction. This essay was published in a book ‘Woman, Culture and Society’ (1974), edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Loise Lampere.
Ortner argues that women everywhere are associated with nature.
She claims that the biological fact that women, not men, give birth,
gives them that universal association. Women’s reproductive role limits them to the domestic environment. The home, along with women
(with several children) represent ‘nature’ and ‘the private’ sphere,
while men represent ‘culture’ and ‘the public’ sphere. Ortner does not
believe that women are associated with nature in any substantial way.
Rather, she argues that this cultural universal rests on a symbolic differences (between nature and culture) found in every society.
Gender as a set of social relationships
Feminists criticized Ortner’s model for not fitting the ethnographic
facts. The best- known example is an article by Jane Collier and Mi92
Sex and Gender in Different Societies
chelle Rosaldo ‘Politics and Gender in Simple Societies’. It was published in the book by Sherry Ortner and Harriet Whitehead ‘Sexual
Meanings: ‘The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality’
(1981). Collier and Rosaldo point out that hunters/gatherers’ societies
in Australia, Africa and the Philippines do not associate childbirth
or motherhood with ‘nature’. They do not simply associate women
with reproduction, but rather with certain activities.
Liberating women and men: the feminist critique
We can distinguish the basic differences between the gender studies
and feministic anthropology:
1. Gender studies view gender as an aspect of society, along with
economics, politics, etc. Between other aspects of society, they
view relations between genders as natural ones. Thus, gender
studies might be related to the way men and women make a
living or how they interact with each other.
2. Feministic anthropology states that men and women experience all aspects of society in different ways. Gender becomes
central and feministic approach, while normally ignored, is
emphasised.
Feminist anthropology has existed for almost 100 years. Field research has been done since the 20th century, but it was only from
the 1970’s when feministic anthropologists have started to break the
biased male attitude created by female anthropologists themselves.
Henrietta Moore’s book ‘Feminism and Anthropology’ (1988), gives
an interesting discussion of this.
Moore emphasises that anthropologists should look at what
people (especially women) say as well as what they do. They should
also understand that women are not the same everywhere. What it
means to be a man or a woman is dependent on culture. Finally, she
states that it is not easy to talk about being a man or being a woman.
An individual is not just a ‘woman’, it involves several roles, such as
middle class woman, Asian or Muslim woman. The complexities of
these roles, taken together, are what makes up her social personality (Barnard 2000: 94–95).
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It should be added that a woman is a set of family relations, since
she is a wife to one person, a sister to another, etc. Relations between
women and men (or between women and other women, or men and
other men) take place in a family.
Summary
Sex is related to biology, and gender – to social and cultural behaviour. Anthropologists have examined gender in different societies,
yet, more importantly, they have performed intercultural comparisons and looked for universal features of sex and gender. The feminist critique has been especially powerful in providing a possibility
for anthropologists to think about such issues.
Study questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is the difference between sex and gender?
Describe the challenge posed by feminist anthropology.
Explain gender from two points of view.
Give an example of gender as a symbolic construction and as
a set of social relationships.
10 Lectures. The Family and Marriage in
Different Societies
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
How families and marriage differ in different societies?
Types of family structure.
Varieties of marriage.
Are families and marriage universal?
Definition of marriage.
Structure of a family partly depends on their activities. Small family
units are widespread in many industrial societies. Large family units
are widespread in locations, where such are required for agricultural
purposes, such as in India. They are also widespread where relations
between relatives form the child care system. Examples include both
rural and urban societies. Different forms of marriage lead to different forms of family structures.
Types of family structure
Nuclear family is a married couple and their children. In essence,
it is a basic family structure unit in every society.
One parent family is a type of nuclear family. In some cases, children are parented only by one parent (usually mother). This family
type may form in case of divorce or death of one of the parents.
Compound family comprises the main figure (usually a powerful
father), his or her spouses, sometimes concubines and their children.
It is common in Western Africa.
Joint family comprises brothers, their wives and children and all
of them live together. It’s an efficient family structure when brothers share property, as it is in India, China, Africa and some other
countries.
Extended family is an ambiguous term. On the one hand, it is
a next of kin nuclear family group that live together. On the other
hand, it is a group that does not live together, but maintains relations
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(such as newly established urban and industrial societies). This group
could include extended Lithuanian families, where all the children
and their families used to live with their parents.
Varieties of marriage
There are 2 possible reasons why marriage exists in every society. First
it defines the tie between partners. Secondly it legitimates the childbirth to married couple. This does not mean that each group of partners marries; it rather means that marriage is defined as the norm
and other relationships are more or less equivalent to this norm.
One of the ways to classify marriage is by relations between people:
Monogamy is a marriage model between 2 persons.
Polygamy is marriage model between more than 2 persons. It
consists of two following forms:
Polygyny is a marriage between 1 man and more than one woman.
It is common in several parts of the world, particularly in African
societies.
Polyandry is a marriage between 1 woman and a group of more
than one man, usually brothers. There are well-known cases in South
Asia, such as among Toda people in India, although the custom becomes extinct.
Group marriage is a hypothetical type. In the 19th century, some
anthropologists, such as Lewis Henry Morgan believed that it was a
primary type of marriage.
Gay marriage is marriage between people of the same gender.
Marrying kinsfolk
Marriages may also be classified according to the fact if the partner
is kinfolk. Anthropologists find 2 possibilities when marriage with
kinfolks is a standard:
1) People who are self-determined regarding the motives of marriage and want to preserve family property are allowed to marry next
of kin. Such cases are found in Arab societies, particularly when a
man marries a daughter of his father’s brother. He knows her from
childhood and they belong to the same kinship group.
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Sex and Gender in Different Societies
2) People are allowed to marry people from the permissible categories, while marriage with people from other categories is strictly
prohibited. In various societies of South Asia, South America and
Australian aborigines, a man can marry his cross-cousin (a daughter
of mother’s brother or a daughter of father’s sister), but he cannot
marry his parallel cousin (a daughter of father’s brother or a daughter of mother’s sister). The reason of this is that the first one (crosssister) is considered as more distant to marry than the second one.
Are families and marriage universal?
American anthropologist George Peter Murdock claims in his book
‘Social Structure’ (1949) that family is universal. All societies are
formed either according to the nuclear family structure, or more
complex family structures, which are all formed according to the nuclear family (extended family, combined family, etc.). Notwithstanding, many suggested cases may be complicated under the conception
of Murdock. Israel’s kibbutzim (farmer societies, where children are
parented collectively) or West India’s families, where a woman is the
most important figure, may serve as examples. These examples demonstrate that family is not universal as it was perceived by Murdock.
Definition of marriage
Definition of marriage is complicated. Marriage can be defined as
behaviour, feelings and rules related to mating and reproduction of
people of different genders who live together in a home environment.
However, there are different types of marriage found worldwide and
do not fit into this definition.
Marriage of the Nayar people (group with a high status in South
India) and the Lovedu people (South Africa) are the 2 well-known
examples.
Example of the Nayar people
Marriage of Nayar people provides men with 2 different roles that
are combined in India. In ordinary, non-Nayar Hindu marriage, the
bridegroom ties a tali (the gold emblem which symbolizes the union)
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around the neck of the bride. In Nayar marriage (in ancient times), a
high-caste person, often a Brahman, ties the tali. In an Indian context,
the ceremony clearly indicated the first stage of a Hindu marriage.
Yet in the world-wide context, the ceremony would seem to resemble more a puberty rite than a marriage, in that it grants the girl
fool womanhood and enables her to take lovers. The Nayar girl does
not sleep with her tali-tier. Instead, she takes a series of lovers, called
‘sambandham partners’ and they become the genitors of her children.
However, children owe allegiance neither to the man who tied their
mother’s tali nor to their mother’s sambandham partners. Rather,
since descent is reckoned matrilineally, they owe allegiance to their
mother’s brothers (Barnard 2000: 99).
Example of the Lovedu people
The Lovedu represent an example of ‘woman marriage’. Since around
1800 the Lovedu have been ruled by a line of biologically female, but
socially male women, the remote and mysterious ‘rain-queens’. Each
queen since that time has been married to several other females.
Some remain there to be impregnated by male members of the royal
house, while others are redistributed to the queen’s relatives or other
subjects. This pattern maintains alliances between the royal house
and the people of scattered localities (Barnard 2000: 99–100).
Example of the Dahomey people
A case of the Dahomey tribe exists among African nations when a
woman can marry another woman. A woman, who may already be
married to a man, buys a ‘bride’ for a bride-price. Thus the brideprice payer becomes a ‘female husband’. She creates a family by allowing her ‘wife’ to conceive from sexual unions with certain men.
A child in such marriage becomes subordinate to his ‘female father’,
rather than to biological genitors.
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Sex and Gender in Different Societies
Summary
Intercultural research on family and marriage has revealed that our
consideration of something as a universal matter-of-fact often appear to be misguided. Different forms of marriage lead to different
forms of family structures.
Structure of a family partly depends on their activities. Small
family units are widespread in many industrial societies. Large family units are widespread in locations, where such are required for
agricultural purposes. They are also widespread where relations between relatives form the child care system.
Study questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
Name some types of family structure.
Give the examples of different types of family structure.
Are families and marriage universal?
Explain definition of marriage. Give some examples of marriage from different societies.
5. What is the difference between polygyny and polyandry?
6. What are some of the reasons for polygyny and polyandry?
11 Lecture. Kinship: Terminology, Descent
and Alliance
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
Kinship calculation.
‘Real’ versus ‘fictive’ kinship.
How to draw kinship diagrams?
How to understand descent theory?
Alliance theory.
Elementary structures of kinship.
Kinship calculation
Anthropologists study the kinship groups that are significant in a society as well as kinship calculation – the system by which people in a
society reckon kin relationships. To study kinship calculation an ethnographer must first determine the word or words for different types
of ‘relatives’ used in a particular language and then ask questions
such as, ‘Who are your relatives?’ Kinship, like gender, is culturally
constructed. This means that some biological kin are considered to
be relatives whereas others are not. Through questioning, the ethnographers discover the specific genealogical relationships between
‘relatives’ and understand the relationship between kinship calculation and kinship groups – how people use kinship to create and mantain personal ties and to join social groups (Kottak 1991: 296).
‘Real’ versus ‘fictive’ kinship
There are three main branches in the study of kinship:
1. Kinship terminology.
2. Descent theory
3. Alliance theory.
Basis of kinship is biology, or otherwise, the biological metaphor
which defines the subject. The difference between the real and fictive
kinship is very important here.
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Real kinship
Traditionally, ‘real kinship’ entails notions of biology in all the cultures. But what is biology? In a book called ‘The Sexual Life of Savages’ (1929), Malinowski writes that Trobriand Islanders did not believe that the father had anything to do with the concept, which they
viewed as determined matrilineally.
Other anthropologists had doubts as to his interpretation of the
thinking of Trobriand’s people, but his most important approach remained, stating that it should not be thought that everybody has the
same biological ideas. Some argue that the anthropological study of
kinship is based on Western and not universal ideas of ‘biology’. David Schneider (1918–1955) was the leading proponent of this view.
