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History of Theory So Far
• 19th -century evolutionists
– Comte – organic analogy
– Darwin – biological evolution, adaptation
– Spencer – organic analogy, social progress, evolution of social systems
toward more complexity, 'survival of the fittest'
– Marx & Engels – materialism, infrastructure (economic base/means &
relations of production/subsistence) determines superstructure (social
organization, ideology)
societies evolve through stages based upon modes of production
class struggle is the underlying dynamic
– Morgan & Tylor – unilineal cultural evolution, savagery-barbarism-civilization
Boas: American Historicism
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Cultural relativism
Rejected evolutionism
Inductive (vs. deductive)
Emic
Historical particularism/American Historicism:
– Detailed descriptions of particular peoples
within their own historical contexts
• Anti-theory
• Methodological rigor in ethnography
• Famous Columbia students:
– Lowie, Kroeber, Benedict, Mead
• Anti-racist
• Culture concept:
– Culture, not biology, determines behavior
British Social Anthropology
Functionalism
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
(1881-1955)
Bronislaw Malinowski
(1884-1942)
Organic analogy:
ComteSpencerFunctionalists
Society:
Harmonious composition of structures functioning together
Maintain social solidarity
Satisfy needs
All parts interrelated
Functionalism
• Bronislaw Malinowski
– Elements of culture satisfy individual needs
– Everything has a useful function for individuals
• A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
– Structural functionalism
– Elements of culture contribute to well-being of society
• Every part of a culture has a function
• Interrelated parts in equilibrium
– Change in one part produces changes in other parts
• Robert Merton
– Dysfunction
– Critiqued functional unity
• Critiques: It did not address
– Social and historical change
– Individuals as innovators
The Boasian School
• Alfred Kroeber, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead,
Ruth Benedict
• Culture and the individual
• Enculturation and personality
Personality
Culture
Child-rearing
Psychological Anthropology
Culture and Personality
• Freud: Phases of human psychological
development (oral, anal, genital, etc.)
fixed by nature and universal
• Boas: Psychology varies, influenced by
culture
Margaret Mead
• Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
– Adolescence experienced differently in different cultures
– Enculturation vs. biological determinism
– Developmental stages not biologically determined,
not universal
• Sex & Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
– Gender roles and temperaments vary in different cultures
– ‘Masculine’ and ‘feminine’ not biologically determined,
not universal
– Gender is culturally constructed
• Mead brought anthropology into popular culture
• Cultural relativism
Neoevolutionism and Cultural Ecology
Late 1940s-50s
• Cross-cultural generalizations
• Some used HRAF (Human Relations Area Files)
• Based on environmental factors
• Reformulated 19th-century cultural evolutionism
• Leslie White & Julian Steward
– Materialist, influenced by Marx
– Foundation for
• Cultural ecology
• Cultural materialism
Leslie White
Neoevolutionism
• Culture evolves from simple to complex
– Control of energy key
– Driven by technology
– Harnessing greater amounts of energy
• Thermodynamic law: E x T = C
– Energy captured with Technology = Culture
– Culture evolves as energy extraction & efficiency increases
• Human  animal  steam & internal combustion  nuclear
• 4 stages of cultural evolution
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Invention of tools
Domestication of plants & animals
Fossil fuels
Atomic energy
Leslie White’s Layer Cake
Change/Cultural evolution driven by:
Marx: relations of production, class conflict
White: technology and extraction of energy
Ideology
Social and Political
Organization
Technology and Economy
Julian Steward
Cultural Ecology
• Specific cultures’ adaptations to particular environments
• 3 Types of Evolutionary Theories
– Unilineal evolution (Tylor and Morgan)
• Places cultures into certain evolutionary stages
– Savagery  barbarism  civilization
– Universal evolution (White)
• Develop general laws that apply to all cultures
– EXT=C
– Multilinear evolution (Steward)
• Evolution of individual cultures
• No single evolutionary trajectory
Cultural Ecology
• Cultural adaptation to environment
• Similar environments  similar technological solutions
 social & political institutions
• White: general, universal paradigm
• Steward: specific, relativistic, multilinear
• Materialist analyses influenced by Marx
Cultural Materialist Model of Society
Causality
Infrastructure (means & mode of production + reproduction )  development of culture in certain directions
Cultural Materialism
Marvin Harris
• Provide causal explanations
• Infrastructural determinism
– Causes for institutions and behavior are found in infrastructure
(subsistence based upon resources in the environment & technology)
