ANTH202 Final Review Flashcards.xlsx - Sheet1
(38 cards)
Space and Place
The distinction of space versus place is one that brings us back to the distinction between nature and culture. Space is almost viewed as a natural concept, one that simply exists. To talk about something as a space is typically somewhat scientific, disinterested, and unemotional. Places, to contrast, are treated as fluid ideas created by people; they are the counterpart to culture in this comparison. A place is not simply a collection of physical matter, but the attitudes and preconceptions associated with it. McGill University could be though of as a space by giving it a list of properties like its address, for example, while it could also be conceptualized as a place by referring to the lineage of world-class research that has occured here over the years, including famous scientists like Rutherford.
“Wisdom sits in Places”
Wisdom sits in Places is the title of a reading by Keith Basso that we did in class, examining the conceptualization and importance of location in the culture of the Apache people in the southwest USA. Among the Apache, places are of great importance, as they often have traditional oral fables associated with them that exist to pass traditional wisdom and knowledge from one generation to the next. For example, in the story, one place was called “Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills”, and there was a story associated with it about a foolish man called Old Man Owl, who was continually made a fool of by two sisters. In speech, the place was referenced when another person performed a foolish action, often comparing them to Old Man Owl, e.g. “So you’ve come back from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills?”.
The Social Production of Space
This is a concept created by French marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who used it to examine power dynamics and the class struggle. According to Lefebvre, whoever had the power to decree certain spaces as used for certain purposes wielded enormous power over society. For example, the government has the power to make certain areas smoking and certain areas non-smoking through legislation, and to enforce their ideas about usage of space through policing. The average person cannot decide to declare a certain area as a smoking area with any success, however. Similarly, private land owned by big businesses or the wealthy can be very tightly controlled.
Myth
A myth is a tale told in a certain culture that seeks to explain something in nature and its origins. They often serve as a moral warning, and can be analyzed as representations of collective thoughts and emotions of a culture. For example, the greek tale of Echo and Narcissus seeks to explain the origins of echos in caves and the narcissus flower around lakes, and it serves as a moral warning against the vice of vanity.
Cosmology
(Almost?) Every culture has a myth of creation, a tale which links the physical and the metaphysical and provides a sense of structure to the world by describing its creation, which is variously described as finished or ongoing. For example, the tale told in the Book of Genesis of how God makes the world in seven days is a creation myth. The concept of the Big Bang can be analyzed as a creation myth as well, providing a scientific cosmological perspective rather than a traditional cultural one.
The Trickster
The trickster is an example of an archetype, which is a type of character that re-appears over and over in many different cultures and stories. Carl Jung theorized that these archetypes were an inherent part of all of our thoughts and psyches, part of the “collective unconscious”. The trickster archetype is a character that often acts as a mischevious fool by tricking other characters in the story, but in doing so can be beneficial in revealing certain unanticipated facts or secret knowledge. An example of the trickster is Loki, the god of mischief in Norse mythology.
Structural Study of Myth
Claude Levi-Strauss introduced a structural system of analysis to the study of myth, where he emphasizes not the content of the story itself or the chronological order of its parts, but the patterns and relations between different parts of the stories and how they link together. By analyzing myths this way, Levi-Strauss hoped to see patterns in groups of myths that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
The Hero’s Journey
The hero’s journey refers to a certain pattern of events (“tropes”) that occur in many different stories in a similar manner, showing structural similarity between many different stories at a basic level. For example, the hero is often called to adventure from a peaceful life, aided by a supernatural force or being, has both a mentor and a less-able helper, and undergoes many trials and temptations along their journey before experiencing a rebirth and trimphing in their quest. Then, they return to their quiet old life, but “nothing will ever be quite the same”. This pattern fits many tales, both modern and ancient, such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Buddha, et cetera.
Rites of Passage
A rite of passage refers to a specific ritual process by which a person is said to be “changed”, or moved from one category to another. For example, coming of age (moving from the category of “child” to “adult”) often involves ceremonies or trials in many cultures, and the trial can be seen as a rite of passage. Rites of passage have been codified by some anthropologists into steps. For example, rites of passage can be viewed as a three step process in which the first step is the separation of the person or group that is to be changed. This can result in the formation of communities due to a sense of separation between these people. The second step is a phase of liminality, when those who are to be changed are caught between two states of being. There may be trials and tests they have to face. Finally, in the third step, they are reincorporated into the community at large, having been changed.
