socio-cultural anthro Flashcards
colonial uses of anthropology
- study of colonized by colonizers
- “primitive”, “native”, “no history”
- served colonial administrations
- inherently colonial (active in classifying people into ethic groups)
idea of a people
- social construct
metropolitan / metropolis
- centered in the colonizing countries
fields of anthropology (physical/evolutionary/biological)
- physical appearance
fields of anthropology
(archaeology)
- material culture (objects, culture, tech)
- especially from the past
fields of anthropology (socio-cultural)
- customs, ideas, social organization
fields of anthropology (linguistic)
- what language is spoken via geography
decolonizing anthropology
- decenter the colonial gaze and step away from typical position
- change the demographics of anthro (make it less white-centric)
- introduce global context (ethnography of west, not just racialized groups)
culture
- what we learn from each other vs. what was programmed by our genes
culture
language as a principal tool of
- social construction (group understanding of the world, people, and their relationships)
- communication
- identity formation
culture
cultural universals and particulars
- significantly different but not infinitely different
- cultures have more in common than not
culture
cultures reflect global influence (colonization)
- weather
- politics
- economy
culture
languages have more in common than not
- nouns, verbs, word order
- sentence formation
culture
identity formation
- sameness (affect: community)
- difference (affect: othering)
culture
- culture and language are human universals
- universals (language/culture) are innate
- transmitted via genes
adaptive value of social transmission
- flexible: major changes occur easily (generationally and species wide)
- language and culture preserves species
- specific language and culture develop to cope with specific environmental and social contexts (niches)
gift economies
- potlatch
- dowry
- moka
- kula trade
adaption in humans and other animals
- the proportion of social to genetic transmission is qualitatively greater in humans than in other animals
anthropocene
- geological epoch where humans are in control of environmental state + future
technology
- can be a threat (biotech and ai will replace humans)
community and difference
- positive affect of group identity
imagined communities (benedict anderson)
- extends community beyond fact-to-face contact (profession, nation, etc)
difference
the negative affect of group identity: othering (fear/prejudice/opinion of other group/outsiders)
competition, inequality, conflict
- stems primarily from competition for resources and power
- ideology: prejudice, racism
- political economy: competition for resources
social construction
- utilizes terms like “invented”
- race, gender, nationality are invented
- works with material reality, but transforms and shapes it into social reality
- skin color is a material reality; however, that does not mean it is a social construct
anthromorphism
- animals seen as human
- animal breeds are comparable to human races
race
- invention whose material reality is genetic pools
- category of imagines common descent
- folk notion, NOT scientific
- product of racialization, a social construct
- races exist, but not as scientific category
- notion with history; different through periods of time
- anti black white supremacy justifies slavery
- different races’ different genetic characteristics are socially constructed (not different to be justified scientifically)
one drop rule
- if you have any black blood = youre “black”
- not a natural fact, but a social construct
- classification is given by social context and language
- ex. wasians are seen primarily as white in asia/asian contexts
types of race
- people/nation (english race)
- regional population (nordic race)
- speakers of a family of languages (aryan race)
- dispersed group of conquerors (anglo-saxon race)
signification >= semiosis
- making signs/sense
- linguistic and non linguistic signs/symbols
nature of signs
- signifier
- signified
- icon
- index
- symbol
anthropological linguistics and semiotics
- ferdinand de saussure’s view of semiosis
= signifier and signified
= material and immaterial
= together the signifier and the signified make up the sign
icon
- shares some of their physical form (shape, sound, etc) with the referent
- ex. beware of moose sign shows moose silhouette
index
- do not share form (shape, sound, etc) with the referent, but indicates it
- ex. poison’s symbol is a skull = death
symbol
- arbitrary
- no palpable relation to the referent
- wedding rings symbolize marriage
denotation
- what a sign means literally
connotation
- what a sign implies
the unrepresentable
- it’s ineffable, transcendental
- signs (linguistic and other) attempt to construct a reality that we can think and talk about
stages of development
- the real, the imaginary, the symbolic, the self as a construct
the real
may not always be the same as what exists independently of semiosis
jargon v ordinary language
- reality is what is real (ordinary language)
- reality is how we understand the real (humanities/social science jargon)
- it is our “reality”
species specific construction of reality
- different animals see things differently
- what is the real unconstructed scene?
