Cultural Anthropology Test 1 – Flashcards

§ Anthropology-combined 3 streams of thought □ Study of cultural differences among societies □ Struggle to explain the antiquity of humans and the artifacts left from lives □ Investigation of biological origins of humans and other species § Europeans were always fascinated with exotic cultures, but remained isolated intil the 15th century. Sailing and weaponry allowed expanded influence. Concept of degenerationism provided a biblically based explanation of cultural diversity from the Renaissance until the 18th century. Prior to the destruction of the Tower of Babel, all people were in a single civilization. Then the peoople wre disperssed and some degenerated and lost their civilization, becoming savages. § Progressivism- rather than deteriorating from a civilized condition, societies started out primitibe but progressed. John Locke supported. § Rise of the violent and radical Montagnards and the death of Condorcet signal an important moment in British, American, and French social thought. Result was a revival of religion and deep questioning of the notion of progress § Foundation of biological evolutionary speculation was laid with writings of White and Ray who classified the diversity of life forms. Linnaeus taxonomic categorization of life forms provided the systematic framework for necessary scientific investigation of bio evo to take place. He believed that immutability of the species- life forms were created separately by God and could not change. § Buffon- outlined an ebolutionary theory called degeneration that darwin used in his theory of natural seletion. Buffon observed physical variation occurred in species, different animals had similar structures, life multiplied faster than its food supply, and that some life forms had become extinct. § Lamark and Erasmus Darwin wre evolution people... Changes in geographic and climatic aresas placed pressures on plant and animal life. § Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 after many years of refraining. Was important because: □ Scientifically convincing explanation of the ways in which life forms could change over time and new species emerge □ Powerful social metaphor. Possible to have both progress and social disruption § Herbert Spencer- ciivil engineer, devoted himself to writing. Interested in evolution as general phenomenon and applied to many fields of study. Believd that evolution was progressive and that evlutionary hange was from simple to more complex states, evolutionary progress ocured because life was a struggle for survival. Organic analogy= compared human societies to biological organisms. Coined the phrase "survivval of thefitest." believed evolution was a general moral forces pervading the universe and that the mechanisms of evolution were Lamarkian, involving the transmission of learned behavior from one geneation to the next. Popularized social Darwinism- right of western powers to dominate those who were les advanced. § Morgan and Tylor believed that there were niversla evolutionary stages of cutural development that characterized the transition from primitive to complex societies. Known as unilineal evolutionists. Morgan focused on the evolution of the family and subsistence patterns believed that evolutionary progress was not achieved through competition byt by the flowering of thought. Tylor on the idea that one could trace evolution of sociey by studing survivals, a form of cultural remnant believed that one could reconstruct earlier stages of cultural evolution ny struding survivals. And that the most basic concept underlying the invention of religion was animalism. . Marx- theory of social evolution, all thought was a product of cultural institutions rather than cause. Examined the conflict generated by increasing wealth of the bourgeoisie capitalists and the proles. Social change was an evolutionary process marked by revolution in which new levels of social, political, and economic development were achieved through class struggle.

§ Franz Boas- father of American anthropology, first anthro proffessor in America □ Physicist turned geographer □ Developed interest in studying culture □ Professor of Anthro, columbie univ 1899 □ Helped develop anthropology as a methodologically rigouous field of inquiry ® Proponant of fieldwork ® Rejection of arm chair approaches □ Critiqued grand theories on race, social evolution, and cultural determinism □ Boas' critique of unilinneal social evolution ® Unsubstantiated hyp; hist changes in cultural life follow definite laws which apply to every society ® Boas; cultural similarities can arise through diffusion, adaptation to similar env, and or hist accident □ Critique of diffusionism ® Unsupported hypothesis; historical changes in cultural life are the result of contact between more and less civilized peoples ® Boas; must assume migration/ contact over enormous geo areas □ Boas' historical Particularism ® Culturals can only be understood with refernee to their particular historical developments ® No general theories (evo, diffusion) can explain proceses of culture change ® Every cutlrue is unique and must be studied in terms of its uniqueness (precursor to cultural relativism-) □ Racial theories and anthropolmethrics ® Cranial dimensions reflect racial differences ® Assumption that such traits are bio determinded thrus races are fixed categories ® Assumed connection between race and intelligens □ Rejection boas ® 1908 study; cranial dimensions in immigrants and their kids ® Evidence; imigrant kids had different skull shapes than parents- result of different diets, habits, environment ® Thereofrer, cranial morphology is not an immutable markder of race, it can bary through time and according to environment ○ Methods of Ethnography § Against uniform evolution of Morgan- occurencew of sijmilarities are distributed irregularly and cannot readily be explained on the basis of diffusion § If we admit that there may be dfferent ultimate and co edxisting types of civilization the hypothesis of one single general line of development can not be maintained § History of human civilization does not appear as determined entirely bu psychological necessity that leads to a uniform evolution the world over. We see that Each cultural group has its own unique history, dependent on the inner development of the social group and upon the foreign influences which it has been subjected. There have been processes of gradual differentiation as well as processes of leveling down differences between neighboring cutural centers. § Studies of the dynamics of primitive life also show that an assumption of long continued stability such as is demanded by Elliot Sminthy is without any foundation. Primitive conditions can be proved to be in a state of flux. Stability into rapid change. § We annot accept the method of psychological investigation as an ethnogolical method in investigation of the individual to social phenomena,which has been determined to be sbject to influences that are not at all comparable to those that control the psychology of the individual

what causes cutlrual differences? Humans are born with greater plasticity and less natural instincts. Culture is abstract while society is numerable, being the people that make up a culture. ○ Values orientation theory; cross=cultural understanding and commutation can be facilitated by analyzing a given culture's orientation to Human Nature, Man- Nature Relationships, time, activity, and social relations. ○ Key Distinctions § Culture- distinctive ways of life of a group of people § Society- a group of people who interact more with each other than others • Why do people differ?- destined by God or fate to different habits? ○ Environmental Determinism- our climate makes (Europeans, Nordics) us vigorous, innovative, and industrious or (tropics) our climate makes us lethargic, unimaginative, and lazy! ○ Biological differences- racial determinism ○ Because they were brought up that way, raised in different societies • Culture is ○ Traditions and customs ○ Treated as an environment that influences and ○ Is not stataic • Culture is learned ○ Depends on symbols (signs that have no necessary or natural connection to the things that they stand for or signify) ○ Cultural learning is a process of enculturation • Enculturation ○ The social process by which culture is learned and transmited (within generations, across generations, or across societies). ○ Corrective actions represent enculturation through direct transmission ○ Direct transmission-about reading. Parents teach parents. Directly transmitting within generations ○ Observing- observing the actions of others and imitating their cultural styles and behavior ○ E.G. Gender differences- how do boys and girls learn what constitutes proper behavior for their respective genders? § Direct transmission? Observation? § What messages do toys convey to boys and girls regarding expected gender roles? § Direct transmission; boys who play with dolls are encouraged to play with something else; that's not for boys § Observation; observing what men do influences how boys play. ○ What constitutes a proper greeting between individuals. American men maintain personal space. European men get closer and more intimate. • Culture is symbolic, symbols are learned through enculturation. Learn symbols through direct transmission. ○ Symbols provide order- a map is a 2-d collection of symbols that helps navigate 3-d space • Culture is integrated- cultures are integrated, patterned systems. If one part of the system changes, other parts change as well. Cultural ramifications of ideological changes, technological changes ○ Tech changes- introduction of TV to rural Guatemala, cell phones and norms of public/private communication, computers and interpersonal interactions • Culture is shared- an attribute not of individuals per se but of individuals as members of groups. Enculturation unifies people by providing them with common experiences, beliefs, and values

○ Shakespeare in the Bush- different take on Hamlet, perspective from bushman! • Naïve Realism ○ Is human nature the same everywhere? When she went to live with the Tiv culture, she thought everyone was essentially the same and that Hamlet would show that human beings interpreted similarly ○ Can a story written in one cultural context be interpreted the same wha across cultures? ○ Are cultural concepts universal?- the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's father § Cultural belief: the afterlife.... Bohannan; a ghost is a walking/talking dead person. Tiv; That's a zombie. But one can touch zombies. Bohannan; a ghost is a dead man's shadow. Tiv; dead men cast no shadows ○ Cultural concept; political leadership § Cultural norms and expectations of a European king differ from a Tiv King ○ Bohannan's Interpretation § Inappropriate to marry brother's widow. § Inappropriate for widow to marry quickly ○ Tiv Elders' interpretation § He did well § Your father's brother can become your father § Where were the other wives of the dead chief? (polygyny indicator of power and prestige) • Key points ○ Culture is shared by members of group ○ Culture shapes how we interpret experiences and events ○ Not universal ○ Interpret a story within context of their own cultural norms and beliefs.