Anthropologists often exclude 2 types of fatherhood and 2 types
of motherhood.
• genitor – culturally recognised biological father;
• pater – social father (including an adoptive father);
• genetrix – culturally recognised biological mother;
• mater – social mother (including an adoptive mother).
All these relationship imply ‘real kinship’.
Fictive kinship
‘Fictive’ or non-real kinship is easier to define that ‘real kinship’. It
includes relationships that are similar to the ones of real kinship;
nevertheless, they are not respected by people who are related as real
kinships. For instance, metaphoric kinship terms, such as ‘sisters’ in
a feminist movement, or priest as a ‘father’. Sisters in feminist movement have something in common with sisters in family, but nobody
could state that both of them are exactly the same thing.
Godparenthood and compadrazgo
1. Godparenthood is a form of a non-real kinship and is found in
many Christian cultures. The ritual sponsors of a child at baptism –
its ‘godparents’ – promise to look after the spiritual interests of the
child as it grows up. Although these mutual relation are fictive (god101
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father is not considered as pater (social father)), but certain elements
of relations with godfathers come close to kinship. For instance, in
some churches marriage to a godchild or a godparent’s child is forbidden. These rules imitate the incest taboo.
2. Co-parenthood (compadrazgo) is a fictive kin relationship between godparents of a child and the child’s parents. It is common in
certain Roman Catholic societies, most often in Western Mediterranean and Latin American countries. Parents and godparents are
called campadres (in Spanish). They lend money to each other and
generally help out in time of trouble or during religious festivals. Often the compadrazgo relationship is unequal, with the godparents being of higher status than the parents (Barnard 2000: 103).
How to draw kinship diagrams?
The most important principles of kinship diagram drawing are provided below:
1. A triangle represents a man.
2. A circle represents a woman.
3. A box or diamond represents a person whose gender and unknown or not important (such as, of a small chid).
4. A line above two symbols indicates a sibling relationship (that
between brothers and sisters).
5. A line below or an equal sign between two symbols indicates
marriage.
6. A dotted or dashed line indicates a sexual relationship other
than marriage.
7. A vertical line indicates a parent/child relationship.
8. A line through a symbol indicates a dead person.
9. A line through a horizontal line or equal sign indicates a severed relationship (such as divorce).
Kinship symbols
In order to represent exact genealogical relationships, anthropologists have established symbols. The most common system is as follows:
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Kinship: Terminology, Descent and Alliance
F– father
B – brother
S – son
H – husband
e – older (elder)
ss – same sex
M – mother
Z – sister
D – daughter
W – wife
y – younger
os – opossite sex
P – parent
G – sibling
C – child
E –spouse
The symbols are combined as possessives. For instance, FB would
mean ‘father’s bother’. English word uncle reflects genealogical position FB (‘father’s brother’), MB (‘mother’s brother’), FZN (‘a husband of father’s sister’), and MZN (‘a husband of mother’s sister’).
Differences of older/younger and of the same/opposite sex become
related either directly or indirectly. Nharo Bushmens distinguish
older brother or sister from a younger one. Tobriand’s islanders distinguish brothers and sisters according to their gender. Tobrianders’
language does not have a word for brother or sister; instead use words
for ‘same’ of ‘opposite sex siblings’ (and younger or older).
Language and terminology
Language classifies the world, while a word in one language may not
have an exact equivalent in another language. Compare, for example,
Latin and English words for ‘uncle’. In Latin, a father’s bother (FB) is
called by using a single term patruus, while a mother’s brother (MB)
is called avanculus and he was not an authority.
Anthropologists have devised standard diagrams to illustrate and
classify terminologies. There is some debate about the extent to which
it is meaningful to classify societies just because they have the same
kinship terminology structure. Nevertheless, there are basic statements about patterns which comprise the world’s terminologies.
Study tips of kinship terminology
There are some study tips specifically relevant to the study of kinship
terminologies:
1. Take note of what a kinship diagram illustrates. For example,
does it illustrate a real genealogy, a hypothetical genealogy, or a
kinship terminology structure? If there is exactly one triangle or
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circle for each genealogical position (M, MZ, MB, etc.), or there
are possibilities to depict diagram in terminological structure.
2. Kinship terminology diagrams should always be drawn in the
same way, since this way it is easier to compare differences
between terminological structures.
3. Kinship terminology diagram usually consists of Ego father
situated on the left side, mother on the right side, parallel relatives in the centre and cross-relatives are situated outside the
diagram. That facilitates the reading of diagrams.
How to understand descent theory?
Descent theory involves the study of group structure and rules of
residence, for example whether upon marriage one live with the
wife’s family or with the husband’s. This theory also involves the
rules governing the inheritance of property, as well as succession to
title or office, such as a chiefship.
Descent theorists are more concerned with groups than with terminology. Descent theory has always been more perspective in the
British anthropology, for example, in the work of A. R. Radcliffe–
Brown, Meyer Fortes and Jack Goody.
Descent is a belief in an important role of certain persons who
procreate and raise certain children. Descent theories across cultures vary significantly. In the Western tradition, married couples
and their children are bound by a belief that both a man and a woman equally significantly contribute to a birth of a child. It is believed
that human blood is the most vital liquid that keeps them alive and
that it is different from the blood of their genitors. There is a belief
that mother’s and father’s blood is distributed in the body of a child
in equal parts. This image distinguishes blood relatives from the
brothers-in-law who are related to the marriage. In the 19th century,
this belief has encouraged anthropologists to use ethnocentric term
of consanguinity in order to define blood descent relations. Kinship proximity is actually measured by the general DNA proportion,
rather than by common blood.
Descent may be independent of allegedly inherited blood and
does not necessarily mean dependency on either father or mother.
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Kinship: Terminology, Descent and Alliance
Rules of the determination of descent
In the evaluation of relations, individuals are provided with different duties, rights and privileges in respect of other people and various areas of social life. Descent may be used to define person’s name,
family, place of residence, rank, richness, ethnicity, nationality, etc.
There are four main types of descent groups:
1.
2.
3.
4.
patrilineal;
matrilineal;
double;
cognatic or bilateral.
Patrilineal descent
Determination of descent patrilineally is the most common in the
world. Patrilineal clan is comprised of a father, a grandfather, a greatgrandfather, etc. Independently of a child’s gender, he or she will also
belong to the group members. Therefore, ego relates only through
men, upwards and downwards.
Matrilineal descent
Matrilineal descent is traced through maternal ancestors and is less
common, but is still found in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, as well
as in the societies of Native Americans. Famous examples include
the Bemba of Zambia (Africa), the Nayars in India, the Trobriand
Islanders in Melanesia and the Iroquois of North America.
Matrilineal descent is defined as descent through maternal line.
This does not mean that authority belongs to a mother, or to women
in general, but that authority within family is in the hands of a father, or more likely, in the hands of a mother’s brother (a father of
an individual is a member of different matrilineal group, i. e. not
of his own group). Matrilineal descent group members are a person’s mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, etc. Therefore,
kinfolks of this group relate only through women, upwards and
downwards. Men and women relate only through a mother’s line;
from generation to generation, children of men are not considered
as kinfolks.
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Both patrilineal and matrilineal descents are subject to the rules
of unilinear descent that limit kinship relation only exclusively to
men and exclusively to women.
One of the most significant logical consequences of the unilinear
descent is that children of the blood relatives of opposite sex are attributed to different categories. This effect is very important in respect
of cousins. Patrilineally, ego father’s sister’s son (FZS) and daughter
(FZD) have no common descent with ego, while ego father’s brother’s son (FBS) and daughter (FBD) have common descent with ego.
Matrilineally, such difference occurs in respect of maternal cousins.
Children, whose parents are related as brothers and sisters, are called
cross cousins; while children, whose parents are related as brothers
with brothers, or sisters with sisters, are called parallel cousins.
Double descent
Double descent is a rare form, where everyone belongs to two kin
groups: 1) patrilineal and 2) matrilineal. The best examples are to be
found in Africa. The Herero of Namibia are a well-known example.
They recognize 2 different relations of unilinear groups. Each Herero
belongs both to an oruzo (patrilineal clan) and an eanda (matrilineal
clan). Priest leads all the oruzo people and distributes property after a
death of community member. Members of oruzo fellowship share food
taboos, origin legends, rituals, sacred hearth and other activities. Eanda members are less important, but members share similar activities.
Double descent is similar to but distinquished from complementary filiation. ‘Complementary filiation’ is a term used to express fulfilment of duties between different halves of family relatives, from
which he or she has acquired a descent.
Therefore, double descent is when ego relates both matrilineally
and patrilineally. It is different than unilinear descent kinships only
through men or only through women.
Cognatic or bilateral descent
This is the opposite of double descent. Cognatic societies do not have
patrilineal or matrilineal groups. A person is considered as completely related to family kinfolks. Cognatic descent is determined
based on both genitors. Cognatic kinship is particularly common
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among hunters-gatherers and in technologically-advanced societies.
Western societies are mostly cognatic, although surnames and titles
of nobility tend to be inherited patrilineally.
In anthropology, ramage and sept are the synonyms of cognatic
descent.
Residence and descent
Almost all the societies have a practice of a husband and a wife living
together in the same house after the wedding; sometimes to acquire a
house, as it is common in the Western Europe. Usually, a house is acquired that is close to the living place of kinfolks either of a husband
or a wife. There are 3 descent groups according to the living place:
Virilocal residence – residence in the locality of the husband.
Virilocal residence automatically creates group relations of patrilineal kin, living in the same place.
Uxorilocal residence is a wife’s living place. It keeps matrilineally-related women together and disperses the men. Among the Bemba
a daughter is allowed to work in field which she will inherit from her
mother.
Avunculocal residence is a shared living place with a mother’s
brother (avunculus in Latin). Among the Trobrianders, each boy
leaves his parents’marital home well before the age of marriage in order to settle in a village of a mother’s brother. He is tought to take care
of this village as his own because it is the village of his matrilineal
kin. Girls stay in their village from their birth till the wedding. After
the wedding, she moves away to the village of her husband (which is
also a village of his mother’s brothers). Such practice creates residential units that consist of matrilineally related men, but disperses the
women through whom they are all related. In matrilineal societies,
authority stays in the hands of a man through his sister’s children
(since his own children belong to a different matrilineal group).
Alliance (marriage) theory
Alliance theory is concerned with relations between groups, families and individuals related in kinship through marriage. This theory
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originated in France. Claude Levi–Strauss presents it in his book
‘The Elementary Structures of Kinship’ (1949). In the British anthropology, prominent theoretical perspectives have been revealed in the
works of Sir Edmund Leach and Rodney Needham.
Incest
Incest is a sexual act or marriage between related individuals and is
prohibited. All the societies have incest prohibitions. In many societies all individuals are divided by kinship relations and also have kinship categories, which are particularly preferred for engagement and
marriage. Alliance theory mainly focuses on these societies. These
societies reject an idea that group membership forms a society. They
view society in terms of marital group relations.
