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Samenvatting lectures CA3 History of anthropology
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- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Dit is een volledige samenvatting voor de hoorcolleges van CA3
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CA3: LecturesLecture 1:
Anthropology is divided in 4 sub-disciplines: linguistic, archeology, physical/biological and
social/cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology originated in the US and social in the UK.
Anthropology is a product of western European thought and is shaped by western European
societies and cultures (especially Christianity).
The ancient Greek are the first people to create a term for ‘the other’, this term applied to
everyone that doesn’t speak Greek. They were perceived as barbarian or uncivilized.
Herodotus was one of the first Greek to study ‘the other’. Herodotus avoided essentialism;
he avoided the claim that all members of a particular group share the same attributes. He
was interested in local customs, their beliefs, their religion, their customs/traditions etc.
IBN Khaldun (1332-1406); was the first to give a theory of evolution and decline, that was
ahead of his time. He adopted the Aristotelian argument that humans are inherently social.
Humans differ from animals because they need tools and weapons to survive, humans use
their intellect. The tools and weapons depend on reason, accumulated knowledge (passed
through generations) and cooperation among humans. Attributes differ among groups due
to geographical and material circumstances.
Also, solidarity declines when specialization and division of labor occurs in ‘developed’
societies (agriculture and up).
The 15th century was a time of enormous social change in Europe. Starting from 1450 Europe
was expanding and increasing wealth. The end of the middle ages and the beginning om
modern ages began. Trade and commerce, markets were expanding. Portuguese exploration
on the coast of Afrika, then Columbus to the ‘new world’/America.
Around 1500 the Renaissance started especially in Italy. Encounters with ‘the other’ led to
enslavement and needed categorization.
15-16th; Exploration and discovery
15-17th; early contact, conquest, settlement and colonization
16-18th; permanent European settlement and emergence of global capitalism.
in the middle of the 15th century Christianity had fallen. Istanbul fell to the Ottomans in
1453. The Ottomans controlled the Silk road after that. Western Europe became the real
center for Christianity, it used to be Istanbul, but Istanbul was concurred by the Ottomans,
so the center shifted to Rome. Western Europe became the seat of
Christianity/Christendom.
Encounters with new sorts of peoples led to their subjugation, as well as the need for their
categorization. Thomas Aquinas and Catholic theology viewed Native peoples as imperfect
humans and, therefore, natural slaves to Europeans.
Spanish theologian Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566) redefined natural slaves as
natural children, allowing benevolence to ‘save’ them and make them civilized Christians.
,The idea that native Americans were descendants of Atlantis was partly based in the cultural
similarities between Europeans and the Inca’s/Aztecs. Cultural similarities in the fact that
these were also great city-states. These acceptance of similarities led much later to the
doctrine of monogenesis; the idea that human all came from the same ancestors.
The idea emerged: All good and civilized things must come from Europe or ‘the west’.
We don’t contrast the west with the East:
Steward Hall writes about this; the west is not defined in contrast to the East, but in
contrast to everything else; ‘The West and the rest’. Without ‘the rest’, ‘the West’ would
have not been able to recognize/represent itself as the summit of human history. ‘the West’
is not opposed to things that are eastern but is seen as a pinacol that others strive for, it is
opposed to the rest.
‘the rest’ (people who are being discovered or encountered) were being treated with 2
different frames of reference: as natural slaves or on the other hand as children. Ultimately
these ideas converged into different understanding of what these people (Americans) mean.
- One was the idea of noble savage; being an earthly paradise with simple life.
Europeans perceived these people as being without social organization or
simple/pure civilized society. Their nakedness was seen as a sign of open sexuality.
This noble savage paradox was opposed by the paradox of ignoble savage
- On the other had the idea of ignoble savage; They were seen as cannibalisms and the
lack of states was seen as being uncivilized. They were seen as nothing but barbaric.
The beginning of enlightenment:
emergent of scientific method and a belief in progress; this belief in progress of
technology, knowledge and progress of ‘the west’ would fuse with a lot of earlier ideas. This
fusion created a new understanding of human difference.
scientific method: Arab philosophers and scientists began to develop mathematics,
physics and chemistry. The European development of the scientific method relied on both
experimentation and inductive reasoning concerned with what could be seen.
