Chapter 3

Question 1

Who is Ibn Khaldun?

Answer 1

• A muslim scholar (1332-1406)
• Contributed a multi-volume history published in Arabic in 1377.
• His history has been considered the first major work in cultural anthropology, its significance can be judged from the fact that is anticipated many of the conclusions European Scholars would reach only 400-500 years later.
• “Reason” is a distinguishing factor of humans

Question 2

Who is John Locke?

Answer 2

• English political philosopher
• laid the groundwork for Englands policy of displacement in North America in his 1669 work “The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina”.
• Provided the ideological basis for which English colonies could remove Indians from their lands for the benefit of white settlers.
• Tabula rosa= empty cabinet

Question 3

Describe tabula rasa

Answer 3

• Latin for “blank slate”
• Locke argues that the mind at birth is an empty cabinet which contain no pre-existing thoughts or values. This void is filled over the individuals lifetime as he acquire knowledge.

Question 4

Define Comparative Method

Answer 4

• The assumption that contemporary “primitive” societies represent the early stages of cultural evolution.
• Can look and compare everyone and determine where they are on the notion of progress (arrow)

Question 5

Who is Jean Jacques Rousseau?

Answer 5

• believed societies like those of native Americans were represented by the “noble savage” a kind of honest humanity that was lost amidst the pretensions of civilized Europeans. Rousseau tended to romanticize the savage and decry the civilized.
• were better off than the “civilized” and their bad habits learned in the cities.

Question 6

Who is Charles de Montequieu?

Answer 6

• 1689-1755
• he rejected the assumption of social evolution in favor of a theory directly relating human behavior to the effects of the physical environment.
• Somewhat of a literal reading of Locke regarding the influence of the environment on behavior.
• Claimed that geography and climate directly influence human temperament, leading to different legal systems.
• Aspects of culture could not be understood in isolation, but only in context.

Question 7

Who is Johann Gottfried von Herder?

Answer 7

• 1744-1803
• There is only one species of man throughout the whole earth.
• One of the first to propose the relationship between language and the world view that was later formalized as the Sapir-Whore hypothesis.
• Rejected the belief that any one nation or people could claim superiority over others.

Question 8

Describe Degenerationism

Answer 8

• Because all people were assumed to have been civilized before the construction of the Tower of Babel, fundamentalists argues for the doctrine of degernationism (that contemporary primitives had degenerated to their present state from an earlier condition in civilization).
• This belief was incompatible with an evolutionary view of historical progress.

Question 9

Who is Auguste Comte?

Answer 9

• 1798-1857
• Wrote the novel “System of Positive Policy”
• Believed the humanity had progressed through theological and Metaphysical stages and was now entering a positivistic stage all of which were defined with reference to French history.
• The theological phase was seen preceding the Enlightenment in which society’s restrictions upon humanity were referenced to god
• The metaphysical phase, referred to the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789.
• Coined the term positivism

Question 10

Describe Mercantilism

Answer 10

An economic system that dominated in Europe during the decay of feudalism to unify and increase the power and monetary wealth of a nation by a strict government regulation of the entire national economy