colors
- the color spectrum is continuous and its a language that divides it into units
- color distinctions vary across languages
social construction and perception
- people did not understand terms as essentially different due to language disparities
social construction of the self
- our concept of having a self is not entirely given by nature
- it is constructed in society, by signs, especially language
whorf hypothesis
- each lnaguage decisively influences the way its speakers think
- different languages construct different realities
- linguistic relativity
theory
- like colors and race, there is a continuum out of which language delineates a distinguishable “self”
- all our experiences and actions are united in the distinct whole called “I”
- largely through social construction
jacque lacan
- stages of how the self develops
jacque lacan’s real
- when born, there is no self
- undifferentiated/no signs/uncategorized experience
jacque lacan’s imaginary / mirror
- infant begins to develop self
- cannot express itself without language
= corresponds to icons rather than words
jacque lacan’s symbolic
- language appears to child (mainly symbols)
- learnt from parents/society
- world is categorized by signifiers
- ex. ego = “I”
- systematic, socially constructed, socially sanctioned, not nature-given
- not Lacan’s real, but reality
“I” as a symbol
- occurrence of “I” is a signifier, whose meaning is developed from relations to other signifiers
inner conversation
- we are both “I” and “You” to ourselves
- one party coaches the other
- the “coach” is influenced by society and it represents society
- ex. freud’s superego = voice of self and society - superego included in inner conversations
language and signs
- make sense of the world
- how we appear to others
erving goffman
- saving and losing ‘face’
- ‘face’ is how we appear to others
- ‘facework’ = how we maintain face
- social media enables facework and projects ourselves to be desirable
religion
- spirituality
- community
- politics
anthropological attitude to religion
- not to judge or to establish truth/falsehood
- recognize the nature and role of religion in its social/cultural context
- what religion might mean as a general characteristic
religion or spirituality
spirituality is an aspect of religion
- many equate religion to
- a.) organized religion
- b.) religious beliefs/texts
in anthropology, we look beyond a&b
jacques lacan’s religion
- refused to discuss a relationship between his psychoanalysis and religion
- reality = the world
clifford geertz’s religion
- animatism: the belief that a common spirit pervades the world
- dao (chinese)
- karma (hindu)
- god (?)
abrahamic religion
- judaism, christianity, islam
- one god (monotheism) who revealed himself to abraham
- sacred books: torah, bible, quran
religion is NOT necessarily
- a modern or western one
- none of the ff exist in ALL religions: ‘god,’ holy text, dogma, natural history
religion
- a doubtful but revealing etymology
- ‘re-link’
-re-link the world as we understand (sigify) it
ritual by victor turner
- liminality: a powerful, possibly dangerous state at ‘the threshold’
EX. balinese theatre
- plays where it is a civic duty to participate
- trance dance: powerful spirits enter people (rangda and barong)
- universal order depends on the balance of these forces
- trance dance is part of reality for the balinese
religion in the law
- secular law can conflict with religious law = abortion, insulting religion, etc.
-the divine = source of the law - divine are above the law?
religion as imagined communities
- oldest and most widespread form of imagined community (more so than nation)
- likely to transcend the state as a form / organization
religion in politics
- religion extends social relations to the sacred
religion and physical space
- spatial rituals linking ‘worldly’ to the sacred (liminal)
- processions, pilgrimages, sacred sites
sacred sites
- sacralized: functioning in ways resembling the sacred (parliament building, hockey hall of fame, home, homeland)
- sacred sites: holy land (can embody conflict over land ownership/control)