Anthropology 200 Lecture 5.1

1
Anthropology 200Lecture 5.1

• January 30, 2006

2

• Website for Anthropology 200
• http//toby.library.ubc.ca/ereserve/er-coursepage.
  cfm?id2182
• E-mail contact
• Anthropology 200 Teaching Assistant,
  Stephen s_robbins_at_telus.net

3
Cultural Ecologists

• Schools reacting to each other
• Diffusionists and S-Fs to Evolutionists
• Cultural Ecologists to Structural Functionalists
• Structural-Functionalists
• Culture is knowable, integrated, functional
• Anti-evolutionist, interested in function, not
  progress
• Study of society as key sum of integrated parts,
  like an organism
• System of human interactions--eg.kinship--not
  individuals, key
• Society as set of functionally integrated parts
  search for nomothetic principles/general laws
  governing human society
• Example Radcliffe-Browns work on BaThonga in
  Mozambique

4
Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown

• Major differences
• Radcliffe-Brown focused on SYSTEM
• Malinowski and focus on Individual psychological
  functionalism, and long-term fieldwork
• Example Magic
• Malinowski on Trobriand Islanders
• R-Brown--on Andaman Islanders (1922)
• Similarities
• Social institutions, like magic, integrated
  within system

Hieronymus Bosch, The Magician (1475)
Magic and individuals psychological need to
understand world vs.
Magic as serving SOCIAL function NOT b/c of
individual needs
5
1950s and 1960s, Contesting Theory

• Structural Functionalists falter
• S-F w/questionable explanatory power
• How explain colonial struggles worldwide--India,
  Africa, SE Asia, North America?
• No mechanisms of change stuck in ethnographic
  present
• Example Radcliffe-Browns African Systems of
  Kinship and Marriage (1950)
• Writes that book is for Europeans
• So Europeans will know and understand the
  people who will benefit
• "This book will be read not only by
  anthropologists, but by some of those who are
  responsible for formulating or carrying out
  policies of colonial government in the African
  continent
• Culture NOT merely a "system", not just
  functional
• CONFLICT in the world, Change
• Malinowski (1938) "Main presuppositions of
  functionalism in its simple form break down.

6
Cultural Ecology/NeoEvolutionists

• Cultural Ecology
• focus on Culture and relationship btn processes
  in society environment
• Key Ideas
• Reinstating theory at core of discipline
• Elements of Evolutionist approach, but
  Multi-linear evolution
• Like Structural-functionalists, not interested in
  individuals opposed to psychological
  anthropology (Personality and Culture)
• Unlike Structural-Functionalists
• culture, not social system focal Culture NOT
  viewed as an organism
• Diachronic process, not synchronic systems as
  focus
• Especially change, how it happens, and its
  origins central
• DIACHRONIC process--change over time key

7
Cultural Ecologists and Culture

• Concept of Culture and key terms
• linked to ecology, integration of "parts" of
  culture
• Culture influenced by technology, economics,
  environment, ALSO vice versa
• Core and Periphery core enduring, causal
  periphery as accidental, extra
• Core social organization, politics, religion,
  influenced by techno-environment
• Periphery Creative practices, "ideosyncratic
  behavior not influenced by environment directly
• Cultural Traits created as cultural adaptations
  to environ.
• NOT evolutionary stages THUS different from
  Unilineal evolutionists
• Example Patrilineal band and matrilineal band
• as a type similar techno-environmental
  adaptation
• similar complex of elements b/c similar use of
  environment by all groups

8
Cultural EcologistsTheory and Classification

• Universal Laws
• Multi-linear evolution as key no universal
  stages of cultural development
• Regularity of social change
• Cultural types with cross-cultural variation
• Classification
• Concept of "Cultural Traits"/Integration of parts
  of Culture
• Examples of types Patrilineal band or
  matrilineal band
• patrilineal band x-culturally, associated w/
  similar elements of culture
• Julian Steward argues similar elements reoccur
  together x-culturally
• LINK btn "cultural traits, eg. Yanomami of
  Brazil and Venezuela

9
Cultural EcologyChange, Methods, Integration

• Change
• Technology, culture itself changes
• Adaptation KEY w/ technology, culture can ADAPT
  to new circumstances
• technology w/ environment results in change
• Methods
• Analysis of methods of subsistence in the
  environment
• Analysis of Patterns of human behavior in rel. to
  subsistence practices
• Understand relationship of subsistence/production
  practices to other elements---kinship, property
  relations, etc. ---of culture
• Integration of Parts
• NOT viewed as organism----Ecology not determining
  culture