• Material aspects  cultural variation
• Emphasized etic, scientific, objective
– Environment, material circumstances
– Like cultural ecology but less concerned with evolution
– Functionalist
• Synchronic
• Practical adaptations
• Function in context of whole
• The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle
– Materialist: ideology result of economic rationale
– Functionalist: practical function of cattle
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
French Structuralism
• Universal structures of human mind
• Linguistics – binary opposition
– Words get their meanings by contrasts
• E.g., up/down, male/female, raw/cooked, sacred/profane
• Human brain
– Programmed to think in pairs of opposites
– These dichotomies give shape to culture
• Psychic unity of humankind
Ethnoscience
1950s-60s
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Influenced by linguistics
Emic
How language classifies things
Classificatory logic that creates meaning
Different cultures have different meaning systems,
world view
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• Influence of language on culture
• English vs. Hopi concepts of time & space
– English time
• Objectified, quantified, linear, past, present, future
• Separate from space
– Hopi Time
• Manifested – past and most of present
• Manifesting – coming-to-be, future, hoped for, intended, expected,
in the heart
• Same as space
• Language shapes perceptions, world view
Symbolic Anthropology
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Cultural meanings
Culture as mental phenomenon
Ways people interpret and give meaning to their world
How this world is expressed in cultural symbols
Interpretation of symbols  cultural meaning
Agency = potential to act creatively
Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz
Victor Turner (1920-1983)
• British social anthropology
– Structural-functionalism
– Maintenance of social order
• Marx: normal state of society is conflict and contradiction
• Social unity is problematic
– Not primordial need for togetherness
– Must be continually maintained through effort
• Centrality of ritual symbols
– Symbols create social solidarity out of conflict
– E.g. national flag, singing national anthem, statue of liberty
– Function to reproduce of social order
Victor Turner – Anti-structure
• ‘Anti-structure’ & ‘communitas’
– Van Gennep
• Rituals of rebellion
– E.g. Mardi Gras, Carnival, Holi
– Expressions outside of structure
– Communitas = emotional connection and equality
– Safety valve that enables maintenance of social solidarity
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)
• American cultural anthropology
• Emphasis on culture and meaning
• Symbols
– Carriers of cutural meanings
– Communicate worldview, values, ethos
– Shape and reflect how people see, feel,
and think about the world
• Culture embodied in public symbols
– e.g. flag, 4th of July
• Turner: function to reinforce social solidarity
• Geertz: represent cultural values
– History, independence, patriotism, democracy, freedom, etc.
• “Actor-centered”
• Emic
Interpretive Anthropology
• How people themselves explain and interpret their own
values and behaviors
• Ideas, meanings
• Reflexivity
– Ethnographer’s position vis-à-vis informants included in description
– Combines self-knowledge with knowledge of the people studied
• Emic, relativistic, reflexive
• Interpretivism vs. Cultural Materialism
– Meaning, beliefs, emic vs. material environment, economic system,
etic
Feminist Anthropology
• ‘Radical’ movements of 1960s and 1970s
• Internal critiques in anthropology
• Androcentric bias
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Most anthropologists were male
Limited access to women in cultures studied
Emphasis on men, war, politics, economics, religion
Women only described in passive terms & relationships with
men
1970s focus on women & subordination
Gender socialization, cultural construction
Differences (race, class, ethnicity, etc.)
Gender and power
Contributions of Feminist Anthropology
• Importance of gender in all aspects of social life
• Power relations
– Critique of all inequalities
• Overlap with postmodernism
• Rejection of positivism (objective, scientific)
• Subjective, reflexive ethnography
– Mitigate power relations,
– Collaborative, qualitative, emic
• Promote interests of women, oppressed
• Multivocality (variety of viewpoints)
– E.g. Weiner’s vs. Malinowski’s Trobriand fieldwork
Postmodernism
• Modernism
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1920s-70s
Detachment, objectivity
Scientific neutrality
Rationalism
• Postmodernist critique/rejection of:
– Grand theories (e.g., evolutionism, cultural materialism)
– Positivism: Idea that human progress is based on scientific knowledge
– Idea that objectivity is possible
• Extreme relativism
– We can never be value-free
• Ethnography
– Always subjective
– Cannot discover ‘truth’
– Reflexive approach
• Dialog, collaboration
• Take account of power relations, class, gender, etc.
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