This development put a lot of scientists in tense relationships with the church. Scientists
became associated with secularism, straying away from theology.
Francis Bacon: Founder of the scientific method we know today. Bacon said that the world is
much faster than the limits of religion. The peoples that are encountered were not
mentioned in the Bible and the Bible can’t answer all questions.
Early social theory and the ‘state of nature’:
Thomas Hobbes saw the ‘state of nature’ as a war of ‘all against all’ in which life is ‘nasty,
brutish and short’. In the ‘state of nature’ theory Hobbes and others said that all humans
must have lived without society know in Europe. People had to fight for their lives
constantly, that’s the reason why people wanted to be ruled.
Common themes;
- nature vs. culture (based on reason/ civilization)
- Savages respresent early man after “the Fall”.
Great chain of being:
, - The idea that human have the right to exploit the material world and the animals in
it. The idea of superiority of human being, and that God had given the world to
humans to rule.
- Cuvier skeletons: fossils began to be studied in the 17th century. In early 18th Cuvier
found a skeleton in the US that he showed belonged to an extinct animal (referred to
as masterdone). Cuvier opposed ideas of natural evolution; his finding provoked a
way of thinking because his found skeletons proved creatures had gone extinct. It
showed that there had been creatures before that no longer exist. Cuvier put these
extinct creatures in a particular theory of history that is linked to the great chain of
being.
- This idea of great chain of being applied to humans; In the 18th century there were 2
basic views that were built on previous ideas of human progress/development:
- monogenism: the idea of one genesis; the idea that all humans/races had common
ancestors. Viewed as a ‘kind version of racism’, it saw savages as humans as well.
With monogenism there is no foundation to de-humanize people, so there is no
foundation to treat people different ‘like slaves’. The idea of monogenism is tied to
the idea of ‘natural slaves’ and ‘born children’, because when you think of people as
born children you can ‘save’ them through religious missions because everyone is the
same.
- polygenism/ multigenism: Races have separate origins. Contradicts the bible.
Became prominent in the 19th century, when European colonization was spreading.
This idea proposed absolute difference between Westerners and others.
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778);
- He wanted to classify nature according to the ‘great chain of being’
- He invented taxonomy in the 18th century with 4 human races; Americanus,
Europeanus, Asiaticus, Afer.
- Blumenbach build on Linnaeus taxonomies and used comparative anatomy to classify
races. Blumenbach claimed that there were 5 races and made the name Caucasian
popular. He considered the Caucasians as the original/superior race and believed the
other 4 races degenerated from Caucasians.
In this century, ideas that have been developing over decades comminated in attempts to
understand them scientifically, in ways that are corresponded with the way of understanding
and classifying the natural world.
, Sums up the background ideas that were shaping all these attempts to understand
differences in this time.
The Romantics response to the enlightenment; you can’t base everything on reason
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Noble Savages represent humans in Garden of Eden.
Civilization in not progress but corruption of innocence
- Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) formulated the idea of ‘national culture’ of
what came to be known as ‘national character’. National character is in opposition to
the idea of progress. He found uniqueness of culture important, ‘historical
uniqueness’. He found linguistic the most unique aspect of culture. His ideas became
the driving force behind nationalism and harming ‘others’. He is also known for
definitions that came to be known as race in the 19th century.
He was reaction to what he saw as the separation of human and nature by the
enlightenment. He was the first to express the idea of being true to oneself.
Sum up for the enlightenment:
narratives of progress in the enlightenment fused with … laatste punt
Lecture 2:
The transition from cultural evolutionism to cultural relativism: How did culture come to be a
central defining concept for anthropology?
There has been an evolution on the meaning of culture (from cultural evolutionism to
cultural relativism):
- The starting definition of culture was; Cultivation or to cultivate (as in terms like
agriculture or horticulture)
- In the Enlightenment; the cultivation of the human mind; as in ‘to be cultivated’.
- This took on a meaning of social development and the stages of social development a
community was in; moving to civilization (most cultivated).
- 20th century: culture began to take on the meaning of; the distinctive way of life of a
people.
- Late 20th century: culture began to take on the meaning of; a system of signs and
symbols
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