Elementary structures of kinship
Elementary structures involve patterns established by positive rules
of marriage which are sort of the opposite of an incest taboo. For
instance, ‘You cannot marry your sister’, but ‘You must marry one
of the cross-cousins’. That’s what Lévi-Strauss referred to as complex
structures are known as negative rules: ‘You cannot marry your sister’. Lévi-Strauss has claimed that elementary structures represent
the earliest forms of human kinship and helps to understand the
meaning of the incest taboo.
There are 3 elementary structural forms:
Generalised exchange. Group A gives its women as wives to
group B, who give theirs to group C, and so on. Consistent marriage
pattern for men in this society is their marriage with a daughter of a
mother’s brother (MBD). This helps to introduce hierarchic relations
between groups. For instance, when men take wives from the same
group as his father’s, then men are always thankful (owing) to those
from whom they receive their wives. Such examples are found in
southeast Asia. The best know example is Kachin (studied by Leach)
and Purum (described by Needham).
Delayed restricted (or delayed direct) exchange. Group A gives
women to group B, and B to C in one generation, then each group
receives women back in the next generation. Consistent marriage
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Kinship: Terminology, Descent and Alliance
pattern for men in this society is their marriage with a daughter of
his father’s sister (FZD). In exceptional cases, there might be deviations present when relations between groups are inconsistent. Some
anthropologists claim it exists only as a theoretical type.
Restricted (or direct) exchange. Group A gives women to group
B, and group B gives women to a group A. Marriage is allowed either
with a mother’s brother’s daughters (MDBs) or with a father’s sister’s
daughters (FZDs). In many societies, there are 2 kinship groups which
in this case are known as moieties: one of them is called own moiety
(including one’s brothers, sisters and parallel cousins) and the other
one – more distant moiety (including one’s cross-cousins). Common
in Amazonia, South Asia and among Australian aborigine.
Lévi Strauss and his followers recognise a type of system which
lies in between elementary and complex. This is a Crow-Omaha system. Crow or Omaha terminologies define whom one cannot marry:
anyone called by the same kinship term as a close relative. This entails a negative marriage rule, and therefore a complex system (Barnard 2000: 114–115).
Summary
Kinship is a rather technical branch of anthropology, yet it can be
charming. Acquisition of the most important concepts and the art of
kinship diagram reading and drawing is the key to success. Kinship
includes the classification of relatives, the formation of kin groups,
and aspects of marriage. Anthropologists who emphasise kin groups
are called as ‘descent theorists’. Those who emphasise relations between groups (through marriage) are known as ‘alliance theorists’.
Study questions
1. How can real kinship be distinguished from fictive kinship?
2. Diagram and describe some of the different kinds of kinship
terminology. How they differ from one another?
3. What is the debate between descent theory and alliance theory?
4. What are elementary structures of kinship? Give some examples from different societies.
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12 Lecture. Anthropology of Religion:
Belief, Ritual and Symbolism
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
Different views of the world.
Terminology of the sacred and the profane.
Understanding belief systems.
Encountering rituals.
Interpreting mythology and symbolism.
Different views of the world
Ecological, economic and political anthropology differs significantly
from the studies of belief, ritual and symbolism. The anthropological study of religion, or more precisely the study of belief, ritual and
symbolism is more interpretative. Anthropologists interested in religion in order to try to think like their informants and understand
their vision of the world.
How do anthropologists reconcile their own beliefs about the
world with writing about the beliefs of others?
Following the anthropological practice, researchers threat beliefs
as truth for the believers, and do not comment on whether they are
true in the sense of representing an external reality.
Does this mean they accept all religions as true? Not exactly. They
separate theological truth from the anthropological one (i. e. what
people say and do in society) and comment only on the latter.
Does this mean that all the anthropologists are atheists?
Not at all. Many anthropologists practise Buddhism, Hinduism,
Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other religions and many specialize
in the study of religions other than their own.
Terminology of the sacred and the profane
The most fundamental distinction between studies of belieth, ritual
and symbolism is the notion of the ‘sacred’. In ‘The Elementary Forms
of the Religious Life’ (1912), French sociologist Emile Durkheim made
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Anthropology of Religion: Belief, Ritual and Symbolism
an important distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’. Later
this distinction has been reiteraited by other anthropologists and religious studies sholars. In 1957, famous Romanian historian of religion
Mircea Eliade discussed these terms in his book ‘Sacred and Profane’.
Sacred
Profane
1. Separated from the normal world.
Belonging to the normal world.
2. May entail ‘forbidden’ knowledge or
practices (taboos).
Entails everyday knowledge.
3. Includes ritual practices.
Includes utilitarian practices.
4. Often related to magical forces, spirits
or deities.
Associated with ordinary, especially
material things.
5. Related to religion and magical practice. Related to non-religious activities or
aspect of cultural aspects.
In his book, M. Eliade tries to answer a question as to how people
comprehend sacredness. He talks about hierophanies, i. e. the ways
in which sanctity reveals itself, including sacred places, as well as
saints. For instance, they claim that Christ is the highest hierophany,
since his sanctity belonging to the world, which is completely different than ours, reveals itself through human nature, i. e. the feature
of our world. According to Eliade, the Western world gradually loses
its ability to feel sanctity, thus the task of the history of religion is to
help modern world to redeem the materialized life to a feeling of sacredness. According to Eliade, secularized westerner no longer feels
sacredness and tries to compensate it with science fiction, literature
and movies about supernatural phenomena.
Understanding belief systems
Anthropologists have significantly contributed to the classification of
belief systems. The first anthropologists focused on religious evolution.
Human being has gone a long road from ape-like mumbling to the
fear of darkness and ‘animatism’, a belief in impersonal, mighty, mysterious and dreadful power. Concentrated form of animatistic force
found within certain objects, animals and people that confer supernatural powers. This spiritual power which percolates through all the
phenomena and matters is known as mana (Polynesian word). Mana
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means a belief in a mighty power, e. g., it is believed that either a hook
which helps to catch much fish, or a bat which kills many enemies, or a
horseshoe that brings luck, contain plenty of mana. A blacksmith who
carves a nice piece of art and whose work is especially complex has
mana, while a warrior captured by enemies has lost his mana.
According to the religious evolution theory, animatism has turned
to animism, i. e., a religion based on fear of evil spirits, which is common among isolated tribes. Later, polytheism emerged and was immortalized in the Greek mythology. It was followed by monotheism
which emerged from Hebraic religion.
Evolutional approach to religion was supported by many researches since the times of Darwin. Human evolution was considered as a
proven matter, therefore, the scientists sought to derive evolution of
religion from it.
However, all further research showed that evolution of religion
from animatism is no longer regarded as an axiom. Some anthropologists claim that monotheism as an ideology may be more primitive
than animatism. Lead by Wilhelm Schmidt from Vienna, anthropologists have demonstrated that religions of hundreds of today’s isolated tribes are not primitive. Tribes keep and image of the ‘Supreme
God’ as of a creator and father in their minds, but do not worship him
since they are not afraid of him anymore. Instead making sacrifices,
they are trying to propitiate the evil jungle spirits. Therefore, threats
of enchanters are more efficient than the voice of the God the Father.
Rather, research data bespeaks about apostasy from recognition of the
true God. Thus historical material urges us to think about the answer
about the first religion found in the Bible. The Bible states that it was
not a man who invented religion, a man was created after God’s image and he has recognized and worshiped only one God the Creator.
Monotheism and stockbreeding are the 2 inseparable characteristics
of the origin of religion that are clearly demonstrated in the Bible.
Animism and fetishism
The first anthropologists, including Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917),
assumed that animism was the oldest form of religion. Animism is
a primitive belief that soul exists not only in human beings, but also
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in animals, plants, natural phenomena and things. This concept has
been introduced by the anthropologists E. Tylor in his book ‘Primitive culture’. According to Tylor, people all around the world believe
that souls can be seen in dreams, trance, thoughts and that spirits
are related to the loss of consciousness, birth and death.
Although some animistic faiths are universal, each culture has its
own characteristic animistic creatures and specific concept of a soul.
In different cultures we can even find a different number of souls.
Ancient Egyptians and many West African cultures believe that a
human being possesses 2 souls: the one obtained from maternal ancestors and the other obtained from paternal ancestors.
Ecuador’s Jivaros believe they have 3 souls. The first soul provides
body with a life; the second one is acquired by the holy waterfall,
during a vision caused by narcotics. It infuses with courage in a battle. The third soul arrives into the head of a dying warrior in order
avenge for his death. In order to temper this soul, Jivaros decapitate the dead warrior, dry his head and bring it to their village. Here,
powers are pulled out from the head and are awarded to the winner
by using rituals.
Gabon’s Fang people probably have the highest number of souls.
They believe they have 7 souls: a brain soul, a heart soul, and name soul,
a soul of vital power, a body soul, a shadow soul and a ghost soul.
In their opinion, animism originates from the striving to explain
complex phenomena that are characteristic to human beings and
nature. In the 20th century, his statement was criticized by anthropologists who have proven that religion is much more than just the
attempt to explain complex phenomena; religion performs a big variety of economic, political and psychological functions.
The first anthropologists have also considered fetishism as the
oldest form of religion, i. e. the belief in fetishes or objects that have
supernatural power. Primitive people have most likely made fetishes – objects that, as they believed, had magic powers. Although we
now know that fetishes do exist, they do not create a foundation for
something what could be depicted as a system of beliefs.
Totemism is a primitive religion based on a tribe’s relations with
a totem from which it derives itself. Animals, plants and inanimate
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cestor guardians. A word totem derived from Ojibwe language which
was used in the area of the Upper Great Lakes in North America.
This word was introduced in English language around 1791. In Ojibwe
language it was believed that totem is an opposite of manitoo. Ojibwa’s totems are spiritual creatures represent animal species (such as
catfish, cranes and bears). There are several totems and each of them
symbolises different clan. They are found in mythology. Manitoos
are spirits which guard individuals, rather than groups. They reveal
themselves through dreams. It was believed that the animal species
belonging to one’s totem could not be killed or eaten. It was also
believed that persons who have the same totem cannot marry each
other.
Similar viewpoints are also found in other cultures. For instance,
in Australia ethnographers have found different types of totems.
They include:
• Individual totems.
• Clan totems.
• Totems of sacred places that belong to the spirits of sacred places.
In Australia, totems represent animals whose bodies are not used for
food and whose members cannot be lovers or spouses. There is descent
relation between the members of a group and their totemic father.
Totemic beliefs have also been observed in South America, Asia,
Africa and Pacific Islands. A number of anthropologists focused
their research on with Totemism. The most famous authors working
on this topic were Alexander Goldenweiser who published his article
in 1910 and Claude Levi-Strauss who published his book ‘Totemism’
in 1962. They state that totemism differs in various places with regard
to its phenomena.
