UPSC CSE ANTHROPOLOGY

What is Cognitive Anthropology?

To redefine cogitative anthropology based on the definitions of a range of literature assessed

for this paper, it is an idealistic approach, studies the interaction between human thought and
human culture. To be specific, it studies how each group of society organize and perceive the
physical objects, events, and experiences that make up their world. Cognitive anthropology
gives attention how people make sense of reality according to their own indigenous cognitive
faculty unlike the anthropologist point of view, known as emic vs. etic theoretical approach.
Cognitive anthropology speculates that each culture organizes and understands events
material life and ideas to its own standard. Hence, the primary objective of cognitive
anthropology is reliably characterizing the underlying logical systems of thought of other
people according to criteria, which can be discovered and replicated through analysis
(Robertson & Beasley, 2011; Class lecture handout).

Association with other disciplines: cognitive anthropology is aligned with many disciplines
since its very earlier period. It is associated with psychology as both explore the cognitive
process. It has also adopted theoretical elements and methodological techniques from
linguistic and structuralism as will be discussed later. Moreover, it is closely associated with
psychological anthropology, cognitive linguistic, psychological linguistic, cognitive psychology
and other more cognitive sciences (Robertson & Beasley, 2011).

Developmental phases: Cognitive anthropology developed through three stages. The first
formative stages known as ethno science, the period in which cognitive anthropology had
adopted some methodological and theoretical orientations from linguistic. Developed by
Kenneth Pick, one of the most influential methodology that adopted during this period from
linguistic to the field of cognitive anthropology is Emic Vs. Etic, which is analogous to linguistic
methodology, phonemic vs. phonetic. Phonemics is the study of linguistic meaning of native
speaker while phonetics is the study of linguistic sounds by the linguist. In other words,
phonetic represents the outsider’s point of view and phonemic represents the speakers’ point
of view. In the same manner, pick applied this method to anthropological fieldwork technique
called participant observation. According to pick, participation in the target culture was
representing emic, because it looks things from the native point of view, enables the
researcher anthropologist to think like natives. In contrast, when participation was etic, it
detaches him from the native point of view, that he thinks from outsiders’ point of view
(Robertson & Beasley, 2011; class handout MU).

The other theoretical orientation developed in this era was known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,
named after anthropological linguist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his student Benjamin lee
Whorf (1897-1941). This theory hypothesizes the close relationship between language and
culture, that mental structure of languages and cultures are correlated; that the structure of
languages influences the structure of cultures and vice versa. Sapir and Whorf put culture
inside people’s head; and believed that different languages construct different ways of
thinking. Their approach same times said to be language culture determinism (class
handout; kooff, 2002).

According to Sapir and Whorf, the grammatical categories of different languages produce
different thinking about things for its speakers. In English, for example, time is divided into

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UPSC CSE ANTHROPOLOGY

past, present and future but in Hopi language is not a case; and also, English classifies personal
cases as he, she, him, her, his, and hers, whereas the Palaung tribe in Burma does not. This
difference leads the speakers of these languages to think about time and personal cases and
realities in different way than English (kooff, 2002, pp140-142).

The second developmental stage of cognitive anthropology was marked between 1960sand
1970s, being middle period. The school sometimes called Ethno Science, Ethno
Linguistics,or The New Ethnography had achieved reputation in Componential
Analysis methods developed by Harold Conklin ,Charles Freake and Ward Goodenogh
. Componential Analysis method sometimes Known as folk models which in turn
produced folk taxonomies of meaning. Folk taxonomies were classifications of cultural
domains using hierarchies of categories defined by cultural criteria.
Folk taxonomies were analogous to Linnaean taxonomy of Western biology in which living
things were classified in to hierarchy of categories by defined biological criteria. Folk taxonomy
was achieved through interviewing native informants to elicit meaning about cultural
categories through linguistic method adopted and extended from the very beginning of
cognitive anthropology. Through componential analysis, several knowledge systems such as
cultural grammar, maps of semantic domains ranging from Subanum boils and Zeltal firewood
to ethno botanical classifications of Amazon pharmaceutical plants were produced (Robertson
& Beasley, 2011 ; class handout).

During this period, theoretical and methodological shift occurred within cognitive
anthropology. Although the field continued to use linguistic analysis method for
understanding and accessing the cognitive categories of indigenous people, the analysis was
further advanced to analyze categories in terms of mental process, the assumption that there
was mental process based on the structure of the mind common to all human being. This
assumption leads scholars of the era to extend the study beyond studying components of
abstract systems of process to relating it to symbols and ideas (McGee and Warms 1996, cited
in Robertson & Beasley, 2011).

Third period, beginning 1980 till most recent time, marked by the growth of schema
theory and the development of consensus theory. Prior to schema theory, Culture had been
conceived from either materialistic or symbolic point of view. Now, anthropologists started to
think it in terms of parts instead of wholes. Schema theory paved the way for that culture
could be placed in human mind, and cognation of human mind forms the units: such units
were features, prototypes, schemas, propositions, and cognitive categories. Hence, culture
could be explained by analyzing these units or pieces of culture (Robertson & Beasley, 2011).

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