100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
logo-home
College notes Culture and Context (7301A1207Y) $5.60   Add to cart

Class notes

College notes Culture and Context (7301A1207Y)

 3 views  0 purchase
  • Course
  • Institution

Summary of all colleges.

Preview 3 out of 28  pages

  • October 19, 2022
  • 28
  • 2018/2019
  • Class notes
  • -
  • All classes
avatar-seller
CULTURE AND CONTEXT

Introduction: What is anthropology?
1. What is anthropology?

AAA: “Anthropology is the study of what makes us human, a broad approach to understanding the
many different aspects of human experience, which we call holism. “

- Holism -> everything’s connected -> look as things as a whole

Cultural anthropology = how people live around the world, and how the people understand the
world

- Micro perspective
- Ethnography = research and its product
- Method: participant observation = becoming a part of what you’re studying as far as possible
- Understanding human action in cultural context
- Avoiding ethnocentrism = judging other cultures by your own standards
- Sociological imagination -> defamiliarize with the familiar

Culture concept

- Patterns, meaning, shared, symbols

= An historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited
conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and
develop knowledge about and an attitude towards life.

- Holistic

= That comlex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

 Preassuming uniformity + clear borders

= The acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behaviour

- Acquired, not something you’re born with

Anthropology analyses shared cultural believes/ values/ principles and behaviour

- Shared but “carried” individually
- On different “levels”; you are in multiple cultural groups
 People have motives for choosing some of the groups they are in
- Both inside and outside of you
 You embody culture
 You’re part of a wider world; social and cultures norms
- Cultural reality
- Tacit vs explicit culture
 Tacit: acquired without it had been explicitly thaught
 Explicit: things you’ve explicitly been thaught
- Culture is not reducable to biology (genes -> race with certain characteristics) and psychology
(individuals)
 Connection with history

1

,Ethnography

- Participant observation not detached observation
- Authority comes from really being there
- “To grasp the native’s point of vies, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”
 To come into the mind of a native, and translating that to text understandable for people
who don’t share that native-experience
- Insiders point of view is a goal, but fantasy!
- Observation, followed by learning about the meanings of behaviours you observe
= Interpretation
 Of actors involved
 Of the anthropologist

Historical roots

- Travel literature
 Describing the experience of another culture
 Explorers describing their experiences
- Social philospophy

Studying the other -> seeing clearly in their faults, but being blind to our own

 Defamiliarize with the familiar
 Comparing things considered ‘normal’ to things considered ‘absurd’

- Universalism (normative) vs relativism (descriptive)
 Problem with universalism is simplification because of the generalization
 Problem with relativism is becoming too specific
- Ethnocentrism vs cultural relativism
 Ethnocentrism is connected with universalism: universalizing your own norms
 Cultural relativism = every culture should be judged in its own context; people might have
reasons to do what they do
 Other as mirror of “us”
- How do you relate to others?

Anthropology was founded in the late 19th century

- The new imperialism
 In contrast with the old imperialism in the age of discovery, where Europeans stayed
near trading posts, the coast, small islands etc. The mans didn’t stay for long
Old imperialism was about showing economic and military might
 With new colonialism, Europeans and later Americans moved in further and started to
settle. Not only the recourses, but also settlement and reforming natives are goals.
Because people were settling, they developped infrastructure and medicines
-> White Man’s burden and the mission civilisatrice
New imperialism was about gaining direct rule

Darwin -> biological evolutionism
Spencer -> analogy between biological and the social

 Social evolutionism
- Primitive vs. Modern

2

,  Primitives were important to study because it could give us information about us in the
past
= Understanding other societies in order to understand our own
 Anthropologists job was to classify societies

- We still compare societies
Explanation: “psychic unity of mankind” (Bastian)
 Human nature is universal, we differ because of what we learn culturally

Evolutionists

- Tylor:
 cultural survivals = cultural traits that survive but don’t seem to serve any kind of funtion
 Culture as a complex whole

Functionalism and the West

Anthroplogy and colonism

- Anthropologists were creating knowledge, knowlegde is power and could be used
- New imperialism -> indirect rule (ruling natives trough natives)
 Need to understand how particular societies work (traditional authority and leadership; ways
of dealing with conflicts; religions and beliefs)
- How-to guide to rule the natives

White Man’s Burden

- Civilising natives and transforming their societies
- Trying to build societies stable in our eyes
 Creating order in what was viewed as a chaotic, wild and dark world

Functionalism

- Reaction to evolutionist theories (the idea that human civilisations evolve)
- Functionalism was about looking at cultures in the present (in their own right)
- Assumption: every society is build from parts that each serve a functions, and these functions
serve a larger whole to make the society as a whole function
 Everything exists for a reason

Functionalism was important because it teached us

- To look at societies as equals
- Terms that are still used today
- To look at societies as an organism (whole) -> to look at context

Limitation: no explanation for change over time

Book: African political systems

- Meyer-Fortes and Evans-Pitchard (1940)
- Trying to understand how these communities lived
 Societies seemed to be living fine and peaceful without political institutions visible for
the western



3

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller ecdp. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for $5.60. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

83637 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now

Start selling
$5.60
  • (0)
  Add to cart