Fundamentals of CA

Question 1

Culture by Eriksen

Answer 1

“Let us therefore, as a preliminary conceptualisation of culture, define it as those abilities, notions and forms of behavior persons have acquired as members of society.”

Question 2

Culture basics

Answer 2

1) Learned, not innate
2) Partly conscious, partly unconscious
3) Compelling - unconsciously conforming to social role expectations
4) To some extent “shared” by people who belong to a specific group
5) Unequally distributed between members of the same group (skills and knowledge varies)

Question 3

Culture basics

Answer 3

1) Learned, not innate
2) Partly conscious, partly unconscious
3) Compelling - unconsciously conforming to social role expectations
4) To some extent “shared” by people who belong to a specific group
5) Unequally distributed between members of the same group (skills and knowledge varies)

Question 4

Universalism vs particularism

Answer 4

Eriksen: “To what extent do all humans, cultures or societies have something in common, and to what extent is each of them unique?”

Question 5

Ethnocentrism

Answer 5

Eriksen: “evaluating other people from one’s own vantage-point and describing them in one’s own terms.”

Question 6

Cultural relativism

Answer 6

Eriksen: “Cultural relativism is sometimes posited as the opposite of ethnocentrism. This is the doctrine that societies or cultures are qualitatively different and have their own unique inner logic, and that it is therefore scientifically useless to rank them on a scale.”

Question 7

The Problem of Translation

Answer 7

Eriksen: “How can we translate an alien way of experiencing the world into our own mode of thought; how can we be certain that we do not misinterpret or distort the society when we try to describe it in our own terms?”
Solution: distinguish between description (experience-near, the native’s understanding) and analysis (experience-distant, using comparative concepts to connect this to other societes)

Question 8

Emic

Answer 8

Eriksen: “life as experienced and described by the members of a society themselves”
Importance: Understanding and describing ideas, conceptions and actions form the point of view of those involved (internal logic)
Challenge: Ethnocentrism, problem of translation, limitations of textual representation

Question 9

Etic

Answer 9

Eriksen: “the analytical descriptions or explanations of the researcher”
Importance: Use of theories and concepts to make sense of empirical observations and comparison is possible
Challenge: Are not all anthropological theories emic/ethnocentric as they rose in the West?

Question 10

Holism

Answer 10

Studying phenomena not in isolation but as connected, in relation to everything else