Anthropology 2

“Introduction to Cultural Anthropology”

Spring 2008

Casey Walsh

Lecture 4/4/2008

Topics and Themes

Topics

• Specific research issues / professional specializations / bodies of literature
• Anthro 2 is a survey course, and will cover many of the standard topics
• Two lectures on specific cases
• Two ethnographies

Topics: History of Anthropology

• Anthropology emerges from the study of contact between cultures

Colonialism, empire.

• Modernity

World system; colonialism; empire; capitalism; liberalism

• Ideas are historically and culturally specific
• To understand the main ideas of anthropology, we need to study the history of the discipline.
• We should also treat anthro as culture: part of a specific way of seeing the world
• Our topics are defined by this perspective

The Culture Concept

• “Culture” is the particular domain of anthropology
• Edward Burnett Tylor (1871).

“…that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

• “Custom” and “Tradition”

Evolution / Environment

• The dynamics of change

Biological, social, cultural

• Darwin: natural selection
• Relation of a species to environment
• Ecology
• “Culture” plays a key role in these relationships

Race and Ethnicity

• Anthropology has always been interested in human biological and cultural diversity
• “Races” can not be identified by science

Ideas of race are very strong in society

• Biology and Culture: what is the relation?

Scientific racism

Critical race studies

Economy

• Human social reproduction
• Economic activities are embedded in other kinds of relationships
• Boundaries of the concept?
• Emic or etic concept?
• Economic Perspectives on Livelihoods

Social and Political Organization

• Individual
• Kinship
• Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, State

Gender and Sexuality

• They way men and women are defined culturally, and the tasks and activities assigned to each.

Religion / Arts / Food

• Although related to social organization and economy these topics are seen as more ideational or symbolic.
• Beliefs and tastes.

Development and Government

• How anthropologists and anthropological concepts orient the political, economic and cultural interventions of government in society.
• Case study from Mexico: Manuel Gamio and the anthropology of Mexican Development.

Neoliberalism

• Political-economic philosophy that is currently dominant
• Case study from Mexico: how the management of water resources in the borderlands of northern Mexico is shaped by a particular concept of culture.

Themes

• Themes are more general, overarching intellectual issues.
• Themes of anthropology, but also of the modern, western, northern culture that has produced anthropology.
• No lectures specifically about the themes of the course, because they are present in all the lectures

Keywords

• words that are especially fraught with meaning, and are subject to debate.

“race”

“development”

• How are these defined?

Us and Them

• Emic and Etic (me and them)

Certainty and Relativism

• “Cultural relativism”

No inherent superiority of any culture

Leads to a questioning of fundamental principles and end goals

• Truth

There are things are certain in the world.

Unity and Diversity

• We are culturally and physically diverse
• We share things as humans

Structures, Functions, Systems

• Structure: how things are arranged, spatially, socially, mentally.

Relational, fixed

• Function: the role something plays in a larger arrangement.

Things exist because they work as part of a larger system

• System: the whole functioning arrangement.

Process and Causality

• Processes in time, more than structural relationships
• Social Change
• What makes things happen?
• Determinism and Determinations