Download cultural concepts

Goal of Anthropology
• Describe, analyze, and explain different
cultures to show how groups live in different
physical, economic, and social environments,
and to show how members give meaning to
their lives.
SUB-FIELDS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
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Physical (aka Biological) Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Archaeology
Cultural (aka Socio-Cultural) Anthropology
Ethnography
• Ethnography is the description of society or culture.
– An emic ethnography attempts to capture what
ideas and practices mean to members of a culture.
– An etic ethnography describes and analyzes
culture according to principles and theories drawn
from the Western scientific tradition such as
ecology, economy, or psychology.
Ethnology
• Ethnology is the attempt to find general
principles or laws that govern cultural
phenomena.
Subsistence Patterns
• The ways societies transform the material
resources of the environment into food,
clothing, and shelter.
• They develop in response to:
– seasonal variation in the environment
– environmental variations such as drought, flood,
or animal diseases
Subsistence Patterns
Factors:
• Population density: The number of people
inhabiting an area of land.
• Productivity: The yield per person per unit of
land.
• Efficiency: The yield per person per hour of
labor invested.
Subsistence Patterns
FORAGING
• Relies on food naturally available in the
environment.
• Strategy for 99% of the time humans have
been on earth.
• Limits population growth and complexity of
social organization.
Subsistence Patterns
PASTORALISM
• Caring for domesticated animals which
produce meat and milk.
• Involves a complex interaction among animals,
land, and people.
• Found along with cultivation or trading
relations with food cultivators.
Transhumant Pastoralism
• Found mostly in East Africa
• Men and boys move the animals throughout
the year as pastures become available at
different altitudes or in different climatic
zones.
• Women and children and some men remain at
a permanent village site.
Nomadic Pastoralism
• The whole population moves with the herds
throughout the year.
• There are no permanent villages.
Horticultural
• Production of plants using non-mechanized
technology.
• Typically a tropical forest adaptation that
requires cutting and burning the jungle to
clear fields.
• Swidden (slash and burn): Clearing fields by
felling trees and burning the brush.
Agriculture
• Production of plants using plows, animals and
soil and water control.
• Associated with:
– Sedentary villages
– Occupational diversity
– Social stratification
Transitions to Industrial Economy
Had an effect on many aspects of society:
• Population growth
• Expanded consumption of resources
• International expansion
• Occupational specialization
• Shift from subsistence strategies to wage la
Political Organization
• Bands are foragers, usually egalitarian, and
exchange goods through generalized
reciprocity.
• Tribes are horticulturalists or herders and
generally egalitarian and balanced reciprocity
is their major means of exchange.
Political Organization
• Chiefdoms are rank societies, characterized by
the political office of the chief.
• State societies are usually based on
agriculture, industry, or in the contemporary
world, a post industrial service economy.
Social Structure (Organization)
The relative access individuals and groups have
to basic material resources, wealth, power,
and prestige.
Egalitarian Societies
• No individual or group has more access to
resources, power, or prestige than any other.
• No fixed number of social positions for which
individuals must compete.
• Associated with bands and tribes.
Rank Society
• Institutionalized differences in prestige but no
restrictions on access to basic resources.
• Individuals obtain what they need to survive
through their kinship group.
• Associated with horticulture or pastoral
societies with a surplus of food.
• Associated with chiefdoms.
Stratified Society
• Formal, permanent, social and economic inequality.
• Some people are denied access to basic resources.
• Characterized by differences in standard of living, security,
prestige and political power.
• Economically organized by market systems.
• Based on intensive cultivation (agriculture) and industrialism.
• Associated with form of political organization called the state.
Descent Groups and Systems