Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology- the study of contemporary human cultures.
Anthropology is:
- Holistic- uses all sciences together
- Comparative- looks at all human beings in all times
- Relativistic- different frame works
Without culture we would not know how to interact. People learn their culture unconsciously.
Culture is:
- Learned
- Integrated
- Shared
- Dynamic
enculturation- the process by which a society's culture is transmited from one generation to the next.
culture- a set of rules or standards shared by members of a society,
which when acted upon by the members, produce behavior that falls
within a range the members consider proper and acceptable.
adaption- a process by which organisms achieve beneficial adjustment to
an available environment and the results of that process--the
characteristics of organisms that fit them to the particulars set of
conditions of the environment in whcih they're generally found.
Functions of culture:
- Provides for the production and distribution of goods and services considered necessary for life.
- Provides for biological continuity through the reproduction of its members.
- Enculturate new members so that they can become functioning adults.
- Maintain order among its members.
- Motivate its members to survive and engage in those activities necessary for survival.
If you change one aspect to survive and engages in those activitates necessary for survival. Cultures are always changing.
Anthropologists use fieldwork (participation observation) to get
reliable info from a culture. Instead of doing it from an objection
point of view, they do it from an honest point of view. To do this
participant observation they have to move from one culture and live in
an another culture.
Language- a system of communication using sounds that're put together in meaningful ways according to a set of rules.
- Symbols- sounds or gestures taht stand for meanings among a group of people.
- Signal- a sound or gesture that has a natural or self-evident meaning.
- Linguistics- the modern scientific study of all aspects of language.
- Phonetics- the study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech.
Phonology- the study of the sound patterns of language. Phones- sounds.
- Morphemes- the smallest units of sound that carry a meaning.
- Once a number of utterances have been collected, is to isolate
the smallest classes of sound that makes a difference in meaning,
called phonemes, and to analyze the actual sounds that belong to each
of theses classes, called allophones.
- People can make a wide range of sounds. No human culture uses all the sounds possible.
- No two individual voices are alike.
- The upperclass modify the words to maintain the class distinction and then the lowerclass borrows these modified words.
- When an object is of importance then there is more words to describe it.
- dialects- appropriate language for an appropriate usage.
- code switch- using language for a particular culture or situation.
- Whorfian hypothesis: The language you learn affects your behavior.
Dependency- the group is stressed as being more important than the individual. Independency is the exact reverse of dependency.
We learn our culture before we speak. Acculturation- learning a new culture.
The Harmless People:
- Taught not to be aggressive, to live in harmony with the environment.
- nectony- older people looking younger.
- Don't eat grains or milk. Taboo: Can't eat pheasant.
- 84 men to 100 women
- Language: Clicks, Khoisen languages, tones- rising and falling.
- Technology: Hunters and gatherers, arrows, 2140 calories. Spend four to five days a week doing hunting and gathering.
- Economics: Men hunt, women gather. 80% of the food is provided by
the women. Had private property. Sharing. The person who makes the
arrow owns the animal that is killed with his arrow. Don't trade.
- Social organization: Movers, live in bands of extended families.
Polygyny. Control the population by infanticide. Parents choose mates
for their children.
- Political organization: Each band has one leader. He expresses
the consensus. The leader was the representative of the water hole.
- Religion: Gods in the east, Now. Don't stand down wind of a grave.
- Art: Story telling.
- Change: The way of life has not improved.
- Gikwe bushmen stay around the dead, the Kung don't. The bushmen children were indulged.
Adaption:
1. Foraging. Lasted about four million years.
- Scavengers- earliest people.
- Hunter-gatherers.
Successful because of mobility. Very few material goods. Low population
density. Bare subsistence. Have private property. Sharing. Women
produce most of the food. Headmen- no power. Political organizations
based on consensus. Majority rules. Deviant behavior is controlled by
religion. Crime is punished by ostracization.
2. Domestication.
- Pastoration- domestication of animals. Population densitiy
increases. Large family groups that are male oriented. Monothestic- one
male god. Females take care of the family. Males take care of the
animals. Warlike. Seasonal migration. Men raid when some of the animals
die. War chiefs who control groups of similiar pastoralists. Have
power. Children have fathers last name.
- Horticulture- domestication of plants. Less nomadic, sedentary.
Internal trade. The food is shared. Overseers control the trades.
Chiefs or divine kinship. Even more dense populations. Stratification.
Slash and burn- one person can feed six people. Specialization.
Redistribution. Communal ownership.
3. Commercialization. Trade, internal and external. Specialization.
Quantification. Market. Military. Force. Rapid change. Private
ownership.
Surplus doesn't lead to commercialization from horticultural or foraging.
Economics- rules of which goods are produced, consumed and distributed.
1. Allocation of resources.
- Patterns of labor: Sex, age, community- one particular community specializes in one particular good.
- Property: In the 15th century there were no banks, so the women
controlled the weath. Ownership- right to use and sell property.
Usufruct- right to use property only, not to sell, destroy, etc.
(borrowed). primogeniture- property is transfered to the eldest son.
Ultimogeniture- property is transfered to the last born son. Practiced
mostly among pastorists.
2. Modes of production: Work patterns differ around the world.
3. Distribution and exchange.
- Repriprocity- give and take. Generalized- you do something for
me, I will do something for you eventually. Balance- you do something
for me, I will do something for you right now. Silent trade- give and
take without a word said. Negative- one benefits, the other doesn't.
