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CA3 Lecture notes 2022/2023
- Instelling
- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
All lecture notes of the course CA3 in 2022/2023
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Cultural Anthropology 3Lecture 1
Part I What is this all about?
Theory tries to explain things. Different from only describing (e.g., what journalists usually do).
Why History?
Hegel’s view of the dialectic: ideas generate new ideas, for Hegel this was how thought progresses.
Dialectical Point of View
Discourse: a way of speaking of something that creates a certain categories that shape the way we think
Discourse can be both limiting and enabling
- It’s limiting when we can’t think beyond it.
- But it’s enabling when it allows us to think in ways that we couldn’t before
Example: Intersectionality, which emerged a term in 1989 to enrich feminist critique
Episteme’ means knowledge (epistemology is the philosophy of how we know).
For Foucault, an episteme is a set of ideas that constrains how people think in a particular period. It shapes
their ideas and assumptions about the world, and therefore it shapes science
This is also related to Thomas Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms.
Example 1: terrorism studies is part of public discourse, and there’s an assumption that we all know what it is.
Paradigm: determines at any time within a field what are relevant data, what is considered an acceptable method of
investigation, and how observations are interpreted is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including
theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Example: the world is round/ the world is flat
Example 2: Emily Marin The Woman in the Body: in her book she explores the medicalization of childbirth, showed
how doctors viewed women as passive ‘vessels’ because of that hey tended to treat childbirth as a problem for
medical intervation rater than a natural process where women should take charge
Paradigm shift: A paradigm shift, a concept in the philosophy of science introduced and brought into the
common lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the
basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.
Example 3: Social evolution or human progress as paradigm, Are we progressing? What is human progress? Have we
gotten beyond this paradigm?
Summary part I:
Anthropology needs theory as much as description
Theories always develop out of other theories
For that reason, its important to study the theories of the past in order to understand our ideas in the
present
Part II Anthropology’s Predecessors
Anthropology prehistory
Anthropology’s prehistory in attempts to understand cultural difference.
Anthropology is a discipline that emerges in something that we call “the West” and cannot easily be
separated from its self-definition, since for so long it defined its task as studying “the Other.”
,Greek
- Other as barbarians
- Herodotus people have different beliefs and that’s fine, cultural relativism
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
Human are social
Human are different from animals
Attributes differences among groups to geographical and material circumstances
Tools and weapons depend on knowledge
Specialization and division of labor and not such a strong sense of solidarity
Four main phases of European expansion
15th-16th centuries Exploration and “discovery”
15th-17th centuries Early contact, conquest, settlement, and colonization
16th-18th centuries Permanent European settlement and emergence of global capitalism
19th century-WWI European scramble for colonies
The rise of the Ottomans
Istanbul fell to the Ottomans in 1453
Two consequences:
- the Ottomans controlled the Silk Road look for other ways to trade, going West
- Europe became the center of Christianity the emergence of the idea of The West
Encounters with new sorts of peoples led to their subjugation, as well as the need for their categorization
Initially, Thomas Aquinas and Catholic theology viewed Native peoples as imperfect humans and, therefor,
natural slaves (in an Aristotelian sense) to
Spanish theologian Bartolome de Las Casas (1474-1566) redefined natural slaves as natural children,
allowing benevolence to ‘save’ them and make them civilized Christians
Explaining Native people lost continent of Atlantis
Emergence of “the West”
‘The so-called uniqueness of the West was, in part, produced by Europe’s contact and self-comparison with other,
non-western, societies (the Rest), very different in their histories, ecologies, patterns of development, and cultures
from the European model. The difference of these other societies and cultures from the West was the standard
against which the West’s achievement was measured. It is within the context of these relationships that the idea of
“the West” took on shape and meaning’ (Hall 1992, p. 187).
Noble savage
The noble savage paradigm was especially significant. Many of the peoples encountered by European explorers were
described as being in a “state of nature”. Positively, this was described as:
- earthly paradise
- simple, innocent life
- lack of developed social organization and civil society
- frank and open sexuality; nakedness, beauty of the women
Ignoble savage
Negatively, this same simplicity and closeness to nature was seen as inhuman, too close to animals.
Cannibalism was a common theme.
The lack of governments and states was seen to be a lack of society and uncivilized.
Enter the Enlightenment
Gradual scientization of all realms of knowledge.
Belief in the progress of knowledge.
Key to knowledge seemed to lie in bringing nature under of the human gaze.
Scientific methods
During the European “Dark Ages” Arab philosophers and scientist began to develop mathematics, physics, and
,chemistry. The European development of the scientific method also relied on experimentation and inductive
reasoning but was centrally concerned with what could be seen. Began to be associated with secularism (the
separation of church and state).
