THEORY

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• THEORY

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Anthropology Theory

• As anthropologists began to accumulate data on
  different cultures during the mid-nineteenth
  century, they needed to be able to explain the
  cultural differences and similarities they found
• The desire to account for the vast cultural
  variation that had been observed gave rise to
  anthropological theory.

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Anthropology Theory

• Anthropological theories attempt to answer
  questions such as Why do people behave as they
  do? and How do we account for human diversity?
  

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evolutionism

• In an attempt to account for the diversity of
  human cultures, the first anthropologists,
  writing during the last half of the 19th century
  suggested the theory of cultural evolutionism.

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evolutionism

• All societies pass through a series of distinct
  evolutionary stages. We find differences in
  contemporary cultures because they are at
  different evolutionary stages of development.

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evolutionism

• Edward Tylor
• Lewis Henry Morgan

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Evolutionism

• Euro-American cultures were at the top of the
  evolutionary ladder and less-developed cultures
  on the lower rungs.
• The evolutionary process was thought to progress
  from simpler (lower) forms to increasingly more
  complex (higher) forms of culture.

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Evolutionism Lewis Henry Morgan

• Hired to represent the Iroquois in a land grant
  dispute
• gtbegan a study of the Seneca culminating in the
  book Systems of Consanguinity and
  Affinity(1871)
• gtwrote Ancient Society (1877) and developed a
  system of classifying cultures to determine their
  evolutionary niche

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Lewis Henry Morgan

• Morgan used the categories , savagery, barbarism
  and civilization according to the presence or
  absence of certain technological features.
• Lower savagery-from earliest forms of humanity
  subsisting on fruits and nuts
• Middle savagery-began with the discovery of
  fishing technology and the use of fire
• Upper savagery-began with invention of bow and
  arrow

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Lewis Henry Morgan

1. Lower barbarism-began with the advent of pottery
   making
2. Middle barbarism-began with the domestication of
   plants and animals in the Old World and
   irrigation cultivation in the New World
3. Upper barbarism-began with the smelting of iron
   and use of iron tools
4. Civilization-began with the invention of the
   phonetic alphabet and writing.

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Criticisms of Evolutionism

• Ethnocentrism
• Armchair speculators
• Both Morgan and Tylor were trying to establish
  secular evolutionary rationales rather than
  relying on the supernatural

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Diffusionism

• During the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
  diffusionists addressed the question of cultural
  differences in the world by determining that
  humans were essentially uninventive
• Certain cultural features developed in one or
  several parts of the world and then spread,
  through the process of diffusion, to other
  cultures.

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diffusionists

• All societies change as a result of cultural
  borrowing from one another
• A deductive approach is used, with the general
  theory of diffusion being applied to explain
  specific cases of cultural diversity
• Diffusionism overemphasized the essentially valid
  idea of diffusion

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American Historicism

• A reaction to the deductive approach and headed
  by Franz Boas, this school of anthropological
  thought was prominent in the first part of the
  20th century and insisted upon the collection of
  ethnographic data through direct fieldwork prior
  to making cross-cultural generalizations

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American Historicism

• Ethnographic facts must precede the development
  of cultural theories (induction)
• Any culture is partially composed of traits
  diffused from other cultures
• Direct fieldwork is absolutely essential
• Each culture is, to some degree unique
• Ethnographers should try to get the view of those
  being studied (emic) not their own view (etic)

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Functionalism

• Theory of social stratification holding that
  social stratification exists because it
  contributes to the overall well-being of a
  society
• No matter how bizarre a cultural tem might at
  first appear, it had a meaning and performed some
  useful function the well-being of the individual
  or the society the job of the researcher is to
  become sufficiently immersed in the culture and
  language to be able to identify these functions

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Functionalism-Bronislaw Malinowski

• Like Boas, Malinowski was a strong advocate of
  fieldwork, but he had no interest in asking how a
  cultural item got to be the way it is. Focused
  on how contemporary cultures operated or
  functioned
• Ex the kula among the Trobriand Islanders

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Funtionalism-Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown

• Like Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown held that the
  various aspects of a society should be studied in
  terms of the functions they perform.
• Whereas Malinowski viewed functions mostly as
  meeting the needs of the individual,
  Radcliffe-Brown saw them in terms of
  contributions to the well-being of the society

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A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

• Because of the emphasis on social functions
  rather than individual functions,
  Radcliffe-Browns theory has taken the name
  STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM

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functionalism

• The functionalist approach is based on two
  fundamental principles
• Universal Functions-every part of a culture has a
  function
• Functional Unity-a culture is an integrated whole
  composed of a number of interrelated parts a
  change in one part of the culture is likely to
  produce change in other parts