10
Cultural Ecology--Major Figures

• Major figures
• Julian Steward
• Leslie White
• Julian Steward
• Intellectual trajectory
• Cultural Ecology/Neo-Evolutionist
• Boas' intellectual grandson--undergraduate
  training
• Then turns to the physical environment relation
  to culture
• Fieldwork
• Including among Carrier Indians of BC
• Interests
• Ecology, population density, band size and
  marriage rules for H/G
• Sought THEORY to explain primary elements of
  social organization
• cross-cultural study of industrialization and
  urbanization
• The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands
  (1936)
• Contemporary change in traditional societies
  (1967)

11
Stewards Contributions

• Ideas/Reactions
• S-F and Historical Particularists as problematic
  assumptions of 1920s-1930s critiqued
• each culture NOT distinct and cultures can be
  governed by common set of rules theory can
  describe human societies x-culturally
• Evolutionism is important cannot discard
• Refocused discipline on evolution
• But retained the "S" in the study of Cultures
• Cultural evolution from multi-linear perspective

12
Major figuresLeslie White

• Intellectual Context
• Post-WWII, few supporting evolutionary theory of
  Spencer, Morgan and Tylor---Evolutionists
• University of Chicago, trained as Boasian
  switched to Evolutionist perspective
• Move to U of Michigan replaces Julian Steward
• Ideas
• Culturology or Science of culture
• Liked "Grand theory, explaining culture over
  stretches of time and space
• work on Lewis Henry Morgan

13
Leslie WhiteContributions

• Reintroduced evolutionary thinking more than
  Steward
• Embraced theory of evolution in regard to culture
• No concern for multiple cultures and unique
  development
• Unlike other Neo-evolutionists (like Steward),
  posited
• Evolutionprogress
• Theories rest on unilineal evolution can
  precisely measure advances
• Cultural advances increases in amount
  energy/capita/year
• OR the more Energy a society can Harness, the
  more it advances
• Energy multiplied by Technology (efficiency of
  Tools) Culture
• E x T C

14
Marvin Harris

• Rel. btn Cultural Ecology and Cultural
  Materialism
• Focus on material elements ecology central
• React to lack of evolutionist perspective for 50
  yrs
• Seek nomothetic principles in anthropology
• Publications
• Patterns of Race in the Americas (1964)
• The Rise of Anthropological Theory(1968)
• Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches (1974)
• Defining Feature
• focusing on material conditions
• Understand material conditions first, then all
  else vulgar materialist?

3-part Cake of Culture
15
Marvin Harris--Contributions

• Contributions
• Repopularized materialist approach
• Morgan's material analysis of society
• Unlike Morgan, not focused on stages of unilinear
  evolution
• Like Morgan, uses Comparative Method
• What seems to be due to RITUAL or BELIEF system
  --due to material explanation
• Method -etic perspective privileged over -emic
• Like Steward and White, interested in rel. btn
  ecology and culture Like Steward, interested in
  process---mutual interaction btn ecology and
  culture
• Cultural materialism explored
• In Cows,Pigs,Wars, Witches argues on cultural
  materialism
• Hinduism and cows
• Aztecs and cannibalism

16
New Directions in Ecological Approaches?

• Universal laws?
• Move away from Grand Theory
• models not be applied x-culturally w/ one "Motor"
  for explanation
• Some "middle-range" theory
• controlled comparison w/ similar
  institutions/cultural traits---as Steward
  suggested
• Lots of attn to particular ethnographic cases and
  local ecology
• Change
• Not like S-F models or in cultural ecology
• PEOPLE much more central, and influencing
  environment, and change
• Local history part of analysis----NOT mechanical
  interaction of "Environment" and "Culture"
• Examples Keith Bassos, Paul Nadasdys work

17
New Directions in Ecology

• Place and Landscape
• Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places Landscape and
  Language Among the Western Apache (1996)
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
• Paul Nadasdy, Hunters and Bureaucrats Power,
  Knowledge, and Aboriginal State Relations in
  Southwest Yukon (2003)
• Indigenous Systems of Knowledge
• Felice Wyndham