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Leading figure in the development of the scientific method.
Said that it mustn’t go for nothing that by the distant voyages and travels which have become frequent in
our times many things in nature have been laid open and discovered which may let in new light upon
philosophy.
Early social theory and the ‘state of nature”
Common themes:
nature vs. culture (reason) “savages” represent early man after The Fall therefore, “savages” are more
degenerate than civilized humans, whose reason is more perfect
Great chain of being
Enlightenment still built on earlier Christian ideas about the superiority of humans in relation to animals and
nature.
“Great Chain of Being”— in some versions, humanity is between the angels and the animals on a stairway
ascending to God.
Monogemism: All races descend from Adam and Eve, this meant that all races had common ancestors saw
“savages” as human
Polygenism: races have separate origins, contradicts the Bible, became prominent in the 19 th century, when
European colonization was spreading, proposed absolute difference between Westerners and others.
Carolus Linneaus (1707-1778)
Wanted to classify nature according to the “Great Chain of Being”
Four human races: Americanus, Europeanus, Asiaticus, Afer
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: claimed that there were five races and popularized the name Caucasian
Monogenicist, believed four of the races degenerated from Caucasian.
The West as knowledge
“Enlightenment thinkers believed that there was one path to civilization and social development, and that all
societies could be ranked or placed early or late, lower or higher, on the same scale. The emerging ‘science of
society’ was the study of the forces which had propelled all societies, by stages, along this single path of
development, leaving some, regrettably, at its ‘lowest’ stage — represented by the American savage —while others
advanced to the summit of civilized development—represented by the West” (Hall, p. 219).
Summary part II:
The European encounter with difference produced a “West and a “Rest”.
The difference of the Rest had to be explained.
Also had to be reconciled with the Bible.
The fact that Europeans conquered foreign lands gave them perception of being more advanced.
Narratives of progress fused with the Great Chain of Being, as well as with emerging sciences, including
social theory.
Part III: The popular urge to classify
The curiosity cabinets
At a time when people were obsessed with classifying, ”freaks” crossed those boundaries human zoos
The most famous museums were founded from collections like curiosity cabinets They teach us how to
see the world in classifying ways.
Summary part III:
, A popular fascination with strange people, animals, and objects led to curiosity cabinets and freak shows,
but also to the emergence of museums and forms of classification.
This produced popular discourses about difference that would interact with scientific discourse.
In particular, it produced discourses about the relationship between humans and nature, the normal and the
abnormal, the West and the Rest.
Reading questions (seminar 2)
How does the history of colonization relate to the concept of the West?
West is often seen as a cultural, political, and economic entity that emerged out of these colonial experiences. The
history of colonization therefore plays a significant role in shaping our understanding of the West. They compared
themselves to the Rest, which created the discourse of West and the Rest. Contributed to the scientific knowledge.
How did evolutionary theories contribute to our notion of the West and in what ways do they still influence our
understanding of it?
Evolutionary theories were widely used to justify Western European imperialism and the subjugation of non-
Western peoples. These theories posited that Western civilizations were biologically and culturally superior to
others, and that it was the responsibility of Western powers to "civilize" and "develop" non-Western societies.
Although many of these theories have been discredited and discredited, they still influence our understanding of the
West by perpetuating the idea of Western superiority. Discourse causes to evaluate the differences between the
West and the Rest.
Seminar 2
Stuart Hall
Representation: one thing standing for more things, it simplices
Discursive formation practice: the practice of producing meaning action that gave meaning
1. Positions: Every discourse constructs positions from which alone it makes sense. Anyone deploying a discourse
must position themselves as if they were the subject of the discourse.
2. Not closed system: A discourse draws on elements in other discourses, binding them into its own network of
meanings
3. Coherence: The statements within a discursive formation need not all be the same. But the relationships and
differences between them must be regular and systematic, not random.
Discourse/Ideology
Discourse: a way of speaking of something that creates a certain categories that shape the way we think
Ideology: thinking in truth or false, not realistic
Innocent: a discourse can’t be innocent, maybe the intention aren’t bad, the outcome is always harmful, because it
shape the way people think
Lecture 2: A science of society: evolution, race and the
discovery of difference
Five main meanings of culture (from cultural evolution to cultural relativism)
Cultivation, as in agriculture or horticulture
Cultivation of the human mind, as in “to be cultivated”
Stages of social development, i.e., civilization (Enlightenment)
20th century: the distinctive way of life of a people
Late 20th century: a system of signs and symbols
Part I: Before Boas: The influence of German Anthropology
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
Influential figure in the German Enlightenment (Romantic) period, often called “father of nationalism”
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