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Psychological Anthropology

• Looks at the relationships among cultures and
  such psychological phenomena as personality,
  cognition and emotions
• As early as the 1920s American Anthropologists
  became interested in the relationship between
  culture and the individual

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Psychological Anthropology

• Some of Boass students began asking questions
  about what role personality played in human
  behavior, should personality be viewed as a part
  of the cultural system or if personality
  variables are part of culture, how are they
  causally related to the rest of the system

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Edward Sapir

• Individuals learn their cultural patterns
  unconsciously in the same way that they learn
  language
• Culture can be found within the interaction of
  individuals

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Margaret Mead

• Early interest in adolescence in the U.S.
• Coming of age in Samoa (1928)
• Research on Gender
• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
  (1935)

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Psychological Anthropology

• Anthropologists need to explore the relationships
  between psychological and cultural variables
• Personality is largely the result of cultural
  learning
• Universal temperaments associated with males and
  females do not exist

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Neoevolutionism

• School of thought that attempted to refine the
  earlier evolutionary theories of Tylor and Morgan
• Boas and others were extremely critical of 19th
  century evolutionists, in part because they made
  sweeping generalizations based on inadequate
  data. Yet no one was able to demonstrate that
  cultures do not develop or evolve in certain ways
  over time

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Leslie White

• Resurrected the theories of the evolutionists
• Felt their major shortcoming was an absence of
  data
• Culture evolves as the amount of energy
  harnessed per capita per year increases or as the
  efficiency of the means of putting energy to work
  is increased
• CE x T

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Julian Steward

• More interested in developing propositions about
  specific cultures or groups of cultures
• unilinear evolution-an attempt to place
  particular cultures into specific evolutionary
  phases

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Julian Steward

• multilinear evolution-suggestion that specific
  cultures can evolve independently of all others
  even if they follow the same evolutionary process
• cultural ecology-assumption that people who
  reside in similar environments are likely to
  develop similar technologies, social structures,
  and political institutions

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Neoevolutionism

• Cultures evolve in direct proportion to their
  capacity to harness energy
• Culture is shaped by environmental conditions
• Through culture, human populations continuously
  adapt to technical-environmental conditions
• Because technological and environmental factors
  shape culture, individual factors are
  de-emphasized

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French Structuralism

• Theoretical orientation holding that cultures are
  the product of unconscious processes of the human
  mind
• Claude Levi-Strauss

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French Structuralism

• Human cultures are shaped by certain
  preprogrammed codes of the human mind
• Theory focuses on the underlying principles that
  generate behavior rather than the observable
  empirical behavior itself
• Emphasizes repetitive structures rather than
  sociocultural change

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French Structuralism

• Rather than examining attitudes, values and
  beliefs, structuralists concentrate on what
  happens at the unconscious level
• The human mind categorizes phenomena in terms of
  binary oppositions.

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Ethnoscience

• Theoretical school popular in the 1950s and 60s
  that tries to understand a culture from the point
  of view of the people being studied

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Ethnoscience

• Attempts to make ethnographic description more
  accurate and replicable
• Describes a culture by using the categories of
  the people under study rather than by imposing
  categories from the ethnographers culture
• Because it is time-consuming, ethnoscience has
  been confined to describing very small segments
  of a culture
• Difficult to compare data collected by
  ethnoscientists

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Feminist Anthropology

• Seeks to describe and explain cultural life from
  the perspective of women

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Feminist Anthropology

• All aspects of culture have a gender dimension
  that must be considered in any balanced
  ethnographic description
• Theory represents a long overdue corrective to
  male bias in traditional ethnographies
• More subjective and collaborative than objective
  and scientific
• Largely critical of a value-free orientation

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Cultural Materialism

• Cultural systems are most influenced by such
  material things as natural resources and
  technology
• Marvin Harris

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Cultural Materialism

• Material conditions determine human thoughts and
  behavior
• Theorists assume the viewpoint of the
  anthropologist, not the native informant
• Anthropology is seen as scientific, empirical and
  capable of generating causal explanations
• De-emphasizes the role of ideas and values in
  determining the conditions of social life

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Postmodernism

• Human behavior stems from the way people perceive
  and classify the world around them
• Interpretive Anthropology the critical aspects
  of cultural systems are subjective factors such
  as values, ideas and worldviews
• Clifford Geertz

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Postmodernism

• Calls on anthropologists to switch from cultural
  generalization and laws to description,
  interpretation and the search for meaning
• Ethnographies should be written from several
  voices-that of the anthropologist along with
  those of the people under analysis
• Involves a return to cultural relativism