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What is Anthropology?
- The comparative study of human societies and cultures.
- Anthropology is the study of human being from our beginning to the present.
- Anthropology explores the lifeways of a people
- -Subsistence - how people feed themselves
- -Food - what they eat and eating rules
- -Shelter/ Housing – how they protect themselves from the elements.
- -Religion - how they give meaning to their lives and their supernatural belief system
- -Time
- -Space
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How they organize their
community
- – Kinship
- – Leadership
- – Government
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How do they communicate?
- – Language
- – Body language
- – Dance
- – Music
- – Theatre
- – Visual Arts
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Energy exchange with the
environment
– Adaption to the environment.
- Clothing – what they wear
- -Change in any and all of the
- parts that make a culture.
- We are all culture bearers.
- *It is in our heads …what and how we think.
- *How we behave and what we believe
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Culture vs. Society
- – The learned behaviors and symbols that allow people to live in groups,
- including way human being adapt to
- their environment and give meaning to their lives.
- -Society
- –A set of social relationship among people
- -Role
- -Status
- Culture vs. Society
- – Behavior -relationships
- – Symbols dyad/group
- –Adapt to environment -status and roles
- – Beliefs
- –meaning
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The Five Sub-disciplines of Anthropology
- – Cultural Anthropology
- The study of human culture and society.
- – Linguistic Anthropology
- Concerned with understanding language and its relationship to culture.
- Knowing the history of a language can help to discover the history, interaction/relationships with other cultures and the migrations of a culture
- – Archaeology
- Focuses on the reconstruction and understanding of past cultures based on their material culture.
- –Physical / Biological Anthropology
- The study of humankind from a biological perspective. It includes subfields such as osteology, nutrition, demography, epidemiology and primatology.
- –Applied Anthropology
- Uses anthropology to solve human problems.
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Short history of Anthropology
- • Anthropology as a field of study began in the nineteenth century (1800’s) by Europeans and Americans.
- • Travel by steamboat and railroad
- • Colonial ism...Empire building in Europe
- • Move west for USA
- • Need to understand people other than self
- • First they wanted to try to trace the evolution of humans
- • Unilineal evolution…beginning to them
- • Savage to civilized
- • Stages of evolution
- • Lower, Middle Upper Savagery
- • Lower, Middle, Upper Barbarism
- • Civilized
- • Travel
- • Brought people such as
- – Missionaries
- – Explorers
- – Soldiers
- – Government officials
- • Anthro interview them about their experiences
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Armchair Anthropologist
- untrained observer
- ethnocentric
- bias
- bad info
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Who is Franz Boas?
- • Father of Cultural Anthropology
- • Anthropologist must go themselves to observe the people they are studying Field work
- • Early 1900’s Boas trained next generation of Anthropologist and sent them out in the field to collect data. Kroeber, Sapir, Mead, Benedict to name a few.
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What is Culture?
- Everything a person perceives, knows, thinks, values, feels, and does –almost everything that makes us human- is learned through participation in a sociocultural system.
- • Might call it a story people tell themselves about themselves
- • A shared system of organizing and classifying the world
- • is learned from others while growing up in a particular society or culture….enculturation
- • is widely shared by members of that society or group
- • so profoundly affects the thoughts, actions and feeling of people in a group that we often say that an individual is a product of their culture
- • explains or is the source of differences between groups of people in how they think, act and feel.
- • Not all members of any society are going to always agree or think alike about aspects of culture
- The culture of a group consists of a shared socially learned knowledge and behavior pattern.
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Who is the wild boy of Aveyron?
- • 1799…age 12…had been found twice before but escaped.
- • Shown in Paris
- • Human but no humanity
- • Sent to School for the deaf to be studied
- • Had no language, no development of his senses, no ability to focus attention…rocked
- • Why was he like this?
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6 characteristics of all cultures
- 1. Learned behavior
- 2. Use of language and symbols
- 3. Are patterned and integrated (the
- elements of culture have a logical relationship)
- 4. Share by members of the group
- 5. Are adaptive
- 6. Change
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What is shared about culture?
