Encountering Cultural Differences (Lecture 3) Flashcards
Do people usually get disorientated when they’re in new cultures?
Yes - cultural differences
What is a human form of adaptation, that’s not genetic changes?
Cultural Differences
Is violence between cultures unique to Europeans?
No
How was Herodotus a good example of an anthropologist?
What did he say about the Egyptians, in terms of the ‘common practices of mankind”?
He studied and recorded the day to day, mundane details of other peoples, state affairs, politics (Egyptians)
They reversed it
His understanding of Egyptians were from the perspective of his own culture
Comparison always involves perspective
What did Bartolome de Las Casas argue for, for the Indians?
Indigenous Rights
What is Proto-Anthropology? Who was it done by?
a.k.a armchair Anthropology
Scholars who tried to make sense of other peoples, by reading travel books (written between the 16th and 19th Centuries)
What did the Spaniards do to the people on Hispaniola Island to be considered brutal?
The Spaniards murdered them all (nearly) - from 3.2mil to 125
What ideas did ArmChair Anthropologists (19th Century) use to understand cultural differences?
Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary Theory (Darwin)
e.g. natural selection, survival of the fittest ==> better adapted societies more likely to survive
Who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”? How was the idea applied to societies and cultures?
Herbert Spencer
That better adapted societies survived, and he saw a simple direction of simple to complex societies
What did Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) ‘contribute’ to Anthropology? What did his approach do?
Unilinear development of social complexity
Placed white, European males at the top of the framework
Who is considered in many ways as the first modern Anthropologist? What ideas did he debunk?
Frank Hamilton Cushing, studied the Zuni Indians
Debunked simple idea of social evolution of societies
Where did Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen study?
Australia
Who was the 1st person to institutionalise long-term field work?
Malinowski (1884 - 1942)
