Chapter 11 Flashcards
Describe Materialist Base
- Cultural materialism is an anthropological research orientation
- Leslie White and Julian Steward and their theories of cultural evolution and cultural ecology were instrumental in the reemergence of evolutionist theories of culture in the 20th century and Harris took inspiration from them in formulating cultural materialism.
- It all matters
- Production, consumtion and distribution (triangle of economics
Describe Possibilism
Kroeber characterized the relationship between culture and environment as possibilities
Describe Culture area and food area
The environment sets broad limits on cultural possibilities and does not directly determine the traits that will develop. Ex:// maize cultivation was restricted to American Indian groups living where there was a summer season of at least one month and adequate precipitation. Maize was thus able to diffuse form Mexico to the Southwest, but not to California, where sufficient water did not exist. Food Area: there is some causal relationship between a geographical region, the dominant food sources within it, and the cultural practices that develop there.
Describe the Theory of cultural ecology
cultural practices provide people with the means of adapting to the environment. Cultural ecology distinguishes different kinds of sociocultural systems and institutions, it recognizes both cooperation and competition as processes of interaction, and it postulates that environmental adaptations depend on the technology, needs and structure and on the nature of the environment. Includes analysis of adaptation of the social environment.
Describe Culture Core
Also developed by Julian Steward, consisting of those cultural practices most closely related to meeting the needs of a population.
Describe totalizing discourse:
Post modernists, cultural evolution represents the kind of “totalizing discourse” that they consider part of the offensive legacy of science in anthropology.
-Essentially the same as grand-narratives
Who is Julian Steward:
(1902-1972) a materialist pioneer in anthropology, was well aware of the dangers of being directly associated with Marxist thought. Theorized Cultural ecology as well as culture core. Re-introduced social evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology.
FROM SLIDES
Proposed that cultures in similar environments would tend to follow the same developmental sequences and formulate similar responses to their environmental challenges.Developed concept of the cultural core to describe the cultural features closely associated with subsistence practices.Cultures that shared similar core features belonged to the same cultural type.He theorized multilinear evolution studied through cultural ecology – the cultural adaptations invented by human beings to meet the challenges posed by their environments.
Who is George Peter Murdock?
An individual at Yale University who became an FBI informer and reported to the agency on colleagues whom they suspected of leftist learning’s. Murdock corresponded with J Edgar Hoover to name 12 anthropologists that he believed were communists.
FROM THE SLIDES
-Interested in large scale cross-cultural comparisons using statistical testing of hypotheses..Created the HRAF (Human Relations Area Files), a huge ethnographic data bank on over a thousand societies indexed according to standardized categories.Critique of his work: ethnographic data is taken out of context and “coded” (put in taxonomies) where very different situations and practices might be coded together. No methodological consistency.Critique of his academic activities: turned suspected commie Anthros over to the FBI for investigation.
Who is Alfred Kroeber?
Disputed the idea that there was consistent association between region and culture type, pointing out that many different kinds of cultures were found within a single region. Also argued that any similarities between such cultures were due to diffusion rather than a direct result of the environment.
Who is Leslie White?
Embraced Marxism and delivered a paper entitled “An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution” In it, he praised Soviet union and predicted that the then-developing Great Depression in the West would Lead to the collapse of Capitalism.
FROM SLIDES
-Formulated a general evolutionary theory of culture using a quantifiable, universal standard of measurement of complexity.He separated culture into three analytical levels: technological, sociological, and ideological.Technology, he believed, was the key to complexity.Heavily influenced by Marx.Understood anthropology as a branch of natural science.
“Culture area” concept critiques.
Dealt with the same core
What were the Key components of Stewards Culture?
-Direct challenge and refutation of historical particularismConcerned with discovering general laws of culture (nomothetic)Interested in specific interrelations among technology, environment, and society.Saw secondary features as virtually unrelated to the core.
What was Whites measure of Complexity?
-For White the neo-Marxist struggle is for increased control of energy and increased efficiency of energy usage.“Culture develops when the amount of energy harnessed by man per capita per year is increased; or as the efficiency of the technological means of putting his energy to work is increased; or, as both factors simultaneously increased.”
Key points of Whites Culturology
-Treated cultural phenomena as obeying their own laws, distinct from human biology or psychology (super-organic).Written in scientific writing conventions, including formulas (that, in the end, could not be operationalized)Teleological vision of evolution – human control of the environment
