midterm 2 Flashcards
- Two concepts to explain how individuals come to acquire and take for granted the cultural and social beliefs, behaviours and identities prevalent in their societies.
- Socialization: the process by which human beings learn to become members of a group both by interacting appropriately with others and by coping with the behavioural rules established by the group
- Enculturation refers to the process by which human beings living with one another must learn to come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are considered appropriate to their respective cultures
- World view
encompassing picture of reality created by members of a society
o Can be thought of as comprehensive and systematically ordered and integrated set of ideas and beliefs about how the world works.
o world view becomes institutionalized or pervasive, it shapes how those individuals who hold it interpret their experience and events or occurrences in the world around them
often work at an unconscious level, and will frequently shape the actions and behaviours of individuals
- science and secularism, which can be defined as the
view that religion and state should remain separate, are also world views in their own right
- Early anthropologists sometimes equated entire cultures with particular world views. Such a view, however
, has come under heavy criticism in recent years, as anthropologists challenge a reductive notion of culture that treats cultural or social groups as homogeneous, bounded or isolated, and unchanging
- Ideology can be defined as the
social beliefs, practices, or senses of self that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply natural and right, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce existing systems of power and inequality even when we recognize them as unfair
- ideology is always as a concept is always linked to
power and inequality
o Anthropologists and other scholars often turn to the concept of ideology to explain how it is that dominant systems of power and inequality come to seem natural to individuals, simply part of who they are rather than an imposition by external forces
- play, sports, art, media, myth, and ritual are key practices through which humans
acquire, reproduce, comment or, and sometimes contest social norms, beliefs, values, and behaviours
- textbook defines play as
a framing (or orienting) context that is 1) consciously adopted by the players; 2) pleasurable; and 3) alludes to the non-play world by transforming the objects, roles, actions, and relations of ends and means characteristic of the non-play world”
- Key to play, as to the other expressive activities that we will discuss in this unit, is the ability to
communicate to other participants what “frame,” or cognitive boundary or context, you’re in, so that they can understand what behaviours and conventions are expected of them
o Statements or actions that might mean one thing in a play context may not mean the same in a non-play context, so it is important to have culturally understood signals that communicate to others the difference between play and ordinary life
, art and other expressive forms are often
reflexive, that is, they may serve as a commentary or cultural and social beliefs, behaviours, and identities.
- play can often have normative functions
o Through activities such as playing house or playing family, children may practice the roles that they will adopt later on in life, often validating these roles as natural or right
o play can be seen as instrumental to processes of enculturation and socialization as well as to the acquisition and consolidation of specific ideologies
o Through play, in other words, children may come to view and to accept such ideological divides as simply natural and right, part of who they are and how the world works rather than a culturally constructed and unequal division of power.
- At the same time, children’s play can also provide opportunities to institute social change.
o example of how children’s books may themselves play a role in instituting social change and creating new norms and values, for instance through books designed to teach children about alternate, non-traditional family forms.
The White Swan Express (2002), for instance, provides children with a fictionalized window into several different non-traditional families, telling the story of four Chinese baby girls adopted into four widely different families in North America, including a lesbian couple, a single woman, and two heterosexual married couples
o Anthropologist Andrew Miracle, for instance, notes how telling jokes is sometimes a strategy used by the Aymara people of Bolivia to ease otherwise uncomfortable social situations.
According to Miracle, the Aymara typically reserve joking for intimates. They consider it disrespectful to laugh in the presence of strangers. Joking among intimates is thus used to reinforce existing social bonds with friends and family. But Miracle observed that the Aymara sometimes broke this social norm when they found themselves on crowded buses. He notes that the Aymara generally consider at least an arm’s length as an appropriate distance to be maintained between individuals. On buses and trucks, however, they are forced to sit or stand uncomfortably close to strangers for long periods of time. Miracle argued that joking with strangers was a response to this uncomfortable situation
- If play can help reinforce dominant ideologies, it may also serve as a means through which both children and adults
criticize social norms and authority
o parody and satire can sometimes serve as particularly effective means through which individuals threaten social norms by criticizing how these are presently organized and pointing out alternate ways of organizing society
- The status of satire, parody, and other forms of comedy as “just play” is often what allows it to be an effective means of social protest
o Under conditions of widespread censorship, officials may permit comedy where they might block or shut down more straightforward forms of protest.
o Under conditions of general social complacency, comedy can shock or surprise citizens into a new awareness about broad social problems
- Sports are another form of social activity through
which individuals may reproduce or challenge dominant social beliefs, relations, and identities
- sports can be considered a type of
play with more definite, established, and even ritualized rules and conventions. Your textbook defines sports as “an aggressively competitive, often physically exertive activity governed by game-like rules that are ritually patterned and agreed upon by all participants”
- For instance, in her ethnography, Soccer Madness, Janet Lever argues that in Brazil, soccer, which is referred to as football or futebol in Brazil, works to build
political unity and allegiance to the nation. However, she argues that it does so in a somewhat paradoxical fashion, first affirming regional and social divides through city-level and regional competitions only to ultimately transcend them at the national level
o This system, Lever argues, gives “dramatic expression to the strain between groups while affirming the solidarity of the whole”
Lever notes that each Brazilian city has its own team, while major cities may have several teams. In a large city like Rio de Janeiro, different teams are supported by different social groups along class, racial, ethnic, and neighbourhood divides.
This city-wide competition thus reinforces the identities and rivalries between these different social groups. Yet most inhabitants of Rio come together to support the city’s winning team at national-level competitions, where the emphasis is then instead on divides between different cities or regions.
- Like play, sports can also serve as a means of criticizing and transforming dominant social relations
o cricket was introduced to the Trobriand Islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea by a missionary who hoped to use the game to “civilize” the native inhabitants, indoctrinating them in the beliefs and values of the British colonial rulers. By the 1970s, however, the Trobrianders had radically transformed the game.
It became a substitute for warfare between the different villages and a means of building political allegiances. The Trobrianders also instituted important changes to the rules of the game.
o In many societies, art and media also constitute
specialized professional arenas that involve their own complex set of political, economic, and other social relations and dynamics.
- Kenneth J. Guest defines art as
“all the ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies that humans employ to express themselves creatively and to communicate their creativity and inspiration to others”
- Alfred Gell defines art as objects which are
“beautifully made” and “demonstrate a certain technically achieved level of excellence”
- Art may often be designed to make audiences think or to otherwise convey particular meanings
o The German playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht, for instance, devised an entire theory and practice of theatre in 1920s Germany that was designed to disrupt audiences’ emotional absorption in plays in order to prompt them to instead think critically and rationally about the social, political, and economic dynamics of the events depicted on stage
- aesthetics, which can be defined as
the perception through one’s senses in contrast with the perception through intellect and logic
- Anthropologists of art have largely disputed the idea that there is any sort of simple or universal relationship between artistic forms and human response across cultures
They note that perceptions of art and what counts as beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, or even as art can vary widely across different societies
- The Baule are renowned for their skills in
sculpture and Susan Vogel has studied their sculpture practices for several decades. Emphasizing the ways in which different societies may have widely different understandings of what counts as art and aesthetics and how art works, Vogel notes that the Baule attribute specific power to their works of art that could seem strange to many Westerners
- Sculptures and, more specifically, carefully designed masks that represent either animals or specific people, play an important role in the Gbagba dance, a daylong performance that enacts and teaches basic lessons about how the Baule view the world.
