what is social anthropology

Question 1

definition of social anthropology

Answer 1

the study of human society and culture across a range of different societies and cultures at different times

Question 2

particularization + examples

Answer 2

strategy to study diveristy by stressing the social, linginguistic, cultural and historical singularities and comparing/contrasting these across different societies

e. g. franz boas and kwakiutl
e. g. malinowski and the trobrianders

Question 3

generalization

Answer 3

stressing commonality, recurrence and universals about human social organizaiton, ritual and cognition across societies

Question 4

why is paticularization valuable

Answer 4

• description and analyze can be too culturally other to be translatable; hence informants sometimes not containable in western categories

Question 5

cultural relavativism

Answer 5

franz boas; peoples meanings are speicific to a society and cant be transalted to another;
hence each society has distinct formations of cultural ethos to be comprehened by hisotircal particularization and cultural relativism

Question 6

ontological turn of particularization

Answer 6

p-anthrology reveals insufficiences of western categorgies; isolate transferable parts to western lens

prompts conceptual refinements in west

cultures (such as jokes and poems) are difficult to translate, hence translating mythologies is easier

Question 7

franz boas and kwakiutl

Answer 7

1892; north west american coastal culture in vancouver island on TOTEMS

• totems and exchange cerecomies where aspiring chiefs exchanging wealths
• man who ‘throws the most wealth’ at rivals; becomes cheaf

boas; in book; said its difficult to translate meaning as too specific to culture

Question 8

malinowski and the trobrianders date and focus

Answer 8

1916; “kula” circulation

• aimed to study kula in trobriand society by interpreting SPECIFICITY and NONECONOMIC motive;
  hence also studied Trobriand religion and culture to contextual kula trade in 20th century

Question 9

kula meaning

Answer 9

kulas: 2 way circulation of prized arm-bands and necklaces; are form of ritualized trade (stric, directional flow to specific partners)

• work in rituals by males
• have to be produced outside island chains

Question 10

malinowski findings about kula

Answer 10

= groups exchange kula on boats in water

• groups can only go with bracelets in one direction to other (directional trade; necklackes go one way and bracelets another; officially sanctioned trade path)
• youc ant trade and come back empty handed
• all neckalces have stories behind them about heroes; these are in criculaiton
• none of the kula are produced on trobriand islands

Question 11

malinowski conclusions about kula

Answer 11

= kula not a function of trade but circulation of history

• not like trade in west
• particulaiztion links kula to other trobriand aspects such as funerals, ancetral appreciation and ritual analysis

Question 12

how does generalizatino work

Answer 12

translate indigenous terms and compares/decodes practices
-its METHODOLOGICAL rather than CONCEPTUAL; scientific approach to demosntrates regularities and laws and human universals

Question 13

name some examples of generalization cases

Answer 13

marcel mauss 1950; gift giving

arnold van gennep 1909 + victorer torner; rituals

max cluckman 1963; power and authority

Question 14

marcel mauss

Answer 14

1950: studying gift giving as a universal idea (essay on the gift);
different forms of repricoal human social universals consist of

1. the giving gift
2. the reciprocal gift
3. the circulation of continual gift giving and recieving

Question 15

van gennep and torner

Answer 15

arnold van gennep (1909) and victor torner (1996) claim that no human society exists without rituals; rituals are a human social universal process

consists of:
1. entry ritual (when people do things)

2. people act in strange was different from normal life (special transformation)
3. exit ritual: return to normal

Question 16

gluckman

Answer 16

1963: max cluckman (rites of rebellion)
says representation of power and authority always different but commonly socieities have their own annual reidicul and negation of chiefs where chief is symplogically defeated in triump

e. g. shakespeare; henry IV and V
e. g. office parties at XMAS

Question 17

‘laws’ of modern anthropology about culture study

Answer 17

1. reject racial and anatomical deternisim; no correlation between anatomical and psychological differencs that create cultural varaition
2. accept sociopyschoological transfertaiblity of human mind across cultures and societies; i.e. all people can be socialized to anothers culture

Question 18

contants in human nature

Answer 18

human nature has social/cultural formations of central, constants

• incest taboo
• ritualization of death
• gift giving

Question 19

philosophers of enlightenment

Answer 19

hobbes, roussau, kant, hegel, marx;

‘regardless of society, we are all human’

Question 20

allen abramson ethnography

Answer 20

1. fiji (1974-2000); 2 years; structures of myths, ritual and social organization in polyneziation society;
   a) ritualizzation of social life and use of hallucingoens

b) women make marsks to use at funerals

2. uk/london; aritificial climbing walls
   ; symbolic transformation of sport in society; what is it about climbing walls that makes it sociall trending?
   a) risk-taking and playing as universal; adernaline as desire

Question 21

what do anthropologists mean when referring to the concept of ‘the other

Answer 21

the outgroup/no me

• • in social context; outgroups usually defined as not/less human
    e. g. in ancient greece and medieval europe, believe that the sacred center (civilizzation) surounded by wild peripheries (savagery)

Question 22

herodutus

Answer 22

5th century BC; greece surrounded by people with animal and deviant characteristics;

• divine and fully humans are closer to greece
• herodutus; two headed people, cannivals, etc etc; are the distant people

Question 23

homo monstrous

Answer 23

sub-human unvivillized beheaviour; ungodly adn lack of arts
e.g. wolfheaded or devil people
=== a type of humanity; proportionate to proximity to sacred center, as sacred centers more of affliication with fod
; this idea migrated to 16th century exploraiton of the ‘new world’ where people where thought to have bestialized beheaviour in america

Question 24

hans staden

Answer 24

wrote; ‘true story and description of a country of wild, naked, grim, man-eating people in the new world, america’ (1557)

• depicted images of cannibals in south america, despite not ever having pbeen there
• cannibalism then in medieval europe was then used to distinguish animals from humans (e.g. withces and sorceres as cannibals)

Question 25

carl linneaus

Answer 25

1771; ‘system naturea’; human like-genus; ‘paradoxa’ (homo monstrous)
- he categorized organisms and non human animals into ‘non human taxa’
- he assumed the existence of monkey like people in africa
; hence western 18th century civilizzation the most/full humans

Question 26

how non westerns have conceptualized the western ‘other’

Answer 26

could be bad:
andean people believed europeans were fat suckers (Taussing)

east africans thought William Arens was a blood sucker during his ethnography there

could be in good light; saw them as dieties

Question 27

polynesians and the other?

Answer 27

believed that europeans (such as captain cook) were gods [ sahlins and tcherkezzof]

-captain cook was sent to hawaii by royal society to study venus astrology; depicted as a god (diefied)

[SAHLINS analysis of ritual]

• in ‘lono’ mythology; cook a diety that represents the lono god who is killed and reborn in ritual batle by Ku god
• historical reflections of cosmology; the endeavour ship returned to hawaii 5 months after cooks first visit, which brought fertility, and then symbolically killed by hawaiian priest)
• cultural expectatations from cosmological scheme mirror historical events.

Question 28

modern society + homo monstrous

Answer 28

• people use ‘the other’ as a cultural gaceotry to created subjective interpretations of outgroups
• anthropology had aimed to take a ‘humanistic’ approach to conceptualizatino the others post-enlightnment
• in modern sociery; racist imagery often used (jews/blacks as subhuman in ww2, rwandan genocide and the hutsi and tutsi)
• xenophobia; trump and subterrean patriosm in the subrubs
• approproation and asethetic glorification of cultures
• eugenics and controversy