Lec 2 Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is anthropology?
Anthropology studies humans and culture, building a tool kit for a way of thinking. It is a generous, open-eded, and comparative critical inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life.
Ethnography
Ethnography (what anthropologists write) is, in turn, is based on fieldwork
What do anthropologists do?
“If you want to understand what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do. Above all else, what anthropologists do is ethnography” (Monaghan and Just 2000, 13)
Legacies of Violence and In Search of Respect are…
ethnographies (not novels)
What does ethnography/fieldwork accomplish?
Culture from “the native’s point of view” (Malinowski; Geertz)
Context for knowledge about culture
Philosophers and various explorers as “proto-anthropologists”
proto means early
Victorian anthropology
(Tylor and Frazer): evolutionary, hierarchy of “civilization” (based on Darwin)
- Comparative, second-hand accounts
- Anténor Firmin as noteworthy exception
Cultural Evolution
Culture is acquainted with civilization (Tyler and fraiser-he was thinking of Victorian England) Cultural evolution
Frasier was into religion, evolution of beliefs. Humans started out as magical thinkers (talking animals), to religious thinking, to scientific thought.
“Armchair anthropology”
Armchair anthropologists are people who never left their offices, they are made fun of. Basically no real fieldwork
Malinowski “On the Verandah”
First person to do fieldwork, he didn’t set out to though. They didn’t spend time with the people they wanted to write about but they would live with colonial officials and watch people. HE was there but didn’t actually do anything.
Malinowski “Off the Verandah”
Here he is actually interacting wit the natives. He was stranded there as WW1 started and became an enemy of state to Britain as he was polish. He stayed for two years and was the first person to do fieldwork and participant observation (a sub topic of fieldwork). You participate in peoples life firsthand.
Malinowski: Participant Observation
He participates but also observes, writing notes after. You never go completely native, but participate but also be out of things. He learned the natives point of view through this. He stressed the need to learn language and understand the day to day life. One of the two fathers of anthropology.
Franz Boas (“He translated the world’s gestures”)
The second father of anthropology. He was super famous for bringing the natives point of view to other cultures.
Historical Particularism
They need to be studied realistically and not ranked, he was writing against Tyler and fraiser (Victorian anthropology).Each culture has its own particular history which has brought to where it is. (historical particularism) All cultures are analytically equal and significant.
Cultural Relativism versus Ethnocentrism
Cultural relativism vs ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism is the idea that as anthologists we must interpret specific beliefs and practices relative to that context, you have to judge it from the natives perspective. Ethnocentrism is when you judge, its the opposite. Its when you hold your beliefs as right above those of others. Cultural relativism is the goal.
Relativist Fallacy
Relativist Fallacy (same idea as moral relativism)
Fieldwork
The switch to fieldwork meant—first-hand knowledge; holistic knowledge; comparative, but not hierarchical, approach to culture
What is culture?
Working definition: shared patterns of learned behaviour
Or: “culture is the system of meanings about the nature of experience that is shared by a people and passed from one generation to another.” (SA p. 6)
culture as a lens for experience
Boas- All human beings have certain experiences they have to deal with ex eating, dying, etc. Without the lens of culture, its just stuff.
Two important notes about culture
Culture is not a “thing”, it is a concept. It is a tool for anthropologists to think about how human beliefs, values, logics, worldviews, behaviours, etc., are patterned and meaningful.
It is no longer possible (if it ever was) to think cultures as entirely bounded and separate. In an ever-globalizing world, cultures come into contact with and shape each other
Contemporary consensus about culture:
Culture is learned and taught
Culture is shared, yet contested
Culture is symbolic and material
No culture is pristine/untouched/uncontacted
The penetration of local communities by global culture does not dooms local cultural traditions to extinction.
Interpreting cultures: The Balinese Cockfight
Cultures are texts
The cockfight is a story the Balinese tell themselves about themselves
Cockfights don’t change status, but they tell a story about status and prestige
Fieldwork and ethnography are what make anthropology
anthropological
Interpreting texts as culture: what about power?
Who are the Balinese? Who decided the cockfight is the most important text? Who is left out of this picture?
Compare to the idea of hockey as a “text” of Canadian culture:
Who plays hockey? Who doesn’t?
Who are the tellers of this “story”? Who is excluded?
Think of the Don Cherry’s firing last fall: how might we read this as uniquely Canadian cultural text?