- myths tend to be used to
consolidate dominant versions of reality
- play, art, myth, and ritual can be seen as existing on
a continuum from most to least open, then myth, like ritual, tends towards the closed, conventionalized, and formalized end of that spectrum.
- Your textbook defines myth as
as “a representative story that embodies a culture’s assumptions about the way society or the world in general must operate”
- Myths work to consolidate a
society’s dominant beliefs, values, and practices, by virtue of integrating personal experience with dominant ways of viewing the world and how it works
- Traditionally, myths are a
a verbal art. In many societies, they are passed down to audiences through the ruling groups in a society, including elders, political leaders, and religious specialists
o Myths are often about events in the past, telling stories about the beginning of time or of a particular society, or are about events in the future, focusing on stories about the end of time or human society
- in a society such as Canada, myths often play a relatively
informal role, in part because this is a nation-state in which different cultural and social groups with different cultural traditions, including different myths of origin, live side by side
- Perhaps one of the most dominant myths in Canada is that of
multiculturalism, a story promoted by the government and various other social institutions and individuals that tells us that Canada is a society in which different social and cultural groups live side by side in harmony, with respect for difference, and with strict prohibits against silencing others.
o Yet while this myth can serve as an important resource to which individuals and social groups can turn in an attempt to shape social behavior and political policy, it often does not reflect lived reality.
- Bronislaw Malinowski conducted long-term fieldwork in the early twentieth century with the
Trobriand islanders off the coast of Papua New Guinea and is known as one of the original advocates for long-term ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation
o Based on his study of Trobriand origin myths, he concluded that myths provide justifications for present-day social arrangements, explaining to those who hold them why it is that their society is organized in the way that it is and providing justifications for maintaining the established social order.
- A second account of how myth works was developed by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss’s theory of myth relied on
concepts and theories derived from linguistics as developed by Ferdinand de Saussure and has been highly influential not only within the discipline of anthropology but also in several related disciplines, including English Literature. Lévi-Strauss argued that myths were tools through which a society represented and managed contradictions, such as oppositions between male and female, life and death, the spirit and body, and so on
Ritual: A definition
- a repetitive social practice set off from everyday routine and composed of a sequence of symbolic activities that adhere to a culturally defined ritual schema and are closely connected to a specific set of ideas significant to the culture
- rituals usually contain some version of the following four elements:
- Rituals are themselves a repetitive social practice, that is, they are activities that social groups tend to engage in and repeat on a regular basis.
- Rituals are set off and considered as separate from “everyday life.” As your textbook goes on to note, entering into a ritual often involves invoking and signaling to others entry into a ritual “frame.”
- Rituals also involve an ordered sequence of symbolic activities, such as dance, song, speech, gestures, the manipulation of certain objects, and so on. receiving communion, and so on, each one of which has a particular, coded, meaning.
- Rituals are linked to a set of culturally important ideas, beliefs, and values. The ritual and its patterned set of activities are generally symbolically linked to and meant to reinforce these dominant norms, values, beliefs, social roles, etc.
- Rites of passage are typically considered to have three phases
separation, transition, and re-aggregation.
- The first phase, separation
involves a series of practices designed to separate the ritual passenger (the individual or individuals undergoing the rite of passage) from their previous identity or social status.
o n the military, this phase is marked by the new recruits leaving their families, having their hair shaved off, and so on. All of these activities reinforce the idea that the recruits are leaving their previous status or identity behind.
- During the second phase, transition
the ritual passenger is neither in the old phase of his or her life nor has he or she fully transitioned into his or her new identity and role. Gennep also described this phase as the liminal phase.
o Victor Turner emphasized how, in many societies, this phase of liminality is frequently associated with ambiguity and a perceived increase in danger.
o Turner used the term communitas to describe this new sense of solidarity found during the liminal phase of a rite of passage
- In the final phase of a rite of passage, re-aggregation,
the ritual passenger is reintroduced into society in his or her new role or social status
- Religion provides its practitioners with a
comprehensive set of beliefs and ideas with which to interpret and explain their own experience and the world around them
o ideas and practices that postulate reality beyond that which is immediately available to the senses
- Importantly, these ideas and practices are not individual but rather social
o they are shared by a large group of people and often shape the ways in which individuals who hold these beliefs experience and interact with the world and one another
- behaviours that are often associated with religious practice, including
prayer, physiological exercise, exhortation, mana, taboo, feasts, and sacrifice
- Arguably one of the most classic takes on religion and world view within anthropology is E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s discussion of
magic and witchcraft among the Azande people of Central Africa. Evans-Pritchard was a British Structural Functionalist (see Unit 3), who conducted fieldwork with the Azande in the early twentieth century
o As Evans-Pritchard explained it, the Azande believed that mangu, which Evans-Pritchard translated as witchcraft, was a substance that could be located in the bodies of witches, generally under the sternum
o Witchcraft is inherited from parents and age is deemed to strengthen an individual’s witchcraft: the older the witch, the stronger his or her witchcraft. There is also a gendered division to how witchcraft is practiced, with men practicing witchcraft against other men and women practicing witchcraft against other women
- Again, rather than dismissing witchcraft accusation as susperstition, Evans-Pritchard argued that it had a logic of its own as well as important social functions
o First off, those who are suspected of witchcraft are always proximates to the victim.
o Evans-Pritchard also argued that far from being illogical, witchcraft accusations among the Azande demonstrated a clear and consistent logic: it provided an explanation for what otherwise could not be explained
- World views can be used as instruments of
power when one social group attempts to establish its account of or particular view of reality as the only valid or correct view
- The Ghost Dance movement provides an example of a
revitalization movement, or a “conscious, deliberate, and organized attempt by some members of a society to create a more satisfying culture in a time of crisis”
- economic anthropology as
the part of the discipline that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living
economy, in turn, can be defined as
the culturally specific processes used by members of a society to provide themselves with material resources
- Economic anthropology has often been at odds with
classic approaches in economics, especially that of neoclassical economic theory
o neoclassical economic theorists such as Adam Smith assumed that individuals are inherently rational and self-interested
this model means that individuals are oriented towards maximizing utility and minimizing costs
And by self-interested, this model means that individuals are primarily concerned with their own wellbeing and are indifferent to the welfare of others.
- Economic processes can be divided into three phases
production, distribution or exchange, and consumption
- production as
the transformation of nature’s raw materials into a form suitable for human use”
o often closely linked to and dependent on systems of distribution and consumption
o The concept of modes of production is derived from the theories of Karl Marx
subsistence strategies as
the patterns of production, distribution, and consumption that members of a society use to meet their basic material survival needs”
- Food collectors, also sometimes referred to as
foragers or hunters and gatherers, can be defined as “people who gather wild plant materials, fish, and/or hunt for food”
- Food collection is the oldest human subsistence system.
- specific strategies used by food collectors to satisfy their material needs depends on
how rich the environment in which they live is in natural resources.
- Small-scale food collectors or foragers
such as the Ju/’hoansi of southern Africa, lived in environments where resources are often patchy and, as a result, tend to relocate often in search of food.