There is a significant difference between the totems which symbolize clans and other social groups and the totems which are the reason
for many sacred unions, including the one of food prohibition.
Shamanism
Many religions have experts of religion or performers of rituals, such
as priests, rabbis, pastors, etc. In the anthropological literature, activity of shamans is the most broadly discussed one.
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Shaman is a ritual specialist, especially in the arctic or the Americas, who mediates between the human world and the spirit world,
between human and animals, as well as between the living and the
dead. Both women and men, who are socially acknowledged as having a special ability to relate with spiritual creatures and manage supernatural powers, may become shamans. The term shaman is synonymous with ‘medicin man’, ‘wizard’ or ‘magician’. It comes from
the language of the Tungus people of eastern Siberia. Shamanism
has become widespread, particularly in the Arctic and South America. In his book ‘Shamanism’ (1951), Eliade described shamanism phenomena present in several continents.
The entire shamanistic complex includes a certain trance state
which increases the powers of a shaman. Obsession, an entry of the
God or spirit to the human body, is the most common trance form
of shamanism. A shaman falls into a trance while smoking tobacco,
using narcotics, beating a drum, dancing monotonously or simply
closing his eyes and concentrating. A trance starts when a body stagnates, sweats or heavy breathing is present. While being in a trance,
shaman acts as a medium who transfers knowledge from ancestors.
With the help of friendly spirits, shamans predict upcoming events,
find lost things, determines the reason of illness, indicate medicine
and advise how to protect oneself from intents of enemies.
There is a close relation between shamanistic cults and the search
for individualistic visions. Frequently shamans have psychological
inclinations to hallucinatory experiences. In cultures where the use
of hallucinatory materials while trying to infiltrate into the secrets of
the other world is present, many can claim the position of a shaman.
One of four Jivari men is a shaman, since hallucinatory plants allow
anybody to fall into a trance and become a shaman (Harner, 1972).
Elsewhere, people can become shamans only if they tend to have audible and visible hallucinations.
Although trance is a part of shaman’s repertoire in hundreds of
cultures, it is not universal. Many cultures have semi experts who do
not use trance, but diagnose and cure, find lost things, predict future
and infuse with resistance in a war and with success in love. Such
people can have different titles, such as wizards, clairvoyants, enchanters, witches and psychics. Shamanistic complex comprises all of
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these roles. Shamans within Tapirape village people in Central Brazil
obtain their power from dreams where they meet with spirits (Wagley, 1977). They become the helpers of a shaman. Dreams are evoked
by souls that leave body and wander. Frequent dreams signify a talent
of a shaman. Mature shamans, with the help of familiar spirits, can
turn into birds or fly on air with pumpkin canoes, to visit ghosts and
demons or travel to the future and the past of distant villages.
Tapirape’s shamans are usually invited to cure. They cure using
quick hand gestures with the help of familiar spirits, while almost
falling into a trance and smoking tobacco heavily, which results in
them vomiting.
Monotheism and polytheism
Monotheism is a monocracy, a belief that there is the only Supreme
God that has all the features of divinity. Judaism, Christianity, Islam
and many local African religions may serve as examples of monotheistic religions.
Polytheism is a worship of multiple gods that predominate over different areas of the world and life. The examples of these religions are
found in the Ancient Egypt, as well as in Greek and Roman religions.
Notwithstanding, differences between monotheism and polytheism are not always clear. Nuer and Dink people in Sudan are monotheists, but they also speak about different types of divinities and
spirits. In his book ‘Nuer Religion’ (1956), in the section about God,
Evans-Pritchard describes upper and lower spirits.
Cargo cults
Cargo cults are postcolonial, acculturative religious movements,
common in Melanesia, that attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behaviour. In some other countries, such as Melanesia
and countries of the Pacific coast, people believed that on a doomsday or at the dawn of a new age their ancestors will return with a
cargo of valuable goods. This movement was especially widespread
as a result of the World War II. Oracles used to predict their return
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and encourage people to build wharfs and aerodromes, so that ancestors could deliver valuable goods of the Western Europe (fashionable clothing, radio and electrical goods, refrigerators and cars). Peter Lawrence’s ‘Road Belong Cargo’ (1964) is one of the most famous
studies about Cargo cults. Similar beliefs are found among Native
North Americans. They are commonly known as nativitic or revivification beliefs. Revivification is a political and religious relation between a lower caste class and the dominating group. Some revivification movements emphasize the attitude of passivity, observation
of ancient cultural customs or afterlife for merits; others propagate
open resistance or active political or military activity.
After the Europeans have invaded the New World, conquered the
nations of Native Americans and destroyed natural resources, revivification movement have become extremely widespread. On the most
significant revivification movement of the 19th century was the Ghost
Dance, also known as the Messianic Madness. It started in 1889 and
Wovoka, the Paiute religious leader, was its moving spirit. He predicted the day when all their ancestors would come back to life. For
this to happen, people danced and sang. For the natives of flatlands
this return meant that they could exceed the white people in quantity and therefore become more powerful.
Among Sioux Indians, there was a version of a dance that envisaged the return of buffaloes and death of the white people under an
enormous landslip. Sioux warriors used to wear a shirt of the Ghost
Dance that, according to them, protected them from bullets. Clashes between the USA army and Sioux people became more frequent
and the Sioux chief Sitting bull was arrested and killed. The second
movement of the Ghost Dance ended with the massacre of 200 Sioux
Indians in South Dakota in 1890. When all the capacities of military
resistance were exhausted, the movement of revivification of the Native Americans became more closed and passive. Visions of all the
white people vanishing have gone and the relation of religion with
the political reality has been proven.
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Explaining witchcraft and sorcery
Witchcraft is a malevolent magical activity which is partly innate in
an individual. People are born in order to become enchanters, witches or become enchanter as a result of an evil that exists in them and
cannot be controlled.
Sorcery is a similar phenomenon in terms of power, but it is acquired, rather than innate.
In his book ‘Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande’
(1937), Evans-Pritchard revealed differences between Zande people
from Sudan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Zande are involved in whichcraft. Under their perception,
there are 2 reasons behind many events: the first one is physical
cause, while the second one includes sorcery or more often witchcraft. Zande people try to interpret daily phenomena based on these
reasons. For instance, if termites eat the pillars of the grain storehouse granary and someone is killed when the storehouse falls down,
it may interpret in two ways. The first method of interpretation is the
simplest one, i. e. termites have eaten the pillars. Such explanation is
not sufficient for the Zande people as they also want to find out why
it fell at a certain time and on a particular person. This even may
interpret as an occurrence of someone’s ill-will: a person appeared
at the said location and was killed by the fall of the granary due to
a witchcraft. African societies take sorcery as part of their daily life.
The interpretation method of Evans-Pritchard reflected the understanding of local people and their attempt to relate it to other cultural and social aspects.
Encountering rituals
Sacrifice is a central element of nearly all religions. Anthropology has
endued this term with a very broad meaning. It does not have to be
something valuable, yet it is important to make a symbolic gesture.
It can be a gesture of recognition of a presence of a spirit or an
ancestor. For instance, Chinese funeral participants place rice on the
graves of their deceased relatives, while in many African societies
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Anthropology of Religion: Belief, Ritual and Symbolism
its or ancestors before drinking themselves. Human sacrifice is an
extreme rarity (e. g., in the Aztec societies). Until the emergence of
states, many societies used to practise human sacrifice and solemnly
eat the bodies of war prisoners or parts of their bodies. However,
once the state emerged, such customs started to decline. Aztecs were
an exception from the common trend. Instead of prohibiting human
sacrifice and cannibalism, Aztec state turned human sacrifice into
the foundation of ecclesiastical beliefs and rites.
Aztecs believed that everything, including gods themselves, was
created by two primordial divinities, i. e. Ometecuhtli, the God of
Duality, and Omecihuatl, the Goddess of Duality. They lived on the
top of the world’s mountain. They created all the gods and humanity. However, after the start of invasion of the Spanish, both primordial divinities were replaced by a flock of younger and more
vigorous gods.
Aztecs believed that gods created the Earth. The most important
deed of the divinity was birth of the Sun. Sun occurred in Teotihuacan, after the sacrifice of some small leprous god. Other gods have
followed his lead and stated to sacrifice blood needed by the Sun, so
that it could move along the sky.
The Sun had to be given human blood daily, otherwise it would
stop and so would life on the Earth. Therefore, there was the constant
need of people in order to sacrifice. That was mostly prisoners of war.
It is believed, that 20.000 people used to be slain on a yearly basis.
Animal sacrifice is more common: a goat or a cow is slain for ancestors or divinities, but they are usually eaten by people who execute the sacrifice. Evans-Pritchard’s description of sacrifice in the
Nuer religion is considered as classical.
Rites of passage
Rites of passage are rituals, when an individual experiences changes
by passing from one life status to another. Rites of passage consist of
the following:
Naming rites are the ones designating a passage from a status of
non-person to a status of a person, or from a person existing outside
the society to a person belonging to the society.
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Initiation rites are the ones designating passage from childhood
to adolescence.
Marriage rites are the ones designating passage from a status of
non-married to a status of married.
Funeral rites are the ones designating person’s passage to an ancestor, or a passage of a person belonging to the society of the living
to the society of the dead.
Domestic christening with water in Lithuanian, Belarusian and
Christian cultures or baptism in Christianity can serve as the examples of naming rites. Confirmation in Christianity or bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah in Judaism can serve as the examples of initiation rites.
Marriage rites are found in every society. They often have religious basis, although it is not of an essential importance for rites
of passage to take place. Even the process of divorce in a court may
be considered as a rite of passage replacing a status of married to
single.
Funerals are also universal. The specific meaning depends on the
system of religion belief. In some societies, it is necessary to hold
more than one funeral, and occasionally more than one funeral ceremony. On Madagascar and in much of Australian Aboriginal people,
an individual is buried once, then his or her body is exhumed and
reburied again, in order to designate passage phases in the transition
from living to ancestral status.
Initiator of the rites of passage theory is the French folklorist Arnold van Gennep, whose book ‘Rites de passage’ (1909) indicated the
ways for further research on this topic. Van Gennep claimed that
there are 3 following phases of the rites of passage:
1) Separation (such as leaving the group prior to rituals;
2) Transition (the period of most ritual activity);
3) Incorporation (where individuals are incorporated into group
in their new status).
The transition phase is known as liminal (‘limen’ means ‘threshold’ from the Latin). This phase often has reversal rites, where for example man acts as if women or old people act as if they are children.
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Interpreting mythology and symbolism
One of the most common approaches in an interpretative mythology is a ‘charter for social action’. This phrase has been developed
by B. Malinowski. What does it mean? Myths form the rules for correct social behaviour. To those who believe in them, myths explain
relations between social groups and between categories of relatives,
explain with whom marriage is allowed, what can be eaten and what
cannot be eaten and why.
