Anth Notes 1

7/30/2019 Anth Notes 1

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Ch 1.

Anthropology discipline of infinite curiosity about humans.

From greek anthropos (man, human), and logos (study)

Interested in universals and difference in human populations. And discover when, where,

and why humans appeared on earth and how and why they changed.

Scope of Anthropology

Anthropologist though as individuals who travel to little know corners and study exotic

peoples or fossil remains or remnants of people or culture who lived long ago. Anthropology bordered in scope, both geographically and historically.

Anthropology: concerned with explicitly and directly with all varieties of people, not just

those close at hand or in a limited area.

Interested in people of all periods, anywhere were human populations existed.

Used to not study western civilization. Changed when belief any suggested generalizations

about human beings, any explanations of characteristics of culture or biology, should be

shown to apply to many times and places of humans existence.

If generalizations dont prove to apply widely, anthropologists become skeptical about it.

Lactose intolerance due to lack of enzyme lactase used to break down lactose (suger in

milk). Lactose intolerance common in adulthood among Asians, southern Europeans,Arabs, and Jews, West Africans, Inui and North and South American natives, and African

Americans.

Holistic Approach

In addition to historical scope of anthropology, another feature is its holistic, or

multifaceted, approach to study of humans.

Anthropologist study not only variety but many aspects of human experience.

When describing a group of people, they discuss history of area, physical environment,

organization of family life, features of language, settlement patterns, political/economic

system, religion, styles of art and dress.

Goal is to understand connections of physical and social life. Anthropology broken down into specialization.

Anthropological Curiosity

Focus on typical characteristics (traits and customs) of populations.

Focus on typical characteristics of humans groups, how and why populations and their

characteristics varied around the globe and throughout time.

Fields of Anthropology

Concerned with biological or physical characteristics of human populations; others

interested in cultural characteristics of human populations.

Two broad classifications of subject matter in anthropology: Biological (physical)

anthropology and cultural anthropology.

Biological is one major field while cultural is divided into three major subfields:

archaeology, linguistics, and ethnology.

Ethnology is referred by name cultural anthropology while crosscutting all the fields makes

a fifth called applied or practicing anthropology.

Biological Anthropology

Biological (physical) anthropology seeks to answer two sets of questions:

o The emergence of humans and later evolutions (called human paleontology or

paleonthropology)


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o How and why contemporary human populations vary biologically (human

variations).

Reconstruct human evolution, paleontologists search for buried hardened impressions

called fossils of humans, prehumans and related animals.

Findings in east Africa excavated fossils of humanlike beings of more than 4 millions years

ago showing when ancestors develop two legged walking, very flexible hands and larger

brain.

Paleontologists use geological info on succession of climates, environments, plant andanimal populations.

Prosimians, monkeys, apes, are members of order primates.

Anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists specializing in study of primates are called

Primatologists.

Biological anthropologists piece together information from different sources and construct

theories explaining changes observed in fossils and evaluate theories by checking

evidence against another.

Human paleontology overlaps disciplines such as geology, general vertebrate

paleontology, comparative anatomy and comparative primate behavior.

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focus of biological anthropology (study of human variation), investigates how and whyhuman populations differ in biological or physical characteristics.

All people belong to species Homo sapiens, because all can interbreed.

Biological anthropologists use three techniques of other disciplines to study human

variations: human genetics, population biology, epidemiology.

Cultural Anthropology

Culture: customary ways particular populations or society thinks and behaves. Include

language, way kids are brought up, roles assigned to males and females, religious beliefs

and practices, music.

Also interested in learned behaviors and ideas that come to be customary.

Three branches of cultural anthropology: archeology (past cultures through materialremains), anthropological linguistics ( study of language), and ethnology (study of

existence and recent cultures).

Archeology

Trace cultural changes.

Archeologists serve as historians.

Archaeologists deal with prehistory, time before written records.

Specialty in archaeology called historical archeology studies remains of recent people with

written records.

Anthropological Linguistics

Study of languages and changes taken place over time and variations. Anthropological linguists concerned with emergence and divergence of languages over

thousands of years.

Study of how languages change over time and how they are related is known as

historical linguistics.

Study of how contemporary languages differ especially in construction is called

descriptive or structurallinguistics.

Study of how language is used in social contexts is called sociolinguistics.

Ethnology (Cultural Anthropology)


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Ethnology largely the same as that of archaeologists, however ethnologists generally use

data collected through observation and interviews of living people.

