Jeremy lafayette

ANTH 310, MIDTERM 9/27/2010

Anthropology and Epistemology:20th century anthro set itself against 19th century evolutionist perspective of linear “Progress and Civilization” concept.4 level of
anthro applied: body, psyche, society, and culture.Cultural Relativists:Franz Boas:Cultural relativist, he and his students espoused the idea that cultures must be
understood on their own terms and as wholes. Each culture needed to be treated as a unique way of life.Benedict: Cultures are collective
personalities.Sapir:Behavior patterns characteristic of a society condition the thoughts and emotions of a societal member.Bateson:Cultures should be
conceptualized as integrated “systems of thought” or “scales of value”Sociology:Durkheim: Human beings make culture, and are themselves already a product of
culture. Society is the origin of social facts. “Decried the notion of funtion” as valid explanation.Functionalists:Kroeber:Culture presupposes society. Society is based
on individuals and individuals have mind/ bodies. “Plasticity.”Kroeber and malinowski looked at culture as a form of human adaptation.Malinowski:Society
progressivly met and developed needs over time, encouraging a view of cultural systems as integrated wholes with funcionally related parts.Cultural
materialists:Steward: Biology and psychology seen as setting limits on culture (Steward &White).Structural-functionalism:Radcliffe-Brown: Social relations based
on behavior can be observed. Culture cannot because it does not refer to any concrete reality. It is an analytical abstraction.Analogy linking functionalism with S/F of
RB and Brit. Anth was the living orgainism.CH1: The Aims of Anthropological Research: By Franz Boas “We may best define our objective as the attempt to
understand the steps by which man has come to be what he is, biologically, psychologically and culturally.” Caution in the use of morphological similarities; similar
forms develop in genetically unrelated groups. (ex. Variety of “white-haired” animals across species and regions).“it is ever so much more probable that analogous
cultural forms develop independantly.” Cultural reconstruction not possible because most important aspects (language, social org., religion) leave no trace in the
soil; vanishes with the life of each generation.“…it is impossible to determine with certainty the direction of diffusion.” “Cultures differ like so many species or genera
of animals, and their common basis is lost forever.”Dynamics of existing society veiw in two ways:Interrelations between various aspects of cultural form and
between culture and natural environment and The interrelation between the individual and society.“Attempts to deduce cultural forms from a single cause is
doomed to failure.” (“Culture is integrated. It is true that the degree of integration os not always the same”.“It is our task to discover among all the varieties of
human behavior those that are common to all humanity.”CH 2: The Concept of Culture in Science By A.L Kroeber“…the essensial thing to apprehend is their values,
because without these he will not know either toward what the cultures are slanted or around what they are organized.” Concept of culture is a two-edged tool: it
ties phenomena and interpretations together; it dissimilates and distinguishes the others.Cultural values, forms, and content exist “only through men and reside in
men.” Values instilled from the outside (society), and so values originate from a “collective” or “mass” origin. Leads to “essential anonymity” of origins of customs
and ideologies.“covertness” (lack of awareness rather than concealment) of cultural patterns.“irrationality” = a factor of inconsistency. Cultures tend toward
integration, but never achieve it in total.The values of the culture are reflected in societies ideals. “plasticity” = variability.Organisms change, but repeat their basic
body structure plan. Nothing in culture corresponds to organic repetitiveness. Appearances of repition are dubios and vague.Must look at history through the
centuries to see plasticityCh 3: Problems and Methods of Approach By Gregory Bateson“…the occurance of cultural changes is in part controlled by some abstract
property of culture, which may vary from period to period so that at one time a given change is appropriate and occurs easily though a hundred years earlier the
same innovation may have been rejected by the culture because it was in some ways innappropriate.”Zietgeist = The Spirit of the times.When a culture is considered
as a whole, certain emphases emerge built up from the juxtaposition of the diverse traits of which the culture is composed. These emphases are concieved to be
either “systems of thought” or “scales of value’ .Concept of “group mind” must be discarded. Must regard all thinking and feeling in culture as being done by
individuals. “Systems of thought” refers to how culture affects the pshychology of individuals, causing whole groups to think and feel alike.Two ways culture might
do this:1) education: inducing or promoting certain mental processes2) selection: favoring individuals with an innate tendency.Fundamental axiom of holistic
science approach: “ that the object studied-- animal, plant, or community—is composed of units whose properties have been standardized by their position in the
whole organization.A human is born with potentials and tendencies which may develop in various directions. The culture that a person is born into stresses certain
potentials and and suppresses others.“The essense of the method is to determine the system of sentiments which is normal to the culture and emphasiszed in it’s
institutions; and when this system is identified we are justified in referring to it as a factor which has been active in shaping the institutions. It will be observed that
the argument is circular… It would seem that circularity is a universal property of functional systems…”.Functional analysis requires dividing a system into a series of
