Module 2 Flashcards
Diffusion
the spread of tools, practices or
other features from one culture to another
Inductive approach
starting from specific
ideas or observations and moving into
broader theories of though
qualitative research
aims to understand
the why and how of human behavior
through methods such as participant
observation and interviews
historical particularism
an approach to
understanding society whereby the
unique history of each culture is consid-
ered influential and central to under-
standing the present
purposeful sampling
a method whereby
research participants are selected based
on having certain characteristics that the
researcher deems necessary for inclusion
structural functionalism
an approach to
understanding society whereby the major
structures of society are comparable to
the organs of a biological organism
Bronislaw Malinowski
Functionalist - wrote book - Argonauts of the Western Pacific - desc Kula Ring, Trobriand islands - did do fieldwork - Kula ring is an economic system practiced by elites, an exchange of shell trinkets, saw it as informing every aspect of culture for the Trobriand islands
Franz Boas
Historical Particularism - emphasis on culture’s unique historical trajectory, American schools, challenged racism + biological determinist thinking, cultural relativism, long-term fieldwork, inductive approach - North America
- Inductive approach, historical particularism, cultural relativism, long-term fieldwork
Lewis Henry Morgan
NY Lawyer and businessman who employed social evolutionary thinking. Worked with Haudenosaunee and compared indigenous pops with early histories. Devised social evolutionary scale.
Lewis Henry Morgan’s ‘Ethnical periods’ and social evolutionary scale + CRIT
Savagery -> Barbarism -> Civilization - each with lower, middle, upper - poli org, kingship, property rights - saw progressive changes in inc of individualism, monogamy, etc
CRIT: Eurocentric, ethnocentric
Eurocentric
imagined European supremacy
Ethnocentric
act that judges other cultures by standards of ones own.
Social Evolutionism
dominant paradigm of Victorian Age - ideas of evolutionary progress - Social Evolution; the transformation of one social form into another
Social Evolutionist theorists would
§ Theorists devised notions of ‘primitive’ societies + imagine other peoples as ‘backward’ + ‘original’ + always in relation to their own society
□ Super taken up with ideas of progress - often (always) with their own societies being viewed as ‘highly’ evolved comparted to other soc being ‘primitive’ + ‘original’
□ Now called ‘armchair anthropologists’ refer to how early anths + social theorists conducted their research
® Often conducted research at home, library, etc - always research through books on what someone else wrote - based on travelers + missionary works (bad)
Edward B Taylor
Influential to Darwin - gathered evidence from other authors (armchair anthropologist)
Posited that culture is not just something that elites do, rather it is a characteristic of being human; applies to all of humanity
Influential ideas: notions of progress, science
EU social anthropology + anthropologists
focus on social systems
Radcliffe-Brown - BRIT - following BRIT trends wanting to scrap ideas of social evolutionism - interested in ethnographic methodologies in living societies in structural + functional terms
Durkheim
interested in religion - how religion maintains social cohesion via control + shared purpose
NA school of ANTH
‘cultural’ anthropology; interested in holistic models, sometimes linked w sociology
Inductive approach
theories appear AFTER collecting data
Historical particularism
understanding soc/cult where by each unique hist is considered influential + central to understanding culture - emphasis on cultures unique cultural trajectory, it is unique and a product of its own history
Lasting notion from Franz Boas
Salvage Anthropology
the practice of collecting and documenting in the face of presumed cultural decline - specifically historically done by EU to Indig pops, problematic
-Franz Boas
Cultural relativism
the idea that one should suspend moral judgement and assumption in order to appreciate and understand culture on its own terms rather than in comparison to one’s own - rel. to historical particularism
Biological determinism
notion that there is a direct correlation between cultural characteristics regarding categories such as gender, race, or class , with biological traits
□ e.g. notion that racial group are bio superior in terms of intelligence, idea that men are naturally predisposed to be hunters/providers, while women are naturally suited to be caregivers
Cartesian Dualism
A system of thought whereby something is conceptually divided into two separate entities
- e.g. mind and body
anth want a holistic understanding, often a Eurocentric idea
Audra Simpson
Why white people love Franz Boas - Political anthropologist, indig politics in the US and CAD, gender and sexuality studies
- CRIT Boas,
Audra Simpson on Franz Boas
□ Sees as continuation of Morgan - dualistic/binary of cultural + bodily differences which figures indigeneity as disappearing - documenting + recording of ‘disappearing’ indig peoples - his book was in fact making a case for assimilation; noted how Indig bodies are suitable for state + settler abortion, prevailing racial hierarchy
® Perpetuating violent dispossession of indig land + erasing indigeneity through working through the confines of the eliminating + assimilative state - whereby the state can occupy indig territories for accumulation; of power, resources, land
® Goal of the state as Simpson rec is dispossession - useful to the cont of science + colonial projects of the state w/I this, rather than liberating indig peoples from colonialism Boas work tries to erase indigeneity - keeps it in place rather than challenging
