Anthropological Concepts

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Anthropological Concepts
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Fundamental Concepts Principles
Holism Function Relativism Comparison Structure Ad
aptation Culture
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Holism

• the whole picture, all facets of human life
  interrelated
• small scale vs. large scale societies
• holism its boundedness

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Function

• Important proposition for holistic perspective
• Social institutions, behavior, cultural logic
  operate to satisfy human needs have a function
• Primary secondary needs
• Function within a total system
• Integrated system equilibrium

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Ethnographic Example Holism and Function

• The Tsembaga of PNG their Pigs
• Pigs seldom eaten, serve other functions, keep
  residence clean, prepare soil for planting
• Pigs require minimum maintenance
• Pig herds grow large, not enough tubers, feed
  human food, intrude on garden crops, invade
  neighbors gardens feuds
• people move distance themselves (carrying
  capacity of the land)
• Elaborate ritual system - pig meat redistributed,
  pig herds decreased, lessen conflict, needed
  protein into diet, lubricate social relations

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The Tsembaga Model
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The Tsembaga Model
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Relativism

• philosophical relativism
• response to ethnocentrism
• methodological relativism
• linked to holism
• dilemmas of relativism
• relativism comparison
• examples
• Universal human rights
• Female circumcision

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Comparison

• Cross-cultural comparison the comparative
  approach
• Self-Other (us and them)

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STRUCTURE(S)/STRUCTURAL TYPES

• systems of relationships, organization, forms of
  associations
• standardized modes of behavior
• structure agency

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Adaptation

• core concept of evolutionary perspective
• any physical behavioral characteristic that
  enhances the ability to pass on ones genes or
  the genes of ones kin to the next generation
  (adaptive strategies)
• process organisms undergo to achieve a beneficial
  adjustment to an available environment and the
  results of the process
• in cultural systems people make decisions about
  change
• genetic evolution not subject to conscious choice
• Malaria in Africa

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Culture and Adaptation

• Humans have adapted by manipulating environments
  through cultural means
• All cultures change and adapt over time. Cultural
  adaptation serves to meets the basic needs of a
  cultural group for food and shelter, procreation,
  and social order.
• Humans have come to depend more and more on
  cultural adaptation
• What is adaptive in one context may be seriously
  maladaptive in another

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Culture

• Humans are animals with a difference - make
  culture
• humans organize life into groups - society
• animals organize life into groups - society
• habitual activities, imprinted relationships
• distinction between culture society
• Society is distinguished from culture in that
  society generally refers to the community while
  culture generally refers to the systems of meaning

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Humans, Other Primates, Adaptation, and Culture

• primates genetics, sex partners, natural
  selection behaviour
• food getting, adaptation, environment, technology
• Competition vs. co-operation

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Enculturation

• enculturation is the difference -- common
  cultural perspective transmitted through learning
• "a partly conscious and partly unconscious
  learning experience whereby the older generation
  invites, induces, and compels the younger
  generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking
  and behaving" (Marvin Harris)

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The Culture Concept A Short History

• Latin cultura -- cultivation or tending
  (agricultural)
• civility civilization (17th century)
• 18th century beginning of the universal histories
  descriptions of "secular" processes of the
  human condition
• folk cultures

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Diverse Definitions of Culture

• Topical Culture consists of everything on a
  list of topics, or categories, such as social
  organization, religion, or economy
• Historical Culture is social heritage, or
  tradition, or custom that is passed on to future
  generations
• Behavioural Culture is shared, learned human
  behaviour, a way of life
• Normative Culture is ideals, values, or rules
  for living
• Functional Culture is the way humans solve
  problems of adapting to the environment or living
  together
• Mental Culture is a complex of ideas, or
  learned habits, that inhibit impulses and
  distinguish people from animals
• Structural Culture consists of patterned and
  interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviours
• Symbolic Culture is based on arbitrarily
  assigned meanings that are shared by a society

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ANTHROPOLOGY THE CULTURE CONCEPT

• (19th cent.) E.B. Tylor - "culture... is that
  complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
  arts, morals, law, custom, and any other
  capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
  member of society.

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Clifford Geertz on Culture

• (20th cent.) Geertz - "culture as... the fabric
  of meaning in terms of which humans interpret
  their experience and guide their actions... "man
  is an animal suspended in webs of significance he
  himself has spun, I take culture to be those
  webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not
  an experimental science in search of law but an
  interpretive one in search of meaning."

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Culture in the Making

• Richard Fox (20th cent.)
• culture is in a constant state of
  becoming/in-the-making
• unitary set of rules meanings continually are
  in-the-making through oppositions struggles
  among groups, where groups themselves the rules
  that regulate their interactions only develop in
  the process of ongoing social relations
• culture always is, but it has always just become
  so

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Features of Culture

• Learned
• Shared
• Habitualized
• Patterned, structured
• Adaptive
• Historically Charged
• Big C or little c
• Culture is open, receptive

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Metaphors of Culture (and Society)

• Culture/society as an organism
• Culture/society as an economy
• Culture/society as a system
• Culture/society as a symbol
• Culture/society as fractal
• Other metaphors
• As pattern, as fabric, shreds patches
• Vast instrumentality
• As text