- The culture of a group consists of a shared socially learned knowledge and behavior pattern.
- • The people are able to communicate and interact with one another with out serious misunderstandings and without the need to explain constantly what their behavior means
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What is part of culture is socially learned?
- • enculturation
- • not learned by trial and error, but by observation, imitation communication and inference
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What part of culture is knowledge?
- • cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment
- • knowledge is pasted down through the generations
- • knowledge accumulates
- We stand on the shoulders of our cultural ancestors
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Patterns of behavior in culture?
- • not individual behavior but the behavioral regularities the are bigger than one persons behavior
- – weddings
- – parent/child
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Human Adaption
- Culture is our adaptation to the environment
- • Culture
- – Food…..h/g, tools, farming, domestication of plants and animals
- – Shelter….use of materials found in the environment to make shelter or use of natural formations…..cave
- • Cultural adaptation is trial and error
- • Taught to succeeding generations = culture
- • Can be changed to improve
- • Faster than biological adaptation that depends on chance mutation
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How does culture change?
- Culture change
- • internal
- • external
- • disease
- • climate
- All cultures change
- • Traditional cultures change slowly
- • Modern cultures change quicker; as do traditional that are part of a industrialized society today
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What are norms?
- • Shared ideas or rules about how people ought to behave in specific situations and how people should
- act toward one another (depending on their role
- • Allow us to interact without need to interpret behavior/actions…most unconscious of all cultural elements
- • Norms are not always followed and can be ignored at times
- • However, norms imply
- • Widespread agreement about standards of behavior
- • Other will judge behavior according to the norm
- • Those who repeatedly fail to comply with behavior norms will face negative reactions from members of the culture
- • We learn cultural norm as we grow enculturation…
- • Some norms are only given lip service…sex …marriage
- • Some norms are subverted...Indian women...home and religion….religious clubs to get out
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What are values?
- • Peoples beliefs about what is right, true, beautiful and good
- • Values are a profound...although unconscious…affect on behavior
- • The good life…American Dream
- – Work hard = success
- – Responsible for own destiny
- – Assumes level playing field
- • Values are critical to the maintenance of a culture because the represent what people believe are essential to their way of life
- – Freedom of speech
- – Liberty
- – The pursuit of happiness
- – Religious freedom
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What is subculture?
- • A group within a larger culture that shares different norms and values than those of the dominate society
- • 1960 hippies
- • Neo-Nazi
- • Goths
- • Rappers
- • Sub-cultures and the dominate culture can rub against each other and cause change
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What is Ethnocentrism?
- • The belief that your culture and lifeways are natural and superior to all other ways.
- • The positive side to ethnocentrism is that it binds a group of people together…it is the glue of a culture
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How is race a cultural construct?
- • Race is a cultural construct and does not biologically exist.
- • No human group has ever been isolated from other humans long enough for genetic changes to occur.
- • Human beings are all members of a single race.
- • Other cultures construct race differently.
- • Traits used to “define” race are arbitrary. Why choose skin color rather than height, or eye color rather than eye shape?
- • Racial “traits” are obvious.
- • Human beings are very similar in skeletal structure and blood type.
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What is racism and racialism?
- • Racism
- • The belief that some peoples are genetically superior to others.
- • Racialism
- • Biological fixed races that have different moral, intellectual, and physical characteristics.
- • These races can be ranked in a hierarchical scale.
- • Political action need to be taken so that society reflects the hierarchy
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What is Biopsychological Equality?
- • Franz Boas
- All human beings have an equal capacity for culture
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What is cultural relativism?
- • Franz Boas
- • Peoples lifeways, values and customs must be understood in terms of that culture
- • Anthropologist must not judge a culture, if they are to understand the logic and dynamics of that culture.
- • This is a fundamental tool of Anthropology
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Emic vs. Etic
- • Emic
- • Point of view of the cultural insider. Trying to understand a culture as if one were born into it. Understand how to think and act as a native.
- • Etic
- • The outsider’s point of view. Looking at a society in terms of concepts, categories and rules from outsider’s perspective.
- • Members of the culture may not agree with the researcher’s analysis nor find the analysis meaningful.
