Cognitive Anthropology

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Cognitive Anthropology

• S4 Advanced Social Anthropology I
• Thought, Belief and Ethics
• Lecture 2
• The development of cognitive anthropology from
  ethnoscience to epidemiology of representations
• Jonathan Mair

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Development of cognitive anthropology

• Ethnoscience (50s-70s)
• Schemas,, cultural models (80s)
• Epidemiology of representations, cognitive
  science, evolutionary psychology (90s-00s)

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1. Ethnoscience, Folkbotany, Folkbiology

• 1950s Yale Anth Dept combine
• Ethnoscience
• Methods from structural linguistics
• Kinship (Goodenough, Lounsbury)
• Ethnobotany (Frake, Cronklin)
• Colour terms (Berlin and Kay)

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2. Schemas and cultural models

• Prototypes -gt Schemas, mental models
• Schemas explain
• Fast reasoning in familiar domains
• Generative capacity of cultural knowledge
• Schemas simplified worlds
• Semantic schemas (e.g. bachelor)
• Imagistic schemas (metaphorical)
• Research methods
• Informants intuitions
• Analysis of natural discourse

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3. Anthropology and Cognitive Science
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Epidemiology of representations

• Dan Sperber - 1984 Malinowski Lecture
• A materialist approach to culture
• Allows interaction with psychologists
• Testable Hypotheses
• Explain differential spread of representations
  with reference to cognitive and ecological
  factors

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What is a representation?

• A relationship between three terms
• An object represents a meaning for some
• information-processing device

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Types of representation

• Public representations
• Mental representations (brain states)
• 3. Abstract representations

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Explanation

• Objects
• Public Representations
• Mental Representations
• Causal chains in which (1) and (2) alternate
• Factors
• Psychological
• Ecological - including social/cultural

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Epidemiology of Myth

• Objects
• Narratives public representations
• Stories mental representations
• Causal chains
• storiesnarrativesstoriesnarratives

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Epidemiology of Myth

• Factors
• Ecological constraints
• e.g. absence of writing
• e.g. importance of horses
• Psychological constraints
• e.g. the organisation of spontaneous human memory

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Why epidemiology?
Disease
Representations
individuals
Pathology
Psychology
?
populations
Epidemiology
Anthropology
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Role of psychology

• Psychology of cognitive processes
• Concept formation
• Storage and recall
• Communication
• Filtering effect on representations

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Oral Literature

• Proposed law
• in oral societies all cultural representations
  are easy ones difficult ones are forgotten or
  transformed

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Selection and Attraction

• Genes
• Mutation infrequent, random
• Representations
• Transformation frequent, directed