Structural interpretation is another widespread approach in research on mythology. The most famous supporter of the structural
interpretation is French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Between 1964 and 1970, he has written 4 volumes of mythology and
called them ‘Mythologiques’. In this work he introduced an analysis
of 813 myths from North and South America. His famous essay ‘The
Story of Asdiwal’ is another important work that was published in
France in 1958 and re-published for a number of times (Lévi-Strauss
‘Structural Anthropology’ (2, 1973)).
Mythology
Franz Boas wrote down a myth of Asdiwal from Tsimshian people
of British Columbia. In the myth, Asdiwal travels back and forth between two rivers that run in parallel and also travels back and forth
between the coast and upstream. The myth starts with the migration of Asdiwal’s mother and grandmother from the area of shortage
(affected by famine) and ends with Asdiwal’s conversion to a stone
in wilderness. According to the myth, Asdiwal hunts down several
animals and marries three women, one of whom bears him a son.
Other characteristics comprise his father who represents a bird, and
is opponent brother-in-law by his various wedding.
Analysis of a myth
The details are not important there. What is important is the analysis of the myth. Levi-Strauss reveals structural meaning of the
myth written down by Boas. According to Strauss, the myth may
be interpreted following several patterns. He provides 6 patterns:
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geographical, cosmological, integral, sociological, techno-economic
and global.
For instance, in the geographical level we can talk about Asdiwal’s
journeys from east to west and from north to south. The latter exactly correspond to the actual migration of Tsimshian people, when
they used to look for fish during certain seasons (techno-economic
level). Global level comprises integration of opposing elements, such
as a man and a woman, thirst and famine.
When all of these elements are understood in relation to each other, Lévi-Strauss argues, we can uncover not just the meaning of the
myth, but the deeper thought process of the Tsimshian people, and
perhaps those of humankind in general.
Symbolism
Structural anthropologists claim that it is much the same with any
aspect of symbolism. Spatial symbolism is perhaps the easiest to understand, because it is visual. There have been many anthropological
studies written about layouts of villages and buildings, particularly,
residential houses. Usually there is a distinction between the inside
and outside of a village, which may implay a symbolic distinction between culture (inside) and nature (outside). Houses are often divided
between public and private areas, as well as into male and female
areas. Even though it does not necessarily have a religious meaning,
it nevertheless symbolises social relations.
There are also examples of spatial symbolism in ritual. A traditional British wedding is one of them. It is commonly thought that a
bride takes the left side while a bridegroom takes the right side. The
seating of people in the wedding is organised following this order. A
bride comes in while holding her father’s left hand and is led to her
husband from the right side.
Symbolic order is based on the simplest oppositions, such as the
right and the left. For people performing the ritual it does have a certain meaning. The basic aim of anthropologists is discovering these
meanings.
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Summary
Belief, rites and symbolism are complex aspects of culture. Anthropologists try to interpret them without preconceived attitude in respect of faith. They introduce new concepts, such as sanctity or profanity, witchcraft or sorcery, which they take from the study of many
societies. They use methods based on both observation and intuition.
While looking for the structures of mythology and symbolism, anthropologists may find new meanings, which initially seem to be insignificant and cause certain havoc.
Study questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Explain the difference between sacred and profane.
What is totemism?
What is the difference between witchcraft and socery?
What are rites of passage? Gives some examples.
How have anthropologists tried to explain symbolism?
13 Lecture. Visual Anthropology and its
Applied Aspect in Anthropology Research
Schedule of lecture
•
•
•
•
•
What is visual anthropology?
Visual practice in the 19th century.
3 types of ethnographic photography.
Visual practice in the first half of the 20th century.
Development of visual anthropology since the second half of
the 20th century to the beginning of 21st century.
• Disciplines related to the visual anthropology.
• Methods and ethics of the visual research.
What is visual anthropology?
Visual anthropology emerged as distinct subfield of anthropology in
the latter part of the 20th century. Visual anthropology is concerned
with visual systems and forms and their engagement in processes
of anthropological knowledge production. To scope of visual anthropology is wide, ranging from the creation and analysis of photographic, film and artistic productions to material culture, bodily
expressions and spatial design. (Wacowich 2012: 708)
British and American visual anthropologists Marcus Banks and
Jay Ruby emphasize that the history of visual anthropology “is rather
a history of ideas and interests within the discipline that at some
times have cried out for visual exploration (whether that call was
needed or not) and at others have apparently spurned the visual in
favor of the written word as a mode of representation and language
as an access route to the mind” (Banks, Ruby 2011: 2).
Visual practice in the 19th century
The origin of visual anthropology as a subdiscipline dates back to the
19th century. Visual technologies had significant importance in field research of the Victorian anthropologists. Previously, anthropology used
to classify nations and cultures according the evolutionary scheme,
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therefore, the scientists used cameras to gather primary ethnographical data, which later was used to create theory about the development
of human society. It was believed that pictures ensured a more credible
and objective way to gather factual evidence that facilitate the comparison of field research data collected from different parts of the world.
The issue regarding the collection of factual evidence was extremely severe for anthropologists of the 19th century, since the roles
of a theorist and field researcher were strictly limited. Rumours and
indirect talks were supplemented by pictures taken with a camera.
Visual data gathered this way was considered direct and more credible. Therefore, a camera soon became the most important working
tool for anthropologists.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries physical anthropologists
utilized a range of visual-photographic indices in support of theories of social evolution: anatomical and group portraits, film footage,
biometric data of ‘racial types’ and their ‘tools’. Such visual evidence
also served to bolster discourses of race and evolution crucial to imperialist projects.
3 types of ethnographic photography:
In the book ‘Wondrous Difference’ (2002), Alison Griffiths singles out
3 types of ethnographic photography:
1) Anthropometric photography which was the most common in
the 19th century. Its focus was on the type. Following the principles of
taxonometry, individuals used to be photographed as the representatives of physical species in strictly controlled environments. Physical
appearance was the foundation of the cultural, intellectual and evolutionary theories. Instructions for the collection of this type of data
were very specific and required to photograph undressed individuals
against a neutral background.
2) The second type of photography conveyed a live relation between the cultures of researched nations. Anthropometric photography was criticized as a documentation of ‘spiritless bodies’. This
new approach was focused on the relationship between a photographer and a subject. It was important for a field researcher to gain his
subject’s trust and to collaborate with him or her.
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3) The third type of photography was artistic postcards with a
picture. In the 19th century, the demand for pictures of ‘primitive’
people was increasing. Their spread was determined by the intellectual culture of the second half of the 19th century which has erased
the split between scientific and popular genres.
A. C. Haddon’s expedition to the Torres Strait in 1898 was a crucial
moment in the history of visual anthropology. During the expedition
a 4 minute motion film was captured and marked the commencement of ethnographic films. Haddon merged previously separated
roles of a researcher and a theorist. This turn in the ethnographic
research had a significant impact on the role of photography in the
anthropological research of the 20th century.
Visual practice in the first half of the 20th century
The decline of picture as the object and method of anthropological
research is related to research works by B. Malinowski. Conceptual
attention digressed from the surface to the depth and from visible
cultural manifestations to the interest in social structure. A change
in the role of a field researcher has also taken place. The Victorian
anthropologists with an impressive set of instruments were replaced
by discrete ethnographers who carried only a memo book and a pen
with themselves. Shortly, cameras disappeared from the ethnographic practice pattern by becoming another aid for a field researcher.
However, new research studies by anthropologists were constructed under a certain visual concept. An inner view method was
developed when a picture is imagined. It comprises intuition, insight
and revelation moments which can only be achieved through senses
and not through technological measures. The new relationship between knowledge based on a picture and experience has been determined in the anthropological research described in the classical text
of Malinowski ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ (1922).
Although modern anthropology was established as an initially
literary initiative, the work based on a picture has been further developed and thrived in the margins of textual discipline. The use
of a camera was particularly related to Margaret Mead who started
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to actively use visual technologies in the 1930’s along with Gregory
Bateson in the context of field research. She also aimed to developed
innovative methodology that was relevant for their research of certain cultural practices in Bali and New Guinea. A camera was mainly
used for ethnographic purposes, rather than illustration. Mead and
Bateson recognized the limitation of language in expressing the aspects of social life. The comparison of different materials of field research (written, visual and audible) was an integral part of that what
Bateson used to call ‘ethos’, i. e., ‘intangible cultural aspects’.
Development of visual anthropology since the second half of
the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century
Many anthropologists were affected by the passionate devotion of
M. Mead to the use of a filming camera. Some of them used visual
means in their field researches. They include John Marshall, Timothy Asch, Asen Balikci, Robert Gardner and Karl Heider. Timothy
Asch declared that ‘a camera has the same meaning to anthropologists as a telescope has to astronomers or a microscope to biologists’.
In the 1980’s, Ash and Napoleon Chagnon started filming the life of
Yanomami Indians. Prior to that, they have edited a number of films.
The Ax Fight is one the mostly discussed films in the area of visual
anthropology.
During the period of 1960–1980, there have been discussions if
visual and audio records could be of any use to the observational
research of social sciences. During this period, many researchers of
social sciences opposed to the use of ethnographic visuals in ethnography by claiming that such method of data collection is too subjective, non-typical and non-methodical. Such anthropologists as M.
Mead, J. Collier and H. Becker, using their theoretical arguments
and practical works, have attempted to disprove the opinions of previous researchers.
Experts of visual ethnography were accused of their visuals having neither objectivity nor scientific accuracy. M. Mead responded to
the critics by stating that filming camera allows to film continuously
for a long time without human interference and thus allows to show
an ‘objective material’.
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Some researchers emphasized that the specificity of a photography moment is not scientifically reasonable. H. Becker stated that
pictures taken by anthropologists during field research are ‘in fact,
just holiday pictures’. Collier warned that records of photography
may remain as completely impressionistic if the researchers fail to
switch to systematic application of information technologies. Other
anthropologists stated that a visual method may have a positive effect on social sciences as an objective recording method.
One of the most significant publications of the 20th century that
had a significant impact on the development of visual anthropology is J. Collier’s (1967) [1986] ‘Visual Anthropology: Photography
as Research Method’. This textbook introduces the use of photography and video material in ethnographic research and presentations.
J. and M. Collier (1986) promote a systematic observation method
which is carried out by a researcher with the help of visual technologies. They claim that ‘good video recordings that are recorded during
a research are organized and consistent observational products’. According to J. and M. Collier, the most important task of an ethnographer is to record a certain version of reality that can be observed by a
researcher. J. and M. Collier distinguish a fiction of the ‘working scenario’ which is often used in the world of photography and cinema
from the concept of the research that aims to capture reality. In their
words, ethnography is an observation of reality and not a construction of movie scenario based on narratives and life stories.
In 1986, J. Clifford and G. Marcus published their book ‘Writing
Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography’. On the contrary,
J. Clifford claims that ethnographers themselves construct narratives and create fiction. He uses a term of fiction or belles-lettres not
to demonstrate that ethnographers are opposing to the truth or are
false-minded, but in order to emphasize that ethnographers cannot
completely reveal the reality and tell just part of the story. For J. Clifford, ethnographic truths are incomplete, partial and unfinished.