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5 subsistence strategies
- • Foraging…aka hunting and gathering
- • Pastoralism…domestication of animals for their dairy and meat
- • Horticulture…non-mechanical farming…without irrigation
- • Agriculture…animal power, fertilizer and irrigations
- • Industrialism…mechanical, technological and chemical process used to farm
- • For 95% of human life has been as foragers.
- • Only in the last 10,000 years have we changed and begun to domesticate plants and animals
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Hunters and Gathers
- • Supports limited:
- – population
- – pop density
- – complexity of social organization
- • Live on every continent in the world except Antarctica
- • Success depends on vast specific knowledge of the plants and animals of their area
- • Division of labor by age and gender
- • Mobility
- • Gathering and dispersing
- • Bands...group of about 50 people or less
- • Reciprocal sharing norm
- • Prod no food themselves
- • Exploit their environment
- • Depends more on gathering of plant food than hunting
- • Follow seasonal changes...if necessary
- • Lots of leisure time
- • Good health
- • 2 1/2 hours a day …work…prep and hunt
- • 1 day gathering + food for 3 days
- • Small flexible camps composed mostly of ki
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Example of Hunters and Gathers
- Western Shoshone
- • Nev. West Utah, Oregon
- • Food
- • Meat- deer, antelope, small mammals…rabbits
- • Plants- roots, seeds, berries, pine nuts
- • Most of the year they roam the dry valley and slopes in small bands of a few nuclear families…sometimes gather in larger group to hunt antelope or rabbit…drive them into corrals or nets
- • In the fall…pinion nuts…on mts ripen.. travel to best place for pinion nuts…meet with other small
- bands to gather the nuts...lots of food
- !Kung
- • Kalahari Dessert
- • 100 species of plants…nuts, fruits, berries, melons, roots, greenery
- • 50 kind of animals…mammals, birds, reptiles
- • Dry season and wet season
- • Average work week
- – Men… 22/36 hours
- – Women ….13 hours
- Old and young...no work…40%...60% do work
- Eat 2,355 calories a day
- Health…few infections…intestinal parasites, bacterial infections or dietary deficiencies…no modern diseases...heart
- Today
- • Foragers live in the marginal areas of the world…have been forced out of their on plentiful land by others or government.
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Pastoralism
- 10,000 began to domesticate animals and plants
- Heard domesticated animals…sheep, goats (SW Asia), cattle (E. Africa), camels (N. Africa), yaks( C. Asia), caribou and reindeer (sub artic).
- • Usually in areas where it is difficult to grow crops…esp. using pre-industrial methods
- • Terrain is usually hilly, rocky, and dry or the water/ rain supply is unreliable
- • Too cold to grow plants and too short a growing season.
- • This type of subsistence allows people to indirectly exploit resources that they cannot otherwise use.
- • Humans cannot digest grasses, shrubs…so the animals eat this and the people eat some of the products of the animals…10% rule
- • Pastoralist are by necessity mobile...travel to find food for herd…nomadic – all move with the animals…transhumant – men and/or boys take animals to different areas to pasture...usually up to different altitudes
- • Regulate access to pasture land through (patrilineal) kin groups
- • Over see herd mgt
- • Key to success is herd growth w/out over taxing the land...balance present need over future herd prod…eat meat now...none later
- • Usually do not live on only products from their animals
- – Farm some foods
- – Trade with neighbors
- – Sell animals, meat, hides, wool, mild, cheese and other prod from animals
- – Use animals as pack animals for trade long distances
- • Farmers can prod more food then pastoralist and thus took over the best lands to cultivate…10 % rule
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10% rule
- • Photosynthesis is base of ecosystem (except deep ocean)
- • In the food chain:
- • Herbivores.....eating plants they get 90 % of the energy directly
- • Carnivores…eat herbivores and only 10% of the energy that was in the plants the herbs ate…same with people…when we eat meat only get 10% of the energy the animal got from it’s food
- • Not most prod way to use land
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Horticulture
- • Farming using simple tools...digging stick...dry farming no irrigation…only rain and snow…human power only
- • Fields lie fallow for up to 20 years then are planted again
- • Extensive agriculture = horticulture
- • Supports less pop density…150 people per square mile
- • Some are sedentary…villages 100 to 1000 people
- • Some move when they have to move fields
- • Grow enough for local group …but no surplus to trade