Complex food collectors or foragers
such as the Native peoples of the northwest coast of North America, lived in environments where the resources were more plentiful and, as a result, tended to build permanent settlements.
- While food producers may also incorporate practices of food collection into their subsistence strategies, they can be distinguished from the previous category because they also
depend on the domestication of animals and/or plants in order to meet their human needs
o Herders, also sometimes referred to as pastoralist
in the anthropological literature, depend on domesticated animals for food and other economic resources.
o Except for modern forms of stock raising practised in industrialized countries, most pastoral systems are
nomadic and rely upon the organized movement of herds to naturally occurring pasture and water over open range land
- Farming can be divided into three different categories, according to the types of technologies used.
o extensive agriculture, as your textbook notes, farmers burn brush in uncultivated lands and then grow crops in the ash-enriched soil
these techniques eventually exhaust the soil, requiring farmers to cultivate new plots in order to grow their crops.
o intensive agriculture, farmers use tools such as crop rotation, irrigation, and fertilizer, in order to cultivate the same piece of land over a longer period of time.
o mechanized industrial agriculture, farming depends on industrial methods of production. Mechanized industrial agriculture can characterize both the ways in which both crops and animals are cultivated.
- Distribution, as your textbook notes
can be thought of as the various methods used to allocate goods and services within a given social context
- one of the key contributions of anthropological work on distribution or exchange has been to demonstrate
how the methods that a society uses in order to distribute goods and services both reflects the organization of social relations within that society and are constitutive of or help to create those social relations
- Marcel Mauss was a highly influential French scholar whose theories became important to both anthropologists and sociologists and have been productively contested, revised, and elaborated on over the years.
- One of his major contributions to anthropology was his
theory of the gift.
o In modern Western societies, we typically assume that gifts should be presented freely. That is, they are not supposed to have “strings” attached to them, by which we mean that receiving a gift from someone should come without obligation and debt on the part of the receiver
o Marcel Mauss countered such assumptions. In his view, there was no such thing as a “free gift.” Rather, he argued, gifts produce ties of obligation and debt
o Practices of gift giving are both self-interested and oriented towards others. They can work to promote relatively egalitarian social systems, but they can also be used to reinforce systems of power and prestige
- Anthropologists have argued that gift giving will tend to establish
egalitarian relationships when individuals give and receive gifts of relatively equal value. By contrast, gift giving may tend to establish unequal relationships when the relative value of the goods exchanged between individuals are unequal or if one person gives gifts while another receives them
- Giving more gifts or giving gifts of higher value may establish the giver’s relative
power or prestige over the receiver.
- Marshall Sahlins argues that practices of reciprocity can be classified along a
continuum, in which three key forms can be located: generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity.
- Generalized reciprocity refers to the
exchange of goods and services without expectation of an immediate return.
o Generalized reciprocity may include forms of exchange in which there is no expectation of a return to forms of reciprocity in which there is a more diffuse and implicit expectation that the exchanges will, most likely, eventually balance out
o in perfect generalized reciprocity, failure to reciprocate does not result in the giver ceasing to give.
- Balanced reciprocity refers to the
exchange of goods of equivalent value within a set time period.
o Sahlins defines perfectly balanced reciprocity as “the simultaneous exchange of the same types of goods at the same time
o Balanced reciprocity can also include transactions in which a return of equivalent value is provided with some degree of delay, but the expectation of a return within a reasonable elapse of time is much stronger than in generalized reciprocity
o Generalized forms of reciprocity often presuppose and reinforce an ongoing sense of mutual obligation and intimacy between parties
o In perfectly balanced reciprocity, the obligation between the parties could potentially be fulfilled in that immediate transaction. Delaying the return, by contrast, can work to extend social obligation into the future
- In negative reciprocity, by contrast
one party seeks to benefit at the expense of the other
o Haggling during barter in order to get a better deal for oneself falls into this category, as do theft and obtaining goods from other social groups through warfare or raids. This category of reciprocity implies the greatest social distance between parties involved in the exchange.
- Redistribution involves
the co-ordination of distribution through some form of centralized social organization.
o This central social organization or those who occupy it receive economic or material contributions from all the members of the society, which they in turn redistribute.
- The potlatch is a gift giving ceremony
traditionally practiced among the First Nations peoples of Canada’s west coast. As your textbook notes, it would be reductive to see the potlatch as only a system for the redistribution of goods. Rather, it was an important ritual event in which people came together to bear witness to culturally significant events.
o The potlatch was also an important way of establishing social hierarchy. Potlatches involved the staging of ostentatious public feasts to which a host would invite all the prominent leaders from neighbouring communities
- Systems of redistribution are also common to many modern nation states in the form of
taxation. In Canada, for instance, individual citizens pay taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency on the assumption that those taxes in turn will be used by government agencies to provide all citizens with needed goods and services, including health care, road construction, education, a legal system, and military defense.
- Unlike market exchanges, the give-and-take involved in redistributive systems is determined not by supply and demand forces but by
socially and politically defined rights and obligations
- Market exchange is the
form of distribution to which we are most accustomed in capitalist societies.
- a mode of exchange in which the exchange of goods is calculated in terms of a multi-purpose medium . . . and standard of value
- Market exchange is the predominant form of exchange in capitalist societies.
- Marx defines labour as
the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind”
o labour is the set
of human intellectual and physical capacities mobilized by individuals in order to transform the material world and produce new value.
- Also key to Marx’s approach to economic processes is the argument that different
societies can be characterized by the different systems they used in order to carry out production
o Marx referred to these systems as modes of production.
- Anthropologist Eric Wolf, whose work we examined in Unit 3, defines a mode of production as
a specific, historically occurring set of social relations through which labour is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge”
- The means of production refers to
the tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” involved in production
- The relations of production refer to
“[t]he social relations linking human beings . . . within a particular mode of production”
- The concept of relations of production thus refers to the
distribution of productive tasks among different social groups, and how their different forms of labour or productive activities then relate to one another. A mode of production can thus be seen as the sum total of how the means (technology, skills, knowledge) and the social relations of production (the division of labour among social groups) are organized within a particular social context.
Wolf identified three principle modes of production:
- A kin-ordered mode of production, in which social labour is organized through kinship relations, with productive tasks distributed among different members of a family. This mode of production is frequently found among foragers, herders, and farmers.
- A tributary mode, in which labourers pay tributes to rulers. One prime example of this tributary mode can be seen in European feudal systems of the Middle Ages, in which peasants or serfs worked on land that belonged to lords, devoting part of their labour to producing what was necessary for their own subsistence and the other part to producing harvests paid to the lords. Notably, in European feudalism, social positions were fixed. One was born into and remained within the position of either lord or serf.
- The final mode of production is capitalism, which is also the mode to which Marx’s arguments have most successfully been applied. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production, workers sell their labour in exchange for wages, and this labour in turn generates surplus value for capitalists, which they either reinvest in the productive process in order to produce new surpluses or extract in the form of profit. Exploitation under capitalism rests on this extraction of surplus value from the labour-power of the workers. To understand this argument, we first need to define two other key concepts in Marx’s theory: commodities and value.
- Goods produced and exchanged under capitalism take on a special character: they are commodities.
o that is, they both satisfy human needs and can be exchanged for others according to an abstract and quantitative measure.
