Four Fields of Anthropology

1
Four Fields of Anthropology

• Anthropological Method
• Describe

2
Key concepts
3
Cultural Relativism

• Cannot judge a culture by the norms and values of
  another
• Must understand a culture on its own terms
• True of time, too (historical attitudes)
• Controversy What about maladaptive practices,
  violations of human rights or historical
  wrongs?
• FGM
• Persecution of minority groups
• Slavery

4
Ethnocentrism

• Belief ones own culture is superior to others
• We cant be objective if we are ethnocentric
• But we always wear our cultural glasses, we
  just need to be sure they arent so dark that
  what we see is distorted.
• Awareness of cultural glasses helps you avoid
  ethnocentrism

5
Naïve Realism.

• Belief that everyone sees, interprets or
  understands the world in the same way.
• Issue cross-culturally and in studying past
  people or events

6
Can be subtle
Closer to Native view
Way we usually see NE
Petroglyph-NY Iroquois
7
Worldview framework for making sense of our
surroundings and how the world works
8
How does anthropology study culture?
Participant Observation
Informants, surveys, etc
Scientific method
9
Culture Explicit vs. Tacit
Explicit clear, observable
Tacit- hidden framework
10
Culture

• Ethos Motivations and perceptions about life
  and the world that guide
  life-way and choices
• - -How people cope with and
  interact with world
• - -reflected in cultural values
• -Observable in human actions and
  what humans create

11
(No Transcript)
12
Anthropology, Archaeology and History
the Baggage

• Disciplines rise from Western/Euro tradition
• Associated with colonial powers and imperial
  interests
• Used to justify nationalist or imperial goals
• Used to deny identity and legitimacy of subject
  peoples

Great Zimbabwe
13

• Anthropologys original goal
• Document vanishing cultures
• Colonized people expected to assimilate
  (or die)
• Removing cultural materials was
• OK b/c people/culture would soon be gone
• Living people and human remains treated as no
  more than scientific specimens or curiosities to
  be exhibited

14
History Purpose (now) understand how events
come about and the impact of those events on
human societies

• Issues
• Inherent bias (slant)
• Records the activities and interests of the
  elite.
• Viewpoint exclusively that of dominant culture.
• Pre-contact Indigenous recording systems were
  ignored, denied meaning or purposefully destroyed
  

15
(No Transcript)
16
Historys Units How events experienced
Note Race is a cultural construct, not
biological fact and categories change over time
17
Ethnohistory

• AKA Social archeology, culture history
• Cultural patterns
• Continuity AND Change
• Uses
• Oral histories
• Cultural knowledge of indigenous people
• Ethnographic Analogy
• Anthropological, Archaeological and Historical
  theory
• Goal Recover the culture history and experience
  of colonized (or otherwise unrecorded) people
• Understand effects/experience of historical
  processes
• Understand cultural processes (adaptation
  and change)