- • Grow several crops the horticulturalist three:
- – Corn
- – Beans
- – Squash
- • Supplement by hunting, fishing, domestic animals ( goats, pigs, chickens sometimes cattle)
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What is Slash and burn or Swidden
- • Typical form of horticulture done in tropical forests...but in other places as well
- • Fell trees, burn what’s left, ashes become fertilizer
- • Fields can be used from 1 to 5 years then will not grow …lie fallow for up to 20 years
- • Eventually forest will not grow back and land becomes grasslands
- • Slash and burn is inefficient and ecologically destructive
- • However, logging and agri-business is mainly responsible for disappearance of tropical forests…tropical woods
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Example of Horticulture
- Hopi
- • Maize, beans and squash the horticuralist three
- • Combine with domestic animals
- • Clan owns the land individual do not own land
- • They plant along rivers where plants roots can get water
- • Like most horticulturalist they stagger planting times so if some plants are killed by frost others may
- survive. And they plant is several areas…flood plane and upland.
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Agriculture
- • Intensive agriculture
- • Land permanently cultivated
- • Plow, draft animals
- • Irrigation…terracing
- • Natural fertilizer
- • Supports a higher level of pop density…5, 10 or 20 times than hort...this may be only advantage
- • More food because
- – More planting and harvesting
- – Better prep—tilling the soil
- – Better control of water…irrigation
- – Removal of weeds
- – Added nutrients/fertilizer
- • More work for humans
- • Outlay of capitol
- • Women’s role changes...more household duties and more work to prepare food
- • Size and permanence of villages grow…100’s or residents
- • Right to land is more defined owner ship is a family or a kin group
- • Prod more food per unit of land and per hour of labor than does horticulture
- • Because a single worker can produce more food than the family needs…
- • Surplus...for the first time
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What does Agriculture surplus support?
- Surplus supports
- • Specialization of labor:
- • Rulers
- • Military
- • Priests
- • Aristocrats
- • Traders
- • Craft specialist
- This leads to
- • Writing
- • Metallurgy
- • Monumental architecture
- • Cities
- • Great religious traditions
- • Great artistic traditions
- • Agriculture spawned states, government, bureaucracy and class distinctions
- • Is associated with sedentary villages
- • The rise of city and states
- • Occupational diversity
- • Social stratification
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Social stratification in Agriculture
- Peasants
- • Peasants are individuals in an agricultural society that farm for family use only...not for market...on land they lease for the owner. They pay the owner part of the crop.
- • Family members work the farm and may hire help
- • Most have other part-time jobs
- • State requires taxes
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Agricultural Technology and Energy Source
- • Horticulturalist…extensive agriculture
- – Hand tools powered by humans
- Agriculture…intensive agriculture
- – animal powered, plow, irrigation made by humans
- – crops harvested semi-annually, annually or biannually…thus land use in intensive
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Industrialism
- • Mechanized Agriculture or Agriculture in the Industrial or Age...Agri-business
- – High tech...powered by fossil fuels
- – Very intensive use of the land …it is always under cultivation
- • Brought the rise of:
- – Bureaucracy
- – Farming to sell produce…agri-business
- – Wage labor
- • Increased pop growth
- • Consumption of natural resources…esp. energy
- • International expansion
- • Occupational specialization
- • Change in subsistence strategies…wage labor… is the only thing most have to sell
- • Needs a specialized work force that are skilled, mobile and ready to move when necessary
- • based on the idea that consumption must always be expanded and material standards of living should also increase
- • Always has at least two classes
- – Laborer…lager
- – Owners…smallest
- – Often Management…small
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Global Economy with industrialism
- Global Economy
- • Global system of exchange between suppliers of raw materials and those who manufacture products
- • Created significant world wide inequalities…haves and the have not’s
- Global Economy Ripple Effect
- • Oil
- • Global industries
- • Cost of food
- • Degrading ecology and global warming
- • Tropical forests…strip mining...nuclear waste
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What is Colonialism?