That may be also applied to the research and its presentation.
J. and M. Collier recognized that the full picture of the researched
situation could not be video recorded. They encourage the research
photographer to compare similarities between all the collected details and events observed in the context of time and space.
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Around 1980, Clifford’s ideas helped to create appropriate environment so that visual approach in ethnography could emerge. In
film and text recording, an emphasis was put on accuracy, experience, recognition of similarities between constructivity and fiction.
All of the above comprised the context in which ethnographic film
became a more acceptable form of ethnographic presentation.
H. Larson (1988) (Photography that listens, Visual Anthropology 1: 415–32) used photography and artistic images in order to find
out through the cooperative photography about the informers’ approach to reality. Major attention to mediation between anthropologists and informers was the development in the ethnographic films
of reflexive style created by David and Judith MacDougall and their
contemporaries.
1990 was marked by the start of the discussions on the development of relations between the approaches of photography, films and
observation in anthropology and sociology (Chaplin 1994, Edwards
1992, Harper 1998, Henley 1998, Loizos 1993, Morphy and Banks 1997,
Pink 1996, 1998 b). Edwards, Morphy and Banks emphasize in their
books the intentional failure to comply with scientific paradigms,
yet they recognize that, in the modern context, many scientists feel
trapped between the conceptual advancement of visual anthropology and far more conservative paradigms of scientific positivism traditions (MacDougall 1997).
MacDougall suggests a new approach to the principles that arise
when field researchers try to review anthropology with the use of
visual means. That means a radical transformation of anthropology
itself and review of certain anthropological categories.
The transformation of this discipline is revealed through the transition from anthropology based on words and sentences to the anthropological idea based on artistic image and episodes. Therefore,
MacDougall tries to incorporate images into the social science based
on words.
The book of Marcus Banks ‘Visual Methods in Social Research’,
published in 2001 in London, is like a guide that instructs how to
use visual material in social research. The author provides empirical
approaches to creation and analysis of visuals in field research. His
research objects are Egyptian television soap-operas, sale of ethno129
Cultural Anthropology
graphic photos in an Auction House in London and pornographic
images on the internet. He discusses the most up-to-date technologies, such as multimedia and analysed conversion of images to digital
forms. Banks provides practical advices on how to use film and photography archives and how to submit the results of visual research.
New approach to historical development of visual anthropology
is provided in the book by Marcus Banks and Jay Ruby, ‘Made to Be
Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology’ (2011). The
essays critically examine different topics: material visions, photography and ethnographic film, dress and textile, art and body adornment,
interpretations of the visible and the invisible, ethical and epistemic
reflections on/of anthropological vision, the body as cultural phenomenon, indigenous media, and digital visual anthropology.
Visual anthropology emerged as distinct subfield of anthropology
in the latter part of the 20th century. In the 1980’s, supporters of the
‘new ethnography’ introduced ideas of ethnography as a fiction and
emphasized the importance of subjectivity of cognition. In the 1990’s,
it was recognized that ethnographic films or photography were in essence neither more subjective nor objective than recorded texts.
What has encouraged the use of new technologies of photography
in ethnography?
• Innovations of visual anthropology around 1990;
• Critical postmodern theoretical approaches to subjectivity,
experience, knowledge and representation;
• Reflexive approach to methodology of ethnographical field research;
• Interdisciplinary emphasis.
In recent decades, new communications technologies have entered
the representational arena, changing the shape of visual anthrpology.
The digitization of photographic and filmic technologies and their
distribution through the World Wide Web has put issues of global
mobility at the forefront of a twenty-first century visual anthropology. Allegations of Western ‘crisis of ocularcentrism’ have effectively broadened the disciplinary scope to incorporate hearing, smell,
touch and taste into an all-embracing anthropology of the senses.
Finally, renewed interest in the graphic and artistic mode of descrip130
Visual Anthropology and its Applied Aspect in Anthropology Research
tion by the anthropological fieldwork (Ingold 2007) highlights the
inherently creative nature of anthropological inquiry and raises new
questions for an anthropology of the visual (Wacowich 2012: 710).
Disciplines related to the visual anthropology
Studies of anthropology, sociology, culture, photography and multimedia are the disciplines that are mostly related to visual anthropology. Each of them is concerned with different aspects, such as
material culture, video technology, interpretation of cultural texts,
understanding of social relations and individual experience. Each
of the aforementioned disciplines offers individual perception of an
image in culture and society.
Different disciplines use visuals and technologies in ethnography
in order to implement individual empirical programme. Therefore,
interdisciplinary relations have been very important lately and are
intended to be developed in the future (Pink 2001).
In the modern world, anthropology and visual studies are closely
interconnected. Theory of photography and films may affect our perception of possibilities of visual information means in ethnographic
research and its presentation. Ethnographic approach can also enhance the presentation and interpretation of visuals. Ethnographic
approach helps photographers and film makers understand that
their artistic practice may be affected by ethnographic research.
Methods and ethics of the visual research
Professor of visual anthropology Marcus Banks from Oxford university divides visual research methods into three broad activities:
1) ‘making visual representation (studying society by producing images)’; 2) ‘examining pre-existing visual representations’ (studying
images for information about society); 3) ‘collaborating with social
actors in the production of visual representations’ (Banks 1995). The
introduction of photographs to interviews and conversations sets
of a kind of chain reaction: the photographs effectively exercise
agency, causing people to do and think things they had forgotten
or to see things they had always known in a new way. They serve to
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bring about a research collaboration between the investigator and
subject (Banks 2001: 95). M. Banks emphasizes that film-elicitation,
like photo elicitation, can be highly productive research tool for the
social researcher, yielding insights and understandings that might
otherwise be missed or not be discernible by other methods (Banks
2001: 99). Film may play a role of a mediator between a researcher
and an informer.
Sometimes using cameras and making images of informants is
inappropriate for ethical reason. In some situations photographs or
videos of informants may put them in political danger, or subject
them to moral criticism. By thinking through the implications of image production and visual representation in this way ethnographers
should be able to evaluate how their “ethnographic‘ images would
be invested with different meanings by different political, local and
academic discourses (Pink 2001: 33).
Summary
Visual anthropology is concerned with visual systems and forms and
their engagement in processes of anthropological knowledge production. To scope of visual anthropology is wide, ranging from the
creation and analysis of photographic, film and artistic productions
to material culture, bodily expressions and spatial design. In recent
decades, new communications technologies have entered the representational arena, changing the shape of visual anthrpology. The
digitization of photographic and filmic technologies and their distribution through the World Wide Web has put issues of global mobility at the forefront of a 21st century visual anthropology. Nevertheless, sometimes using cameras and making images of informants is
inappropriate for ethical reason.
Study questions
1. Name three types of ethnographic photography that were
common in the 19th century.
2. Which anthropologists have mentioned them in their works?
3. Name the most important methods of visual anthropology.
Provide examples found in the works of anthropologists.
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4. What was the difference of visual practice of the 19th century
from that of the 20th century?
5. What is common for the research ethics in the use of visual
images?
6. Provide examples of visual anthropology in the works of anthropologists, ethnologist and sociologists.
7. Think how you could apply visual anthropological methods in
your own research.
14 Lecture. Perspectives of Applied
Anthropology
Schedule of lecture
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•
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The role of applied anthropology today.
Applied anthropology and the subdisciplines.
Urban anthropology.
Medical anthropology.
Development anthropology.
The role of applied anthropology today
Applied anthropology is the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems. Applied anthropology has its roots in work on
behalf of colonial administrations, but is now firmly established in
contexts as diverse as development agencies, health education and
social work as well as work for private-sector corporations (Barnard,
Spencer 2012: 756).
The applied anthropologist’s most valuable research tool is the
ethnographic method. Ethnographers study societies firsthand, living with and learning from ordinary people. Ethnographers are
participant-observers, taking part in the events they study in order
to understand native thought and behavior. Other “expert” participants in social-change programs may be content to converse with
officials, read reports, and copy statistics.
Modern applied anthropology keeps ethical problems and guidelines in mind. Its practioners attempt to help the people anthropologists have traditionally studied as formely isolated communities are
increasingly confronted with worldwide currents of economic and
social change. Applied anthropology draws its practioners from biological, archeological, linguistic, and cultural anthropology.
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Applied anthropology and the subdisciplines
Applied anthropologists come from all four subdisciplins. Biological
anthropologists work in public health, nutrition, genetic counseling,
substance abuse, epidemiology, aging, and mental illness. They apply
their knowledge of human anatomy and physiology to the improvement of automobile safety standarts and to the design of airplanes
and spacecraft. In forensic work, biological anthropologists help police identify skeletal remains. Similarly, forensic archeologists reconstruct crimes by analyzing physical evidence.
Applied cultural anthropologists sometimes work alongside the
applied archeologists, assessing the human problems generated by
the change and determing how they can be reduced.
Cultural anthropologists work with social workers, business
people, media researchers, advertising professionals, factory workers, gerontologists, nurses, physicians, mental-health professionals,
school personnel, and economic development experts.
Linguistic anthropology, particularly sociolinguistics, aids education. Knowledge of linguistic differencies is important in an increasingly multicultural society whose populace grows up speaking
many languages and dialects (Kottak 1991: 392).
Anthropology and education. Ethnography brings a novel perspective to education, with practical applications. Anthropology and
education refers to anthropological research in classrooms, homes,
and neighborhoos. Some of the most interesting research has been
done in classrooms, where anthropologists observe interactions between teaches, students, parents, and visitors.
Urban anthropology
Urban anthropology – the anthropological study of life in and
around world cities, including urban social problems, differences
between urban and other environments, and adaptation to city life
(Kottak 2012: 316). It has theoretical and applied dimensions. Urban
anthropology examines the social organization of the city, looking
at the kinds of social relationship and pattern of social life unique to
cities and comparing their different cultural and historical context.
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Cultural Anthropology
Urban societies and cities came to the attention of socio-cultural
anthropology only in the second half of this century, especially in
the 1960’s. Urban anthropology emerged as a separate subdiscipline
of sociocultural anthropology during 1950s and 1960s. In contrast
to earlier studies of urbanism, urban anthropology applied anthropological concepts and field research methods to urban populations
where the city was the context of the research than the phenomenon
under study (Merry 1997).
“Urban anthropology” counters anthropology’s traditional emphasis on “primitive” and peasant people to the exclusion of urban,
complex and industrial societies (Basham 1978). This shift accompanied the deconstruction of “primitivist” anthropology and the acknowledgement that – because all cultures are part of the modern
world – they do not form isolated, self-contained entities.
A further motivation was the observation that cities in the 20th
century were growing more rapidly than ever before. This new emphasis can also be understood as a way of “studying up,” representing
a shift from the periphery to an analysis of the center.
Theoretically, urban anthropology involves the study of the cultural systems of cities as well as the linkages of cities to larger and
smaller places and populations as part of the world-wide urban system (Kemper 1996).
