Cultural Anthropology midterm Flashcards
What did anthropology look like at the beginning of the 20th century?
- almost no fossil evidence of human origins
- racial classifications based on anthropometrics
- linguistics was only historical, reconstructing a protolanguage
What are the major developments in physical anthropology?
- African fossils
- Timeline for the development of upright posture
- Neanderthals are no longer considered ancestors to modern humans
- Dating methods
What was the role of Gordon Childe in archeology?
- He put together all the available information from European countries to create a prehistoric chronology for Europe
What was the negative effect of the Chomskian revolution?
- anthropologists were turned away from discribing the world’s lesser known languages - they switched to using bits of data from their own languages
Branislaw Malinowski
British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski is remembered as the father of the functionalist school of anthropology as well as for his role in developing the methods and the primacy of anthropological fieldwork. Malinowski first rose to prominent notice through his studies of Pacific Islanders, especially those conducted among the Trobriand Islanders whose marriage, trade, and religious customs he studied extensively. His best known works include his classic book Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) as well as Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929), and the posthumously published Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (1948). Malinowski helped develop the field of anthropology from a primarily evolutionary focus into sociological and psychological fields of enquiry. Some of the more noteworthy byproducts of his fieldwork in this direction was various evidence that debunked the Freudian notion of a universal Oedipal Complex and also showed that so-called primitive peoples are capable of the same types and levels of cognitive reasoning as those from more “advanced” societies. Malinowski’s ideas and methodologies came to be widely embraced by the Boasian influenced school of American Anthropology, making him one of the most influential anthropologists of the 20th century.
What are the two schools that relate anthropology to development?
- Development anthropology
- Anthropology of development
What is the role of the World Bank in development anthropology?
What is the difference between anthropology of development and development anthropology?
developent anthropology: working in development institutions, applied work in development
anthropology of development: language and discource seen as constitutive of social reality
What is the weakness of development anthropology?
- Critics suggest that the underlying framework – development – inspires a cultural politics of dominance over “Third World” countries.
The role of F. Boas in US anthropology.
Franz Boas was born at Minden, Westphalia, Germany, on July 9, 1858. After studying at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, he received a Ph.D. in physics with a minor in geography from the University of Kiel in 1881.
His first fieldwork experience was among the Eskimo in Baffinland, Canada, from 1883 to 1884. From 1885 to 1886, Boas conducted fieldwork under the auspices of several museums on the North Pacific Coast of North America. During this time he was also involved in an important project to bring the cultures of Native Americans to the general public as part of the Chicago World’s Fair from 1892 to 1893.
Franz Boas pioneered the concept of life group displays, commonly known as dioramas, and exhibited skulls of various peoples to demonstrate the irrelevance of brain size and argue the diminished significance of theories of racial distinction between humans.
Ethnographic techniques:
- observation
- interviews
- genealogical method
- informants
- life histories
- local beliefs and perceptions
Local beliefs and perceptions - two approaches:
Emic approach- how local people think
Etic approach – scientist-oriented approach
Founding fathers of anthropology:
Lewis Henry Morgan
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
Franz Boas
Bronislaw Malinowski
Ruth Benedict
Margaret Mead
Evolutionism in Anthropology:
Morgan‘s Ancient Society:
(Savagery, barbarism, civilization
Unilinear evolutionism)
Tylor‘s Primitive Culture:
(Development of religion from animism to polytheism to monotheism);
Both were interested in survivals – practices that survived from earlier evolutionary stages
Franz Boas bullet points:
Father of American four-field anthropology
Race, Language, and Culture
Boas showed that human biology was plastic
It could be changed by environment, culture, etc.
Biology does not determine culture
Historical particularism