- The use-value of the good refers to
“the usefulness of a thing,” its specific material and tangible qualities and the uses to which it can be put
But under capitalism, goods also have an exchange-value
which refers to the quantitative measure according to which goods can be exchanged for others.
- An additional characteristic of capitalism as a mode of production from Marx’s perspective is that, under capitalism
, labour itself is a commodity
- But under capitalism, as Gary Lapon (2011) points out
workers are not compensated for the new value they have produced. Whether they are paid what some might deem a fair wage or are paid poorly, capitalism depends on a gap between the new value produced by the labour of workers and the compensation they are provided for that labour in wages.
o This gap is surplus-value, which, as mentioned above, can either be reinvested by capitalists into the productive process to make new surplus values, or extracted in the form of profit.
o Surplus value was at the heart of why Marx believed that capitalism was exploitative. Even in conditions where a company provides its workers with a decent wage and good work conditions, the owners of the business are still extracting a value from labour for which the worker is not compensated.
- Under capitalism, by contrast, workers enjoy relative freedom.
Rather than being relegated to a particular position by birth or conquest, as they would under feudalism or slavery, under capitalism, workers are free to trade their labour for wages
o At this level of simple exchange, then, everyone under capitalism is, in theory at least, free and equal
o Now, of course, things aren’t quite that simple in practice. There may be more or less jobs available at given points in time, and employers or sellers may discriminate on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, or other factors
- Consumption can be defined as
using up material goods
- The first theory of consumption discussed in your textbook comes from the work of Bronislaw Malinowski.
Malinowski listed a basic set of human needs, including nourishment, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, movement, growth, and health
o He argued that every culture responds in its own ways to these needs with a corresponding institution, including food collecting techniques, kinship, shelter, protection, and so on
The term cultural ecology, as your textbook recounts, comes from anthropologist
Julian Steward, who studied under Franz Boas
- Cultural ecology seeks to
account for economic and other cultural behaviours primarily as adaptations to the physical environments that people inhabit
- An approach that views economic behaviours solely as adaptations to the environment is also problematic because
it fails to account for the selectivity that many social groups practice in terms of which foods and other good from their environment they choose or prefer to consume.
- ethnographic research demonstrates that no
society consumes every available food source.
- While both human need and the environment play important roles in shaping a society’s consumption practices, this practice of selectivity demonstrates that neither one of these two factors can account for consumption on their own.
- political anthropology as
“the study of social and political power in human society”
- An environmentally deterministic account of social and political structures also ignores the way in which global forces such as colonization can disrupt local political systems, regardless of their adaptiveness to their local environment, and ignore the role of human agency in determining a society’s political system
- Finally, some analysts have argued that population growth may often
determine social organization.
o Yet as Marshall Sahlins notes, population pressures only determine how many people can be sustained by a given environment.
- Uncentralized political systems, according to Llewellen
are relatively egalitarian forms of organizing social relations in which decisions tend to be made either through consensus or through the influence of individuals who emerge as temporary leaders.
o Uncentralized political systems include a band
which your textbook defines as “a form of social organization that consists of a small group of foragers (usually fewer than fifty people), in which labour is divided according to age and sex, and social relations are highly egalitarian”
Typically, bands consist of small groups of foragers who move across particular territories while hunting and gathering. They may break up and reform on a regular basis as conflicts arise among members and new alliances form between different individuals
They are relatively decentralized and egalitarian in that decisions are often made through consensus and leaders emerge with respect to given tasks as they arise.
- The second type of decentralized political system in Lewellen’s classificatory system is that of a tribe
Your textbook defines a tribe as “a form of social organization generally larger than a band, in which members usually farm or herd for a living”
o Like bands, tribes are generally
Like bands, tribes are generally
egalitarian with a decentralized decision making process. However, as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1971) notes, that in such societies leaders can emerge. These are typically referred to in the anthropological literature as village heads or big men
through personal achievements such as an ability to resolve conflicts or their capacity to give generously, “big men” are able to establish their prestige and garner the support of other individuals within their villages or societies.
- In contrast to uncentralized political systems, centralized political systems
possess a “distinct, permanent, public decision-making institutions (eg. a chief, a king or a queen, a formal government)” and often involve an important degree of social stratification and inequality between different social groups
- Chiefdoms constitute the first type of centralized political system identified by Llewellen.
o Your textbook defines chiefdoms as “a form of social organization in which the leader (a chief) and the leader’s close relatives are set apart from the rest of society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige”
o As in bands or tribes, the social relations involved in chiefdoms are organized through kinship. Unlike these other two types of political structures, however, leadership is centralized around a ruling authority figure, the chief, who holds the authority to make and enforce decisions.
- The final type of centralized political system is that of a state.
o What a state is and how it functions in the world today are often linked to colonial histories, ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization. In what follows I will define the state and the role of colonization in the formation of the modern nation-state.
o Your textbook defines the state as “a stratified society, controlled by a formal government, that possesses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police”
o Anthropologists argue that examples of the state can be seen as early as 5 000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt
M any anthropologists link the rise of the state form to the increasing importance of agriculture, which encouraged social groups to establish fixed settlements and to develop elite specialists entrusted with economic activities or the defense of the settlement.
However, most of the states that now exist in the world reflect the effects of Western colonialism on the rest of the world.
- Beginning with the American Revolution from 1765-1783 and the Haitian Revolution from 1791-1804, the new territories formed through the effects of colonization then acquired independence from the European colonial states
o M ore colonized territories achieved independence in the centuries that followed including after World War II. Yet the effects of colonialism and its role in shaping modern states remain with us today, as reflected by the ongoing domination and struggle for their rights on the part of indigenous groups in modern states such as Canada as well as by conflict between distinct ethnic groups reorganized through the process of colonization and independence into single states
o Finally, the sovereignty of the state, that is, the ability of state leaders and organizations to autonomously control the political, economic, and social processes at work within the boundaries of its geographic territory, has itself come under increasing attack from the twentieth century on as globalization leads to new flows across state boundaries of people, goods, and ideas.
- power can be generally defined as the
ability to transform a given situation,” which we might also rephrase as the relative ability to bring about change through action or influence
Following Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller, your textbook defines visible power as
the “definable aspects of political power – the formal rules, structures, authorities, institutions, and procedures of decision-making”
o One of the defining characteristics of modern states is that they have a standing police and military force entrusted with enforcing the laws of a particular state and the decisions and authority of its political leaders both within the state’s own territorial boundaries and with respect to other sovereign states.
- Hidden power is the second type of power referred to by your textbook. It can be defined as an
an exercise of power that results in political or social effects that individuals can identify, but where the sources, reasons, or strategies behind these effects are often less easy to trace
o Political lobbying in contemporary liberal democratic states provides one salient example of hidden political power. For instance, while some forms of political lobbying in contemporary liberal democratic states may involve public advertising campaigns, it can also rely on backroom negotiations between interest groups and politicians in which the former work to convince the latter to adopt their goals.
o Hidden forms of power are also often at work in state socialist contexts, where political leaders may announce decisions to the population while deliberately avoiding identifying the reasons behind them.
