Chapter 7 Methods of Analysis

1
Chapter 7 Methods of Analysis
Left Margaret Mead in Samoa, c. 1920 Right
Bronislaw Malinowski in Papua New Guinea, c. 1915
2
Todays Objectives

• How do cultural anthropologists begin and carry
  out their research?
• What aspects of culture do cultural
  anthropologists attempt to discover?
• Be able to explain the difference between an emic
  and etic perspective.
• Review for test on Monday.

3
Variables Studied - Subsistence

• All humans have to eat
• The way we choose to eat reflects cultural and
  environmental choices.
• Cultural ecology
• Biomes (geographic area of climate/food)
• Subsistence patterns
• Foraging or hunting-and-gathering (2mya)
• Horticulture
• Pastoralism
• Intensive agriculture

Top Hunting Bottom Gathering
4
Variables Studied - Demography

• The study of population and its relationship to
  society.
• Demographic anthropology is an important
  subfield.
• Fertility fecundity, birth rate
• Mortality life expectancy, mortality rates
• Migration push and pull factors
• Carrying capacity max population per biome

5
Variables Studied - Technology

• All human techniques and methods of reaching a
  specific subsistence goal or of modifying or
  controlling the natural environment.
• Goods things (material culture)
• Services actions (non-material culture)
• Cultural materialism

6
Variables Studied - Economy

• Social relationships that organize production,
  exchange, and consumption of goods and services.
• Production - creation
• Exchange - transfer
• Consumption use
• Division of labor
• Three different approaches
• Formalist, substantivist, modern

7
Variables Studied Social Structure

• Status
• Ascribed versus achieved
• Role
• Social stratification
• The Family
• Nuclear versus extended
• Marriage
• Endogamy versus exogamy
• Monogamy versus polygamy
• Polyandry and polygyny

Top Nuclear Left Extended Bottom Polygynous
8
Variables Studied Social Structure

• Gender
• Sex versus gender
• Enculturation
• Division of labor
• Status
• Age
• Enculturation
• Division of labor
• Status stratification, age grades
• Rites of passage
• Van Gennep separation, marginalization,
  aggregation

Zuni berdache
9
Variables Studied Political Org.

• Political Power
• Based on authority
• Different systems (Service)
• Band small, close kin relationships
• Tribe early political systems
• Chiefdom centralized authority over economic,
  social, religious aspects
• State centralized bureaucracy with power and
  authority over large areas

10
Variables Studied Political Org.

• Decision-making
• Field
• Political arena
• Warfare and feuds
• Law and social control
• Ethos
• Moral code
• Sanctions

11
Variables Studied - Religion

• Often studied using a symbolic approach
• Myths assumed knowledge
• Rituals repetitive behaviors that communicate
  sacred symbols
• Specialists shamans, priests, etc.
• Movements
• Cognition
• Pascal Boyer How does religion make sense to
  people?

12
Cross-Cultural Research

• AKA ethnological research
• HRAF Human Relations Area Files
• Ethnographic data on 300 societies
• Initiated by G.P. Murdock from Yale
• Help anthropologists figure out whats universal
  and whats culture-specific.
• Problems
• Faulty reporting
• Hard to understand change

13
Homework 1 Interview

• Due Wednesday, 2/26/03
• Practice your interviewing skills
• Find someone (preferably from another culture)
  willing to be interviewed
• Hold a brief, informal (but structured) interview
  about
• Differences in language (sounds, cliches,
  phonemes, etc.) and/or
• Differences in culture (behavior, dress, food,
  etc.)
• Write a brief (1 to 2 pages double spaced)
  summary of what you learned about the other
  person and his/her culture.

14
Chapter 8 Band Societies
Aborigines (native Australians) dancing
15
Todays Objectives

• What are foraging societies?
• What are the characteristics of the five main
  aspects of cultural investigation in these
  societies?
• Demography
• Technology
• Social organization
• Political organization
• Religion

16
Bands - Definition

• Basic social, economic, and political unit of
  hunter-gatherer societies
• Subsistence is based on animals and vegetation
• Food production developed 12,000 years ago
• Band societies as old as 1 million years
• Bands existed in most of the world environments
• Bands are models for anthropologists of
  Palaeolithic societies

17
Modern Foragers

• Most modern bands live in marginal environments
• Some have contact with agricultural societies
• Nisa The !Kung have contact with Hereros, a
  group that pastures cattle (p. 23)
• Probably unlike the band societies of the past
  because of contact

Above Herero women in Namibia Below !Kung
family in Namibia
18
Modern Foragers - Environments

• Figure 8.1 page 171
• Deserts
• !Kung San or Ju/hoansi
• Estimated population of
• around 100,000
• Richard Lee 1960s to 1990s
• Gatherer-hunters
• 60-80 diet from nuts, fruits 20-30 from meat
• 2-3 days of work each week for food procurement
• Australian aborigines (Arunta)
• 4-5 hours per day gathering food
• Women/children gather, men hunt

!Kung man hunting
19
Modern Foragers - Environments

• Tropical Rain Forests
• Mbuti Pygmies of Congo
• Live in Ituri rain forest
• At least 5,000 years
• Change around 450 years ago
• Hunt/gather division of labor
• More collective hunting
• Semang of Malaysia