• The aims of ethnology ○ People described other cultures as little more than beasts ○ If we aim to understand the development of human culture, we must free ourselves from the shackles ○ Human minds everywhere develop according to similar laws ○ Generalization is misleading ○ A superficial analysis of another culture through trabel rather than ethnography is not sufficient to avoid ethnocentrism ○ Anthropologists must adapt themselves to the strange ways ofthinking and feeling of people in other cultures ○ How does one do that ? Fieldwork ○ What is life like in rural Guatemala? § What do brands mean in indigenous Maya communities? § How and why do fashion trends change ○ How does an anthropologist avoid ethnocentrism? § Read what ha already been written § Learn the language § Meet the people § Spend lots of time with htme § Participate in dily actiities § Work beside them § Ask questions § Take notes § reflect on what learned ○ Cultural relativism § Behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture § Important alnalytical tool § Problematic concept in practice? Are there universal morals? ○ How does the definitaion of cultuer help anthropologists overcome this dilemma? § Culture is continually changing § Culture incorporates competing repertories of meaning and action § Some people have more agency than others § So cultural relativism does nto preclude one from making moral judgements ○ A cultural relativist: § Strives to understand why the Confederate flag is an important symbol of cultural heritage for some people in the US South ○ Connecting with culture § Culture is Symbolic □ National membership is symbolically conferred in different ways § Cultural values someitmes exist in tension with moral arguments □ Anthropologists must recognize the value of particular cultural beliefs and practives to various communities, but this does nto preclude taking a moral or political stance

• Ethnography and culture- rather than studying people, ethnography is learning from people ○ In order to uncover other's way of life, you must become the student ○ Cultural behavior- reading ○ Cultual knowledge- how to read ○ Cultural artifacts- books ○ Symbolic interactionism- § human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have on them § Meanings of such things are derrived from the social interaction that one has with his fellows § Meanings are handled in and modified through an interpretive process used by the person dealing with the things he encounters ○ How to analyze another culture § Step 1: Reject Naïve Realism □ Naïve Realism: the notion that all people throughout the world define the world of objects, events, and concepts the same way. (does love have the same meaning in all culture? Does death have the same meaning in all cultures?) § Step 2: Understand the three fundamental aspects of human experience: □ What people do (cultural behavior □ The things people make and use (cultural artifacts) □ What people know (cultural knowledge) □ For Spradley, culture = cultural knowledge "the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior." □ Explicit Cultural Knowledge- people can talk about it or communicate it with ease. (How do you respond when someone is sick? What do people do on holidays? Who are your relatives?-- people have an explicit awareness of family relationships and of the nature and importance of those relationships ® Cultural knowledge => explicit + tacit => interpreting experience + generating behavior ® Setting: You are a low ranking employee in an office ® Explicit knowledge: there is a sociaoeconomic hierarchy in which you occupy a subordinate position ® Interpreting Experience: You understand why the boss has a large office whereas you have a cubicle ® Cultural Knowledge; Tacit ◊ Cultural knowledge that is implied, that people lack words for, or that lies outside our explicit awareness. E.G. Speaking distances, personal and social space

• Bodily ritual among the Nacirima- the tale of intense sadism. Tooth rituals, hiding of the body from even spouses, reproduction discouraged. • Body Rituals of the Nacirema ○ Purpose; document unusual magical beliefs and practices of poorly understood group ○ Highly developed market economy ○ High ritual focus on the body ○ Belief system § The body is fundamentally ugly § Tendency to debilitate and decay § Ritual behavior to combat ugliness and decay ○ Shrine rooms § Sites of private body rituals. More shrine rooms = higher social status ○ Holy- Mouth- Man § Oral fetish: connections between... □ Mouth and social relationships □ Mouth and moral characteristics

he subject, method, and scope of this inquiry • Papuo-Malaysians were sailors • Ethnographer must be an active hunter for his quarries • Lives should be reduced into charts for simplification • Method of stalistic doccumentation by concrete evidence ○ Polish anthropologist, taught at London School of Economics ○ Stranded in Melanesia during WWI ○ Argonauts of the Western Pacific-- there was an enormous exchange, traveled. Constant interchange of shells and neclaces. Maintained relationships between al of the people of the islands. A gift economy § Malinowski's interpretation □ Veremonial gift exchange network: items continually passed along, items tie people into endureng rade relationships, possissing items enhances individual's status. □ Demonstrated the function of what appeared to outsiders as irrational § Participant observation as key method § Major contribution to economic anthropology ○ Early methods in anthropology § Armchair scholars □ Derived theories by reading accounts of missionaries and colonial officials □ Problems: accounts were biased and unreliable, represented ethnocentric perspectives § Early fieldworkers □ Journeyed to societies they studied but brought informants to their camps for interviews in non-native language □ Problems: insufficient language skills for expressing or understanding cultural perspectives § Methodological Transparency-"indeed, some such survey ought to be forthcoming, so that at a glance the reader could estimate with precision the degree of the writer's personal acquaintance with the facts which he describes, and form an idea under what conditions the information had been obtained from the natives." Important to know how the person collected the data § Ethnographer's Magic □ Live with the natives ® Get to know them as companions and as informants ® Learn daily routines ® Acquire the feeling for proper behavior ® Establish trust and rapport ® Become part of the landscape ® Develop empathic understanding of native life □ Systematic sketch ® Look for, and document, order and structure where others see disorder and chaos ® "the first and basic ideal of ethnographic fieldwork is to give a clear and firm outline of the social constitution and disentangle the laws ad regularities of all cultural phenomena from the irrelevances. The firm skeleton of the tribal life has to be first ascertained (holistic approach)"

Was able to live among the Naur, got less info but knew them better was treated as equal. Azande was treated as superior, livd on outskirts, gained much info but didn't really know them. Nuer people of Southern Soudan ○ Fieldwork in the 1930s published in the 1940s "My study of the Nuer was undertaken at the request of, and was mainly financed by, the Government of the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan" § Anthro and Colonialism- ritish colontrol over territory of sudan, british govt commissionedthis to better control the Nuer people § Research obstacles- Servants hired from other groups were hesitant to work among their former enemies □ Nuer were reluctant to allow him into their camps. □ Communication: evans-Prithard lacked an interpreter and had to learn the language from scratch □ Treated with suspicion "when I entered a cattle camp it was not only as a tranger but as an enemy, and they eldom tried to conceal their disgut at my presence..." "the nuer are expert at sabotaging an inquiry.. They steadfastly stultify all efforts to eicit the simplest facts and to elucidate the most innocent practices □ After time, epople were more accepting of him. He neeeded to demonstrated to the British govt the complex level at which the Nuer people opperated and that british coming to take over was a bad idea, he was writing against racism. Against the idea that people who lived in africa and asia were not as sophistocated as Europeans. § Segmentary system of political Organization- small group of people who are all related to each other will be against another small group but if theyre against a larger group, they will unite.

○ Importance of being in the field § "in science one tests hpothese by one's own observations. One does not rely on laymen to do it ofr one" ○ What kind of data do anthropologists collect? § The raw material is-- social life itself. ○ Antrhopological training at the doctoral level: § 2 years of courses in anthropoogy § Areful study of the existing literature on the people you want to study § 1-2 years of field work § Up to 5 years until the results are published ○ Evans Pritchard was a studen t of Malinowski ○ The Lone Fieldworker- make friends with the society ○ Does it matter who the field worker is? Yes- perspectives on social life are informed by individual attributes and processes of enulturation and acculaturation.... No- antrhopoogists share common theoretical models and work in conversatoin with other anthropologists

• Won the trust of the Balinese by fleeing from the police at a cock fight instead of just showing the police their papers to get out of it ○ Symbolic and interpretice anthropology ○ Demonstrated how seemingy irrational institutions and practices have a cultural logic ○ Main ovjective: provide reader with an empathic understandign of another society ○ Empathic Understanding-- the ability to share in another person's emotions, throughts, and feelings, allowing you to understand the experience of another person. ○ Betting on culture- having these roosters fight eachother was outlawed by the indonesian gov't but he found out that its not about men wanting to show off, people betting, its also that what happens in the cockfighting ring and with all of the betting that takes place is actually generating a meta-commentary about what it means to be balinese. People play out stories that they tell themselves about themselves. Sotries of life and death, tropes of masculinity and mortality and hierarchy ○ Entering the field § Upon entering the village, we werer non-persons, specters, invisible men § How do you cross the moral or metaphysical shadow line between being ignored (nonperson) and accepted (member of society) § Geertz is embraced after he runs from the police with the others and hides in someones house § Demonstrate solidarity § Rapport □ Dramatic event allowed Geertz to establish the mysterious necessity of anthropological work § Impact of Geertz's narritive □ Introduced a reflexive styel of ethnographic writing, with the anthroppologist putting himself in the story and reflectin g □ This is who I am and how I think my individual attributes and personality impacted my research and shaped my analysis

○ Sports is an important dimension of society ○ "the sports we play and how we play them can tell us something about who we are as a culture ○ Tried to formulate a research question, render explicit what is often unseen or obscure to fans (why players are so superstitious) ○ Establish rapport- maneuver through media relations director for permission-- learn how to fit in (figures, terms, speech pattern, attire) ○ Empathic understanding- insider's perspective from previous experience with analytical detachment- when I was playing I was so immersed in the culture that I couldn't see what was noteworthy