- • …The active possession of foreign territory and the maintenance of political domination over that territory often for economic gain.
- • Forced labor…/slavery/ cash tax…..must work for colonizer to get cash
- • Most European countries were involved in colonialism…UK was really good at it
- • British Empire…
- • height of its power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
- • empire comprised about one quarter of the world's land area and population
- • territories on every continent, including the British Isles, British North America, British West
- Indies, British Guiana, British West Africa, British East Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
- • USA…Indians…Guam…Puerto Rico…Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands(Micronesia…Pohnpei)…Cuba…Philippines…American Samoa…US Virgin Islands…Hawaii
- • Superior attitude of the colonizers toward the people of the colonized countries lead to racism. We are better because have technological advances…a written language…can read…believe in the one true God…are more civilized…cover our bodies with clothing……….
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What is british ideas about racism?
- • ranked differences that were inherited (Racialism)
- • less moral/ negative personality characteristics
- • Felt morally, culturally, intellectually & spiritually superior to natives
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What are 3 types of racism?
- • Systematic Racism…ranked differences, inherited qualities and relationship between outer (physical) characteristics and inner qualities (morals and values)
- • Remember Racialism?
- • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vAfXNzXueE
- • Conflict Racism…the colonized people are considered dangerous savages, evil enemies and shrewd warriors
- • Paternalistic Racism…a condescending attitude that considers the colonized people to be childlike, charming primitives who are unable to care for themselves
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What is the Nobel Savage?
- • The Noble Savage is a construct of European and America idealism to lessen their guilt in their
- actions to demean other human beings
- • The Noble Savage was primal humans…the human being of nature who lived according to natural law, thought according to natural reason, and understood God and creation by way of natural religion.
- • He/She acquired all he/she knew via sense perception, the only things that were real for him/her were those that were visible and evident to the senses.
- • He/She desired nothing beyond the necessities of life, acquired from nature without work (hunting and gathering are not work?)
- • The image and concept of the Nobel Savage is still with us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R-FZsysQNw
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Colonialism and culture change
- • As bad as slavery and cash taxes were the more powerful forces of change and assimilation were “progress” via education and consumerism.
- • Education separated children from their families, community and traditions and thereby undermined traditional values, language, lifeways, their belief system and personal appearance (hair and clothing)
- • Traditional ways and beliefs were ridiculed and devalued by the supervising adults
- • Consumerism
- • Changed diet...new foods…grew used to the new tastes and liked them
- • They began to dress like their colonizers.
- • Therefore, needed money to buy the food and clothes…could no longer “live off the land”
- • In addition, there often was a systematic or governmental take over of the indigenous peoples land.
- • Depopulation …disease (small pox), forced labor…some die…loss of ability to get traditional foods and taxes all facilitated the dependency of indigenous peoples on the colonizers.
- • Indigenous resistance…Revitalization Religions, American Indian Movement,
- • Indigenous Arts
- • Myth of Africa…Dark animalistic...cannibalism…
- • superstitious…horrifying
- • San Bushmen…depicted as child-like, innocent…primitive…natural trackers…Num Tchi video
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McDonalds and Culture
- • McDonalds
- • Unfamiliar food can be a
- cause of culture shock
- • Eating is always a social
- event
- • So how did Mickey D’s make it in other countries…esp. China
- • Same menu...little variation
- – India …vegetable McNuggets and lamb Maharaja Mac
- Success in clean toilets and food prep areas
- Timing…new middle class …youth culture on rise …government eased controls on foreign businesses
- Cheaper than other similar restaurants
- • Aunt and Uncle McDonald …
- • Greeter…know kids birthdays…cards…visit at school…community involvement…same for one child program
- • Eating there is evidence of families affluence …progressive values…is used for family rituals and special events
- • This is marketing strategy to become part of community
- • Other places
- • Serves as a:
- • Gathering place for women
- • Place for young people to hang out
- • Same and different functions in other countries
- Koreans are not as receptive a Chinese…see it as a symbol of culture
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