- Political paranoia can be defined as a
political style in which individuals link disparate events that may or may not in fact be linked together into an often-totalizing scheme of how power is operating
o The activities of the NSA, then, can be thought of as an example of hidden power, while the conspiracy theories that abounded both before and following the Snowden revelations demonstrate how political paranoia and conspiracy theory, while they may often misrepresent reality, are nonetheless understandable responses and strategies on the part of citizens confronted with the frequently non-transparent actions of political elites and government agencies.
- The third type of power identified by your textbook is invisible power, which Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller describe as the
power relations that shape “people’s beliefs, sense of self, and acceptance of their own superiority or inferiority.”
o As VeneKlasen and Miller argue, invisible power is arguably “the most insidious of the three,” since it is a form of power that we may not even recognize as such
o Ideology is the most important example of invisible power
Ideology, in its most general sense, can be understood as the social beliefs, practices, or senses of self that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply natural and right, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce existing systems of power and inequality even when we recognize them as unfair.
- Structural power, as defined by Eric Wolf, refers to a form of
power that “organizes social settings themselves and controls the allocation of social labour”
o structural power refers to the ways in which the social division of labour can contribute to power and inequality.
- The false consciousness theory of ideology argues that
that ideology works primarily through the adoption by individuals of “false” ideas and beliefs that persuade them to accept the rule of the governing class or existing social order as simply natural and right
- The “American Dream” provides us with a compelling example of how ideology would seem to function as such false ideas and beliefs
o The “American Dream” can be taken to refer to the long-standing belief or myth, often replayed in films, advertisements, or political campaigns, that, in the United States, every individual has equal opportunity to succeed financially through their own individual hard work and perseverance
o Many social theorists argue that this belief is false because it ignores how various social differences and identities – race, ethnicity, class origin and economic status, gender, and so on –contribute to whether or not and to what degree individuals are able to succeed financially and in their careers in the United States, as well as, more broadly, the various ways in which capitalism in the United States and elsewhere depends on exploiting the labour of workers.
- Understandings of ideology as ideas and beliefs about the organization of society and distribution of power that are simply or totally false, however, also have important limitations.
o For instance, consider Karl Marx’s comparison of capitalism to other modes of production.
Marx argues that in some ways capitalism does in fact promote greater equality than do other modes of production or ways of organizing labour, such as medieval feudalism or modern forms of slavery.
Under medieval feudalism, individuals are born to a particular station in life, and remain in that station for life. The serf works the land that belongs to his or her lord, extracts just enough to allow for his or her survival, and gives the rest to the lord. There is no possibility of moving out of that position. Modern forms of slavery similarly involve a coercive and violent relationship of power. Slaves were obliged by individuals to whom they were sold as so much property to work, often through violence, were allowed enough to survive (or not), and the remaining products of their labour went to the benefit of their owners.
- By contrast, according to Marx, capitalism offers relative freedom
The worker sells his or her labour as a commodity to capitalists who own the means of production. If workers don’t like where they work, then, at least in theory, they are free to look for work elsewhere
Yet even if capitalism promotes a relative freedom by comparison to feudalism or slavery, it also involves its own particular forms of exploitation and inequality
o Marx’s argument that capitalism depends on extracting a surplus-value from the labour of workers for which the workers are not compensated
o companies come up with various strategies, including, for instance, outsourcing labour to areas of the world in which workers are paid less for their labour or there are fewer environmental and safety protections and standards, in order to increase the gap between costs to the company, such as paying workers’ wages, and the profits made by the company through the sale of its products.
- Other scholars, however, challenge the false consciousness approach to ideology. They argue that ideology
does not depend just or even primarily on the ideas and beliefs that individuals hold about reality. Rather, they argue that ideology involves the ways in which individuals reproduce the dominant systems of power through their actions and behaviours
- In the “cynical reason” approach to ideology
developed for instance by philosopher Slavoj Zizek (1989), this emphasis on actions as key to ideology leads some to conclude that, in many cases, individuals may even be aware of the exploitative nature of capitalism or some other social system, and yet, through their actions, may nonetheless continue to participate in and reproduce this unequal social system.
- Zizek developed his cynical reason approach to ideology in large part in relation to
Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. To get a better understanding of the difference between the false consciousness and the cynical reason approaches to ideology
- Still other scholars argue that neither the false consciousness nor the cynical reason approaches to ideology fully account for why individuals might continue to support and reproduce existing systems of power.
o they contend that if we continue to reproduce a particular social system, this is because we remain attached to the ideal of a “good life” it offered us in spite of the fact that it continuously fails to deliver on that promise
o Thus, Lauren Berlant (2011) suggests that if many individuals continue to reproduce capitalism, this is because we retain some hope of achieving, for instance, the dream of middle class economic stability or that of becoming rich, even when in actual fact we find ourselves working part time job after part time job or working increasing numbers of hours to keep our jobs
- hegemony as
a system of leadership in which rulers persuade subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by offering mutual accommodations that nevertheless preserve the rulers’ privileged position
o hegemony is a system of rule through political leaders and elites obtain general consent for their rule through tactics of mutual accommodation, for instance, by providing material benefits to their subjects and by disseminating their ideology through institutions such as schools.
- Gramsci insisted that hegemony is never
absolute. Rather, it is always vulnerable to overt and indirect challenges from subordinate groups.
- Subordinate groups can develop counter-hegemonic
practices and beliefs, or alternative practices and beliefs that counter or provide an alternative to the dominant group’s ideology
- One of the first examples that your textbook provides to illustrate the processes of hegemony is that of
kingship among the Beng people of the Ivory Coast of Africa. For this example, your textbook draws on the field research conducted by Alma Gottlieb among the Beng people in 1979-1980, so this account reflects that historical moment in Beng society.
o Among the Beng people, kings are a source of legitimate power
o t he king is responsible for not only the legal but also the moral and spiritual well-being of the people living in this region”
o he power of witches, by contrast, is considered illegitimate and immoral. The Beng people believe that witches work in secret to kill and consume their matrilineal kin (kin related through women)
- Anthropologists have also found Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and counter-hegemony useful for analyzing
the often-difficult processes through which national identities and dominant relations of power were forged in new nation-states as these acquired their independence from colonial rulers
The former British colony of Ceylon, which later changed its name to Sri Lanka, acquired independence in 1948.
o as your textbook notes, at that time it included within its territory two different ethnic groups. The more numerous or larger ethnic group was that of the Sinhalese. The minority Tamil group lived in the northern part of the island. In spite of the presence of the Tamils, dominant Sinhalese population and their rulers attempted to forge a national identity that excluded this minority ethnic group
- This systematic discrimination against the Tamils eventually led to
armed resistance on the part of the Tamils and to the Sri Lankan civil war. The Sri Lankan government responded to these efforts with violence, attempting to use coercion both to force the Tamils out of Sri Lanka and t quell growing Sinhalese resistance to government policies. This can be seen as an example of coercive power or an attempt to rule through domination by the Sri Lankan government.
- As your textbook points out, however, the Sri Lankan government did not just rely on coercion to attempt to assert its authority
It also turned to other strategies to persuade Sinhalese citizens that the government had their best interests in mind, a strategy that thus represents an attempt to rule by establishing hegemony or securing the consent of the governed.
o For instance, anthropologist Michael Woost observed how the government of Sri Lanka used a wide variety of mass media, including television, radio, newspapers, the school system, public rituals, and the lottery, to attempt to establish a link between national identity and government-sponsored development plans.
o National development, in turn, was presented as a means of restoring Sinhalese villages to the wealth, prosperity, and prestige they had supposedly enjoyed under pre-colonial rule.