○ Stigmatize: to characterize or mark as disgraceful ○ Participant observation does not necessarily mean one participates and ovserves all aects of a subject's lives § Didn't become a prositiute to understand the lives of prositiutes § The anthro does not have to go native but has to spend a lot of time § Sterk is patient, not pushy § Adopts a stance of cultural relativism: □ Does not judge the actoins of women □ Tries to understand the lives of prosittues through their eyes § Expresses genuine interest intheir lives § Keeps information confidential ○ Empathic understanding § Ability to share in another persons emotions thoughts andfeelings allow to understand the experience of antoehr person □ By hanging out she was able ○ 6 themes § Womens own explanations § Cutlral typology § Role of pimps § Impact of aids § Violence and abuse § Difficulty of getting out ○ Typology § Streetwalkers-do not use drugs § Addict prostitutes-prostitute to support addiction § Hooked prostitutes- began using after prostitution § Slekjfdsfs- trade sex for crack ○ Reciprocity and relationships § Provided childcare § Car rides § Groceries § House cleaning § Health information § Condoms, gels, feminine products

○ Anthropology's relevance for ethics debates § Studying stigmatized and illegal activities -raises ethical questions. The law and the state are against you § Understanding subjective experience § Understanding the context § Questioning assumptions- question moral assumptions ○ The point- learn as you go- importance of early research visits to help formulate research questions and appropriate methods ○ Interpersonal skills: hard to teach, but essential to doing anthropology

Meeting the "Godfather": Fieldwork and Ethnographic Seduction in a Chinese Nightclub... recruiting the anthropologist to legitimize illegal activity, about the Chinese underground "Fatty"j • Studying "down" Anthropologists traditionally studied societies with less political and economic power than the anthropologists had themselves. ... im going to tell the story of people who don't have the recources t ospeak for themselves • Studying "up" what are the differenecs between studying people who have less agency than you and studying people who have more. Understanding how those who have power in the world are shaping the world, how they think about those who don't have power ○ Doing research with and wrigting about powerful groups requires: § Negotiating the research agend with informants § Getting beyond "official" ways of talking about things § At times, taking a critical stance that implicates one's informants

Gardening Tips-before cultural relativism, there were only two explanations as to why someone was not like yourself; ignorance or stupidity. FGM and cultural relativity... gross not to be in other countries, gross to be in America... • Cultural determinism- against racial theories of human behavior that can support racist positions • Cultural relativism- ethic of understanding beliefs and behaviors from the insider's point of view, rather than assuming one's own cultural superiority ○ Why hnot get rid of cultural relativism? § Culture changes over trime and is contested within cultural groups. § Cultures do not have rights, people do. Althogiught we might want to preserve and promote cultural differences, too § Important to understand othe societies before one tries to change them • Ethics and anthropology- ○ Issue: protecting Sources- protecting data means protecting informants. Keep information confidential from other informatns during fieldwork, carefully store data, invent place names, ○ Issue: brokerage- outside interest groups may want your information, how to decide when or when not to share data... different agendas (are their interests benign? Will they interpret and use the info in a proper manner?) ○ Issue: impacts of publishing § How will your publichations influence the way others perceive the subjects of study. Chagnon's "Yanomamo: the Fierce People" Diamond's "vengence is ours" § Issue" reciprocity • People are a product of their culture, not racial/biological determinism! • Culturalistic Fallacy- no explanation of a behavior, whether it is based on biology, cutlre, or the phases of the moon can ever be used to justify a behavior in moral terms

Moral dilemmas and ethical controversies--- the controversy surrounding Jared Diamond's account of his father in law who chose not to avenge his family and the Paupa New Guinean man who didn't have to think twice about avenging his family. Man accused under China's red rule refused to exile his accuser, shows the human capacity for forgiveness. New Guinea man who watched his father being killed and was sent into exile but returned later and became close friends with the man who killed his father and ate his father's body. • Article written by a prominent public intellectual provides details (including names) about some violent events in New Guinea • Diamond's Arguemtn ○ Contraasting story of vengence: § Western context, father in law refrains from killing the man accused of killing his family members. Hands over to the authroities § New guinea man organizes attack to avenge killing of his uncle ○ Conclusion- in states, gov't surpresses the urge to avenge. ○ Numerous factual inaccuracies ○ Uses a single anecdote to generalize about everone in a country and be extension, all members of a non-state societies. ○ Kirsh's counter-examples: § New guinea man who forgoes revenge against killer of his father § Chinese doctor who refused to take revenge on those who tormented him during Cultural revolution ○ Ethical criticism § Diamond either fabricated data or misused data in order to construct a compelling account that justified his theory § Diamond published names of peope involved in violent acts, thereby exposing them to possible retaliation and criminal charges § This has serious implications, almost advocates a state coming in and taking over this non state population, colonialism ○ Points to poder- one must assume that research pubications will be read by research subjects

body language article, nonverbal communication

• Nonverbal gestures vary across cultures • Facial expressions: universal, part of our shared evolutionary heritage (primates similar) • Hand gestures: vary cross=culturally • Posture- varies cross culturally. • Regularly monitor nonverbal communication in others and adjust our behavior • Do we convey messages to other people by the clothes we wear. Clothing can act as a shared language. What kind of gender, social identities, political identies • Deiutcher ○ How does language shape the way we view the world? § Powerful cultural tool § Military metaphors- civilian targets/soft targets/collateral damage/ neutralize/friendly fire/ non-operative personnel. § Talk about death, but not talk about death. Violence, but not violence. Language that is more acceptable to the public. Matters to the soldiers who are involved in acts of violence § Politics- defense of marriage act, patriot act (if you don't support, youre not a patriot), no child left behind § How are words strategically chosen in advertising to influence the choices you make § The knowledge that language shapes the way we view the world can be used strategically. § Giving directions- left vs north § Focal vocabularies- specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups- result of enculturation ( inuit terms for snow) § Sociolinguistics- relationships between social variations (ethnicity, gender) and linguistic variations (dialect, slang, tone) □ Style shifts- choice of words, intonations, and body gestures influenced by your relative status to the person youre communicating with. Can be conscious or unconscious- important social skill (those who are adept can maneuver through complex society.) Discordance and social disruption- failure to follow the expected norms can cause problems (prof using slang with student) § Pierre Bordeaux- symbolic capital- in the signs and symbols we use effectively can translate into economic benefits for some people. Whe nothers don't use signs correctly, it can translate to economic inequality. Some of us are enculturated in ways that we don't have to make conscious decisions to modify our speaking to access social and economic ladders □ Some forms of speech are stigmatized or considered markers of inferiority □ Values of dialect- which provide us opportunity □ People associate speech patterns with social, politica, and economic status □ Speech patterns of low status groups are associated with lack of educaiton/sophistication □ Sociolinguistic discrimination:using linguistic features as evaluator of competence. § Whorf- believed that people couldn't understand concepts if there wasn't a word for it in their native language. This was refuted and led to the marginaliazation of exploration in this area for the next 70 years. § Jacobson says languages differ I what they MUST convey not in what they MAY convey § If different languages influence our minds in different ways, its not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about. § Such as gender systems in language. A bridge is considered feminine, sleek, in german but manly and strong in Spanish. § Gugu Yimithirr, an Australian tongue relies completely on cardinal directions and does not use egocentric directions. § Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is dificult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verblising it. Ability to ride a bike. Consists of habits and cultrue that we do not recognize in ourselves. E.G. Language itself, native speaker picks it up at a young age almost entirely unaware of the formal grammar which he may be taught later.

○ Code switching- the use of more than one language concurrently in a conversation- pattern of usage typical among multilingual people. ○ Among intimates in the household and the neighborhood, the boundaries between Spanish and English are blurred boundaries. ○ Outside of intimate spaces and relationships, there is pressure to keep the two languages separate. Failure of linguistic order becomes marker of race. • Spanish with non-peers marks one as different and dangerous, Spanish with peers marks one as congenial and worldly. • Semantic pejoration- • Direct indexicality: • My NOtes: ○ Our intellectual ancestors include both founders of scientific racism and important pioneers of the antiracist movement ○ Racism should be as central a question for research in cultural anthropology as "race" has been in biological anthropology of cattle, and racism is precisely this kind of phenomenon. Why, if nearly all scientists concur that human "races" are imaginary, do so many highly educated, cosmopolitan, economically secure people continue to think and act as racists ○ Urciuoli argues that her consultants experience lan- guage as differentiated into two spheres. In an "inner sphere" of talk among intimates in the household and neighborhood, the boundaries between "Spanish" and "English" are blurred and ambiguous both forrnally and Functionall ○ s. But in an "outer sphere" of talk (and engagement with text) with strangers and, especially, with gatekeepers like court officers, so- cial workers, and schoolteachers, the difference between Spanish and English is "sharply objectified ○ Boundaries and order are everything. The pres- sure from interlocutors to keep the two languages "in or- der" is so severe that people who function as fluent bilin- guals in the inner sphere become so anxious about their competence that sometimes they cannot speak at all. ○ While Puerto Rican code switching is condemned as disorderly, Whites "mix" their English with Spanish ○ In previous work (e.g., Hill 1995), I analyzed Mock Spanish as a "racist discourse." That is, I took its major functions to be the "elevation of whiteness" and the pejo- rative racialization of members of historically Spanish- speaking populations ○ "direct indexicality": the production of nonreferen- tial meanings or"indexes" that are understood and ac- knowledged by speaker ○ " another set of messages: profoundly racist images of members of historically Spanish-speaking populations. These messages are the product of what Ochs ( 1990) calls "indirect indexicality" in that, unlike the positive direct indexes, they are never acknowledged by speakers ○ s, I now believe that Mock Spanish accom- plishes the "elevation of whiteness" in two ways: first, through directly indexing valuable and congenial per- sonal qualities of speakers, but, importantly, also by the same type of indirect indexicality that is the source of its negative and racializing messages. It is through indirect indexicality that using Mock Spanish constructs "White public space," an arena in which linguistic disorder on the part of Whites is rendered invisible and normative, while the linguistic behavior of members of historically Span- ish-speaking populations is highly visible and the object of constant monitorin

