Unit 1 Flashcards
Telos/teology
end, fulfillment, completion. Study of purposiveness, of objects with a view to their aims, intentions.
Progress
According to enlightenment thinkers: immanent in the divine plan, but inherent to human nature. Human condition moving toward a specific destination that could be discerned by reason => spontaneous order: vision of human affairs as harmonious and orderly, tending toward perfection.
Spontaneous order
Society evolved from ‘rude’/’brutal’ to ‘polished’ state spontaneously. Ex: society was not created by design to provide safety and security, but, instead, freedom and rights emerged and evolved out of more primitive forms of tribal and collective association as responses to considered injustices and abusive power.
Modernity
Both historical period and ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms that arose from the Renaissance. Closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, secularization, urbanization and technological and political progress. Sociologically manifested through prevalence of institutions (nation-states), values (reason), philosophical attitudes (man foundation of knowledge).
Modernization theory
- Techno-cosmopolitan
- Revolutionary
- Authoritarian
Societies inevitably change in positive, progressive ways. Western capitalist societies provide model for modernization. Ultimate goal of societies is to evolve from traditional/underdeveloped society to a modern one. Western modernization: created during Cold War, to present capitalist countries as modern. It presented communist countries as underdeveloped. Traditionalism seen as stagnation and prevents modernization.
Alternatives to development
Social evolutionism
Unilineal evolution: savagery => barbarism => civilization. Basic features: ethnocentrism, armchair speculation, unilinear scheme, inevitable progress. Social Darwinism: evolution is a form of progress toward increasingly complex forms. A more developed society will be one characterized by a more elaborate division of labor and social roles than a society at a lower stage of development. Society is subject to the same laws of natural selection.
Ethnographic fieldwork
Very important to collect concrete data and study the behavior and mentality of native cultures. Specifically, intimate aspects of native life, and record the details and tone of behavior in order to understand the true spirit and characteristics of a culture. Study of language also important.
Historical particularism
Opposed to speculative and generalized assumptions of the evolutionists. Basic features: no more centered on one particular culture, fieldwork, emic analysis (insider’s pov), habits and traditions, relativism. Each culture and society should be described and understood on its own terms. Each society has its own unique historical development and must be understood based on its own specific cultural and environmental context, especially its historical process. Boas suggested that the anthropologists of his day performed armchair anthropology insofar as they merely read about cultures but did not go there in person.
Structural functionalism
Fieldwork became the cornerstone of anthropology and its professionalization. It provided this discipline with prestige. Basic features: organic analogy, natural science orientation, functional unity, static and anti-historical analysis, primacy of kinship and familiy. Malinowski: understanding the functions or purposes of cultural practices and social institutions within a society. He believed that every aspect of a culture served a specific purpose in maintaining the stability and equilibrium of a society.
Organic analogy: Like a biological organism, a society is able to maintain its essential processes through the way that the different parts interact. Institutions such as religion, kinship and the economy were the organs and individuals were the cells in this social organism.
Cultural relativism
Understanding and interpreting a culture from its own perspective, without imposing the values and norms of one’s own culture onto it.
Enculturation
The process through which an individual learns about their own culture through exposure and influence from various external sources and forces. Places in which individual is enculturated: schools, businesses, religious groups… Enculturation is essential for transmitting cultural practices and beliefs from one generation to the next, ensuring the continuity of cultural identity and knowledge.
Discourse
A framework through which we see the world.
Foucault: power and knowledge expressed through language, ways of thinking that can be observed in society. Discourse has informative power, enacting reality.
Discourses are contingent, depend on particular set of historical conditions
=> certain people, institutions are in position to influence pool of knowledge, in a position of power can change what we believe is true. Prescribes what to say and how to think about a particular thing. Discourse fixes the meaning of ideas, predetermine the way we think about it => means to control practices and population
Westernization
The adoption of the practices and culture of western Europe by societies and countries in other parts of the world, whether through compulsion or influence.
Capabilities approach/development as freedom