- resistance as
the power to refuse being forced against one’s will to conform to someone else’s wishes”
o define resistance as the ability or power to refuse, challenge, or disrupt a given organization of society or system of power. Resistance can take overt forms, such as armed rebellion or street protests
can also take more subtle and indirect forms
- The first example of indirect resistance is that of the
indigenous Bolivian tin miners studied by June Nash. As your textbook notes, scholars have long argued that the rise of capitalism around the world has historically led to the destruction of existing lifeworlds and cultural systems.
- alienation, or, as your textbook defines this term
the deep separation that individuals experience between their innermost sense of identity and the labour they are forced to perform in order to survive”
o disrupting previously existing lifeworlds and cultural patterns, capitalism leads to a profound separation between individuals’ sense of identity and the work they perform.
- The second example of resistance taken up by your textbook is that of gender conflicts and marriage negotiations in
Sefrou, Morocco. As your textbook observes, American anthropologist and political scientist James Scott has been key in developing theories of resistance in anthropology.
- His concept of hidden transcripts refers to the
accounts of reality that dominated social groups may devise, and which can sometimes compete with or offer alternate ways of explaining social experience that counter hegemonic discourses.
o These hidden transcripts typically stop short of overt resistance. That is, dominated groups may appear to acquiesce or conform to the demands of the dominant, while nonetheless attempting to covertly counter dominant views through these competing hidden transcripts or accounts of reality
o Sometimes, subordinated social groups may be able to persuade others that their views of reality are truer than the hegemonic discourse of dominant social groups
Rosen refers to this process of negotiation and struggle between competing visions of reality as bargaining for reality.
o Rosen describes how such competitions between alternate interpretations of reality, a bargaining for reality, often shapes relationships between men and women in Moroccan society
o Rosen notes that in Moroccan society, men typically see women as inferior. Moroccan men argue that women are less intelligent, less self-controlled, and less altruistic, and they expect women to obey them
- But, Rosen argues, women had also developed an alternative account – a hidden transcript – that provided a
different way of accounting for social relations and dynamics, one that countered men’s assertions of their superiority even as women continued to appear to cooperate with the established gender norms of their society
- Rosen observed how these competing views of reality – the hegemonic view of men and the hidden transcripts developed by women – came into conflict with one another in the context of one particular marriage negotiation in Sefrou
o A girl’s refusal to marry the man her father had chosen for her had thrown the household into disarray.
- James Scott’s own study of Malaysian peasants provides a final example of indirect resistance
In his ethnographic work with peasant rice farmers in a Malaysian village, James Scott observed that the peasants were kept in line by what he termed “routine repression,” including occasional arrests, police work, legal restrictions, and an Internal Security Act that allowed for indefinite preventive detention and proscribed much political activity
Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman define subjectivity as
“the felt interior experience of the person that includes his or her positions in a field of relational power”
o This definition of subjectivity draws our attention to the ways in which the inner experience of individuals, including their emotions and their sense of their own position in the social world, are produced in relation to and often as an effect of external social and cultural norms, in To put this otherwise, Western philosophers argued that individuals were self-made and self-determining
This view of individuals and the self deemphasized the ways in which individuals are always dependent on social ties, ranging from those of family to the nation to culture itself
cluding systems of power, dominance, and inequality.
- The links between subjectivity, culture, and power, can be seen by examining dominant Western concepts of the self.
o Beginning in the late 17th and 18th centuries, during what is referred to as the Enlightenment, many modern Western theorists argued that the self was, at its core, autonomous]
To put this otherwise, Western philosophers argued that individuals were self-made and self-determining
This view of individuals and the self deemphasized the ways in which individuals are always dependent on social ties, ranging from those of family to the nation to culture itself
o For instance, political theorist Nickolas Rose (1998) discusses how the ideal common to many modern Western societies that individuals should find
self-fulfillment through work can itself often function as a means of extracting more labour from individuals.
o the American Dream ignores how various
social differences and identities race, ethnicity, class origin and economic status, gender, and so on –contribute to whether or not and to what degree individuals are able to succeed financially and in their careers in the United States, as well as, more broadly, the various ways in which capitalism in the United States and elsewhere depends on exploiting the labour of workers.
- Sex, as your textbook notes
refers to biological distinctions between male and female, which can be based on morphology (observable sex characteristics, including genitals and secondary sex characteristics like breasts); gonads (ovaries in females and testes in males), and chromosomal differences (XX or XY chromosomes)
Gender, by contrast, refers to the
culturally constructed beliefs and behaviours considered appropriate for each sex.”
- Sexuality, your textbook notes,
“refers to the way sexual desire is experienced, including an individual’s preferences in sexual partners”
- As your textbook notes, there are also several societies that recognize more than two gender categories, regardless of whether individuals are born with intersexed features
o Two of the most common examples of third gender categories are the berdache or two-spirited individuals among Native American and First Nations cultures of the Americas, and the hijras of India.
Two-spirited people were typically biological males who adopted some elements of the behaviour, dress, and work typically undertaken by women in their cultures
In some Native American and First Nations cultures, two-spirited peoples were highly valued and were even considered to have special supernatural powers and privileges
o Another well-documented example of a culturally recognized third gender role is that of the hijras in India
They are biological males or, more rarely, intersexed individuals, who adopt elements of the behaviour and dress typically associated with women in their communities
At the same time, most hijras do not claim to be women or to be women trapped in male bodies, but rather actively assert themselves and are interpreted as belonging to third gender category, outside of that of men and of women.
As mentioned in your textbook, according to normative ideals at work both within the hijra community and in broader Indian society, hijras are ideally expected to undergo surgical operations to have part or all of their genitals removed. There are also cultural expectations that they will not be sexually active.
* In practice, however, many hijras may not have undergone surgery and may frequently be sexually active, forming short- or long-term sexual relationships with men in their community and sometimes making a living through prostitution.
Many hijras live in communities with other hijras. When hijras are brought into a hijra community, they undergo a rite of passage that includes being given a new, female name.
Traditionally, hijras often play important spiritual roles within their communities. They make their livings by performing at life-cycle ceremonies such as the birth of children and marriages and also serve Bahuchara Mata in her temple.
- In his ethnographic research in the 1980s, Richard Lancaster discovered that same-sex sexual relationships among men in Nicaragua were linked to
to local concepts of gender in ways that differ from dominant understandings of same-sex sexual practice in North America and many other parts of the world. In contemporary North America and other societies, men who have sex with other men are typically assumed to have a distinct sexual preference linked to a social identity
- Among working-class Nicaraguans in the 1980s, by contrast, sexual practice was linked to
identity according to the role that a man adopted in the sex act, not according to the sex or gender identity of the individual with whom he had sex.
o Thus, so long as a man took the so-called “active” role, that is, so long as he took on the role of penetrating rather than being penetrated during sexual intercourse, he was considered to be a “normal,” machista male, regardless of whether he had sexual intercourse with men or with women
o Only those men who adopted the so-called “passive” role, or, in other words, took on the role of being penetrated rather than penetrating during the act of sexual intercourse with another man, were socially stigmatized
Those men who took on the role of being penetrated during sexual intercourse with other men were deemed cochónes.