○ Social relationships- technology influences the language we use. ○ Back in the day there were only 3 ways to break up with people, saw, called, wrote. Only one was acceptable. ○ Now- tweet tweet we're done! ○ Different media technologies- new media in terms of old media. ○ Old media shapes how we ue and think about new media ○ Nea media changes people's ideologies and uses of old media ○ Face to face = best option. Phone seems not bad now, was the worst option before. ○ In breakups, determining intentions is foremost concern. Media evaluated in terms of how easy one can discern intentions. Conversational turn-taking facilitates exploration of intentions. No media can rival face-to face conversation. ○ Performative speech acts- role that speech can take. Those things that we say that immediately have an effect on someone's social status. "I now pronounce you man and wife" performative speech act "You're guilty" "it's a boy!" ○ Direct and immediate relationship between the utterance and the effect providing all the social and linguistic conventions are met. All of the societal needs must be met ○ What happens when things go awry? Oath of office, Obama misspoke, if we don't redo it, he's not president ○ Semantics- language's meaning system. Meaning, grammar, the way each word relates to another word to create meaning. The branch of semiotics (signs and symbols) that studies the relationship between signifiers and what they stand for. "Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar ○ My notes That is to say, new media never arrive on an empty stage: people always compare them with older media. Through these comparisons, people transform their understandings of both new and old media

○ original affluent society was none other than the hunter's ○ There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little ○ Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. ○ The average length of time per person per day put into the appropriation and preparation of food was four or five hours. ○ As it works out, an attempt to stock up food may only reduce the overall output of a hunting band, for the havenots will content themselves with stay- ing in camp and living off !he wherewithal amassed by the more prudent. Food storage, then, may be technically feasible, yet economically undesirable, and socially unachievable. ○ Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied. The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor

○ quiescent, Malay factory women who are seized by vengeful spirits explode into demonic screaming and rage on the shop floor ○ Anthropologists studying spirit possession phenomena have generally linked them to cultur- ally specific forms of conflict management that disguise and yet resolve social tensions within indigenous societies ○ Since the 1960s, the widespread introduction of Western medical practices and an intensified revi- talization of Islam have made spirit beliefs publicly inadmissable. Nevertheless, spirit beliefs and practices are still very much in evidence. Villagers believe that all beings have spiritual essence (sernangat) but, unlike humans, spirits (hantu) are disembodied beings capable of vi- olating the boundaries between the material and supernatural worlds: invisible beings un- bounded by human rules, spirits come to represent transgressions of moral boundaries, which are socially defined in the concentric spaces of homestead, village, and jungle ○ in village life, spirit attacks are most likely to occur when women are in transition from one phase of life to another ○ Young, unmarried women in Malay society areexpected to be shy, obedient, and deferential, to be observed and not heard. In spirit possession episodes, they speak in other voices that refuse to be silenced. Since the afflicted claim amnesia once they have recovered, we are pre- sented with the task of deciphering covert messages embedded in possession incidents ○ In the factory environment, "spirit attacks" (kena hantu) was often used interchangeably with "mass hysteria," a term adopted from English language press reports on such incidents. In the manager's view, "hysteria" was a symptom of physical adjustment as the women workers "move from home idleness to factory discipline." ○ In corporate discourse, physical "facts" that contributed to spirit possession were isolated, while psychological notions were used as explanation and as a technique of manipulation ○ Thus, although management pointed to physiological problems as causing spirit attacks, they seldom acknowledged deeper scientific evidence of health hazards in microchip assembly plant ○ Spirit possession episodes may be taken as expressions both of fear and of resistance against the multiple violations of moral boundaries in the modern factory. They are acts of rebellion, symbolizing what cannot be spoken directly, calling for a renegotiation of obligations between the management and workers In Third World contexts, cosmopolitan medical concepts and drugs often have an anesthe- tizing effect, which erases the authentic experiences of the sick. More frequently, the prolifer- ation of positivist scientific meanings also produces a fragmentation of the body, a shattering of social obligations, and a separation of individuals from their own culture

○ Foragers § Until 10,000 years ago all humans were foragers § Animal domestication (initially of sheep and goats) and plant cultivation (of wheat and barley) began 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Middle East § t cor- relations—that is, association or covariation between two or more variables § What, then, are some correlates of foraging? People who subsisted by hunting and gathering often, but not always (see the section on potlatching), lived in band- organized societies. Their basic social unit, the band, was a small group of fewer than a hundred people, all related by kinship or marriage. § One typical characteristic of the foraging life was mobility § Among foragers, men typically hunt and fi sh while women gather and collect, § All foragers make social distinctions based on age ○ Cultivation § Cohen's typology, the three adaptive strategies based on food production in non- industrial societies are horticulture, agriculture, and pastoralism § Horticulture □ , horticulture is cultivation that makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery. Horticulturalists use simple tools such as hoes and digging sticks to grow their crops. Their fi elds lie fallow for varying lengths of time. Horticulture often involves slash-and-burn techniques. □ horticulture also is called shifting cultivation § Agriculture □ Agriculture requires more labor than horticulture does because it uses land intensively and continuously □ Includes domesticated animals, irrigation, and terracing □ because agricultur- ists work harder than horticulturalists do, agriculture's yield relative to the labor invested also is lower. Agriculture's main advantage is that the long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable § Agricultural Intensifcation: people and the environment □ People live in larger and more permanent communities located closer to other settlements. Growth in population size and density increases contact between individuals and groups □ . Irrigation ditches and paddies (fi elds with irrigated rice) become repositories for organic wastes, chemicals (such as salts), and disease microorganisms. Intensive agriculture typically spreads at the expense of trees and forests, which are cut down to be replaced by fi elds § Pastoralists □ Pastoralists live in North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. These herders are people whose activities focus on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yak, and reindeer □ Two patterns of movement occur with pastoralism: nomadism and transhumance. □ In pastoral nomadism, the entire group—women, men, and children—moves with the animals throughout the year □ transhumance, part of the group moves with the herds, but most people stay in the home village. ○ Economic Systems § A mode of production is a way of organizing production—"a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge ○ Production in non-industrial societies § Many horticultural societies assign a major productive role to women, but some make men's work primary. Similarly, among pastoralists men generally tend large animals, but in some societies women do the milking. ○ Means, or factors, of production include land (territory), labor, and technology. § Among foragers, ties between people and land were less permanent than among food producers § Manufacturing often is linked to age and gender. Women may weave and men may make pottery, or vice versa. Most people of a particular age and gender share the technical knowledge associated with that age and gender ○ Alienation in Industrial Societies § When factory workers produce for their employer's profi t, they may be alienated from the items they make: They don't feel strong pride in or personal identifi cation with their products. ○ Economizing and Maximizing § 1. How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies? This question focuses on systems of human behavior and their organization. 2. What motivates people in different societies to produce, distribute or exchange, and consume? Here the focus is not on systems of behavior but on the individuals who participate in those systems § .) Western economists assume that when confronted with choices and decisions, people tend to make the one that maximizes profi t § Subsistence vs replacement fund, social and ceremonial fund § Peasants are small-scale agriculturists who live in nonindustrial states and have rent fund obligations They produce to feed themselves, to sell their produce, and to pay rent. All peasants have two things in common: 1. They live in state-organized societies. 2. They produce food without the elaborate technology—chemical fertilizers, tractors, airplanes to spray crops, and so on—of modern farming or agribusiness. ○ Distribution and exchange § The market principle □ With market exchange, items are bought and sold, using money, with an eye to maximizing profi t, and value is determined by the law of supply and demand § Redistribution operates when goods, services, or their equivalent move from the local level to a center. § Reciprocity is exchange between social equals, who normally are related by kinship, marriage, or another close personal tie. □ With generalized reciprocity, someone gives to another person and expects nothing immediate in return □ Balanced reciprocity applies to exchanges between people who are more dis- tantly related than are members of the same band or household □ Exchanges in nonindustrial societies also may illustrate negative reciprocity, mainly in dealing with people on the fringes of or outside their social systems □ North America, the market principle governs most exchanges, from the sale of the means of production to the sale of consumer goods. We also have redistribution. Some of our tax money goes to support the government, but some of it also comes back to us in the form of social services, education, health care, and road building. We also have reciprocal exchanges. Generalized reciprocity characterizes the relationship between parents and children § Potlach □ At each such event, assisted by members of their communities, pot- latch sponsors traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, or other items. In return for this, they got prestige □ Customs such as the potlatch are cultural adaptations to alternating periods of local abundance and shortage ○ Summary § ohen's adaptive strategies include foraging (hunting and gathering), horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism. Foraging was the only human adaptive strategy until the advent of food production (farming and herding) 10,000 years ago. Food production eventually replaced foraging in most places. Almost all modern foragers have some dependence on food production or food producers. 2. Horticulture doesn't use land or labor intensively. Horticulturalists cultivate a plot for one or two years (sometimes longer) and then abandon it. There is always a fallow period. Agriculturists farm the same plot of land continuously and use labor intensively. They use one or more of the following: irrigation, terracing, domesticated animals as means of production, and manuring. 3. The pastoral strategy is mixed. Nomadic pastoralists trade with cultivators. Part of a transhumant pastoral population cultivates while another part takes the herds to pasture. Except for some Peruvians and the Navajo, who are recent herders, the New World lacks native pastoralists. 4. Economic anthropology is the cross-cultural study of systems of production, distribution, and consumption. In nonindustrial societies, a kin-based mode of production prevails. One acquires rights to resources and labor through membership in social groups, not impersonally through purchase and sale. Work is just one aspect of social relations expressed in varied contexts. 5. Economics has been defi ned as the science of allocating scarce means to alternative ends. Western economists assume the notion of scarcity is universal— which it isn't—and that in making choices, people strive to maximize personal profi t. In nonindustrial societies, indeed as in our own, people often maximize values other than individual profi t. 6. In nonindustrial societies, people invest in subsistence, replacement, social, and ceremonial funds. States add a rent fund: People must share their output with their social superiors. In states, the obligation to pay rent often becomes primary. 7. Besides studying production, economic anthropologists study and compare exchange systems. The three principles of exchange are the market principle, redistribution, and reciprocity, which may coexist in a given society. The primary exchange mode is the one that allocates the means of production. 8. Patterns of feasting and exchanges of wealth among villages are common among nonindustrial food producers, as among the potlatching societies of North America's North Pacifi c Coast. Such systems help even out the availability of resources over time.