Liminality/Liminal Space
Liminal space refers to transitory space, temporary space, or space that is between two states of being.
“The Edge of the Woods”
The Edge of the Woods is a concept present in Iroquois culture, notably in the story of Iroquois Confederation. The Edge of the Woods was a poorly-defined liminal space that represented the border of Iroquois territory and influence. For example, Europeans and other outsiders would typically be met at the “edge of the woods”.
Making Up People
An idea of Ian Hacking, which examines the power that categories have over us, and the dynamic relationship of influence between categories and the people they define. An example given in the reading is the category of people having multiple personality disorder. This category did not exist prior to about the 1980s, but as soon as the category was defined and accepted by people, many more cases of it were suddenly occuring. In this instance, a “made-up” category of people suddenly turned into a very real group of people, showing the power that categories and labels have over our thinking. In other cases, people’s general thoughts about what people of a certain category should be like can influence how people under that category behave, as is the case with “sterotype threat”, where people accidentally confirm stereotypes about groups they are apart of when reminded of their membership in that group. For example, black students who were forced to fill out a demographic before the SAT survey which asked them their race, gender, etc, did perform worse on the test, which is in line with stereotypes and statistics. However, when the survey was moved to after the test, this effect signficantly lessened.
Nominalism and Realism
These are two theories about the origins of categories. Realism posits that categories are natural things that have always existed, and when we begin to conceptualize them, we are simply giving a name to a pre-existing group of things. Nominalists believe the opposite - they think that categories are culturally invented, and that people we place in a group with one another often have nothing in common other than being in the category we have put them in, due to culturally defined criteria. Hacking proposes a fusion of the two as a third alternative - “dynamic nominalism” in which categories of people can be created, but are also influenced by the people or things in those categories.
Consumption (Tuberculosis)
Before modern medicine, the sufferers of some diseases (for example, tuberculosis) were conceptualized in a certain way. Other diseases were thought to be caused by moral failings, even. Tuberculosis was seen as a “romantic disease”, something that was suffered by artists and others, who would supposedly have heightened emotional sensitivity once infected. It was thought to be a dramatic and tragic, yet also a slow, death. Many famous artists, musicians and poets are noted to have died from consumption in this period, such as Chopin and Keats.
Nationalism
The view of the world as split into nations, with each nation being home to a cohesive society filled with similar citizens (e.g. the French live in France and they believe in liberty, equality and fraternity) is a relatively modern way to view the world. What even makes a nation? (This discussion smacks of dynamic nominalism.) There are countless answers, and none of them will be 100% accepted; many people would answer “shared culture”, but then we get into the issue of what constitutes culture. According to some, culture is traditions, values, foods, and beliefs that are shared by a people, creating a “nation”. However, others would analyze the power structure involved in acknowledgement of nations and argue that the nation is a way to legitimize and rationalize the existence of political states - federal, territorial governments, et cetera.
Legitimacy
A nation’s “legitimacy” can often be called into question, especially since state apparatus can often exert control and hold power over a region in the name of representing the nation. What gives states the right to do so? In older times, power over land and people was often viewed as a divine birthright (the divine right to rule - given to kings by god), but in the modern world, systems of government and popular belief have changed so that this is no longer a suitable explanation. This can be a complicated discussion, especially in sensitive areas like the dominant states of the new world, which have settled over older governments and often taken their land (e.g. Canada formed on First Nations land). In other cases, people who believe themselves part of a separate “nation” may wish to break off from another government, believing authority over them is not proper, warranted, or “legitimate” - as is the case with states like Kosovo, and even Quebec.
