Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
ANTH111: Introduction to Anthropology
Section 06
Fall, 2007
Instructor: Gregory Vogel
(Back to course Home Page)
Weekly Lecture Notes: Week 9
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!
* * * * * * * * * *
For the reading responses next week – send me at least one comment or question about Anthropology Chapter 9 and the reading in Applying Chapter 23. Also send at least one comment or question concerning the recent ALESTLE article concerning streaking on college campuses in the 1970s (click here). Try to tie this article to ideas we discussed in class on Wednesday.
* * * * * * * * * *
(Material in quotation marks is directly from Applying Anthropology).
We have already begun a framework for understanding cultural anthropology:
Through biological anthropology we know that humans are biocultural organisms: we rely on culture as an important evolutionary trait. Learned behavior and culture is nearly unique to human beings – other animals exhibit what we may call "culture" to a very slight degree, but it is not nearly as important to them as it is to us.
Through archaeology we have seen the development of several important cultural traits, including the development of social complexity and the shift in subsistence strategies from foraging to farming.
WHY cultural anthropology?
Partly just out of academic and personal curiosity, but also many practical reasons.
If we want to change something about culture or society, we first need to understand the mechanisms behind culture – what exactly is it, how does it work, how does it change through time and across regions, how do individual human beings relate to larger cultural trends and patterns?
Some of the questions cultural anthropologists address include: What is the range of variation in human cultures? How many ways are there for societies to organize themselves? How many ways are there for individuals to relate to larger groups?
How do we define culture?
- Applying Anthropology defines culture as "patterns of learned behavior and ideas acquired by people as members of society".
There are many different ways of viewing "culture", including:
- Culture is an "extrasomatic means of adaptation".
- A powerful form of niche construction.
- An evolutionary trait that was developed gradually. Culture is not a monolithic entity, but multi-faceted, involving many different aspects of human learning and thought.
- Culture is learned, it is not an intrinsic feature of individual human beings. In this way, it can be viewed as having evolved in parallel with human biology (coevolutioin). Note that while some anthropologists view the evolution of culture or cultural traits as following the rules of biological evolution (e.g. natural selection), others hold the view that while culture and cultural traits developed over time, this development follows rules fundamentally different from those of biological evolution.
"The enormous adaptive value of complex symbolic representation appears to have created for our ancestors a new set of selective pressures that favored genetic changes that improved our brain's symbolic capacities. That is to say, culture and the human brain coevolved..." Again, note that some anthropologists would not use the term "coevolved".
- Like many theoretical disagreements, it is not necessarily a matter of which view is "true" and which is not. It is often a matter of which makes more sense within the context of your research question – the context of what you are trying to understand.
- Still, understanding our own theoretical viewpoint is important. For example, a Republican and a Democrat may look at exactly the same set of economic data and come up with exactly opposite conclusions.
- Albert Einstein wrote, "It is theory that determines what we see." This means theory not only influences how we interpret information, but what information we gather and what questions we ask.
- We need to at least strive for objectivity in understanding the world, even if we know that we have a particular point of view we wish to promote.
- E.B. Tylor defined "culture or civilization as, "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." (Note that this was written in 1871, when it was acceptable to refer to people collectively as "man".)
- Culture is "learned, shared, patterned, adaptive, and symbolic".
Learned & Shared: Cultural traits and patterns change through time, so they do not involve direct and perfect learning without modification, but they are not re-invented wholesale with each generation. Cultural changes are based on previous, learned patterns.
Patterned: There are distinct patterns in human cultures we can discern (for example, certain traits that often go together, such as the attendant cultural changes that come about with the adoption of agriculture) – so cultural traits are not randomly distributed across the globe or through time. It is important to remember, however, that the boundaries between cultures are not sharp, hard boundaries. Think of them as similar to genetic clines, varying gradually across space and over time.
Adaptive: Cultural traits help us survive - "human biological survival depends on culture". Cultural traits and patterns are generally adapted to local environments, and change and the local environments change (environment, in this sense, is similar to an "evolutionary environment", and includes human cultures as a form of niche construction.).
Symbolic: A symbol is "something that stands for something else" – Human language is the ultimate form of symbolic communication (thus the importance of the study of linguistics). A great deal of human behavior is symbolic. Even things that seem directly related to what they stand for (onomatopoeia) are not universal:
gatan goton – clickety-clack
wan wan – bark bark or bow-wow
pika pika – bling bling
- Human culture is almost certainly as old as bipedalism (Hominids). The earliest hard evidence for culture comes in the form of stone tools about 2.5 mya – evidence that people were sharing ideas about tools, and had a "mental template" of what they should look like.