§ Enculturation is the process by which a child learns his or her culture. § What is culture? □ Culture is learned ® But our own cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols, signs that have no necessary or natural connection to the things they stand for or signify. □ Culture is symbolic ® For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have shared the abilities on which culture rests—the abilities to learn, to think symbolically, to manipulate language, and to use tools and other cultural products in organizing their lives and coping with their environment □ Culture is shared ® Culture is an attribute not of individuals per se but of individuals as members of groups. □ Culture and nature ® Culture takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways. People have to eat, but culture teaches us what, when, and how. ® Our culture—and cultural changes—affect how we perceive nature, h uman n ature, and "the natural." Through science, invention, and discovery, cultural a dvances have overcome many "natural" limitations. □ Culture is all encompasing ® Culture, as defined anthropologically, encompasses features that are sometimes regarded as trivial or unworthy of serious study, such as those of "popular" culture. □ Culture is integrated ® If one part of the system (the overall economy, for instance) changes, other parts change as well. ® Cultures are integrated not simply by their dominant economic activities and related social patterns but also by sets of values, ideas, symbols, and judgments. Cultures train their individual members to share certain personality traits. A set of characteristic core values (key, basic, central values) integrates each culture and helps distinguish it from others. □ Culture can be adaptive and maladaptive ® Humans have both biological and cultural ways of coping with environmental stresses. ® Sometimes, adaptive behavior that offers short-term benefits to particular sub- groups or individuals may harm the environment and threaten the group's long-term survival. Economic growth may benefit some people while it depletes resources needed for society at large or for future generations § Culture's Evolutionary basis □ What we share with other primates ® There is a substantial gap between primate society (organized life in groups) and fully developed human culture, which is based on symbolic thought. ® They can modify learned behavior and social patterns instead. ® Humans are also not the only animals that make tools with a specifi c purpose in mind. □ How we differ from primates ® Although chimps often share meat from a hunt, apes and monkeys (except for nursing infants) tend to feed themselves individually. Cooperation and sharing are much more developed among humans. ® Human females, by contrast, lack a visible estrus cycle, and their ovulation is concealed. Not knowing when ovulation is occurring, humans maximize their reproductive success by mating throughout the year. Human pair bonds for mating are more exclusive and more dura- ble than are those of chimps. Related to our more constant sexuality, all human societ- ies have some form of marriage. Marriage gives mating a reliable basis and grants to each spouse special, though not always exclusive, sexual rights in the other. ○ Universality, generality, particularity § Anthropologists also accept a doctrine termed in the 19th century "the psychic unity of man." This means that although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual tendencies and capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture. Regardless of their genes or their physical appearance, people can learn any cultural tradition. § To understand this point, consider that contemporary Americans and Canadians are the genetically mixed descendants of people from all over the world. Our ancestors were biologically varied, lived in different countries and continents, and participated in hundreds of cultural traditions. However, early colonists, later immigrants, and their descendants all have become active participants in American and Canadian life. All now share a common national culture. § Universals and generalities □ Biologically based universals include a long period of infant dependency, year-round (rather than seasonal) sexuality, and a complex brain that enables us to use symbols, languages, and tools. □ Among the social universals is life in groups and in some kind of family (see Brown 1991). □ Generalities occur in certain times and places but not in all cultures. They may be widespread, but they are not universal. □ One cultural generality that is present in many but not all societies is the nuclear family □ . Another reason for generalities is domination, as in colonial rule, when customs and procedures are imposed on one culture by another one that is more powerful. In many countries, use of the English language refl ects colonial his- tory § Particularity: patterns of culture □ A cultural particularity is a trait or feature of culture that is not generalized or wide- spread; rather it is confi ned to a single place, culture, or society. Yet because of cultural borrowing, which has accelerated through modern transportation and communication systems, traits that once were limited in their distribution have become more wide- spread. ○ Culture and the Individual: Agency and Practice § Cultural rules provide guidance about what to do and how to do it, but people don't always do what the rules say should be done. § as practice theory (Ortner 1984) recognizes that individuals within a society or culture have diverse motives and intentions and different degrees of power and infl uence. § recognizes a reciprocal relation between culture (the system—see above) and the indi- vidual. The system shapes how individuals experience and respond to external events, but individuals also play an active role in how society functions and changes. Practice theory recognizes both constraints on individuals and the fl exibility and changeability of cultures and social systems. ○ Levels of Culture § National culture embodies those beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions that are shared by citizens of the same nation. § International culture extends beyond and across national boundaries. Because culture is transmitted through learning rather than g enetically, cultural traits can spread through borrowing or diffusion from one group to another. § Subcul- tures are different symbol-based patterns and traditions associated with particular groups in the same complex society. In large or diverse nations such as the United States or Canada, a variety of subcultures originate in region, ethnicity, language, class, and religion. ○ Ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and human rights § Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to apply one's own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures. § Opposing ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, the viewpoint that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture. t its most extreme, cultural relativism argues that there is no s uperior, international, or universal morality, that the moral and ethical rules of all cul- tures deserve equal respect. § The idea of human rights invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to the laws and customs of particular countries, cultures, and religions (see R. Wilson, ed. 1996). Human rights include the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and not to be murdered, injured, or enslaved or imprisoned without charge § cultural rights are vested not in individuals but in groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. Cultural rights include a group's ability to preserve its culture, to raise its children in the ways of its fore- bears, to continue its language, and not to be deprived of its economic base ○ Mechanisms of cultural change § Diffusion is direct when two cultures trade with, intermarry among, or wage war on one a nother. Diffusion is forced when one culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group. Diffusion is indirect when items or traits move from group A to group C via group B without any fi rsthand contact between A and C. § Acculturation, a second mechanism of cultural change, is the exchange of c ultural features that results when groups have continuous fi rsthand contact. With acculturation, parts of the cultures change, but each group remains distinct. One example of acculturation is a pidgin, a mixed language that develops to ease communica- tion between members of different cultures in contact. § Independent invention—the process by which humans innovate, creatively fi nding solutions to problems—is a third mechanism of cultural change. Faced with comparable problems and challenges, people in different societies have innovated and changed in similar ways, which is one reason cultural generalities exist. One example is the independ- ent invention of agriculture in the Middle East and Mexico. ○ Globalization § globalization encompasses a series of processes, including diffusion, migra- tion, and acculturation, working to promote change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent.

