THINGS TO KNOW:
(Warning: This list is not necessarily complete! You are responsible for all assigned readings and lectures.

Exam Format: 40 questions, multiple-choice. 80% over the lectures.

Anthropology & Culture
Cultural Anthropology and how it fits into the "Four Fields of Anthropology"-- Cultural anthropology focuses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures. It is socially learned. The four fields include:
Physical (biological)- study of humans as biological organisms
Linguistic (language)- The study of human languages, looking at their structure, history and/or relation to social and cultural context.
Archaeology (time)-study of human cultures through material remains and environmental data
Cultural- study of patterns in human behavior, thoughts, and feelings

Theory of Degeneration: "savages" degenerated from an original Godly perfection based in Biblical understandings of a creation that was relatively recent, spontaneous, and perfect.

Theory of Evolution / Edward Burnett Tylor- Tylor, who traveled to the Americas because of an illness, encountered cultural differences which led him to his theory, which explains the theory of degeneration:

19th Century Evolutionism

----------------------- Progress ------------------------>

Savagery	Barbarism	Civilization
spirits	many gods	science
free love	polygamy	monogamy
hunting/gathering	small scale gathering	agriculture

Civilization is the advanced Culture and the rest are trying to catch up with it.


Historical Particularism / Franz Boas - (1858 - 1942) - a Jewish man growing up in Germany during the latter half of the 19th Century, who knew what it was like to be discriminated against and thought of as "uncultured" and low on the evolutionary ladder. (He lived one year with the Inuit of Baffin Island (N. Canada) and found them to be no less "civilized" than people of his own culture.)

He criticized Tylor's theory of Cultural Evolution on 3 grounds:
1. It is ethnocentric (i.e.,the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture, www.dictionary.com)
2. It doesn't match the facts
3. It is based on a false idea of "Culture" (with a capital "C").

Boas proposes that all cultures are equal, and need to be understood in their own terms.
Known as the "father of American anthropology".
Boas provided the groundwork of today's cultural anthropology, which includes a dedication to fieldwork, and a perspective of relativism, and holism (more on those terms later). He also created the "4 fields" of anthropology.

"Historical Particularism"- each society is a collective representation of its unique historical past.

Culture (with a capital "C") - A part of Cultural Evolution Theory proposed by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, which states that people progress from Savagery to Barbarism to Culture. This is a very ethnocentric belief that there is one supreme Culture (the European culture) and all other cultures are struggling to reach that ideal.

cultures (plural) - An idea brought forth by Franz Boas in response to the Cultural Evolution Theory. Boaz believed people could not be judged as "savage". His idea was that cultures are all different based on their own unique historical past, and no culture can be "better" than another.

Culture Shock: Anxiety provoked by being immersed in a foreign culture. The worst case one can experience is a complete loss of one's self identity.

"Barrel Model" of culture - Every culture is an integrated and dynamic system of adaptation that responds to a combination of internal factors (economic, social, and ideological) and external factors (environmental, climatic). Within a cultural system, there are functional relationships among the economic base (infra), the social organization (social) and the ideology (super). A change in one leads to a change in the others.

Superstructure

• ideas
• concepts
• values

Social Structure

• social and political organization
• kinship
• power relations
  

Infrastructure

• technology
• demographics
• economic system
  

Environment


Infrastructure - tapping into available resources to satisfy a society’s basic needs. A society is also held together by a shared sense of identity and worldview, technology, demographics, economic system. (example: Cows are like "tractor factories" - producing oxen that plow fields and pull carts. They require very little care, scavenging for and eating what humans will not eat. One Zebu cow produces over 400 pints of milk per year. Cows provide over 800 million tons of manure / 40% used for fertililzer, 40% for cooking fuel - equivalent to 40 million tons of coal. What's left makes a smooth, hard floor when mixed with water. Meat-centered diets are very wasteful of grain, land, water, fuel, and fertilizer.
The taboo on eating cows has long-term survival value. If they did not have a taboo against cow slaughter, the culture would not be as successful. The cattle themselves can survive on almost anything - and don't compete with humans for food in times of scarcity. Cows and humans are in symbiotic relationship.)