- Apes and monkeys exhibit some culture – sharing ideas about getting food, etc.
Culture: "Culture" vs. "culture".
The terms "culture" or "cultures" (e.g. Japanese culture, American culture) is avoided by many anthropologists. "Cultures" in this sense being "particular, learned ways of life belonging to specific groups of human beings."
- The debate is partly political, because of the way the term has been applied in the past, and partly practical, because it may be a counter-productive way of looking at culture.
- There are not universal "shared cultural traits" within "a culture" – how many cultural traits can we name that are shared by all Americans, for example? (Think of E.B. Tylor's definition)
- Cultural traits and patterns are constantly shifting and adapting, particularly in the last few hundred years with increased globalization.
- There are thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of "sub-cultures" in every "culture" – about as many as there are individuals within "a culture".
- In some ways, the idea of "a culture" is similar to the biological idea of races: there are no clear boundaries between them, and dividing people into races or cultures is arbitrary and subjective.
- The idea of "loss of authenticity" is important, and we will come back to this later in the course. For individual "cultures" it means that if we define them specifically, any individual (or population) who does not share those traits is not "authentic". For example, if we wish to preserve "authentic" Hawaiian culture, does that mean that anyone who doesn't dress correctly is not authentically Hawaiian? Or anyone who uses a computer or eat a diet different from their Hawaiian ancestors? What would be the definition of "authentic" American College Student culture?
- Some anthropologists prefer to use them term "society" instead of "culture", or to concentrate on "cultural processes" instead of individual "cultures", but the debate is still far from being resolved.
Ethnocentrism: "The opinion that one's own way of life is natural or correct, and, indeed, the only true way of being fully human." Basically, the thought that other ways of going about things are "weird". If we always see our own way of life as the "default" value, everything else is a deviation from normal.
Cultural Relativism: "Understanding another culture on its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living." Basically, not being ethnocentric.
Note that cultural relativism is NOT the view that all cultural traits or patterns are equally valid, or that they are equally good.
The book gives the example of the rise of Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust – This was a complicated cultural period with many aspects. It can be understood from many different viewpoints, even from within the same societies. By trying to understand how the Holocaust could happen, we are not trying to excuse it in any way, or to excuse those who took part in it in any way. We are simply trying to understand the cultural dynamics, and, if possible, to understand them deeply enough to keep the same thing from happening again. We clearly haven't done that yet, though. BUT: if we don't understanding something well, particularly something as complex as large-scale cultural events, we have no way in the world of stopping them from happening again.
Another e xample from the book is about Peace Corps workers in Botswana – the workers were getting "burned out" and leaving the Corps at high rates after dealing with the Tswana. An anthropologist familiar with the area looked into the situation and found that the Peace Corps workers and the Tswana had very different ideas about being alone: the American workers looked at "alone time" as a matter of privacy and as away to relax, while the Tswana thought they were not being hospitable if they left the Americans alone.
Greg's Rule of Cultural Relativism: "Everything a person does makes sense to that person at that time." Would you do anything if it doesn't make sense for you to do it, at least at that time? Could you? In some ways, this is the definition of insanity: doing something that doesn't make sense, even to you. This doesn't mean that we always want to do what we are doing, just that it makes more sense for us to do it than to do something else. Why in the world would you take the time to memorize time period designations in North American prehistory? Does it make any sense for you to do this? It may not make sense to an outsider, and it may not make sense to you later, or in a different context, but in the context of an introductory anthropology class which you are taking for a grade, it makes perfect sense.
- Demolition derbies
- (Almost) uniquely American – England has "banger races", but true demolition derbies, where the goal of the event is to crash into other cars, is illegal just about everywhere else, for safety reasons and environmental reasons.
- Why in the world would they do this?
- Think about the cultural phenomenon of streaking in the U.S. in the 1970s.
- A complicated cultural event, even if a short-lived one.
- Several different "causes", or reasons for participants to streak.
- Garners lots of attention because it is an unusual cultural event – even among college-age students at the height of the phenomenon, it was unusual (that is, only a small percent of college students ever engaged in this).