Methodology of urban anthropology. The shift of focus to
large-scale societies encourages the reconsideration of traditional
anthropological methodology, known as the so-called “participant observation.” For a long time, ethnographic work focused on
creating a close rapport with a small number of informants, but
it was impossible in an urban context. Urban anthropologists are
therefore required to extend their scope, develop new skills, and to
take written materials, surveys, historical studies, novels and other
sources into account. The challenge for urban anthropologists is
to process this array of different sources and to grasp the realities
of larger groups without losing sight of the vivid description that
characterizes ethnography. This includes incidents and encounters,
which at first sight may seem to lack scientific value and relevance,
but which give life to statistics and censuses and reflect the realities
of daily social life.
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A problem of an overly strong emphasis of the participant observer approach in the urban context is the loss of the holistic perspective.
Focusing on the family (such as on the tribe or other social units in
traditional anthropology), leads to a fragmentary picture of urban
reality, and thus to an “urban mosaic” (Fox 1977: 2–9).
Contemporary Urban Anthropology. Today, urban anthropology distinguishes itself from urban sociology mainly in terms of a
different perspective: while sociological studies are more focused on
fragmented issues, urban anthropology is theoretically rather directed toward a holistic approach (Ansari and Nas 1983: 2).
Whereas urban anthropology in the 1960s and 70s focused on
particular issues such as migration, kinship, and poverty, derived
from (or in contrast to) traditional-based fieldwork, urban anthropologists had, by the 1980s, expanded their interests to any aspect of
urban life.
As a result, urban anthropology became more integrated into the
discourse of the other social sciences. Urban anthropology has largely merged with geography, ecology, and other disciplines.
Along with a theoretical interest in and conceptualization of urban space and urbanism, contemporary issues of urban anthropology include rural-urban migration, demography, adaptation and adjustment of humans in densely populated environments, the effects
of urban settings upon cultural pluralism and social stratification,
social networks, the function of kinship, employment, the growth of
cities, architecture (and other urban dilemmas), and practical urban
problems such as housing, home transport, use of space, waste management, and infrastructure.
Urban anthropology also examines social problems characteristic
of large cities such as crime, social disorder poverty, homelessness,
and transience. These studies examine the social organization and
cultural practices of diferent groups within the city such as gangs,
ethnic villagers, homeless alcoholics (Spradley 1970), criminals, and
prostitutes (Merry 1981). Urban studies usually include the systems
of bureaucratic regulation, urban politics, welfare administration, urban renewall and economic conditions that shape local communities.
Other research focuses on systems of formal social control such
as police, courts and prisons (Merry 1997). Although urban anthro137
Cultural Anthropology
pology inspired in its earlier years by theories of urbanism, now examines social life in the city as it exists for the people who live in it,
rather than the city itself.
Medical anthropology
Both biological and cultural anthropologists work in medical anthropology, wich focuses on “disease, health problems, health care
systems, and theories about illness in different cultures and ethnics
groups” (Kottak 2012: 312). Disease problems vary among cultures.
Such epidemic diseases as cholera, typhoid (šiltinė), and bubonic
plague (maras) are associated with dense populations and thus with
agriculture and urbanization.
The incidence of particular diseases varies between cultures, and
different cultures interpret and treat illness differently. All societies have “disease theory system” to identify, classify, and explain
illness. According to George Foster and Barbara Anderson (1978),
there are three basic theories of causation: 1) personalistic, 2) naturalistic, 3) and emotionalistic. Personalistic disease theories blame
illness on sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits. Naturalistic disease theories (including science medicine) explain illness in
impersonal illness in impersonal systemic terms. This includes microorganisms and unbalanced body fluids. Emotionalistic disease
theories assume that intense emotional experiences cause illness.
For example, Latin American women are believed to be susteptible
to susto, an ilness caused by fright. Its symptoms (lethargy, vagueness, distraction) are similar to those of “soul loss”. Modern psychoanalysis also focuses on the role of the emotions in physical and
psychological wellbeing.
All societies have health-care systems – beliefs, customs, and
specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness. When illness has personalistic cause, shamans and other
magicoreligious specialists may be curers. They draw on varied techniques, which constitute their specialized knowledge and expertise.
All cultures have health-care professionals -curers or shamans. The
curer’s role has some universal features. The curers become specialists through a culturally appropriate process of selection (parental
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Perspectives of Applied Anthropology
prodding, inheritance, visions, dream instructions) and training (apprentice shamanship, medical school). Eventually, the curer is certified by established practioners and acquires a professional image.
Medical anthropology, which is based on biological, social, and
cross-cultural research, has theoretical and applied dimensions.
Health programs must pay attention to native theories about the
cause and treatment of illness.
Non-Western systems (traditional medicine) have certain lessons
for Western medicine. Traditional practioners may be more successful in treating mentall illness than psychotherapists are. On of the
reason why non-Western therapy succeeds is that the mentally ill
are diagnosed and treated in small, cohesive groups with the full
support of their kin. Curing may be an intense community ritual in
which the shaman heals by temporarily taking on and then rejecting
the patient’s illness (Levi-Strauss 1967).
Rather than seeking causes, non-Western practioners often treat
symptoms, and their aim is an immediate cure. Traditional curers
have a right rate of success with health problems that our medical establishment classifies as psychosomatic and dismisses as not needing
treatment – despite the feelings of the patient. Non-Western systems
tell us that patients should be treated as whole beings, to be treated
with whatever combination of procedures may prove beneficial (Kottak 1991: 395–397).
Development anthropology
Development anthropology is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of,
economic development (Kottak 2012: 263). Applied anthropologists
uses anthropological findings, concepts, and methods to accomplish desired aims. The advocacy position states that anthropologists – as experts on human problems, social change, and cultural
values – should make policy affecting people. In this view, proper
roles for development anthropologists include (1) identifying needs
for change that local people perceive, (2) designing socially appropriate intervention strategies, and (3) protecting local people from
harmful development shemes (Kottak 1991: 413).
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Cultural Anthropology
Since the 1920s anthropologists have been investigating changes
arising from contact between industrial and nonindustrial societies. Studies of ‘social change’ and ‘acculturation’ are abundant. Acculturation has been defined as including those phenomena which
result when groups of individuals come into continous firsthand
contact, which changes in the original culture patterns of either or
both groups. This definition is broad enough to refer to any case in
which people from different cultures meet and change their customs
as a result (Kottak 1991: 407). Acculturation differs from diffusion,
or cultural borrowing, which can occur without firsthand contact.
For example, most Americans who eat hot dogs (‘frankfurters’) have
never been to Frankfurt, nor have most American Honda owners or
sushi eaters ever visited Japan.
Although acculturation can apply to many cases of cultural
contact and change, the term most often describes the influence of
Western expansion on native cultures. Thus natives who wear storebought clothes, learn Indo-European languages, and otherwise adopt
Western customs are called acculturated.
Syncretisms are cultural blends or mixtures that emerge from
acculturation, particularly under colonialism. One example is the
blend of African, Native American, and Roman Catholic saints and
deities in Caribbean vodun, or ‘voodoo’, cults.
Acculturation, including syncretism, is a broad area of study. Because its focus is interethnic relations, it is relevant to many of the
changes taking place in modern world. Local people are increasingly
being drawn into larger systems – and changing as a result. Sources
of exposure to external institutions and currents of social change
include the mass media, migration, and improved transportation
(Kottak 1991: 407–408).
Summary
Applied anthropology is the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems. Urban anthropology study the life in and
around world cities, including urban social problems, differences between urban and other environments, and adaptation to city life. It
has theoretical and applied dimensions. Urban anthropology exam140
Perspectives of Applied Anthropology
ines the social organization of the city, looking at the kinds of social
relationship and pattern of social life unique to cities and comparing
their different cultural and historical context.
Medical anthropology focuses on disease, health problems, health
care systems, and theories about illness in different cultures and ethnics groups. Development anthropology focuses on social issues in,
and the cultural dimension of, economic development.
Study questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is applied anthropology?
What is the role of applied anthropology today?
What is urban anthropology, and what are its applications?
What are the main issues of contemporary urban anthropology?
What is medical anthropology, and how can anthropology be
useful in medicine?
6. Explain three basic theories of illness causation according to
George Foster and Barbara Anderson?
7. Make a comment on the proposition that: “All anthropology is
applied, because there is an anthropological way of looking at
the world which renders the world’s problems easier to understand”.
Glossary
Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope with environmental stresses.
Acculturation. Cultural changes that develop as a result of continuous firsthand
contact between cultures. Acculturation differs from diffusion, or cultural
borrowing, which can occur without firsthand contact.
Alliance theory is concerned with relations between groups, families and individuals related in kinship through marriage.
Animism is a primitive belief that soul exists not only in human beings, but also
in animals, plants, natural phenomena and things. This concept has been introduced by the anthropologists E. Tylor in his book ‘Primitive culture’.
Animatism. Concept of the supernatural as an impersonal power.
Anthropology [Greek anthrōpos, human being + Greek logos, science, concept] is social science about human beings, their origins, lifestyle, behaviour and cultural
as well as biological diversity. It describes and analyses cultures of both previous
and modern ages, i. e. socially acquired traditions, behaviour and thinking of
human beings, diversity and reasons of culture’s adaptation to environment.
Anthropology at home. The ethnographic study of one’s own society. Of particular interest to European anthropologists in the 1980s, as funding for travel
became tighter and as a way of circumventing access difficulties.
Applied anthropology is the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory,
and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.
Archaeological anthropology (prehistoric archeology). The branch of anthropology that reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains.
Assimilation. The process of change that a minority group may experience when
it move to a country where another culture dominates; the minority is incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that it no longer exists as a
separate cultural unit.
Autoethnography. A form of ethnography in which the author is a member of a
particular group who is writing about that group or about themselves as part
of it, or is an external anthropologist writing about their personal experience of doing research. Allied to post-modernism, autoethnography develops
such concerns as reflexivity and anthropology of home. Autoethnography
has been criticized for its lack of objectivity.
Berdaches. Among the Crow Indians, members of a third gender, for whom certain ritual duties were reserved.
Biological-physical anthropology. The branch of anthropology that studies human biological diversity in time and space; includes hominid evolution, human genetics, human biological adaptation, and primatology (behaviour and
evolution of monkeys and apes).
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Glossary
Biological race is a discrete group whose members share certain distinctive genetic traits inherited from a common ancestor. Problematic concept.
Cargo cults are postcolonial, acculturative religious movements, common in
Melanesia, that attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to
achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behaviour.
Carrying capacity is the maximum number of people who can live in a given
environment. Sometimes this supposes a specific means of subsistence.
Cognatic descent. Descent from both sides of the family equally. In cognatic descent, there ar no clans or lineages. This is the opposite of double descent, where
people belong to both matrilineal and patrilineal groups at the same time.
Cognitive anthropology is the study of cognition and cultural meanings through
specific methodologies such as psychological experiments, computer modeling, and other techniques to elicit underlying unconscious factors that structure-thinking processes.