Structure (Social Structure) - concerns rule-governed relationship—with all their rights and obligations—that hold members of a society together. Households, families, associations, and power relations, social & political organization, kinship, power relations. How these beliefs exist within the social and political context. (example: Muslims began entering region in 8th Century Pluralistic Society: Muslims and other non-Hindus (19% of population) eat beef. Caste system: Lowest castes "untouchables" eat beef. Since the arrival of Muslims 1200 years ago, higher caste Hindus distinguish themselves from Muslims and Untouchables by not killing and eating cows. Today conservative politicians continue to seek a national law banning cow slaughter to protect Indian traditional values)

Superstructure - ideas, concepts, and values by which a group of people makes sense of the world—its shape, challenges and opportunities. Idealistic perspective-theoretical approach stressing the primacy of superstructure in cultural research and analysis. (Example: Love their cows. give them pet names, feed them special food, adorn them for festivals, worship them in rituals, think that eating cow meat would be like eating dog for an American (or worse), Milk, curd, ghee, urine, and dung ==> ritual purity Furthermore: Cow-dung paste purifies sacred space for deities Hindu sacred texts describe the tremendous care Lord Krishna provided for cows. Cow is the symbol of all life and the producer of all life - The Divine Mother Killing a cow is worse than killing a human Ahimsa - the doctrine of non-violence - dictates that cows should not be slaughtered)

Cultural Materialism - theoretical research strategy identified with Marvin Harris. Placing primary emphasis on the role of environment, demography, technology, and economy in determining a culture’s mental and social conditions, he argued that anthropologists can best explain ideas, values, and beliefs as adaptations to economic and environmental conditions.

Socio-political Analysis-emphasis on super and social structure

Interpretive Anthropology-symbols, layers of interpretation, better you understand culture the better you can understand it's symbols ex: a wink, what does a wink mean in different cultures?

Holism - bringing all levels of culture together and examining it as a whole; the big picture; finding connections. Anthropologists doing fieldwork typically try to investigate how the various aspects of culture relate to each other, i.e., political systems, economics and religious beliefs.


Fieldwork
Ethnocentrism - A prison for the mind. The belief that the ways of one’s own culture are the only proper ones. Anthropologists fight against it because after living in another village or community, they come to the realization that no one is less human than anyone else. Resisting the common urge to rank cultures, anthropologists have instead aimed to understand individual cultures and the general concept of culture. Examine each culture on its own terms.

Cultural Relativism - The idea that one must suspend judgment on other peoples’ practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms. Only through such an approach can one gain a meaningful view of the values and beliefs that underlie the behaviors and institutions of other peoples and societies as well as clearer insights into the underlying beliefs and practices of one’s own society. Avoid premature judgments until we have a full understanding of the culture in which we are interested. Then and only then, may the anthropologist adopt a critical stance and in an informed way consider the advantages and disadvantages particular beliefs and behaviors have for a society and its members. The most important step of cultural relativism is to look back on ourselves; this may lead to re-inventing yourself or self-discovery. Suspend judgment : understand others in their terms : look back on own culture.

Participant Observation- combination of social interaction and personal observation;
In ethnography, the technique of learning a people’s culture through social participation and personal observation within the community being studied, as well as interviews and discussion with individual members of the group over an extended period of time. Try as we might, we can't be entirely like them, so we use the toolkit to better understand them.

• you cannot not get involved
• it is only when you jump in, let go of your own cultural practices, and make connections that you can really understand (ex: Tibenim's illness, wtichcraft beliefs, and each individual representing their own personal relationships through health status)

The Ethnographer's Toolkit

• Communication
• Empathy
• Thoughtfulness

They are all interconnected with each other. Communication and Empathy bring us closer to Thoughtfulness, etc.

Ethnography - A detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork. It is a combination of social participation and personal observation within the community being studied, as well as interviews and discussions with individual members of a group, the ethnographic method is commonly referred to as participant observation. An ethnography provides information used to make systematic comparisons among cultures all across the world. Known as ethnology, such cross-cultural research allows anthropologist to make theories that help explain why certain important differences or similarities occur among groups. They must observe carefully to gain an overview without placing too much emphasis on one part at the expense of another. One of the two main components of Cultural Anthropology.

Fieldwork - Combination of social interaction and personal observation (a.k.a. participant observation);
on-location research and fully immersed in another way of life, challenges the anthropologist to be constantly aware of the possible ways that otherwise unsuspected cultural factors may influence the research questions, observations and explanations. They immerse themselves in the data to the fullest extent possible. Become so familiar with even the smallest details that they may begin to identify possible relationships and underlying patterns in the data.

