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College notes Culture and Context (7301A1207Y)
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CULTURE AND CONTEXTIntroduction: 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
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,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
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, 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
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