Compound family comprises the main figure (usually a powerful father), his
or her spouses, sometimes concubines and their children. It is common in
Western Africa.
Creationism. Explanation for the origin of species given in Genesis: God created
the species during the original six days of Creation.
Cross-cousins. The children of a brother and a sister. In many societies, crosscousins are marriageable whereas parallel cousins are not.
Cultural anthropology – the study of human society and culture; describes,
analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.
Cultural relativism. The belief that the values and standarts of cultures differ and deserve respect. Extreme relativism argues that cultures should be
judged solely by their own standarts.
Cultural materialism is the extreme view that environment and technology together determine the social organisation. Its leading proponent is American
anthropologist Marvin Harris. Cultural materialism begins with the assumption that cultures are influenced by material conditions: physical resourses,
plants and animals, relationships (such as trade and war) with other groups
and systems of production and reproduction.
Culture. Dinstinctly human; transmitted through learning; traditions and customs that govern behaviour and beliefs.
Culture and personality. A subfield of cultural anthropology; examines variation in psychological traits and personality characteristics between cultures.
This subfield emphasises the ‘personality’of whole cultures rather than individuals.
Culture of poverty. Coined by Oscar Lewis; has economic, social and psychological characteristics - gregariousness, spontaneity, fatalism, marginality;
associated with real poverty, capitalism, and bilateral kinship.
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Descent theory. In kinship, the perspective which involves the study of group
structure and rules of residents. It examines structure and rules of a living
place, such as if after wedding one decides to live either with wife’s family, or
with husband’s family. Descent theory also includes the rules of management
and inheritance, as well as succession of a property.
Development anthropology focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimenion of economic development. Proper roles for development anthropologists include (1) identifying needs for change that local people perceive, (2)
designing socially appropriate intervention strategies, and (3) protecting local people from harmful development shemes.
Diffusion. The perspective which emphasises the passing of culture from one
society or community to another. Borrowing between cultures either directly
or through intermediaries.
Double descent. Descent in both male line and female line. Everyone belongs
to two lineages, one patrilineal and one matrilineal. This is the opposite of
cognatic descent.
Ecological anthropology interested how environmental forces influence humans and how human activities afect the biosphere and the Earth itself; how
environment and technology affect social organization. Ecological anthropologist today frequently more interested in how ordinary people view their
environments. They attempt not only to understand but also to find solutions
to environmental problems.
Ecological niche is a set of resources utilised by a particular group in an environment. Sometimes different groups (hunters and herders) will exploit different
niches in the same environment.
Emic. The research strategy that focuses on native explanations and criteria of
significance.
Enculturation is the social process by which culture is learned and transmitted
across the generations.
Ethic. The research strategy that emphasizes the observer’s rather than the native’s explanations, categories, and criteria of significance.
Ethnicity. A person’s cultural identity formed on the basis of race, religion, language or national origin.
Ethnocentrism. The tendency to view own culture as best and to judge the behaviour and beliefs of culturally different people by one’s own standarts.
Ethnography. Anthropologists use the word ethnography in two ways. On the
one hand it refers to doing fieldwork and taking notes in a particular culture.
On the other hand, it refers to the practice of writing or to the finished writings themselves.
Ethnology – the theoretical, comparative study of society and culture; examines and compares the results of ethnography – the data gathered in different societies. Ethnology tries to identify and explain cultural differences
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Glossary
and similarities, to distinguish between universality, generality, and particularity.
Exogamy is a marriage outside one’s kin group. It is a cultural universal.
Extended family. Expanded household including three or more generations. It is
an ambiguous term. On the one hand, it is a next of kin nuclear family group
that live together. On the other hand, it is a group that does not live together,
but maintains relations (such as newly established urban and industrial societies).
Fetishism is the belief in fetishes, or objects that have supernatural power. Primitive people have most likely made fetishes – objects that, as they believed, had
magic powers.
Gay marriage is a marriage between people of the same gender.
Gender. In anthropology, the social and cultural distinctions related to being
male and female. In a sense it stands in oppositions to ‘sex’, which describes
the biological distinctions.
Genealogical method. Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record
connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols.
Genetrix – culturally recognised biological father.
Genitor – culturally recognised biological mother.
Globalization – the accelerating interdependence of nations in a word system
linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation
system. Globalization as systemic connectedness reflects the relentless and
ongoing growth of the world system. In this current form, that system, which
has existed for centuries, has some radical new aspects. Three are especially
noteworthy: the speed of global communication, the scale (complexity and
size) of global networks, and the sheer volume of international transactions.
Mark Smith and Michele Doyle (2002) distinquish between two meanings of
globalization: 1) globalization as fact: the spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies accross the world; 2) Globalization as ideology and policy: efforts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the World Bank, and other international financial powers to create a global
free market for good and services.
Interview schedule. Ethnographic tool for structuring a formal interview. A prepared form usually printed that guides interviews with households or individuals being compared systematically. Contrasts with questionnaire because
the researcher has personal contact and records people’s answers. With the
interview schedules, the ethnographer talks face to face to informants, asks
the questions, and writes down the answers. Questionnaire procedures tend
to be more indirect and impersonal; the respondent often fills in the form.
Joint family comprises brothers, their wives and children and all of them live
together. It is an efficient family structure when brothers share property, as it
is in India, China, Africa and some other countries.
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Kinship calculation – the system by which people in a society determine kin
relationships. Kinship, like gender, is culturally constructed. This means
that some biological kin are considered to be relatives whereas others are not.
Through questioning, the ethnographers discover the specific genealogical
relationships between ‘relatives’ and determine the relationship between kinship calculation and kinship groups – how people use kinship to create and
mantain personal ties and to join social groups.
Life histories. The recollection of a lifetime of experiences provides a more intimate and personal cultural portrait than would be possible otherwise. Life
histories present community members as individuals facing common problems.
Linguistic anthropology: The descriptive, comparative, and historical study of
language and of linguistic similarities and differences in time and space, including interrelations between language and culture; includes historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.
Mana. Sacred impersonal force in Melanesian and Polynesian religions.
Mater – social mother (including an adoptive mother).
Means of subsistence is a method of obtaining a living from the environment.
It involves hunting, gathering, fishing, herding livestock, and agriculture (of
various kind).
Medical anthropology. Unities biological and cultural anthropologists in the
study of disease, health problems, health care systems, and theories about
ilness in different cultures and ethnics groups.
Monogamy is a marriage model between 2 persons.
Monotheism is a monocracy, a belief that there is the only Supreme God that has
all the features of divinity. Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many local African religions may serve as examples of monotheistic religions.
Multi-sited ethnography is commonly used to designate two things: the first is
the practice in more than one geographical location. The second is the complex methodological discussion which has coalesced around George Marcus’s
coinage of the phrase in 1995. Marcus proposed ‘multi-sited ethnography’ as a
name for modes of research which collapse the distinction between the local
site and the global system, thereby challenging the division of labour separating the ‘fieldsite’ as province of the ethnographer from the more abstact
‘context’requiring the difference tools of economist or the political scientist.
The multi-sited ethnographer should identify ‘systemic’ realities in ‘local places’, studying the world system directly on the ground; this requires
a willingness to leave behind the bounded field-site and follow people, stories, metaphors, or objects, as they themselves travel from place to place, and
move between different media.
Mutation. Change in the DNA molecules of which genes and chromosomes are
built.
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Glossary
Natural selection. Major mechanism of biological evolution; process by which
natural forces select the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a particular environment; depends on variety within the population.
One parent family is a type of nuclear family. In some cases, children are parented only by one parent (usually mother). This family type may form in case of
divorce or death of one of the parents.
Parallel-cousins. The children of two brothers or two sisters. In many societies,
parallel cousins are treated as brothers and sisters and sharply distinquised
from cross-cousins.
Participant observation. A characteristic ethnographic technique; taking part
in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing.
Pater – social father (including an adoptive father).
Patrilineal descend. Descend through men, from father to child.
Polyandry is a marriage between one woman and a group of more than one man,
usually brothers. There are well-known cases in South Asia, such as among
Toda people in India, although the custom becomes extinct.
Polygamy is a marriage model between more than two persons. It consists of two
following forms: polyandry and polygyny.
Polygyny is a marriage between one man and more than one woman. It is common in several parts of the world, particularly in African societies.
Polytheism is a worship of multiple gods that predominate over different areas of
the world and life. The examples of these religions are found in the Ancient
Egypt, as well as in Greek and Roman religions.
Profane. Emile Durkheim’s term for the ordinary or what is not sacred.
Psychological anthropology attempts to understand similarities and differences
in behavior, thought, and feelings among societies by focusing on the relationship between the individual and culture, or the process of enculturation.
Regionalist anthropology emphasizes the importance of the concept of ‘culture
area’. Historically detailed scientific discourse allows for a more-or-less objective understanding of local life from geographical, linguistic and ethnic
categories. Regionalist specialization has been the main component in the
European and American teaching and practice for almost a century. The
emphasis has been put on ethnographic research and observation from the
regional perspective.
Rites of passage. Rituals associated with the transition from one place or stage of
life to another (such as adolescence to adulthood).
Ritual. Behaviour that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed
earnestly as a social act; rituals are held at set times and places and have liturgical orders.
Sacred. Emile Durkheim’s term for what is set apart from the normal world, often including forbidden knowledge or practices and ritual activities. The opposite is ‘profane’.
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Shaman is a ritual specialist, especially in the arctic or the Americas, who mediates between the human world and the spirit world, between human beings
and animals, as well as between the living and the dead.
Shamanism. The practice of or belief in mediation between the ordinary world
and the spirit world by a shaman.
Sorcery. A learned magical practice whereby an individual performs activities
which may be harmful to others.
Social race is a group assumed to have some biological basis but actually defined
in a social context – by a particular culture rather than by scientific criteria.
Society is organized life in groups; typical of humans and other animals.
Subcultures. Different cultural symbol-based traditions associated with subgroups in the same compex society.
Totemism is a belief system based on a tribe’s relations with a totem from which
it derives itself. Animals, plants and inanimate natural objects, all could be
totems which a tribe considers to be ancestor guardians.
Urban anthropology is the cross-cultural and ethnographic study of global urbanization and life in cities, which has theoretical and applied dimensions.
It is a study of life in and around world cities, including urban social problems, differences between urban and other environments, and adaptation
to city life.
Uxirilocal residence. Residence in the locality of the wife.
Virilocal residence. Residence in the locality of the husband.
Visual anthropology is concerned with visual systems and forms and their engagement in processes of anthropological knowledge production. To scope of
visual anthropology is wide, ranging from the creation and analysis of photographic, film and artistic productions to material culture, bodily expressions
and spatial design.
Well-informed or key informant. An expert on a particular aspect of local life
who helps the ethnographer understand that aspect.
Witchcraft. A magical practice whereby an individual performs activities which
may be harmful to others. It is believed that such practices are inherited (as
opposed to sorcery, in which they are learned).
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