Download Anth - UCSB Anthropology

Culture Change
• Invention/Innovation: creation of something new
within a culture
• Diffusion: borrowed from other cultures
• Material, e.g. technology
• Non-material, e.g. belief systems, behaviors,
styles, words
• Culture provides adaptive advantage
• Negative impacts
Cultures are integrated
• Organic analogy
– All parts interrelated
– Change in one part affects others
Economic
system
Belief system
Arts
Kinship system
• Can be positive or negative
• Functional vs. dysfunctional
• Holism: Method that takes this into account
– Parts viewed in relation to the whole
– Development and applied anthropology
• E.g., Steve Lansing in Bali
• Ideal (norms) vs. real behavior
Exchange
system
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Long-term residence with a small group of people
participation, structured & unstructured interviewing
“Fieldwork is the central activity of anthropology. It is
fieldwork, more than common theories or substantive issues,
that distinguishes anthropology from psychology, sociology,
political science, and economics. It is fieldwork, more than
the distinctive content of the material, that produces the
uniqueness of anthropology and that entitles the
anthropologist to professional status.”
Nancy Howell, Surviving Fieldwork
Participant-observation
Emic and Etic
Living with the people
Participating in their lives
Subjective understanding
Participate/emic, and observe/etic
“[T]o some extent, the anthropologist who genuinely
participates in a cultural practice can take himself as
a subject. One cannot have access to the inner
reaches of those to whom one talks; one can have
partial access to one’s own, and through involvement
at least begin to understand what some of the others
may have been experiencing.”
Tanya Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Late 19th - Early 20th Century
• Long-term fieldwork, participant observation
– First anthropological expedition: A. C. Haddon (U.K.)
• 1898-1899 Torres Strait Expedition Southeastern New Guinea
– Franz Boas (Columbia, U.S.)
– Bronislaw Malinowski (LSE, U.K.)
• Better data and theories
• Studied small-scale, non-Western societies
• Culture shock
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Stress
Disorientation
Disgust
Confusion
Doubts
• Bicultural perspective
– Able to view world in two different ways
– Both emic and etic
Comparison
Differences
Source
Connections to other aspects of culture
history, religion, political structures, economics, kinship systems, etc.
E.g. concepts of the person
India vs. U.S.
Universals
Commonalities among all cultures
Generalizations
2 kinds
Statistical cross-cultural comparison
Controlled comparison
Statistical Cross-cultural Comparison
– HRAF – Human Relations Area Files
• Massive bank of ethnographic data
• George P. Murdock (Yale 1940s)
– Large samples
– Correlations
– Beatrice Whiting
• Witchcraft in 50 societies
• No centralized authority  witchcraft accusations
– Quantitative (numerical data) vs. Qualitative (words & actions)
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Large, dispersed sample vs. small, regional
Data removed from cultural context
Reliability of data questionable
The Internet
Controlled Comparison
– Retain context, qualitative
– Small number of similar cultures, small differences
– S. F. Nadel – witchcraft in 4 African societies 1930s
• Nigeria
– Nupe: women’s power  witchcraft accusations
– Gwari: male dominance  both sexes accused
– Frustration-aggression hypothesis
• Sudan
– Property rights and enjoyment of life linked to age
– Mesakin men old at 25  frustration  witchcraft beliefs
– Korongo men old in 50s  no tension  no witchcraft
History of Anthropological Theory
Comparison  patterns  explanations = theories
Herbert Spencer
Friedrich Engels
Edward B. Tylor
Karl Marx
Lewis Henry Morgan
Franz Boas
Anthropology’s Roots
• Ancient travel writers
– Herodotus (484-425 BCE)
• Greek “Father of History”
• Precursor of ethnography
– Marco Polo - Italian (1254-1324)
– Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
• Tunisian politician & historian
• Developed ‘Science of culture’
• European exploration, colonial expansion
15th–19th centuries
– Age of Discovery/Age of Exploration
The modern study of anthropology originated in European exploration and
colonization in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Contacts with
very different peoples created an interest in understanding and explaining
human diversity, which are the goals of anthropology.
First Academic Anthropology
– U.K.: 1884 Oxford
E.B. Tylor
– U.S.: 1896 Columbia Franz Boas
Anthropological Theory
• Statement about relationships among phenomena
• Explain and predict
• Nadel’s theory regarding witchcraft accusations
– Observation: similar cultures, but difference in
witchcraft accusations
– Hypothesis:
• tension  retaliation
• frustration-aggression
– Explains Nupe & Gwari: women’s power
– Predicts Mesakin & Korongo: inheritance patterns
Development of Anthropological Theory:
19th-century Evolutionists
• Philosophers: Hobbes, Rousseau, Adam Smith
(18th-19th century)
• Auguste Comte
– Organic analogy
• Society has organs
• Function of one determined
by its place in whole
• Charles Darwin
– Biological evolution
– Natural selection  increasing fitness
– Change is result of competition
• Evolution  dominant rubric for theorizing about society