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Core Themes in Anthropology notes

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Aantekeningen van alle lectures(= 'meeting' in het document) week 1 t/m week 7. De onderwerpen die voorkomen in dit document zijn: intro, fieldwork, local organization & social classification, gender & kinship, caste & class, politics & power, exchange & consumption, ecology & agriculture, religio...

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  • January 14, 2024
  • 37
  • 2022/2023
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  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Culturele antropologie en ontwikkelingssociologie
  • Core themes in anthropology (S_CTA)
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Core themes in anthropology
- Week 1: introduction (05-09)
Make sure you know the references (namen van mensen (uit het boek) die dingen hebben
uitgevonden of gemaakt)
Link the concept —> name

What makes anthropology a distinctive social science?
- culture
- View of interlocutors/ research participants
- Fieldwork
- Holism = looking at di erent domains in society and how they interact with each other. Politics,
religions, economy etc. —> everything has an impact on each other
- Contextualization
- Every culture in the world is equally interesting
- Critical attitude
- Solidarity with marginalized people
Anthropology uses ethnographic research methodes.
Knowledge about humans (- Eriksen).

As an anthropologist don’t have assumptions beforehand (example: with an open interview)

Holism makes anthropology di erent from other sciences. Holism is part of contextualization.
What does it mean to people themselves?

Four eld anthropology:
- cultural anthropology
- Physical anthropology
- Archaeology
- Linguistic anthropology
You have to look critically at the de nition of culture because its being used in a negative way by
others. Culture only functions within a society (not 1 person). It must be shared with members of
the society.

Tennekes’ de nition of culture is very useful. = Cultuur is datgene wat een mens als competent lid
van een bepaald social verband dient te weten om adequaat te kunnen handelen.

Caveats
People are often unaware of culture
Culture is context speci c
Culture is not deterministic
Culture is not bounded
Culture is not integrated
Term culture means something di erent to anthropologists and politicians

Anthropologists get remarkably nervous when they discuss culture.

The problem of translation
A few important features of anthropology are; it is comparative and empirical; its most important
method of data collection is eldwork; and it has a truly global focus.

- Meeting 2: Theoretical paradigms and decolonization
Emic terms: terms in local vernacular
Etic terms: analytical terms for cross-cultural comparison
‘The purpose of spending weeks, months and sometimes years in the eld is to help the
ethnography understand a society from the perspective of its own members <— emic perspective




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,Etic perspective —> involves the ethnographers trying to explain a culture in objective terms from
the outside.

Both perspectives are needed in ethnographic research.

Working de nition:
Decolonization of anthropology means that groups that used to dominate the discipline take a
step aside to create space for other voices.

‘Ethnocentrism […] means evaluating other people from one’s own vantage point and describing
them in one’s own terms’.

‘Cultural relativism […] is the doctrine that societies or cultures are qualitatively di erent and have
their own unique inner logic, and that it is therefore scienti cally absurd to rank them on a scale’.
Cultural relativism also means that any society is as interesting as the others.

Decolonization of anthropology
- anthropology departments
- Relationship between anthropologist and researched people
- Anthropology canon (textbooks dominated by northern, white, (male) scholars)
- Anthropology concepts
The ontological turn
- You think there are multiple worlds
‘To analyze and theorize is to impose on someone else’s reality’
You’re obliged to give up all your own theoretical ideas

- Ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being
- Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope
- Methodology: a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity
(The new Oxford dictionary of English)

Theory= a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based
on general principles
Levels of theory:
- Concepts
- Processes
- Grand theories
Function of theory:
- To communicate with other scholars
- To better understand and explain the empirical phenomena we are studying
A theoretical paradigm is a more or less coherent approach to anthropology, consisting of
assumptions about the nature of society, a theoretical core, examples of key texts, a name for the
paradigm, and a sense of membership among the followers.

David schenk, can white men jump? Ethnicity, genes, culture, and success
These (athletes) are not superhuman with rare super-genes. They are participants in a culture of
the extreme, willing to devote more, to ache more, and to risk more in order to do better.

Paradigms: evolutionism, historical particularism, culture and personality, structural-functionalism,
structuralism, transactionalism, symbolic or interpretive anthropology, gender studies,
postmodernism and others.

