1: Introduction Flashcards
1
Q
‘Culture as civilisation’
Edward Tylor
A
- One way of looking at culture:
- ‘Culture as civilisation’
- Everything people do is cultural
- ‘one Culture’. Singular.
- You can have ‘more’ or ‘less’ culture.
- Thus there is a hierarchy implicit in this view.
- Some have achieved more culture than others
- Its an evolutionist model. The everyone around the globe will move in the same direction.
THIS VIEW IN ANTHROPOLOGY IS NOW COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DISCREDITED!!!
2
Q
Culture as a way of life/ way of seeing the world
Franz Boas
A
- Developed his view in CONTRAST to Tylors view.
- He said there is no such thing as ‘one Culture with a big C’
- In fact there are many cultures with a little c, plural
- Cultures are ways of life, they are not achievements like in the way Tylor talked about it.
- They are ways of understanding and being in the world.
- In this case, we don’t get hierarchy. We cannot say that there are people with more culture and people with less culture. Everyone in the world has a culture, there culture. You can’t put them on a ranking in terms of what is ‘more cultural’ or not.
- This is an egalitarian view. No evolutionism here.
3
Q
Clifford Geertz (1923-2006) on culture
A
- One of the most famous definitions of culture.
- Famous for what is called ‘interpretive anthropology’. Anthropology should try to understand meanings, what meanings people give to certain things.
• What is then anthropology an interpretation of? Of culture.
• Plural – cultureS.
• Man have spun webs. Spun webs of significance (meanings). They make these webs of meanings themselves, and then they are suspended in them like a spider in his web. They hand in a web that they have made themselves. Then the web is that culture. The web has a pattern – and the analysis of these webs of meanings is anthropology.
• The key of this definition is that it gives you a really good idea about what culture can mean. Every person in the world is somehow suspended in a web. And none of those webs is more cultural or less cultural.
4
Q
Clifford Geertz:
‘Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning’ (Geertz 1973: 5)
A
Men and women have spun webs… webs of significance (meanings) – make them themseves – then they hang in a web that they have made themselves – the web is that culture. The web has a pattern – and they analysis of these webs in anthropology. None of the webs is more cultural or less cultural.
5
Q
Culture in anthropology:
PERVASIVE
A
- Not one part of society. You have the economy, education, then you have culture. They rule these webs of meanings of all society. That web of significance has to be looked at as a whole. That web of significance makes certain things meaningful for people.
6
Q
Culture in anthropology:
LEARNED AND TRANSFERRD
A
- Come from somewhere, they are passed on. If people give meaning to things, practices and beliefs etc, then these meanings are not some expression for somewhere deep inside our individual soul. Most of what we do is part of social life, it is something WE HAVE LEARNED. An awful lot of how we act in the world is part of collective life. When we say we like certain things it is interesting to see how did we come to like those certain things. Its what we have ‘learned to like’.
7
Q
Culture in anthropology:
ULTIMATELY AND CRUTIALLY, ARBITRARY
A
- They don’t have to be the way they are. Cultures are not routed in any necessity – cultures are not they way they are because of some natural law. Anthropologists when they study culture, they are interested in how people give meanings in ultimately arbitrary ways. E.g. Black associated with mourning in western culture. = This is mostly arbitrary, it could be white, like it is in some other culture. It could be purple with yellow elephants. Because they are MANMADE, human made webs of meanings. Human beings are creative in that respect.
8
Q
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION:
A
- Not given (e.g. by nature, evolution) they are made, constructed, by people.
- Studies social realities as social constructions: e.g. what people eat, they way in which people make home, the rules about marriage that exist in certain groups of people, the celebrations people have when they marry = these things are social constructions.
- They are not given. They are made/constructed/built by people – and they are not individual constructions but rather something that is transferred and told to someone – Anthropologists do not approach them as something that is natural – they are social constructions, human made, spun by man himself. This means we can get on in life – but this is not natural, it is constructed. Treat things as social constructs – put glasses on.
9
Q
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
A
- Put cultural relativism glasses on top of social construction glasses. You cannot rank culture – you cannot say one culture is higher or lower than other. In hierarchy.
- Go to a place to try and understand different cultures e.g. if culture eat ants…. Try and understand in what way they find ants meaingfull/why they eat them/are they considered to be good meal for particular occasions/good for fertility etc.
- Not just go with pre-conceptions and confirm them.
- Step out of our own ethnocentric view of our own culture.
- My views are not universal.
- See things from others position/perspective. - This is the key to social anthropology – try to see that culture from within that culture. We can step outside of our own view of other cultures, ethnocentrism.
10
Q
Ethnography:
A
- To write about particular people
- detailed, in-depth description of everyday life and practice of particular people.
- ometimes referred to as “thick description” – a term attributed to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz writing on the idea of an interpretive theory of culture in the early 1970s
11
Q
Fieldwork:
A
Immersing yourselves in a particular social setting, spending a lot of everyday routines with people in a particular setting. This is what allows one to conduct an ethnography.
- e.g. becoming part of it to a certain degree. Living there. Spending a lot of time and a lot of everyday routines, ordinary lives, with people, in a particular setting.
- Allows you to develop a critical perspective of your own surroundings.
12
Q
Ethnography and fieldwork:
A
- Very important to realize that these to approached (social construction and cultural relativism) are to UNDERSTAND. They are not about questions of judgement, they are questions to understand.
- By going out of your own familiar environment, you can then try to understand things from the perspective of the people you are studying. Then you can ask questions about your own understands. This is a key contribution of anthropology.
13
Q
Ethnocentrism
A
to put your own ethnos in the centre. To start from the point that the way that I think, and the way that I understand the world, is THE WAY. Its absolute, and its universal.