Mbuti father and child
20
Modern Foragers - Environments

• Arctic
• Eskimo (or Inuit)
• Culture dated to 2500 BC
• Primarily hunting/meat diet
• Men and women gather
• The Fast Runner
• Inuit movie about a
• native Inuit legend
• Watch, write 2-3 pages
• for extra credit (5)

Inuit caribou hunt, 1936
21
Modern Foragers - Definitions

• Mobility as food and other resources become
  scarce, groups move to other areas.
• Optimal foraging theory used to predict what
  foods the foragers should exploit to make the
  most efficient use of time and energy

22
Demography

• Population density is low
• Fissioning leaving the group
• Like the Yanomamö of Brazil
• Sometimes fusion occurs too
• Infanticide
• Recall Nisas story of her brothers birth (pages
  53-68)
• Fertility rates
• Slow rate of population growth because of
  nutrition, stress, and breast-feeding
• Also low because of sexual abstinence, abortion
  (Nisa p.178), infanticide, and delayed marriage

23
Technology

• Not limited technology, but functional for the
  particular environment
• Technology also contains cultural knowledge
• Desert
• Hunting small bows and arrows, poison
• Gathering specialized knowledge, eggshells
• Tropical
• Hunting traps, snares, and nets blowgun poison
• Gathering knowledge of seasons
• Arctic
• Hunting boats, canoes, dogsleds, lances, spears,
  bows and arrows, harpoons, traps, lamps
• Gathering not as important to the diet

24
Economics

• Reciprocal economic system
• Based on exchanges among family groups
• Reciprocity sharing of goods and services in
  the society
• No capacity for surplus need for reciprocity
• Types of reciprocity
• Generalized exchanges will balance out
  eventually helps foster an egalitarian society
  (!Kung)
• Balanced expectation of immediate return more
  like barter or trade
• Negative getting something for nothing

25
Economics and Property

• Collective ownership
• Morgan thought that band societies were
  communistic
• Differing forms of property rights
• Usually extremely flexible in hunting-gathering
  groups (dont deny others water)
• Other things are owned personally pets,
  ornaments, clothing, bows, knives, etc.

26
Affluent Societies

• Original affluent societies
• Richard Lee found that the !Kung
• Had an adequate and reliable food base
• Had a nutritionally adequate diet
• Expended as little effort as required to provide
  for their basic needs
• Had a longer life expectancy than originally
  thought (10 over 60)
• Physically and mentally disabled cared for by
  community
• Also called leisured societies
• Dont store food or maintain many personal
  objects
• Idea is challenged by other anthropologists
• !Kung spend much time making weapons, tools,
  clothing
• Time-allocation studies show that foragers spend
  a lot of time preparing to hunt and gather
• Overall caloric intake may be inadequate

27
Social Organization

• Families
• Nuclear family and the band are the two basic
  units of social organization.
• Nuclear family easiest to relocate.
• Bands contain up to 4 or 5 nuclear families.
• People can move in and out of bands.

28
Social Organization

• Marriage and Kinship
• Mostly monogamous marriages
• See Nisa for examples of polygynous ones
• Typically women are young (12-14) and men are
  older (18-25) at betrothal
• Rules
• Cross-cousin marriage
• Patrilocal residence
• Brideservice among the !Kung
• Divorce
• Frequent among the !Kung (see Nisa for examples)

29
Social Organization

• Gender
• Usually examined along with subsistence,
  economic, and political patterns
• Division of labor ?gather, ?hunt Why?
• ? stronger ? bear, nurse kids
• ?, children safer near camp
• More flexible in societies other than !Kung
• Female status
• ? provide much food good status
• Eskimos tend to be more patriarchal as ? provide
  more food from hunting

30
Social Organization

• Age
• Rites of passage (into adulthood)
• Mbuti bopi and puberty ritual
• !Kung first menarche ritual (Nisa, pp. 162-164)
• Elderly
• Old age change in food procurement potential
  (45 to 75 years old)
• Elderly have relatively high status (kinship)
• More experience, more memory
• Babysitting

31
Political Organization

• Band is the basic political unit
• Each band is politically independent, society is
  egalitarian
• Leaders are usually male, command by persuasion
  and influence not by coersion or denying
  resources
• Band can disown a leader
• Leadership is not permanent or hereditary
• Leaders do not get power or wealth, just
  responsibility and sometimes prestige

32
Political Organization

• Warfare and Violence
• 64 of foragers engage in warfare at least once
  every two years
• Sporadic violence, not continuous fighting
• Cant interrupt subsistence activities long
• No standing armies, specialized warriors
• Recall the Yanomamö war display
• No male-status hierarchy, violence not culturally
  valued, no private property
• Conflict Resolution
• Usually ridicule, loose sanctions, move to
  another group
• Eskimo song duel

33
Religion

• Oral traditions associated with nature
• No ties to historical events
• Form of animism
• Also concepts of god or gods
• Examples
• Aborigine dreamtime
• Eskimo religion - shamanism

34
Art and Music
Tiwi art

• Art is closely tied to nature and also has
  religious significance
• Music is generally either recreational or
  religious
• Mbuti water music
• Inuit music