Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
ANTH111: Introduction to Anthropology
Section 06
Fall, 2007
Instructor: Gregory Vogel
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Weekly Lecture Notes: Week 1
These are notes from class sessions outlining key ideas that were brought up in class – keep in mind that these are not comprehensive and do not cover all of the reading material directly. Use these outlines to help you study for the course, but don't use them as a substitute for your own class notes!
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- In class, I will not usually lecture directly from the book – it is there to read, so read it and come with questions and comments. I will stress what I think are the most important points, but also cover material not in the book in class lectures, so it is important that you keep good notes and come to class on a regular basis!
- Anthropology relates to nearly all other fields of investigation:
- Generally considered one of the "social sciences" because our focus of study is people: relates to History, Sociology, Psychology.
- Relates very closely to the biological sciences: Biology, Zoology.
- Employs the physical sciences (Chemistry, Geology, etc.) in many investigations.
- Employs quantitative methods in analysis (Mathematics, Statistics).
- Pretty much anything dealing with people can be incorporated into anthropology in some way.
Biological Anthropology (AKA Physical Anthropology):
- Involves the study of the physical/biological aspects of human beings.
- Evolutionary studies of how we came to be humans in the first place.
- Modern human biology and biological variation:
We will look at the cultural concept of "race" which is only a cultural
concept – it has no basis in biological fact.
- Primatology – the study of non-human primates and the implications they have
for the study of humans.
- "Nature" vs. "Nurture".
Cultural Anthropology (AKA Social Anthropology/Sociocultural Anthropology):
- The study of human societies.
- How groups of people and individuals relate to one another, how we get along
(or do not get along) with one another.
- Kinship, social classification, social organization.
- Does it matter to you if an uncle is your father's brother or mother's brother? In some societies this makes a very big difference.
- Technology, material culture (how we relate to physical things).
- Subsistence (how we extract resources from the environment), economies.
- Religion and worldview.
- Concept of "culture" – Anthropologists moving away from "this or that culture",
using phrases like "cultural processes" more.
Linguistics (AKA Linguistic Anthropology):
- The study of human languages.
- NOT the study of grammar as is commonly understood in academic settings:
Prescriptive vs. Descriptive grammar.
- Historical Linguistics – ties in to Archaeology, and far back enough in time, to Physical Anthropology (when did we, as a species, first gain the ability to speak and communicate with language?).
- Comparative Linguistics (Noam Chomsky and deep structure: all human
languages are the same – hard-wired into our brains).
- In all languages, people differentiate between nouns and verbs:
lesions (damage) in one area of the brain (strokes) leads to difficulty processing nouns, while in another area it leads to difficulty in processing verbs.
- Anthropological Linguists study how language is used everyday, in different contexts, by different people.
- Anthropological Linguistics recognizes that on a very fundamental level language is important to human communication. This is the primary way we convey ideas to one another, which makes it a very powerful tool.
- Think about Don Imus, and what happened to him because of the specific language he used, in a specific context.
- Since we're close to an election year, we have a great chance to see how people use language in very careful ways – politicians have to master language in order to communicate, and they are generally very good at it. They also have large teams of advisors to help them use language.
-"Anti-Abortion" or "Pro-Life"?
- George Bush first described the War on Terror as a "Crusade".
- Karl Rove, George Bush, and Joe Biden all described Barack Obama as an "articulate" black man. What if this adjective had been applied to John Edwards?
- Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the U.S. War in Vietnam: the D.O.D. began hiring advertising executives to help with public relations. The first thing they did was to begin naming military operations: "The Cambodian Incursion" in 1970 under Richard Nixon: "Insursion" has no active tense.
- Think about the names of modern military operations, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more behind the PR campaign: "Iraqi Freedom", "Enduring Freedom", "Desert Storm", "Desert Shield", Desert Scorpion", etc.
- Richard Nixon during Watergate scandal, "Mistakes were made".
- If you see very careful or specific use of language in politics, or elsewhere, bring it up in class!
Archaeology (AKA Archeology):
- Study of past groups of people.
- Artifacts and features: an artifact is anything made or modified by people.
- Both prehistoric (before writing) and historic (after the introduction of writing).
- Different "types" of archaeology: Classical Archaeology (Greece and Rome),
pursued in the Old World, Biblical Archaeology, etc.
- In N. America, "Anthropological Archaeology".
- Sometimes called the "past tense of cultural anthropology" because interested in
the same types of questions as cultural anthropologists.
- The majority of archaeology in N. America (and really throughout the world) is "contract" archaeology.
- Federal, State, Local laws etc. requiring archaeological surveys.
- "Cultural Resource Management" (CRM) is much more than just archaeology.
- "Academic" archaeology – where an archaeologist at a University or other institution has a particular research question in mind and looks for sites to address those research questions.
- CRM and Academic archaeology often get combined.
- Archaeology vs. Archeology
- Within the four sub-fields, people can specialize even further:
E.g. in Archaeology:
- Particular time period (historic, Paleoindian, etc.).
- Particular material class (pottery, stone tools).
- Particular region (western Illinois).
- Particular method of investigation (geoarchaeology, remote sensing).
- Etc.
- Other specializations within anthropology, many cross the boundaries of the 4 fields:
- Ethnomusicology.
- Paleoethnobotany, etc..
- "Applied Anthropology": Simply applying anthropological ideas to practical situations:
- Environmental Anthropology: how we relate to our environment, past and present – big topic/issue these days.
- Medical Anthropology: the way people deal with and understand health and illness. Think about this when you read or re-read Nacirema!
- Cognitive Anthropology: how do we think, how does our cognition work and how do our individual thoughts relate to our cultural practices?
- Forensics/forensic anthropology.
- Understanding groups of people to help introduce medical or economic practices in ways that are acceptable to them.
- Issues of globalization and economic anthropology.
- Social justice, particularly for under-represented groups.
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