parts or elements, and producing theories about the relationship of the parts. BATESON ARGUES FOR A DIFFERENT APPROACH than functionalism. He calls it the
“Ethological Approach”.“Ethos”= a culturally standardized system of organizing insticnts and emotions of an individual. “A standardized system of emotional
attitudes”. (Ex. Intellectuals, “Dons” and their drinks)The many different Ethos dovetail into a harmonious whole.Ch. 4: "Rules for the Explanation of Social Facts"
By Emile Durkheim"...To show a fact is useful is not to explain how it originated or why it is what it is…The need we have of things cannot give them existence, nor
can it confer their specific nature upon them." (Pg. 47)A fact can exist without being useful, because either it has never been given a useful function, or, because it
has lost it’s utility and is still used out of habit.A practice or social institution can change it’s function without changing it’s nature. (Ex. Roman law, the formality of
oaths.)The same words may be used to express different ideas.Things can remain the same, and serve different ends; it’s causes of existence are independent of the
end it serves.Division of labor arose by way of individual differences. He gives three reasons why:Previous “course” was barred, or increased struggle, It was the
direction of least resistance, Other solutions include emigration, suicide and crime.Allowing a place for human needs is not “teleology” (expalanations involving
design, purpose, and “final causes”).Given the same environment, each individual adapts himself to it according to his own disposition and in his own way which he
prefers to all others.Social facts present infinite diversity; comparisons almost impossible.Bizarre customs observed among diverse peoples are symptomatic of a
certain social state.The explanation of social phenomenon must seek cause and function separately. Cause should be studied first, but they are reciprocal. “…we
shall find the function more easily once the cause is known”.The current model for explaning social life: the correspondence between the internal and the external
milieu, but is an approximation.Everything is based on human nature. We must seek the explanation of social life in society itself.First origins of social phenomenon
are psychological. a whole is not identical with the sum of it's parts; the whole has an entirely different nature than the individual parts.Individual minds form
groups that mingle and fuse into a group “being” that has a collective individuality/psychology. Consequently, explaning social phenomenon by psychological
phenomenon is false.No known social phenomenon is dependant on race. PRINCIPLE: the determining the cause of social facts should be sought among the social
facts preceding it and not among the states of individual consiousness. The function of a social fact ought always be sought in it’s relation to some social end. Ch.5:
"Rules for the Comparative Method of Anthropology" By Franz Boas:The same phenomenon can occur among the most diverse peoples.The various forms of
religious thought, society, laws and inventions can be reduced to a few “types”.These types have arisen independantly. “Universal Ideas” are only the beginning
work of anthropology. Scientific inquiry must answer two questions about these Ideas:What is their origin,How do they assert themselves in various cultures. (This is
the easier question to answer.)The method is to isolate and classify causes by grouping the variants of certain ethnological phenomenon according to: External
environment people live in and internal causes which influence the mind,similarities.The same phenomenon may develop in a multitude of ways. (Ex. Clan totems:
same design from multiple sources.)masks used in various ways.“The Presumption is always in favor of a variety of courses which hstorical growth may have taken.”
“the object of our investigation is to find the processes by which certain stages fo culture have develped.”Environment has limited effect on cultural development
because:Linguisticly and culturally different peoples live in the same regions,diffusion.History of culture is not the aim of anthropology. Important function of
historical method is the ability to discover the processes which led to the development of certain customs.American scholars are interested in the dynamic
phenomenon of cultural change.The method is to study the dynamic changes in society that may be observed in present time. We cannot understand the general
development of civilization until we have been able to unravel the processes that are going on under our eyes. If we look for laws, the laws relate to the effects of
physiological, psychological, and social conditions, not to sequences of cultural achievement."...[Dynamics of primitive life] can be proved to be in a state of
flux...Periods of stability are followed by periods of rapid change. It is exceedingly improbable that any customs of primitive people should be preserved unchanged
for thousands of years." Ch.6: "Anthropology and Sociology" By Edward Sapir:"No human assemblage living a life in common has ever been discovered that does
not possess some form of social organization."Important portion of anthro work is to study primitive types of social organization.“social stages” not backed by
evidence. Culture of man is a plastic process(70)Primary error of early anthro was to look at primitive man as “prodromal” cultured humanity.Sociologist hopes to
Jeremy lafayette
ANTH 310, MIDTERM 9/27/2010

gain insight into the essential patterns and mechanisms of social behavior. Family is the universal social unit. Modern family is the persistance of an old pattern, not
emergence of a new one. Cases of diffusion are numerous.Borrowing of patterns has always been significant, but also must never lose sight of formal parrallellisms.
