Anthropology 200 Lecture 4.1

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Anthropology 200Lecture 4.1

• January 24, 2006

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• Website for Anthropology 200
• http//toby.library.ubc.ca/ereserve/er-coursepage.
  cfm?id2182
• E-mail contact
• Anthropology 200 Teaching Assistant,
  Stephen s_robbins_at_telus.net

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Recap of Benedict and Mead

• Culture and Personality school
• Culture as integrated around dominant
  psychological elements
• contrast with Boas shreds and patches
• Like Boas, inner mind as focus
• 6-child study socialization studies
• Mead as Benedicts student
• first problem oriented research
• First emphasis on gender
• Fieldwork
• Essential
• Rules vs. behaviours
• Notes and notetaking

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Diffusionists

• Other Reactions to Evolutionists
• British
• German and Austrian
• Diffusionism
• transmission of things (eg. ideas, material
  culture) from one culture to another, people,
  place
• Humans NOT inventive
• once invented, transmission happens infinitely
• Culture Areas
• Origins
• 18thcbrothers Grimm, etc.
• German and Austrian connection

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German and Austrian Diffusionism

• Key ideas
• Critique of Boasian ideas of inner mind,
  independent invention
• Texts, not fieldwork
• Kulturkreis
• Cultural circles---focus on migration, contact
• culture complexes, bow shaft similarities
• culture areas
• Culture develops w/ diffusion stronger traits
  transmitted
• Major figures
• Friedrich Ratzel
• Leo Frobenius
• culture circles spreading worldwide masks,
  bows etc.

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British Diffusionists

• Key ideas
• Against independent invention
• Challenged intertwining of evolutionist and
  diffusionist thought
• Victorian British society as degenerated
• Major figures
• William James Perry and heliocentrism
• Egyptology connection
• All people evolved from Egypt!! About 6,000
  years ago
• Heliocentrists
• Egyptian society at 4000BC as single source of
  civilization
• All others as degenerated from there

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Comparing Schools of Diffusionism

• German and Austrian
• Both draw on Evolutionist models unilineal
  evolution
• Both depend on texts, no real fieldwork
• One single origin of change, migration or
  transmission (contrast w/Morgans model, repeated
  change)
• Major departure from Evolutionist theories of
  independent invention
• British School
• Disproven
• Link to American Anthropology to Boas etc.
• culture areas, culture traits, and
  ecological zones

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Structural-Functionalism--Origins

• Emile Durkheim
• links to Boas
• mind and culture emic
• sociological but also ethnographic
• Concepts
• Social solidarity The Elementary Forms of the
  Religious Life, 1915
• Origins of religion and force of the social group
• Functionalism
• Classification Primitive Classification
  (w/Marcel Mauss)19031963
• examples from Zuni, Sioux, Aboriginal Australia,
  China
• Marcel Mauss
• Gifts stem from expectation of recipient no free
  gift
• x-cultural data---Kwakiutl, Melanesians,
  Chinese, etc.

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Features of Structural-Functionalism

• Culture?
• Social structure as defining feature focus on
  ONE element of Social Institutions---esp.
  Political or Legal NOT holistic
• Classification?
• Not key focus on social behavior, custom and
  maintaining social structure
• Method?
• Fieldwork as central, defining feature
• Change?
• Social systems maintain themselves w/ cohesion,
  solidarity
• Ethnographic Present, as if static, w/o
  conflict
• Integration of parts?
• Society as modeled on an organism all parts
  integrated
• Generalization?
• Anthropology as science nomothetic principles

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Malinowski and Functionalism

• Background
• Polish, British educated at LSE 1908
• 1914 fieldwork over 30 months in Trobriand
  Islands
• Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
• Kula ring exchange
• Extensive fieldwork
• Key ideas
• Cultural traits/social institutions are
  functional no survivals, serve needs
• Biological
• Instrumental
• Symbolic eg. myth and current social
  arrangements
• 1926 Magic, Science, and Religion and Other
  Essays. New York Doubleday Anchor.

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Radcliffe-Brown Structural-Functionalism

• Background
• British born 1881, as Alfred Reginald Brown
• Anarchy Brown
• Andaman Islanders (1922)
• Key elements
• Society as social system search for general
  laws
• No real interest in fieldwork
• Disliked Boasian idea of unique, distinct
  cultures
• Study of society central process as synchronic
• Society over individual society as an organism
• Rituals and social functions for society
• study of society like study of sea
  shell---anthropology as grounded in observations
  of like structures

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New Theories, New Methods

• Single trajectory for development of society vs.
  specific nature of societies
• Historical Particularism-- fieldwork becomes key
• Structural-Functionalism---Malinowski coins
  participant observation focus on fieldwork
• Fieldwork-- living with people, subjects of study
• Learning language
• Life histories
• Focus groups
• Archival research
• Survey research
• Visual--film, video, photography
• Participant Observation as cornerstone
• Fieldwork as rite of passage

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Research Issues and Methods

• Design
• Fieldnotes
• Writing up
• Ethnographic Present
• Language and power
• Knowledge as contingent
• Objectivity and subjectivity
• The field
• Where is it?