In her research among Swahili Muslims in Mombasa, Kenya, Gill Shepherd discovered that it was not that uncommon for women to take other women as sexual partners and that these practices were generally not looked down upon or stigmatized.
In her research among Swahili Muslims in Mombasa, Kenya, Gill Shepherd discovered that it was not that uncommon for women to take other women as sexual partners and that these practices were generally not looked down upon or stigmatized.
o Shepherd argues that there were a number of practical reasons for which women might come to have sexual relationships with other women. First, women with little money were unlikely to marry men who couldn’t offer them jewelry, shoes, new dresses, status, or financial security. They might instead take on a wealthy woman lover who could offer them all these things.
o Another motivating factor for women in this society to take on women lovers was that, according to Islamic law, a wealthy, high-ranking Muslim woman could only marry a man who was her equal or superior. A marriage of this kind brought with it a great deal of seclusion and a loss of independence for the woman, whose wealth would then be administered by her husband. A wealthy woman in a same-sex relationship between women, by contrast, was freed from these constraints. If a woman wanted to use her wealth as she liked and had a taste for power, entry into a same-sex relationship with another woman or living alone as a divorced or widowed woman were her best options.
- Throughout the twentieth century, many governments pressured citizens into undergoing surgeries to prevent them from having children. This has even included the forced sterilization of certain types of individuals
o This has even included the forced sterilization of certain types of individuals. India’s family planning policies of the 1970s, for instance, included strong incentives designed to encourage citizens, to undergo sterilization
o Similar programs have also taken place in North America. From the 1920s through the 1970s, the state of North Carolina forcibly sterilized persons who were deemed “mentally defective” or “feeble minded.”
o Studies have shown that there were definite correlations between sterilizations, race, and poverty, with a disproportionate number of operations carried out on African Americans and the poor. Victims of these programs have been involved in ongoing legal battles in an attempt to obtain compensation for what was done to them under these programs
- Kinship often involves two types of relationships
affinal relationships, or relationships created through marriage; and consanguineal relationships, or relationships based on descent
- Contemporary definitions of kinship also include what some anthropologists term
fictive” and others prefer to call “chosen” kin, people who are counted as family or referred to using kinship terms even though they may not be related through marriage or descent.
- norms surrounding kinship within a society often deal with one or more of the following four issues
- How to carry out the recruitment of legitimate group members, for instance, through marriage, birth, or adoption.
- Where group members should live, or rules and norms surrounding residence.
- How to establish inter-generational links or descent, which includes determining which consanguineal relationships matter for different considerations of descent.
- Related to the above point, norms around kinship relations often address questions of how to pass on social positions (succession) or material goods (inheritance).
- In a bilateral descent system
individuals trace relations of descent and kinship through both parents. In the language of kinship terminology, a bilateral kin system treats as equally significant for purposes of descent and kinship all relatives on both ego’s father’s and mother’s sides or, in societies in which same-sex relationships are recognized, on both fathers’ or both mothers’ sides.
- The dominant kinship system in the present moment in North America tends to be
bilateral
- In a unilineal descent system
descent is formed based on relations established through either a father (patrilineal descent) or a mother (matrilineal descent)
- Contrary to a bilateral descent system, then, emphasis is given to kinship relations formed through one
of an individual’s parent’s rather than by giving both parents’ relations equal emphasis
- Lineages often play an important role in unilineal descent systems
o A lineage, as your textbook notes, refers to “a descent group composed of blood relatives who believe they can trace their descent from known ancestors”
o a lineage is a set of relatives who can trace their descent from a known common ancestor. How far back a lineage goes can vary greatly from one culture to the next
- some societies may also organize individuals into clans
“a descent group formed by members who believe they have a common ancestor, even if they cannot specify the genealogical links”
o whereas members of a lineage can specify their exact relationship to every other member of that lineage. In a clan, these links are lost to time or may be mythological
- As your textbook argues, the most common form of organizing a lineage is through
patrilineal descent, into a patrilineage.
- The most socially significant relationship for the purposes of calculating descent and kinship in a patrilineage is the relationship between fathers and sons.
- When women marry in a society organized through patrilineal descent into patrilineages,
they typically leave the lineage to join that of their husband’s. Nonetheless, in some societies women who leave their birth homes may continue to play an active role in the affairs of their patrilineages for many years
- Patrilineages are usually characterized by a
system of power and an ideology that casts men as superior to women
- Sex/gender
male or female
o Ex. Uncle and aunt are distinguished on the basis of both generation and sex
- Affinity
: connection through marriage
o Ex. Mother is distinguished from mother-in-law
- Collaterality
direct (linking) or indirect (linked) relative
o Ex. Not applied in English; some cultures distinguish parallel cousins (Egos a father’s bother’s chrildern or ego’s a mother’s sister’s children) from cross cousins
- Bifurication
relation on mother ot fathers side
o Ex. Not applied in English; some cultures distinguish the mothers brother from the fathers brother
- Relative age
relatives of the same category who are older or younger than ego
o Ex. Not applied in English;
ascribed status,
or a social position into which you are born
achieved status,
or a social position that you achieve later in life as a result of your own or others’ efforts. Adoption blurs the lines between these two categories, as it allows what is in essence an achieved status – a relationship of nurturance that is established through the efforts of the adoptive parents and/or the adopted child – into a relationship of descent.
- Kinship can also involve what anthropologists have traditionally referred to as “fictive kinship.”
o These are kinship relationships that are not based on either consanguineal or affinal ties but are in some senses chosen by those involved. In recent years, there has been some debate over whether or not the term “fictive” should be used to describe these relationships, since this term seems to imply a hierarchy of importance or “realness” that often don’t reflect the priorities or feelings of relatedness among those involved. The preferred term in recent years, then, is “chosen.”
- The practice of compradazgo in Roman Catholic Latin America provides another example of how societies may
often employ the rules of kinship in a flexible way to recognize important sets of relations that go beyond affinal or consanguineal relationships
o In Roman Catholic tradition, the baptism of a child requires the presence of a godmother and godfather who act as sponsors for the child. In Latin America, godparents are expected to take a more active and hands-on role in the upbringing of a child than in many other societies, helping them whenever possible.
o The most important relationship established through the institution of compradazgo, however, is not that between godparents and child but rather between godparents and the parents of the child. They become compadres or “co-parents.”
- Marriage can also be key to
establishing a variety of rights and obligations, including social norms and expectations about who gets to have sex with who, how labour and other economic goods should be divided and controlled, who has rights over children, and the respective legal statuses of the partners involved
up until 1964, marriage in Québec had serious
repercussions for a woman’s legal status. Specifically, unless the two parties who married had previously signed a legal contract, a woman who married lost her status as an independent adult.
She could not inherit property, open a bank account, or sign her children into hospital for treatment: these rights were reserved for her husband. Thanks to women’s rights movement, today women in Québec share these rights with their husbands.