- Redistribution: Taxation, money is given to a central agency who
then redistributes it back out. Potlatch- the person who gives away
more wealth gets to hold the office.
- Market exchange- supply and demand.
Polygyny is a way to redistribute the wealth to the man's wife.
Marriage and the family:
1. Controls of sexual relations. Taboos:
- Premaritial sex- the permissible age is very young. Legal age of marriage of common law is twelve in Kansas.
- Extramartial affair- permitted in every culture. Sexual relations
shouldn't embarass the two people involved and their families. Sex
should be between people of the same group. Rich don't marry poor.
- Incest- father having sex with daughter. Brother-sister marriage
was common. Cleopatra was the offspring of a brother and sister.
Adultery- mother having sex with son.
2. Controls of social relations.
- Marriage: Endogamy, exogamy, monogamy, polygamy, group, polyandry.
- Polygyny- 2nd wife means less work for the woman, the mother in
law thinks her daughter is being treated worse than by her husband, and
the other wife is being treated better.
- Levirate- the wife marries her dead husband's unmarried brother.
- Sororate- the husband marries his dead unmarried wife's sister (next eldest sister).
- Cousin marriage- forbidden. Women cannot marry their mother's sister's son.
- Chuckchee- woman marries a baby boy. Asande- man marries a young girl.
- Residence rules.
- Patrilocal- father, son, grandfather, etc. living together.
- Matrilocal- mother, daughter, grandmother, etc. living together. At marriage, the couple lives with the brides mother.
- Ambilocal- combination of the two above. Based on economic reasons.
- Avunculocal- mother's brother.
- Neolocal- new locality, adaption to the environment.
- Family types: Extended, conjugal (same as nuclear).
- Bride service, etc.
3. Descent.
- Unilinear.
- Patrilinear- any male relatives and their children on your father's side.
- Matrilinear- any female relatives and their children on your mother's side.
- Double descent- combination of the above.
- Bilateral- tracing descent on both sides without regard to gender like in the unilateral.
- Cousins. Parallel cousins have some last name as you, but cross cousins don't.
Political organizations:
1. Social control.
- Internalized control. Simple and powerful. Beliefs that people
have that have been integrained in them, that they are scared to break
them.
- Sanctions- peer pressure.
- Laws (formal sanctions).
2. Settling disputes.
- Negotation.
- Mediation.
- Arbitration.
3. Structure of organizations.
- Band. Head of a particular band, but no overall head. To avoid conflict move on, avoid it.
- Tribe. Authority over the whole groups or bands. Segmentary
principle- an immediate tribe mediating between its two subtribes
that're in conflict.
- Chiefdom. Form of authority for the bands. Tribal form with authority.
- State. Form of authority for different cultures together. Uses force.
4. War. Warfare happens when two different cultures come into conflict
in absent of a political power. War is killing, but killing is
not war.
Religion and Magic:
- In the beginning was magic, then religion.
- The soul departed the body at death and dreams temporarily, and entered the body at birth.
- Deja vu- the spirit leaves the body during sleep and visits other places. Materialism.
- Myth- system of beliefs. Practioners- priests and shaman. No concept of soul: Pigmies, Buddhist, Marxism.
- Some Indians believe in a happy hunting ground after death.
- Ancestor worship- the dead spirits protect the living. Eternity is by being remembered by the descendents.
- Ghosts- around because a proper ritual has not been performed when the person died. Cause misfortune.
- Monotheism- evil caused when God falls asleep.
- Zoroasterism- an evil god, and a good god.
- Animatism- a force that permeates the world, makes people powerful when they have it. Mana, Now, gravity, momentum.
- All people are pragmatic.
- Sympathetic magic- magic based on the principle that like produces like.
- Contagious magic- magic based on the principle that things once in contact can influence one another after separation.
- The function of rituals:
- A means to install values in individuals.
- Provide reassurance and security in the world.
- Means of unifying the individuals of specific religion.
- Control over one's psychological and physical state.
- Organize time.
- Rites of passage.
Art- creative play with pattern in context.
- Folklore- a 19th century term first used to refer to the traditional oral stories and sayings.
- Motif- a story situation in a folktale.
- The number three is a pattern in American society.
Cultural change and the future:
1. Agents of change:
- Innovation- new things are being created in a culture. Chance is primary innovation, deliberate choice is secondary innovation.
- Diffusion- borrowing from other cultures causes rapid changing.
- Acculturation- major cultures changes that occur as result of prolonged contact between societies.
- Revitalization- creating a new satisfying culture.
- Nativistic- getting rid of alien things.
- Millenation- changing to fit the new way.
- Messianic- an invidual leads the way to a saner world.
2. Syncretism- separate things from different cultures are blended together.
3. No generation perfectly imitates the previous generation.
4. Rebellion and revolution:
- Loss of prestige of established authority, often as a result of
the failure of foreign policy, financial difficulties, dismissals of
popular ministers, or alteration of popular policies.
- Threat to recent economic improvement.
- Indeciveness of government, as exemplified by lack of consistent policy.
- Loss of support of the intellectual class.
- A leader or group of leaders with charisma enough to mobilize a
substantial part of the population against the establishment.
5. The future of humanity:
- One-world culture.
- The rise of multinationals.
- Ethnic resurgence.
- Cultural pluralism- social and political interaction within the
same society of people with different ways of living and thinking.
6. Problems of structural violence- violence exerted by situations,
institutions, and social, political, and economic structures.
- World hunger.
- Pollution.
- Population control.