One type of ethnologist, ethnographers, spend a year living with, talking to, and

observing the people whose custom theyre studying. This fieldwork provides data for

detailed description of customary behavior and though called an ethnography.

Earlier ethnographers strived for holistic coverage, recent ones specialize in a particular

realm.

Ethnohistorian studies how ways of life of particular group of people have changed overtime. Investigate written documents such as missionary accounts, reports by traders and

explorers, and governmental records to establish cultural changes that have occurred.

Ethnohistorians rely on reports of others and reconstruct the history of people and suggest

why certain changes in life took place.

Cross-cultural researcher interested in discovering general patterns about cultural traits -

what is universal, variable, why they vary, consequences of variability .

Applied Anthropology

Specialization

Anthropologist may specialize in different time periods, geographic locations.

Ethnologists identify themselves as economic, political or psychological anthropologists. Relevance of Anthropology

Ch 2. Culture and Culture Change

Defining Culture

Culture: the set of learned behaviors and ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values and

ideals) that are characteristic of a particular society or other social group.

Behavior can produce products or material culture. Things like houses, musical

instruments, tools and products of customary behavior.

Anthropologists concerned with cultural characteristics of societies.

Society: a group of people who occupy a particular territory and speak common

languages not generally understood by neighboring people. Culture is Commonly Shared

When talking about commonly shared customs of a society, constituting the traditional

and central concern of cultural anthropology, theyre referring to a culture.

When talking about commonly shared customs of a group within a society, which are

central concerns of sociologists and increasingly of concern to anthropologists, were

referring to a subculture.

Culture Is Learned

Culture is something learned as well as shared

Frans de Waal reviewed studied chimpanzees and identified at least 39 behaviors learned

from others. Something is cultural if it is a learned behavior or idea (belief, attitude, value, ideal) that

members of a society or social group generally share

Controversies About the Concept of Culture

Disagreements whether concept of culture should refer just to rules or ideas behind

behavior, or should include behaviors or products of behavior (Cognitive anthropologists).

In strongest view, one that was more acceptable in the past, culture is thought of as

having a life of its own that could be studied without regard for individual at all.

Cultural Constraints


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Social scientist refer to standards or rules about what is acceptable behavior as norms.

Two types of cultural constraints: Direct and Indirect

Direct cultural constraint such as wearing casual to a wedding, or not wearing anything at

all.

Indirect such as doing something that is legal but people wouldnt stop and has no affect

on other people.

Attitudes That Hinder The Study of Culture

People commonly feel their own behavior and attitudes are the correct ones and peoplewho do not share those patterns are immoral or inferior. People who judge other cultures

solely in terms of their own culture are ethnocentric meaning they hold an attitude called

ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism and its opposite, the glorification of other cultures, hinder effective

anthropological study.

Cultural Relativism

A societys custom and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the

context of that societys problems and opportunities, an attitude known as cultural

relativism.

Human Rights and Relativism Elizabeth Zechenter says cultural relativists claim there are no universal principals of

morality, but insist on tolerance for all cultures.

Describing a Culture

Although variations in individual reactions to a given stimulus are theoretically limitless,

they tend to fall within easily recognizable limits.

Variations in behaviors are confined within socially acceptable limits and parts of the

anthropologists goals is to find what the limits are.

In interviewing, anthropologists try to distinguish actual behavior from the ideas about

how people in particular situations ought to feel and behave. In everyday terms we speak

of the ideas as ideals, in anthropology we refer to them as idealculturaltraits. Modal response or mode: a statistical term referring to the most frequent encountered

response in a given series of responses.

Frequencydistribution: collection of recorded data.

Modalpattern: highest frequency in a frequency distribution.

Culture is Patterned

Culture is integrated, meaningelements or traits that make up a culture are not just

random assortments of customs but are mostly adjusted to or consistent with one another

Customs that diminish the survival chance of a society are not likely to persist.

Maladaptive customs: customs that diminish the chance of survival and reproduction

are likely to disappear. Adaptive Customs: customs of a society that enhances survival and reproductive

success.

When custom is adaptive, it means it is adaptive only with respect to a specific physical

and social environment

Tapirape practiced infanticide if twins were born, if third child was same sex as first two,

and if father broke certain taboos during pregnancy or in childs infancy.

Women not allowed to have more than three kids.


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Tendency for a culture to be integrated or patterned may be cognitive and emotionally as

well as adaptively induced.

How and Why Culture Changes

Discovery and Invention

Ignored discovery and invention bring no change in culture.

