W1C1: introduction

Question 1

What makes anthropology a distinctive social science?

Answer 1

• It’s a study of culture
• View of interlocutors: try to understand the world peole understand it themselves
• Fieldwork / participant observation
• Holism
• Contextualisation
• Cultural relativism
• Critical attitude
• Solidarity with marginalized people

Question 2

Definition of anthropology:

Answer 2

‘Anthropology is the comparative study of cultural and social life. Its most important method is participant observation, which consists in lengthy fieldwork in a specific social setting’

Important elements:
- It is a comparative study: it’s about finding differences and universal things.
- It studies cultural and social life
- The unique method of fieldwork/participant observation

Question 3

Definition of holism:

Answer 3

Holism […] is the integral approach to the study of humans, where all factors are taken into account and seen as interdependent’ (Balée 2016: 42).

Question 4

Definition of culture:

Answer 4

‘Culture refers to the acquired, cognitive and symbolic aspects of existence’

or: ‘those abilities, notions and forms of behaviour persons have acquired as members of society’

Or, easier: that what a person needs to know as a competent member of a particular social group in order to be able to act adequately

Important elements of these definitions:
- It is acquired behavior, not in your DNA
- It can change over time: ‘Culture is learned, shared human behaviour and ideas, which can and do change with time’

Question 5

Definition of society:

Answer 5

The social organisation of human life, patterns of interaction and power relationships’

Question 6

Important caveats, why is culture so difficult to define?

Answer 6

• People are often unaware of culture; consequently people only become aware of culture when they feel incompetent in an unfamiliar cultural setting;
• Culture is context specific;
• Culture is not deterministic: never tells you exactly how to behave
• Culture is not bounded: There are never clear and exact outer boundaries
• Culture is not integrated: Lots of tension about what is our (shared) culture
• The term culture means something different to anthropologists and politicians

Question 7

Emic terms:

Answer 7

terms in local vernacular

Question 8

Etic terms:

Answer 8

analytical terms for cross-cultural comparison

Question 9

Emic perspective:

Answer 9

understanding a society from the perspective of its own members.

Question 10

Etic perspective:

Answer 10

trying to explain a culture in objective terms from the outside

Question 11

Two things anthropology looks at

Answer 11

Anthropology tries to look at the universal and the particular

Universals does not mean that these traits are the same everywhere, but only that these traits appear in some form or another in every society, for example: kinship classifications