□ American anthropology in particular, can be traced to the nineteenth century. Early American anthropologists were concerned especially with the history and cultures of the native peoples of North America □ There also are logical reasons for the unity of American anthropology. Each subfi eld considers variation in time and space (that is, in different geo- graphic areas). Cultural and archaeological anthro- pologists study (among many other topics) changes in social life and customs. Archaeologists use studies of living societies to imagine what life might have been like in the past. Biological anthropologists examine evolutionary changes in physical form, for example, anatomical changes that might have been associated with the origin of tool use or language. Linguistic anthropologists may reconstruct the basics of ancient languages by studying modern ones. □ ical contrasts are evident to anyone. Anthropology's job is to explain them. Historically, scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity in two main ways: (1) racial classifi cation (now largely abandoned) versus (2) the current explanatory approach, which focuses on understanding specifi c differences. § The race factor □ In theory, a biological race would be a geographically isolated subdivision of a species. (A species is a population whose members can interbreed to produce offspring that can live and reproduce.) Such a subspecies would be capable of interbreeding with other subspecies of the same species, but it would not actually do so because of its geographic isolation. Some biologists also use "race" to refer to "breeds," as of dogs or roses. □ Humanity (Homo sapiens) lacks such races because human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop into such discrete groups. □ A race is supposed to refl ect shared genetic material (inherited from a common ancestor), but early scholars instead used phenotypical traits (usually skin color) for human racial classifi cation □ Racial classifi cations based on phenotype raise the problem of deciding which traits are most important □ It's true also that many human populations don't fi t neatly into any one of the three "great races." □ There is a fi nal objection to racial classifi cation based on phenotype. The phe- notypical characteristics on which races are based supposedly refl ect genetic material that is shared and that has stayed the same for long periods of time. But phenotypical similarities and differences don't necessarily have a genetic basis. □ Anthropology's comparative, biocultural perspective recognizes that environ- mental factors, including customary diet and other cultural forces, constantly mold human biology. (Biocultural refers to the inclusion and combination of both bio- logical and cultural perspectives and approaches to comment on or solve a particular issue or problem.) Culture is a key environmental force in determining how human bodies grow and develop. □ It is not possible to defi ne human races biologically. Still, scientists have made much progress in explaining variation in skin color, along with many other expressions of human biological diversity □ nations have been provided for many other aspects of human biological variation. Melanin, the primary determinant of human skin color, is a chemical substance manufactured in the epidermis, or outer skin layer. The melanin cells of darker-skinned people produce more and larger granules of melanin than do those of lighter-skinned people. By screening out ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, melanin offers pro- tection against a variety of maladies, including sunburn and skin cancer. □ In the tropics, intense UV radiation poses a series of threats that make light skin color an adaptive disadvantage. First, UV radiation can cause severe sunburn, which aside from discomfort can lead to vulnerabilities in the body. By damaging sweat glands, sunburn reduces the body's ability to perspire and thus to regulate its own temperature (thermoregulation). Sun- burn also can increase susceptibility to disease. Yet another disadvantage of having light skin color in the tropics is that exposure to UV radiation can cause skin cancer (Blum 1961). Melanin, nature's own sunscreen, confers a selective advantage (i.e., a better chance to survive and reproduce) on darker-skinned people living in the tropics because it helps protect them from sunburn and skin cancer. □ Another selective factor in the geographic distribution of human skin color relates to the manufacture (synthesis) of vitamin D in the body □ "Looking at Alaska, one would think that the native people should be pale as ghosts." One reason they aren't is that they haven't inhabited this region very long in terms of geological time. Even more important, their traditional diet, which is rich in seafood, including fi sh oils, supplies suffi cient vitamin D so as to make a reduc- tion in pigmentation unnecessary □ e geographic distribution of skin color involves the effects of UV on folate, an essen- tial nutrient that the human body manufactures from folic acid □ human skin color as resulting from a balancing act between the evolutionary needs to (1) protect against all UV hazards (favoring dark skin in the tropics) and (2) have an adequate supply of vitamin D (favor- ing lighter skin outside the tropics). § The subdisciplines □ Cultural anthropology is the study of human society and culture, the subfi eld that describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differ- ences. To study and interpret cultural diversity, cultural anthropologists engage in two kinds of activity: ethnography (based on fi eld work) and ethnology (based on cross- cultural comparison) □ Archaeological anthropology (more simply, "archaeology") reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains. □ The subject matter of biological, or physical, anthropology is human biological diversity in time and space. The focus on biological variation unites fi ve special interests within biological anthropology: ® 1. Human evolution as revealed by the fossil record (paleoanthropology). ® 2. Human genetics. ® 3. Human growth and development. ® 4. Human biological plasticity (the body's ability to change as it copes with stresses, such as heat, cold, and altitude). ® 5. The biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of monkeys, apes, and other nonhuman primates. □ Linguistic anthropology studies language in its social and cultural context, across space and over time. Some linguistic anthropologists make infer- ences about universal features of language, linked perhaps to uniformities in the human brain. Others reconstruct ancient languages by comparing their contemporary descen- dants and in so doing make discoveries about history. Still others study linguistic d ifferences to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures. ® Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation ○ Cultural rules are subject to interpretation, manipulation, and contestation. § Ideal culture (what people say they should do) § Real culture (what people actually do) ○ Practice theory § Individuals within every society have different □ Motives and intentions □ Degrees of power and influence (agency) § Culture shapes and constrains the thoughts, actions, and behaviors of the individual. § The agency of individuals transforms culture in subtle yet cumulatively important ways § Individual and culture have a reciprocal relationship. Influence each other ○ Mechanisms of cultural change- § Agency and Practice; incremental change over time due to the cumulative actions of individuals § Diffusion; borrowing between cultures either directly or through intermediaries (Hispanic cultures diffusing into North American) § Acculturation; the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; original cultural patterns may be altered, but the groups remain distinct. Can communicate across cultural boundaries § Independent invention; innovation to find creative solutions to problems. The same invention can occur in different places at different times (e.g. agriculture).

