Anthropology

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Anthropology Culture

• The study of humans cultures
• Throughout the world
• Societies of past and present
• Anthropology uses both biology and culture
• Key approaches specific approach, fieldwork,
  comparative method
• Primary contribution to social sciences concept
  of culture
• What anthropologists produce ethnographies,
  policies

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Concept of culture

• Examples of ways culture is used.

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Cow worship in India
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Culture as a way of life

• Behaviors, beliefs, meanings
• Material, mental, and social products
• Characteristics
• Shared and integrated
• learned (not human nature)
• Symbolic and relative
• Adaptive and dynamic
• Ethnocentrism v. cultural relativism, critical
  cultural relativism

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E.B. Tylor

• Culture or civilization, taken in its wide
  ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which
  includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
  custom, and any other capabilities and habits
  acquired my man as a member of society.
• E. B. Tylor 1871

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Clifford Geertz

• Culture is the framework of beliefs, expressive
  symbols, and values in terms of which individuals
  define their feelings and make their judgements
  ( Clifford Geertz AmericanAnthropologist
  5932-54).

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Culture

• culture of a people can be understood as the
  system of shared ideas and meanings, explicit and
  implicit, which a people use to interpret the
  world and which serve to pattern their behavior.

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Culture

• Culture is a system
• Culture is a process
• Implicit/ tacit ( internal)
• Explicit (external)

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Cultural Ecology

• Ecology ? cultural ecology
• Humans in interaction with their environment
• Adaptive strategies ? culture as dynamic process
• environmental setting
• technology (tools, techniques, knowledge)
• worldview
• external forces and institutions

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• Adaptation, be it biological or cultural,
  represents a better fit to specific, local
  environments, not an inevitable stage in a ladder
  of progresswheels, like wings, fins, and brains,
  are exquisite devices for certain purposes, not
  signs of intrinsic superiority."  -Stephen
  Jay Gould, 1983

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Key Issues

• Carrying capacity upper limit on production and
  population in a given environment
• Sustainability, stress
• Cultural basis of conflict
• Resources as factors in conflict

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Kurds
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.Most of them live in I22245ran, Turkey,
Armenia, Syria and Iraq.

• There are an estimated 25 million Kurds
  throughout the world.Most of them live in Iran,
  Turkey, Armenia, Syria and Iraq.

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Robert Breneman Kurds

• Can you identify the regions he lived and did
  research ?
• Defining the region geographically and culturally
• (marked by mountains, desert, river and ocean)
• How are the regions defined and why? For example,
  Middle East.
• Importance of Middle East

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Middle East

• The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent
  (Mesopotamia) and Pharaonic Egypt were the first
  to develop agriculture, writing, codified law,
  and complex social structure.The Golden Age of
  Islam brought advances in mathematics, astronomy,
  literature, and philosophy to Europe, Asia, and
  Africa.The dominant monotheistic traditions of
  today were all originated in the Middle East

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Contemporary Issues in the Middle East

• Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Resource problems e.g., petroleum, water,
  landEthnic tensions (e.g., genocide in Sudan,
  oppression of Kurds)Israeli-Palestinian
  conflictRise of Islamist states and
  fundamentalist movements
• Kurds language and ethnicity
• Language family
• Cultural history migrations, contact, and
  settlements) corresponds to language
  distribution

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Kurds

• Strong ethnic, tribal, cultural, local identity
• Role of the family and larger kinship
  unitsStatus of womenImpact of nomadic
  pastoralist traditionCity versus country
  cultureCustoms related to power, such as
  patriarchy
• Importance of religion KoranTension between
  local culture and pan-Arab/pan-Muslim movements
• Polygyny is associated with Islam, but is
  strongly cultural.
•  

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Various resources

• http//www.merip.org/http//www.arab.net/index.ht
  mlhttp//www.mideastinfo.com/http//www.dfait-ma
  eci.gc.ca/middle_east/countries-en.asp
•