- Finally, marriage is often established through
economic exchanges, which may frequently reflect expectations about the types of social relationships formed through the marriage, as well as the residence patterns, rights, and obligations taken on by the spouses and or other individuals with regards to one another
- we can define marriage broadly as a
socially recognized union between two or more adults that often involves physical and emotional intimacy and establishes new relationships, rights, and obligations.
Exogamy
is a rule that specifies a set of persons that an individual must not marry
Endogamy
as your textbook notes, is a rule that requires a person to solely or preferentially marry into a particular social group.
- The incest taboo is a
universal form of exogamy, or rule forbidding marriage and sex relations with certain individuals, that exists in all societies
o The incest taboo can thus be considered a universal rule of exogamy
- In a typical system of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage within a patrilineal society,
each son would be ideally required to marry his mother’s brother’s daughter.
o Such a system of preferential marriage choice sets up an asymmetrical exchange marriage, in which men always find wives in the lineages from which their mothers came. This form of endogamy thus works to establish long-lasting alliances between different lineage groups, with one lineage providing wives and the other providing husbands
- In a neolocal pattern of residence
the couple establishes a new household in a place of their own choosing, separately from the kin of either individual.
o This is the pattern that is arguably most dominant, or at the very least considered generally considered ideal, in modern Western societies such as Canada and the United States.
o It emphasizes the independence of the marital couple and thus reflects the looser treatment of kinship bonds in modern Western capitalist economies
- A patrilocal residence pattern refers to
cases in which a couple is expected to live with or near the husband’s father’s family
o This residence pattern is typical of societies in which descent is patrilineal. Because children resulting from the marriage belong to the father’s lineage, patrilocal residence emphasizes the bonds between a group of men who are related to one another by patrilineal descent.
o Households will typically consist of an elder couple, sons, sons’ wives and children, including unmarried daughters. Upon marriage, daughters move out to live with their husbands’ families.
- In a matrilocal residence pattern
married spouses live with or near the family in which the wife was raised.
o Matrilocality is often associated with cultures in which descent is matrilineal. It tends to foster and favour the creation of a stable group of matrilineally related women. A typical household will thus consist of an elder couple, daughters, daughters’ husbands and children, and unmarried sons. Matrilocal residence patterns can be found among the Iroquois and the Hopi.
- A second residence pattern often found in societies in which descent is matrilineal is
avunculocal residence.
o Avunculocal residence refers to arrangements in which a couple lives with or near a husband’s mother’s brother. It creates a stable group of matrilineally related men and is often common in matrilineal societies where men will inherit from their mother’s brother
- In an ambilocal residence pattern
, the couple chooses which family they wish to reside and affiliate themselves with. This residence pattern is common among the Mbuti of Ituri Forest. In a duolocal residence pattern, each partner lives with his or her own lineage after marriage, as occurs among the Minangkabau of Indonesia
- The two most common forms of such exchange are
bridewealth and dowry.
- Bridewealth refers to a
gift of goods or money given by the groom’s family to the bride’s family as part of the marriage process
o . Bridewealth is most common in patrilineal and patrilocal societies, although, as your textbook notes, it may also be found in matrilineal societies with avunculocal patterns of residence
o Many anthropologists have argued that bridewealth can be seen as a means of compensating the bride’s relatives for the loss of her labour and child-bearing capacities, since, in the patrilineal and patrilocal societies in which this form of exchange generally exists, women will go to live with their husband’s families and the children they bear will belong to their husband’s lineage.
- Dowry, by contrast, refers to the
gift of goods or money from the bride’s family to the daughter or to the groom’s family as part of the marriage process.
o As your textbook notes dowry practices are common in the agricultural societies of Europe and Asia, but have also been brought to parts of Africa as these societies adopt Islamic sharia law. Anthropologists have argued that, in societies where both men and women inherit, the dowry can be seen as a woman’s part of inheritance from her family. In many societies, dowries are also often considered to be a woman’s contribution to a new household, in which men may bring other forms of wealth.
o In socially stratified or hierarchical societies, the size of a woman’s dowry may play an important role in determining the social status of the family into which she will marry. In some cases, the practice of dowry can place enormous strains on a woman’s family
- Marriage can be divided into two major categories
monogamy and polygamy
- In a monogamous marriage
individuals are married to only one person at a time.
o This is the most common type of marriage practiced in North America and other Western societies. As your textbook notes, in spite of societal ideals that such relationships should be forever, divorce has been on the rise in many Western societies
- Many individuals thus practice serial monogamy
, in which they are married to or have significant intimate relationships with only one individual at a time but may repeat this experience subsequent to a divorce or separation with several different individuals over the course of their lifetime.
- The second major type of marriage is polygamy
Polygamy refers to a “marriage pattern in which a person may be married to more than one person at a time”
o Polygamy is further subdivided into
polygyny and polyandry.
o Polygyny refers to a marriage pattern in which one man is married at a single time to two or more wives. Societies that practice polygyny have different rules and societal norms as to how many wives a man is allowed to have.
- Rarer than polygyny, polyandry refers to a marriage between one woman and two or more men
o the most commonly known form of polyandry is that of fraternal polyandry, practiced for instance in Nepal and Tibet
In this form of marriage, a woman marries the eldest brother but is publicly recognized as being married to all of his brothers, even those who are not yet born.
- While monogamy and the various forms of polygamy are the most common forms of marriage, your textbook also note some less common practices that have been observed by anthropologists. In his work among the Nuer, who reside in East Africa in South Sudan and Ethiopia, British social anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard observed two alternative forms of marriage practice.
o In the first alternative marriage form, a woman could marry another woman and become the “father” of that woman’s children. This marital practice depended on a distinction between social and biological fatherhood. The female husband gave cattle or bridewealth to the bride’s lineage.
o The second form of alternative marriage practice that Evans Pritchard observed among the Nuer was that of ghost marriage. In ghost marriage, a male kin member of a man who died without children married a woman in the name of the deceased, who then became the father of any children of that marriage.
As your textbook explains, the Nuer believed that a man who dies without son would become an unhappy and angry spirit. When this occurred, a kinsman – either a brother or a brother’s son – would marry a woman in the name of the deceased
A nuclear family
consists of two generations: parents and their unmarried children.
o As your textbook notes however, even though the nuclear family remains the ideal family type for many North Americans, only 25% of North Americans in fact live in such a family
- Polygynous or polyandrous families, also mentioned by your textbook, similarly reflect accepted marriage patterns in their family
o Namely, they occur in societies in which various forms of polygamy are practiced. Your textbook notes that polygynous families can sometimes lead to competition between wives as they struggle over resources for their children
In an extended family,
three or more generations, including grandparents, their children, and their children’s children all reside together
o Extended families may form as the result of patrilocal, matrilocal, or ambilocal residence patterns after marriage
- The second traditional type of expanded family unit is that of the joint family
, which includes brothers and their wives or sisters and their husbands living together along with children
o In other words, unlike the extended family, a joint family includes only two generations.
- A third type of expanded family unit is that of the blended family
. A blended family refers to a family formed as previously divorced, widowed, or separated individuals remarry or move in with new partners, bringing with them children from their previous relationships.
- All of these forms of families are examples of what anthropologists refer to as the conjugal family
a family unit that is based on marriage and minimally includes a spousal pair and their children.
- Arranged marriages continue to be the
preferred form of marriage in many parts of India and among the Indian diaspora