The logic, socio-logic, and eco-logic of witchcraft when viewed through a holistic perspective.
Logical

• Someone dies from a scientific illness: the question is "why?"
  • US answers: God's will/it was their time
  • Papua New Guinea answers: witchcraft.

Socio-logical

• Don’t want to blame relationship breaks and rituals-walk the line; makes you think twice and keep the community morally straight (you don't want to get blamed for witchcraft or to be cursed.)

Eco-logical

• Keeps village size in balance by creating tension and forcing people to want to leave and more people come in. Or one has to give a gift to fix the tie, and in order to give the gift others must donate stuff for the gift, it keeps the community tied together.

Nacirema - American backwards. Looking at an outsider's perspective of the things we see as "Normal".

Richard Lee & his ox - "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" with the !Kung Bushmen. Their tradition is to butcher an ox to feed the whole tribe. Richard Lee wanted to donate this year's ox, so he bought the biggest ox he could find. Then all the tribesmen told him what a horrible ox it was, and that everyone was going to be hungry, and it was a "bag of bones". Richard Lee became all depressed, because he couldn't understand why they were all saying horrible things about the ox and himself. Feeling like he was ruining everyone's Christmas feast, he almost decided to leave. But he stayed and they butchered the cow, while everyone kept criticizing the big bull. He finally figured out that it was a joke -- but these types of insulting jokes are rooted deep in their culture to suppress arrogance between the tribal people. The tribe felt they need to teach Richard Lee a lesson in humility, a lesson that keeps the tribe united and alive.


Race
How our skins got their colors - Skin color is subject to great variation and is attributed to several key factors: the transparency or thickness of the skin: a copper-colored pigment called carotene: reflected color from the blood vessels (responsible for the rosy color of lightly pigmented people): and, most significantly, the amount of melanin-a dark pigment in the skin’s outer layer. Exposure to sunlight increases melanin production, causing skin color to deepen. Melanin is known to protect skin against damaging ultraviolet solar radiation. Natural selection has favored heavily pigmented skin as a protection against exposure to ultraviolet radiation in the tropics. Vitamin D is essential for healthy bones and it can come from the sun


Typological vs. Clinal models of human variation-
Clinal is to map variations in a trait (like to say a person of a black race does NOT equal curly hair just because they're black);
Typological is grouping several traits together to form a categorical "race" (this one does say that and is the racist model).

Blumenbach and "caucasian" - German anatomist Johann Blumenbach sometimes called the father of physical anthropology. Divided the human species into four major groups according to geographic area and classified all Europeans as "white," Africans as "black," American Indians as "red," and Asians as "yellow." Beautiful skull of a woman from Caucasus Mountains between Russia and Turkey, he thought that living inhabitants of the Caucasus region were the most beautiful in the world. He concluded that it was not far from the place of human origins in the Bible. He changed labels and introduces a formal hierarchical ordering of the races he delineated.

Redlining- the color red represented the color on lot maps of cities where minorities lived in the 1950's- this made it impossible for those minorities to get loans.

1968- Fair Housing Act - Equal housing opportunity
Blockbusting - white people leave the neighborhoods that black people are moving into. Instead of staying and having the neighborhood be integrated the white homeowners are given money to sell their home and leave. The house is then sold to a black homeowner at an inflated price.

Downward Spiral-
White Flight
Property values go down
Taxes go up
Services suffer
Rock Bottom

Structural Racism-the cumulative effect of policies, systems and processes that may not have been designed with racism in mind, but which have the effect of disadvantaging certain racial groups. (the paradox of race PBS).
-This can happen in places where no one is racist but such a structure occurs and there is racism as a result of it.
Myth of Natural Racial Hierarchy -> White Flight/Segregation -> Black Poverty, Urban Ghettos, Poor Jobs -> Poor Services, Poor Education, No prime loans.

Language & Enculturation
Historical Linguistics-deals with the fact that languages change. Specialists in this field investigate relationships between earlier and later forms of the same languages, study older languages for developments in modern ones and examine interrelationships among older languages. They are not limited to the faraway past, for even modern languages are constantly transforming—adding new words, dropping others or changing meaning