(72)Kinship image: a potent social pattern may fly in the face of reason, of mutual advantage, and economic necessity. Types of Social org. explained as resulting
from the efforts of like-minded individuals to achieve certain ends. Their function is less obvious.The clan tends to atrophy with the growth of political institutions,
as states weaken in the face of globalisations.Social groups, once established, tend to persist.Transfer of social patterns.Clans closely patterned after other clans are
still unique from the other groups. Symbolic association of social groups. (party slogans, flags, ect.)Ch. 7: The Individual and the Pattern of Culture:“Society in it’s
full sense […] is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in
which he participates.”most important task of social thinking is to “take adequate account” of cultural relativity. individual as “plastic”, and argues that most
individuals are given a natural malleability, and that most individuals are eager students of the culture they are born into. discuss how an individual’s culture is
responsible for defining the concepts of normality and abnormality. Normality is defined in most societies as the average behavior of the group. Any behavior that
is outside the norm is considered abnormal. Abnormal becomes those behaviors that are not supported by the institutions of a society. Whether or not an
individual is considered functional in a group is based on what behaviors are cherished by the group. These cherished behaviors will differ from group to
group.Puritan Divines.Ch. 8: The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis:an axiom of fieldwork: “…individual, group, and their mutual dependence will run
through all the inquiries.” model based on the observable relationship of the human’s bodily needs, environmental influences, and cultural reactions functionalist
approach to the study of human culture must include all three aspects of this model simultaneously. analysis of exactly how human needs are defined and goes on
to illustrate the minimal conditions required for the welfare of a human being: 1) nourishment 2) reproduction, and 3) stability of environment. human group is not
a single group, but a number of groups. He also asserts that there are advantages to joint effort.education to be the conditioning of the individual, and that a
human can be developed under any system of culture. the individual and the group relationship, together with environment and material culture, should be studied
at every step of the way. defines functionalism as “the theory of transformation of organic (individual) needs into derived cultural necessities and imperatives.
Society…molds the individual into his cultural personality. The individual…is the ultimate source and aim of all tradition, activities, and organized behavior […]” Ch.
9: The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology:“[…] since man is a domesticated animal, he is affected physically by all his cultural activities…the appearance of
Homo sapiens is probably more the result of cultural causes than of physical causes.”the habitat of the Homo sapiens permits and necessitates a ‘distinctive mode of
life.’ cultural ecological adaptations are creative processes. problem of cultural ecology is to determine if the adjustments of human societies to the environment
require a specific mode of behavior, or if there is latitude that allows for a range of behaviors.outlines the method of cultural ecology by identifying the three key
components for cultural analysis:The interrelationship of exploitative or productive technology and environment.,The behavior patterns involved in the exploitation
of a particular area by means of a particular technology.Determine the extent to which the behavior patterns entailed in exploiting the environment affect other
aspects of culture. Ch.10: Energy and the Evolution of Culture: “culture is an organized, integrated system.” He then goes on to outline the subsystems of the
cultural system. These three systems are:1) The Technological System: material, mechanical technology and their techniques of use.2) The Sociological System:
interpersonal relations expressed in patterns of behavior, both collective and individual. 3) The Ideological System: ideas, beliefs, knowledge, expressed in speech or
symbolic form. These three categories are the “whole” of society from the perspective of White. He goes on to contend that “all life is a struggle for free energy”
and outlines stages of free-energy development for humankind.The energy stages are: 1) the energy of the human organism, 2) energy from the sun in the form of
photosynthesis, and thus, the energy of plants and animals 3) coal/ gas, and 4) nuclear energy.if all other factors are constant, a culture will develop proportionally
to the efficiency of the tools employed. energy is the most basic and primary factor in cultural development.“Culture grows out of culture.”On social
Structure,Radcliffe-Brown RB defines social anthropology as the study of human society rather than the study of culture. He contends that, while the differences
between the two may seem insignificant, the differences between the terms can lead to distinctly different paths of inquiry.To outline the specifics of these
differences, RB first defines social phenomena as, “relations of associations between individual organisms”, and goes on to site bee hives as an example of this
concept of associative relations. Social relations between the queen, workers, and drones and also the association of animals in a herd are used as an example of
“relations of association”. RB states that none of these examples of social phenomenon in the animal kingdom would be referred to as “cultural”.RB brings his point
home by stating that the goal of social anthropology is to investigate the forms of association between human beings and further defends his point regarding the
differences between the study of “culture” and the study of social phenomenon by stating that “culture” is an abstract and vague concept that does not possess
anyconcrete reality .From the perspective of RB, the only observable phenomenon is the complex network of social relations between humans. He defines this
complex network as “social structure”. Social structure fits into the same study of structure as the natural sciences ( biology and chemistry, ect.) there is a place in
the natural sciences for the study of the general characteristics of social structures .two additions to the idea of “social structure” are:Social structure includes all
social relations of person to person,Social structure includes the differentiation of individuals and of classes by their social role.“In the study of social structure the
concrete reality with which we are concerned is the set of actually existing relations, at a given moment of time, which link together certain human beings.” method
to follow in order to study social structure, and this method is basically the simultaneous study of single societies, and the systematic comparison of societies. in
order for a real comparison to take place, there must be a system of classification of “types” of social structures. is a difficult task and that while progress is being
made in the field, there is no such existing classification system.“the structural form may change, sometimes gradually, sometimes with relative suddenness, as in
revolutions and military conquests. But even in the most revolutionary changes some continuity of structure is maintained.”