Download Chapter 4, Studying Culture: Approaches And Methods

Chapter 4
The Development of Anthropological
Thought
Chapter Outline
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Nineteenth Century: Origins
Early Twentieth Century: Development
Mid-Century Evolutionary Approaches
Anthropological Thought Today: Divisions
Chapter Outline
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Scientific Orientations
Humanistic Orientations
Either/Or?
Why Can’t All Those Apologists Agree?
Nineteenth Century: Origins
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Anthropology became a separate
academic field.
Studied how humans progressed to a
"civilized" cultural existence.
Unilineal Evolution - applied the theory of
evolution to culture.
Unlineal Evolution
1.
2.
3.
Compile accounts of other cultures
written by observers.
Compare the cultures to determine
which are the simplest and most
complex.
Classify the cultures into stages of
development.
Unlineal Evolution
4.
5.
6.
Label theses stages: Savagery,
Barbarism, Civilization.
Place any new cultures in the
classification.
Invent an explanation for why the
people in one stage developed into
the next stage.
American Historical Particularism
(ca. 1900-1940)
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Each culture is unique and must be
studied on its own terms.
Each culture changes along its own path,
depending on the influences that affect it.
American Historical Particularism
(ca. 1900-1940)
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Fieldwork is the primary means of
acquiring reliable information.
Cultural differences and biological
differences have little to do with each
other.
Other Theories
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Diffusionists
 Anthropologists who study how cultural
elements (“traits”) were transmitted
(“diffused”) from one people or region to
another.
Configurationalism
 Each culture develops a distinctive set of
feelings and motivations that orients the
thoughts and behaviors of its members.
British Functionalism
(ca.1920-1950)
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The cultural features of a people should
be explained by the functions they
perform.
Contributions:
 Importance of fieldwork.
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Relativism and Holistic perspectives.
Functionalism
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Theory that analyzes cultural elements in
terms of their useful effects to individuals
or to the persistence of the whole society.
Mid-Century Evolutionary
Approaches (ca. 1940-1970)
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Return to cultural evolution.
White emphasized importance of
technology.
Steward emphasized the adaptation to
the local environment in making cultures
the way they are.
Anthropology Today
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Scientific Approach
 Studies focus on humans as part of nature
and seek to account for similarities and
differences in human cultures.
Humanistic Approach
 These scholars believe that humans are
unique because they are conscious, cultural
beings, and their main goal is to describe and
interpret particular cultures.
Scientific Approach
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Sociobiology or Evolutionary Psychology
 Assumes that a body and its behavior are
means of replicating itself
Cultural Materialism
 All mammals have the same imperative
needs: food and water, regulation of body
temperature (shelter and clothing),
reproduction, coping with disease, competing
for resources and so on.
Humanistic Approach
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Interpretive Anthropology
 Emphasizes the uniqueness and
particularity of each culture and that all
social behavior has an inherent
symbolic component.
Humanistic Approach
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Postmodernism
 Emphasizes the relativity of all
knowledge and focuses on how the
knowledge of a particular time and
place is constructed, especially on how
power relations affect the creation of
ideas and beliefs.
Quick Quiz
1. Several changes which led to the
beginnings and growth of anthropology are:
a)
b)
c)
d)
Darwinism and the more ancient age of
the earth
Historical particularism and
functionalism
Marxism and cultural materialism
Unilineal and multilineal evolutionism
Answer: a
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The new theories of Charles Darwin and
the knowledge that the earth was older
than previously thought, led to the
development of anthropology as a field of
study.
2. The theory of unilineal evolution:
a)
b)
c)
d)
developed from Darwin’s ideas on natural
selection
states that different peoples represent
different grades of development
defines stages of savagery, barbarism,
and civilization
all of the above
Answer: d
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The theory of unilineal evolution
developed from Darwin’s ideas on
natural selection, states that different
peoples represent different grades of
development, and defined savagery,
barbarism and civilization as stages of
development.
3. Materialists emphasize:
a)
b)
c)
d)
human uniqueness
ideas
cultural adaptation of resources
the cultural construction of resources
Answer : c
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Materialists emphasize the cultural
adaptation of resources.