• Ethics and Anthropology ○ To guide its members in making decisions involving ethics and values, the AAA offers a Code of Ethics ○ Anthropologists should be open and honest about . . . their research projects with all parties affected by the research. These parties should be informed about the nature, procedures, purpose(s), potential impacts, and source(s) of support for the research. Researchers should not compromise anthropological ethics in order to conduct research. They should . . . pay attention to proper relations between themselves as guests and the host nations and communities where they work. The AAA does not advise anthropologists to avoid taking stands on issues. Indeed, . . . seeking to shape actions and policies may be as ethically justifi able as inaction. ○ . Informed consent (agreement to take part in the research, after having been so informed) should be obtained from anyone who provides information or who might be affected by the research. ○ North American anthropologists working in another country to (1) include host country colleagues in their research plans and funding requests, (2) establish collaborative relationships with those colleagues and their institutions, and (3) include host country colleagues in publication of the research results. • Research Methods ○ Initially sociologists focused on the industrial West; anthropologists, on nonindustrial societies ○ participant observation—taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing. ○ Anthropology started to separate from sociology around 1900. • Ethnography ○ Ethnography thus emerged as a research strategy in societies with greater c ultural uniformity and less social differentiation than are found in large, modern, industrial nations. Traditionally, ethnographers have tried to understand the whole of a particu- lar culture ○ The characteristic fi eld techniques of the ethnographer include the following: 1. Direct, fi rsthand observation of behavior, including participant observation. Ethnographers must pay attention to hundreds of details of daily life, seasonal events, and unusual happenings. 2. Conversation with varying degrees of formality, from the daily chitchat, which helps maintain rapport and provides knowledge about what is going on, to prolonged interviews, which can be unstructured or structured. With the interview schedule, the ethnographer talks face to face with people, asks the questions, and writes down the answers. Questionnaire procedures tend to be more indirect and impersonal; often the respon- dent fi lls in the form. 3. The genealogical method. Anthropologists need to collect genealogical data to understand current social relations and to reconstruct history. 4. Detailed work with key consultants, or informants, about particular areas of community life. Every community has people who by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life. 5. In-depth interviewing, often leading to the collection of life histories of particular people (narrators). life history. This recollection of a lifetime of expe- riences provides a more intimate and personal cultural portrait than would be possible otherwise. Life histories, which may be recorded or videotaped for later review and analysis, reveal how specifi c people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives 6. Discovery of local (native) beliefs and perceptions, which may be compared with the ethnographer's own observations and conclusions. ethnographers typically combine two research strategies, the emic (native- oriented) and the etic (scientist-oriented) Operating emically, the ethnographer seeks the "native viewpoint," relying on local people to explain things and to say whether something is signifi cant or not. The term cultural consultant, or informant, refers to individuals the ethnographer gets to know in the fi eld, the people who teach him or her about their culture, who provide the emic perspective. The etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, cat- egories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to inter- pret their cultures impartially. Operating etically, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she (the observer) notices and considers important Ethnography- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), who spent most of his professional life in England, is generally considered the founder of ethnography. nterpretive anthropology considered the task of describing and interpreting that which is meaningful to natives. refl exive ethnography. Here the ethnographer puts his or her personal feelings and reactions to the fi eld situation right in the text. Linked to salvage ethnography was the idea of the ethnographic present—the period before Westernization, when the "true" native culture fl ourished. Contemporary ethnographies usually recognize that cultures constantly change and that an ethnographic account applies to a particular moment 7. Problem-oriented research of many sorts. move away from holistic accounts toward more problem- focused and experimental ethnographies 8. Longitudinal research—the continuous long-term study of an area or site. Longitudi- nal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits. 9. Team research—coordinated research by multiple ethnographers. § The more recent researchers have built on prior con- tacts and fi ndings to increase knowledge about how local people meet and manage new circumstances. ○ Survey Research § Working mainly in large, populous nations, sociologists, political scientists, and economists have developed and refi ned the survey research design, which involves sampling, impersonal data collec- tion, and statistical analysis. Survey research usually draws a sample § A combination of survey research and ethnography can provide new perspectives on life in complex societies ○ Summary 1. A code of ethics guides anthropologists' research and other professional activities. Anthropologists need to establish and maintain appropriate, collaborative, and nonexploitative relationships with colleagues and communities in the host country. Researchers must gain the informed consent of all affected parties—from the authorities who control access to the fi eld site to the members of the community being studied. 2. Ethnographic methods include fi rsthand and participant observation, rapport building, interviews, genealogies, work with key consultants, or informants, collection of life histories, discovery of local beliefs and perceptions, problem-oriented and longitudinal research, and team research. Ethnographers work in actual communities and form personal relationships with local people as they study their lives. 3. An interview schedule is a form an ethnographer completes as he or she visits a series of households. Key cultural consultants, or informants, teach about particular areas of local life. Life histories dramatize the fact that culture bearers are individuals. Such case studies document personal experiences with culture and culture change. Genealogical information is particularly useful in societies in which principles of kinship and marriage organize social and political life. Emic approaches focus on native perceptions and explanations. Etic approaches give priority to the ethnographer's own observations and conclusions. Longitudinal research is the systematic study of an area or site over time. Forces of change are often too pervasive and complex to be understood by a lone ethnographer. Anthropological research may be done by teams and at multiple sites. Outsiders, fl ows, linkages, and people in motion are now included in ethnographic analyses. 4. Traditionally, anthropologists worked in small-scale societies; sociologists, in modern nations. Different techniques have developed to study such different kinds of societies. Social scientists working in complex societies use survey research to sample variation. Anthropologists do their fi eldwork in communities and study the totality of social life. Sociologists study samples to make inferences about a larger population. Sociologists often are interested in causal relations among a very small number of variables. Anthropologists more typically are concerned with the interconnectedness of all aspects of social life. 5. T he diversity of social life in modern nations and cities requires social survey procedures. However, anthropologists add the intimacy and direct investigation characteristic of ethnography. Anthropologists may use ethnographic procedures to study urban life. But they also make greater use of survey techniques and analysis of the mass media in their research in contemporary nations.

• Language and Communication ○ Non Human Primate Communication § Call systems □ These vocal systems consist of a limited number of sounds—calls— that are produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered. other primates § Sign Language □ . Several apes have learned to converse with peo- ple through means other than speech. □ Cultural transmission of a communication system through learning is a fundamen- tal attribute of language. Washoe, Lucy, and other chimps have tried to teach ASL to other animals, including their own offspring. □ productivity. Speakers routinely use the rules of their language to produce entirely new expressions that are comprehensible to other native speakers. □ Chimps and gorillas have a rudimentary capacity for language. They may never have invented a meaningful gesture system in the wild. However, given such a system, they show many humanlike abilities in learning and using it. □ Displace- ment means that humans can talk about things that are not present. Language Contrasted with Call Systems TABLE 4.1 Language Contrasted with Call Systems Human Language Primate Call Systems Has the capacity to speak of things and Are stimuli-dependent; the food call will be events that are not present made only in the presence of food; it (displacement). cannot be faked. Has the capacity to generate new Consist of a limited number of calls that expressions by combining other cannot be combined to produce new calls. expressions (productivity). Is group specific in that all humans have Tend to be species specific, with little the capacity for language, but each variation among communities of the same linguistic community has its own species for each call. language, which is culturally transmitted. § The origin of language □ The key role of FOXP2 in speech came to light in a study of a British family, identifi ed only as KE, half of whose members had an inherited, severe defi cit in speech (Trivedi 2001). The same variant form of FOXP2 that is found in chimpanzees causes this disorder. Those who have the nonspeech v ersion of the gene cannot make the fi ne tongue and lip movements that are necessary for clear speech, and their speech is unintelligible—even to other members of the KE family ○ NonVerbal communication § Kinesics is the study of communication through body movements, stances, ges- tures, and expressions ○ The Structure of language § The scientifi c study of a spoken language (descriptive linguistics) involves several interrelated areas of analysis: phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. § Phonology, the study of speech sounds, considers which sounds are present and signifi cant in a given language. § Morphology studies the forms in which sounds combine to form morphemes—words and their meaningful parts. Thus, the word cats would be ana- lyzed as containing two morphemes—cat, the name for a kind of animal, and -s, a morpheme indicating plurality. § A language's lexicon is a dictionary containing all its morphemes and their meanings. § Syntax refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences. § Speech Sounds □ . A phoneme is a sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning. □ We fi nd the phonemes in a given language by comparing minimal pairs, words that resemble each other in all but one sound. □ Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in general, what people actually say in various languages, like the differences in vowel pronunciation described in the discus- sion of midwestern speech at the beginning of the chapter. Phonemics studies only the signifi cant sound contrasts (phonemes) of a given language. ○ Language, thought, and culture § Noam Chomsky (1957) has argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis. § Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis □ t different languages produce different ways of thinking. This position sometimes is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis § Focal Vocabulary □ A lexicon (or vocabulary) is a language's dictionary, its set of names for things, events, and ideas. Lexicon infl uences perception □ Such specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups (those with particular foci of experience or activity) are known as focal vocabulary □ . Semantics refers to a language's meaning system. § Sociolinguistics □ The fi eld of sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic vari- ation □ Sociolinguists focus on features that vary systematically with social position and situation. To study variation, sociolinguists must observe, defi ne, and measure variable use of language in real-world situations. □ Linguistic Diversity within Nations ® In certain parts of Europe, people regularly switch dialects. This phe- nomenon, known as diglossia, applies to "high" and "low" variants of the same lan- guage, for example, in German and Flemish □ Gender Speech Contrasts ® . In phonology, American women tend to pronounce their vowels more peripherally ("rant," "rint" when saying the word "rent"), whereas men tend to pronounce theirs more centrally ("runt") □ Stratification and Symbolic Domination ® We use and evaluate speech in the context of extralinguistic forces—social, political, and economic. Mainstream Americans evaluate the speech of low-status groups negatively, calling it "uneducated." This is not because these ways of speaking are bad in themselves but because they have come to symbolize low status. Consider variation in the pronunciation of r. In some parts of the United States r is regularly pronounced, and in other (rless) areas it is not. Originally, American rless speech was modeled on the fashionable speech of England. Because of its prestige, rless- ness was adopted in many areas and continues as the norm around Boston and in the South. ® The lin- guistic insecurity often felt by lower-class and minority speakers is a result of this symbolic domination. □ Black English Vernacular ® BEV is a complex linguistic system with its own rules, which linguists have described. ® Phonological rules may lead BEV speakers to omit -ed as a past-tense marker and -s as a marker of plurality. However, other speech contexts demonstrate that BEV speakers do understand the difference between past and present verbs, and between singular and plural nouns. § Historical Linguistics □ Historical linguists can reconstruct many features of past languages by studying contemporary daughter lan- guages. □ Knowledge of linguistic relationships often is valuable to anthropologists inter- ested in history, particularly events during the past 5,000 years. Cultural features may ( or may not) correlate with the distribution of language families. Groups that speak related languages may (or may not) be more culturally similar to each other than they are to groups whose speech derives from different linguistic a ncestors. □ Language Loss ® e, we lose centuries of thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, e dible fl owers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the every- day ® The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half (measured by number of distinct languages) in the past 500 years, and half of the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century. ○ Summary § 1. Wild primates use call systems to communicate. Environmental stimuli trigger calls, which cannot be combined when multiple stimuli are present. Contrasts between language and call systems include displacement, productivity, and cultural transmission. Over time, our ancestral call systems grew too complex for genetic transmission, and hominid communication began to rely on learning. Humans still use nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions, gestures, and body stances and movements. But language is the main system humans use to communicate. Chimps and gorillas can understand and manipulate nonverbal symbols based on language. 2. No language uses all the sounds the human vocal tract can make. Phonology— the study of speech sounds—focuses on sound contrasts (phonemes) that distinguish meaning. The grammars and lexicons of particular languages can lead their speakers to perceive and think in certain ways. 3. Linguistic anthropologists share anthropology's general interest in diversity in time and space. Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation by focusing on the actual use of language. Only when features of speech acquire social meaning are they imitated. If they are valued, they will spread. People vary their speech, shifting styles, dialects, and languages. 4. A s linguistic systems, all languages and dialects are equally complex, rule- governed, and effective for communication. However, speech is used, is evaluated, and changes in the context of political, economic, and social forces. Often the linguistic traits of a low-status group are negatively evaluated. This devaluation is not because of linguistic features per se. Rather, it refl ects the association of such features with low social status. One dialect, supported by the dominant institutions of the state, exercises symbolic domination over the others. 5. H istorical linguistics is useful for anthropologists interested in historical relationships among populations. Cultural similarities and differences often correlate with linguistic ones. Linguistic clues can suggest past contacts between cultures. Related languages—members of the same language family—descend from an original protolanguage. Relationships between languages don't necessarily mean there are biological ties between their speakers because people can learn new languages. 6. One aspect of linguistic history is language loss. The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half in the past 500 years, and half of the remaining 7,000 languages are predicted to disappear during this century.