Flags
Flags often act as powerful symbols for representing nations. In the United States, the flag is so valued as a symbol of the nation that there are arguments over the legality of destroying or burning an american flag. The flag can also have symbolic imagery or colours on it that represent a nation’s values or culture in another way. For example, flags in much of the arab world will have calligraphic arabic text related to the religion of Islam, or the imagery of the moon and stars, which is a symbol of Islam, since Islam is an important aspect of the culture of these nations. In France, each of the colours on the tricolour flag corresponds to a core french value represented in the motto of France - blue for liberty, white for equality, and red for fraternity.
Rituals for the State
Often, the state has certain procedures and rituals that must be followed not for any practical purpose, but for symbolic purpose. For example, a coronation ceremony would symbolically make a new king, who would then have to be obeyed. The act of coronation does not result in any physical changes, but the title of “king” and the power of the nation is symbolically transferred to the king through the ritual of coronation. A modern parallel of this example would be the inauguration and oath-taking of new heads of state. Other rituals have different purposes - state funerals are not for expressing the personal grief of the people who attend them, but rather to express the grief of the state as a whole regarding the death of an important person.
Imagined Communities
Imagined communities are groups of people that feel connected not due to regular face-to-face contact, but due to other factors and interactions. For example, the nation can be viewed as an “imagined community” because although I don’t have regular face-to-face contact or personal knowledge of people living in Vancouver, we nevertheless still both call ourselves Canadian because we percieve ourselves to have a common set of values. Similarly, communities based on identity, like the LGBT community, can be seen as “imagined”. If one says they are part of “the LGBT community” they don’t mean that they have personal interaction and knowledge of every other person who claims to be a member; they simply mean that they have banded together with an unknown amount of people to fight for the cause of LGBT rights and activism, thus making them a member of this imagined group.
Modernity
Modernity is defined as the shared conceptualization of the world that has emerged around the scientific and industrial revolutions, starting in the 1500s and continuing to today. This definition exists in contrast to “the contemporary”, which is the now, and “the modern”, which is the shared contemporary world. There is much discussion over whether or not systems and concepts have changed significantly in Modernity. For example, has the nature of a person - what they desire, what they value - changed fundamentally in modernity compared to a human of antiquity? What about the world, and its systems? Is business now fundamentally different from private interests before modernity?
Imagination (from Appadurai)
Appadurai is interested in the role that imagination has to play in an increasingly global world. He claims that imagination is no longer mere escapist fantasy or elite past-time, but instead imagination has become an essential social practice, around which entire jobs are centred. Imagination serves as the connecting point between the local *scapes and the global worls of possibilities, and it is the tool through which we all interface with what we percieve as the “global”.
Globalization
Globalization, simply put, is a system of processes that is resulting in the world “getting smaller”. Contact across the globe is now easily accessible and instantaneous thanks to cheap handheld computers (smartphones) and the internet, enabling both personal communications and the worldwide expansion and coordination of business, enabling the operation of multi-national corporations that operate across borders. People’s networks of social knowledge are extending further and further with the advent of technologies like Facebook, where you can be “friends” with hundreds of people, and friends-of-friends with many thousands.
*scapes
Appadurai defines five “scapes” that he sees as the systems that are being influenced the most by globalization. These are the ideoscape, ethnoscape, financescape, technoscapes, and mediascapes. The financescape represents business communities, which are increasingly changing with globalization as multi-national companies become more and more important. Technoscapes are networks of technology, like the cell-phone network in India, the fibre-optic internet system of some American cities, or the underwater copper wires that travel through the sea to link together the continents’ technological (phone and computer) systems. As technology becomes more and more affordable, local technoscapes are increasingly disrupted, enhanced, and interconnected. This enables the disruption of mediascapes and ideoscapes, as the internet becomes more and more accessible and displaces print media (newspapers, books) as the primary place to find news and information. Finally, the ethnoscapes are local conceptualizations of ethnicity and culture that are also spreading across the world and intermixing - multicultural theories of society have gained traction in much of the western world, and ethnic enclaves are popping up - e.g. Chinatowns, in cities all over the world.
The Global and the Local
The global and the local are two conceptualizations of extent and scale. The global often is defined in opposition to the local - that which is not local is global. A local community covers a city, a neighbourhood, or some other space that is small enough to be conceptualized in its entirety by most people. People often feel better connected to communities they think of as local.