Evolutionism:
Lewis Henry Morgan, ‘ancient society’ (1877)
Johannes Bachofen, ‘Das Muterrecht’ (1861)
Edward Burnett Tylor, ‘anthropology’ (1881)




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,Historical particularism; is the view that all societies or cultures have their own, unique history.
Franz Boas (1858-1942); eldworking among Inuit and Kwakiutl

Culture and personality
Ruth Benedict, ‘patterns of culture’
Margaret Mead, ‘coming of age in Samoa’
‘Mead’s work shows, probably better that of any other anthropologist, the potential of cultural
criticism inherent in the discipline.’

Structural-functionalism and colonialism
‘Imperialism gave an inescapable, if usually implicit, context for British social anthropology’
British anthropologists developed a strong interest in local politics among people often subjected
to indirect rule from the colonial o ce.

Functionalism
Functionalism is the view that the institutions of a society carry out operations that serve the
interests and needs of its members of help perpetuate society.
Structural-functionalism viewed society as a social body with parts integrated into an
interdependent whole.

- Meeting 3: Fieldwork as the de ning method
My tribe syndrome; When they (a group of anthropologists) try to have a discussion, there’s
always one anthropologist who spend years in a society and says ‘well in my tribe…’

There’s a need to have a balance between cultural relativism and ethnocentrism.

‘Anthropology distinguishes itself from the other social sciences through the strong emphasis
placed on ethnographic eldwork as the most important source of new knowledge about society
and culture’

Participant observation: is a research technique in which the anthropologist tries to observe
everyday activities of the researched people and to ask open questions about those activities,
while taking part in those activities in a way that disturbs the normal ow of events the least.
(Deep hanging out)

Participant observation is “formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose” (Zora
Neale Hurston)

Its strength lies in:
Observing routines that are di cult to describe
Hearing the use of terms in context
Seeing social organization in action
Building trust to prepare for interviews
Seeing discrepancies between what people say they do and actually do
Fieldwork is a de ning method (not the only method)

Participant observation, how does it work?
The researcher is normally required to spend around a year, many do shorter eldwork, but also
return to the eld several times.
Why a year? You will get better content. You will see the seasons, weather, festivities, vacations
etc. Your presence will look more natural for the locals.
[When you return to the eld, people will tell you more because they see that you’re really
interested.]

Many anthropologists take the role of the clown, such a role can be an excellent starting-point
through discovering how the local react to your own behavior, you obtain an early hint about their
way of thinking.




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, A di erent, and sometimes more problematic, role that can be assumed by the anthropologist in
the eld, is the role of the expert. Many eldworkers are treated with great deference and respect
by their hosts.

Often or sometimes you will feel helpless in many situations. It can be very tiring for people with a
middle-class urban background to adapt to societies where being alone is considered a pitiful of
pathological condition.

Establishing rapport
‘During participant observation, one tries to immerse oneself into the life of the locals and tries not
to be noticed, so that they can carry on with their own lives as usual.’
Speak the local language, and speak it well


Positionality
‘The anthropologist him- or herself is the most important ‘scienti c instrument’ used, investing a
great deal of his or her own personality in the process. The gender, age, race and class of the
anthropologist inadvertently in uences the experience of eldwork.’

The multiple crisis in anthropology of the 1980s;
Quality of seminal works questioned
Opening of black box of eldwork
Male bias
The right to represent others
Role in counter insurgency
Is objective knowledge possible?

Postmodernism in anthropology;
Deconstruction of concepts
Self-re ective turn and positionality
Interlocutors (= gesprekspartners)
Polyvocality, the power of many voices to shift and sustain narrative change
Literary turn in anthropology

Weaknesses and strengths of ethnographic research
Investment of time (weakness)
Impossible to give a good resemble (weakness)

Criteria for good research (strengths):
Objectivity? It is subjective (it’s not bad aslong as you are aware of it)
Large numbers?
Rapport (do people talk openly to you? Do they feel at ease?)
Re exivity
Ethnographic depth (“thick description”)

Many ethnographers probably develop a profoundly ambivalent, sometimes even antagonistic
attitude towards the people they study.

The value of participant observation lies in the quality of the empirical data one has collected, not
in the number of close friends one has acquired in the eld.

Ethical dilemmas:
Informed consent vs y on the wall
Personal involvement
Ambivalent relationship with interlocutors (‘culture shock’)
Inequality in power
Local con icts (can you stay neutral? who’s interest are you going to defend?)
*you can’t stay neutral*

Advice from Freek for the future: Make decision in an ethical dilemma, don’t stay neutral!




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