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○ International culture (transcends national boundaries) => ○ National culture (Symbols; anthems, flags, holidays, historical figures. Purpose; forge a common identity. Embodies those beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions that are shared by citizens of the same nation) => ○ Subculture (culture found on a sub-national level. Associated with religious, ethnic, linguistic, and/or cultural motives) Often have myths, symbols, clothing, rituals, lifestyle, music, language, bodily movement, code of conduct. ○ Perpetuates group solidarity. Regulates our lives- constant pressure to follow certain behaviors. Education into a national culture. Learn who the heroes are

The tencdncy to view one's own culture as superior ○ The tendency to apply one's own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cutlrues

○ Anthropologists only work in the world's most remote areas among people who have never had outside contact § Reality: anthropologist study people in many kinds of societies in many countries ○ Anthropologists are only interested in studying "primitive" societies ( ones that are unchanging) § Reality: anthropologists are interested in change. Often study transnational processes ○ Anthropologists strive to unobtrusively observe rather than actively participate in the society they are studying § Reality: anthropologists become integrated into the communities they study. Fictive kinship, rapport and acceptance. Yet, you must remain somewhat detached in order to retain objectivity (no going native) ○ Anthropological field work is unrelenting series of exotic and romantic encounters § Fieldwork can be exciting, but it is usually mundane ○ Anthropologists only collect anecdotal data that is of little use § Anthropologists us a range of methods to systematically collect data ○ Reality is that anthropologists fieldwork is not glamorous, involves the tedious, painstaking collection of voluminous amounts of data over a long period of time, can be very lonely, can be a team rather than solitary endeavor.

• Ethnographic research: the initial process ○ Read the literature ○ Formulate a research question ○ Apply for research funding ○ Get IRB (human subjects) approval ○ DO IT!

• Tuskegee- people working for the gov't and taking black men with syphilis and intentionally not treating them. Institutions came up with Human Subjects approval-- any researcher has to go through a review process where people read over grant proposals and approve or disprove the project. Protects human subjects from being exploited or harmed. •

○ Living in the communitiy under study ○ Learning the local culture ○ Participate in daily activities ○ Important!!!!- at the end of the day, record your observations. You never realize is this going to be important down the road ○ Is the evidence from participant observation sufficient to understand? Probably not-- textual sources (previous economic surveys), current economic data (how important is it?), oral histories (cultural and personal significance) ○ MAJOR POINT- participant observation is ot the sole method for gathering data to answer a research question § Used for- gaining a basic understanding of the society so that researcher knows what kind of question ask § Used to draw conclusions •

○ Get to know broader range of individuals (more representative view of society) ○ Increasing rapport (thru familiarity and friendship) results in more reliable data ○ Seasonal perspective- understanding annual cycle is crucial for studying a range of issues (subsistence, market cycles, ritual cycles) ○ Longitudinal perspective- repeated surveys allow you to document and quantify change § How can you tell what is changing and at what rate and why and what impacts thosechanges are having if you have no starting benchmark ○ Accepetance, rapport, and access to information can be facilitated or inhibited by characteristics of the ethnographer: age, gender, linguistic sskills, education level, ethnicity, citizenship, personality, skills. Some are invariable (gender) some change during the fieldwork (linguistic skills) some change over a career (age)

○ Because all data is filtered though the lens of theindividual anthropologist, it is crtical to understnd § How personal attributes situate the anthro § How perrsonal atribues help/hinder ○ Acceptance, rapport, accesss to information can be facilitated or inhibited by the social role an ethnographer adopts in the field § What social role will you assume in fieldwork? § How will that role affect rapport and the nature of your interactions with subjects ○ Criteria to consider § Freedom of movement in/out of cocial circles § Type of informant relatiohs § Type of information that can be accessed § Information reliability § Power and autonomy associateed with a particular role ○ The point § Participant observation involves stratgic choices to occupy specific social roles § Good choices facilitate § Bad choices compromise

○ How to explain cultural differences between groups of humans... cultural?, How to explain the bio origin of humans... physical? How to understand human antiquity based on old artifacts... archaeology? ○ Context- European global expansion, contact with other societies. Advanced encountering people less advanced, and had to have explanation for it. Europeans were the cutting edge of evolution, theyre ahead of everyone else ○ How can we explain human differences? § Early theorists □ Degenerationism; we were all once civilized, ut some degenerated while others remained civilized. Religious explanation □ Progressivism; human history is characterized by advances from primitive to civilized. Scientific explanation. ® Diffusion- cultural traits originate in one are aand then spread ◊ Heliocentric diffusion; all cultural traits originate from single source (egypt) } Egyptian pyramids -> Mayan pyramid. } Ethnocentric Bias; people in the new world incapable of independent invention ◊ Culture circles- culture traits originated at multiple sources. } Diffusion from multiple sources, interaction

- all societieis follow the same evolutionary trajectory but at a different pace (economic, political institution, social institutions, religion, rationality, etc)

) Geographic or climatic changes pressures life forms to adapt § Biological- Darwinism 1809-1882- natural selestion. Some variations more beneficial for survival §

Bio to social- Evolution from simple to more complex states. Human societies analogous to biological organisms. Identify functions of organs in maintaining society

focus on Evolution of social and political institutions. Based some of his theories on data he personally gathered. □ Savagery to barbarism to civilization = promiscuity to polygamy to monogamy

- Focus on evolution of religios throughts and systems. Was not gathering own data, was relying on British imperial system's information. Built theories based on reports and descriptions by others. Armchair scholar □ Tylor's theory of religion ® As society evolves humans become ore rational. Animalisms, polytheism, monotheism, atheism.

□ Some societies are more fit than others □ Justification for European powers to dominate other societies (a moral imperative) § Social darwinism and racial theories □ Racial groups classified from primitive to civilized □ Some races deemed inferior to others (biological determinism) □ Justification for social stratification □ Data used methodology; anthropometrics (measuring dimensions noses, etc) § Both scholars used the comparative method □ Assumpt 1- psychic unity of mankind- everywhere think alike □ Assu 2- all societies undergo parallel but independent evo stages □ Step 1- place all societies of a scale from "primitive" to "ivilized" □ S2- analyze "living fossils" (prim societies) as evidence of previous evolutionary stages □ S3- compare institutions (poly systems, kinship, religion) to understand evolutionary trajectory from primitive to civilized.

○ § Used to combine rather than separate sub-disciplines § Adaptation ; the processes by which organism cope with changes ○

○ Combination of holistic approach, small scale analysis, method of participant observation- micro scale research researcher personally goes into the field to gather data ○ Cultural anthropology is the farthest of the social sciences to the qualitative side ○

□ Descriptive acct of particular society □ Based on long-term first hand field work □ Old school approach- highly descriptive and holistic account of a particular society □ Contemporary approach- problem oriented research, less holistic and more focused on a single issue. □ Holistic into single issue, isolation into inter-connections ® Ethnography provides an account of a particular community, society, or culture. During ethnographic fi eldwork, the ethnographer gathers data that he or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present that account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film

§ Ethnology □ Examines, analyses and compares the results of ethnographies- the data gathered in different societies □ Goal is to arrive at general conclusions ○ Cultural anthro a social science or in the humanities? § Social sciences □ Branches of learning concerned with structure of society. Provides plausible and reliable explanations of social processes § Humanities □ Branches of learning concerned with human thought and relations. Provide empathic understanding of another society § A quest for empathic understanding or a quest to provide` explanations for why people act the way they do? ® Ethnology examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnog- raphy—the data gathered in different societies. It uses such data to compare and contrast and to make generalizations about society and culture. Looking beyond the particular to the more general, ethnologists attempt to identify and explain cultural differences and similarities, to test hypotheses, and to build theory to enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work

Physical/Biological Archaeology- the study of past societies by uncovering what is left behind Socio Cultural Anthro- holistic study of human societies with a special focus on culture Linguistic Anthro- the study of language in its social contest