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Summary Engaging Anthropological Theory by Moberg
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Summary for History and Theory; chapters 7 t/m 14
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History and theory of anthropologyMoberg 7
19th century anthropologists (evolutionist): the comparative method = the origin of kinship
systems, political organization, subsistence practices, and religion explained through
independent invention
The consistent and universal stages of cultural development with psychic unity (all human
beings, regardless of culture or race, share the same basic psychological and cognitive make-
up; we are all of the same kind.)
The notion of survival: cultural phenomena that outlive the set of conditions under which
they developed
rational processes leading to uniform development
Franz Boas (1858-1942): each cultural as its own unique history, the product of both
independent invention and diffusion
Diffusion = the notion that cultural similarities result from borrowing of traits by one
group from another (Friedrich Rätzel: Kulturkreis)
Epistemology = the branch of philosophy relating to claims to knowledge
influenced by Immanuel Kant (18th): the real world is unknowable apart from the
perceptions of those who try to know it our world perceptions are constrained by our
preexisting categories of mind (values, concepts of space and time)
Inductive orientation = only after assembling large amounts of carefully collected
ethnographic data would anthropologists successfully derive laws of culture
refute Marx: economic conditions always act on a preexisting culture and are themselves
dependent upon other aspects of culture; cultural life is always economically conditioned
and economics are always culturally conditioned
Boas arguing generalization
1) Not enough knowledge about primitive cultures (racism, ludicrous speculations)
a. Salvage ethnography = documenting native cultural traditions before they
were lost completely
2) Inductive reasoning instead of theorizing/speculating
a. Exhaustive but wholly unsystematic collection of ethnographic information
Marxism
culture derives its character from its economic basis
Idiographic study = particularizing, seeking individual facts to understand them more fully
within context (Boas, Max weber)
Nomothetic study = facts in order to draw generalizations, facts primarily as a means to
producing theory, positivism (Durkheim, Tyler, Morgan)
Boasians
uniqueness of each cultural tradition, upheld as the product of local history and
circumstances that remain unknowable to the contemporary observer
unpredictability of culture as a fragmented and random assortment of practices, beliefs,
and technologies
,Evolutionists (and a little bit diffusionist)
Similarities in accounting for cultural laws
Boas’ contributions
1) Ethnographic fieldwork became the single most important professional criterion for
all anthropologists
2) His work emphasized primary data collection independent of the agendas of
government and church; required original fieldwork (strong empirical study)
3) Separation of the concepts of race and behavior (combating racial injustice)
a. Human groups owe their entire behavioral repertoire to their social
environment
4) Cultural relativism
That cultural values can only be understood within their cultural context of local
history and traditions
o Holistic
That because cultural values cannot be understood outside their cultural context,
they are all equally worthy of respect
o No judgment nihilism
sui generis: “thing in itself” that cannot be reduced to other factors of life
(economics, technology, physical environment); only in terms of itself
“nothing will ever be found that deserves the name of a law (bc of uniqueness and
complexity of cultural phenomena)
Moberg 8
Durkheim’s view on culture patchwork: each patch had a different origin and was
unrelated in any way to the patch sewn next to it
- “Fragmented view”: rejected by British anthropology in first half 20 th century
Boas’s most prominent students Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead
- Both set out to discover how culture shapes the personality of the individual
- Ancient Greeks idea that each culture expresses a unique set of personality traits
Ruth Benedict
- “Patterns of Culture”: plasticity (= quality of being easily shaped) of human behavior
People are faced with an infinite array of behavioral possibilities, from which
each culture will select only a limited range as acceptable
The selected behaviors are conforming to the culture’s configuration (= its
overall psychological orientation; a whole of social attitudes, practices, and
beliefs)
German ‘gestalt’ = form or shape
Influence and concepts from Friedrich Nietzsche
- All aspects of a culture reflect its psychological configuration: cultures are integrated
according to a central theme and configuration
- Not all individuals can comfortable accommodate the accepted norms within their
culture
- Human nature is not fixed; not entirely lacking of free will
, The sanctions for defying value’s are severe ultimately conform
Deviance (misfits): clash between individual’s personality and their culture’s
values
Person honored and respected in a Dionysian culture would be a
despised outcast in an Apollonian one
Each culture was patterned according to the common personality traits
- Benedict and Boas
Differences: cultural relativism: accepting as grounds of hope and as new
bases for tolerance the coexisting and equally valid patterns of life which
mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence (social
faith)
Common: notion that culture just ‘happens’
Margaret Mead
- “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies” (1935): extended the notion of
configuration to gender differences
Sex-specific roles appropriate and ‘natural, in western society not universal
Gender expectations are as variable as personality
- Gender was just as malleable and culturally determined as Benedict had suggested
for personality in general against American assumption that gender is the
outcome of biological differences between the sexes
- A few characteristics become the leading personality traits of the member of that
culture these traits spread an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and
values in each culture which together add up to an unique ‘Gestalt’
- All aspects of a culture (behavior, mythology, aesthetic, supernatural) reflect its
distinct configuration
Problem with Benedict and Mead fail to explain why particular configuration of culture
exists in one place and another elsewhere (no testable hypothesis)
Anthropologist of 1930s / 1940s psychoanalytic; Sigmund Freud: childhood, sexual and
family experiences loomed large as determinants of personality
- Origin of incest taboo, Oedipal complex (= the ‘universal’ desire of males to kill their
fathers and sleep with their mothers), and religion
Malinowski: disprove universal Oedipal complex with Trobriands
Psychological processes identified by Freud
1) Repression = the tendency to suppress or deny emotions experienced during a period
of stress; frustrated desires may cause later aggressive behaviors towards others or
internalized
2) Projection = the attribution of one’s emotions or beliefs to another person, especially
externalization of one’s own blame or guilt to another party
3) Transference = the unconscious redirection of your feelings for one person to
another; resemblance evokes immediate distrust/trust
4) Parapraxis (“Freudian Slip”)= an error in speech memory, or physical action that
occurs due to the interference of some unconscious wish, conflict, or train of thought
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