Unconscious invention

Accidental juxtaposition or unconscious invention: ideas that derive as a consequence of

an observed phenomena. Diffusion

Process by which cultural elements are barrowed from another society and incorporated

into the culture of the recipient group

Patterns of Diffusion

Direct contact. Paper invented by Chinese Tsai Lun in A.D. 105. Spread to Arab via.

Prisioners, then Baghdad in A.D. 793, Egypt in A.D. 900, Morocco 1100, Spain 1150, Italy

1276, France 1348, Germany 1390, England 1494.

Intermediate contact. Diffusion through agency of third parties via traders.

Stimulus diffusion. Knowledge of a trait belonging to another culture stimulates the

invention or development of a local equivalent. Selective Nature of Diffusion

Acculturation

Process of change, or change that occurs when different cultural groups come into

intensive contact.

Anthropologists term of acculturation describes situation in which one of the societies in

contact is much more powerful than the other. Seen as a process of extensive cultural

borrowing in context of superordinate subordinate relations between societies.

Subordinate borrows the most.

Assimilation: used by sociologists describes process by which individuals acquire the

social roles and culture of the dominant group.

Revolution

Most drastic and rapid way a culture can change is a result of revolution: replacement,

usually violent, of a countrys rulers.

Reasons for why rebellions and revolts are not always successful in bringing about culture

change.

Loss of prestige of established authority: financial difficulties, dismissals of popular

ministers, alternation of policies.

Threat to recent economic improvement:

Indecisiveness of government: lack of consistent policy, (being controlled rather than in

control).

Loss of support of the intellectual class:

Globalization: Problems and opportunities

Globalization the massive flow of goods, people, information, capital across huge areas

of the earths surface.

Cultural Diversity In the future.


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Ethnogenesis is the process by which new cultures are created.

Ch 4.

Explanation: an answer to a why question

Scientists try to achieve two kinds of explanation: associations and theories.

Associations and Relationships

One way to explain something is to say how it conforms to a general principle or

relationship. The truth of relationship is suggested by repeated observations, such relationships are

called laws when most scientists accept them.

In social science, associations are usually stated probabilistically; that is, we say two or

more variables tend to be related in a predictable way, which means that there are usually

one exceptions.

John Whiting found correlation of societies with low protein diets tend to have long sex

taboo, a statistical association.

Theories: explanations of laws and statistical associations

John Whiting theorized long postpartum sex taboo is adaptation to tropical environments

where major food staples are low in protein. Such environments have babies who arevulnerable to protein-deficiency disease or kwashiorkor.

A theory is complicated, containing series of statements. Associations usually state quite

simply that there is a relationship between two or more measured variables.

Statistical associations or laws are based entirely on observations.

Why Theories Cannot be proved

No theories can be proved or true because many of the concepts and ideas in theories are

not directly observable and therefore not verifiable.

Photon is theoretical construct or cant be observed or verified directly.

Falsification: shows that a theory seems to be wrong, is the main way theories are

judged. Generating theories

Two types of procedure help anthropologists produce explanations of cultural phenomena:

single case analysis, and comparative study.

Evidence: Testing Explanations

Operationalization and Measurement

Operational definition: a description of the procedure that is followed to measure the

variable.

Whiting predicted society with root and tree crops (cassava, bananas) have low protein

diet, cereal crops (wheat, oats, barley, corn) have medium protein diet, and society

dependent on hunting and fishing have high protein.

Measure something is to say how it compares with other things on some scale of variation.

Sampling

Before researchers can sample randomly, they must specify the sampling universe, that is

list of cases to be sampled from.

Statistical Evaluation

Researchers construct contingency table

Probability value (p-value): likelihood that the observed result or a stronger one could

have occurred by chance.


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P-value of .05 or less are said to have statistically significant results.

Cultural lag: occurs when change in once aspect of culture takes time to produce change

in another aspect.

Types of research in cultural anthropology

Type of research in cultural anthropology classified according to two criteria: spatial scope

of study (analysis of single society, societies in region, or worldwide sample of societies),

and temporal scope of study (historical versus nonhistorical).

Ethnography Participant-observation: living among the people one is studying and observing and

taking part in important events of the society and questioning people about their native

customs.

Ethnography: description and analysis of a single society.

to find a good informant, anthropologists use the cultural consensus model or asking

samples of people about a particular culture domain.

Ethics in Fieldwork

Should conflict arise in ethical obligations, most important obligation is to protect the

interests of the people they study.

Historical Research Ethnohistory: consist so studies based on descriptive materials about a single society at

more than one point in time.

Ch 6. Getting Food

Foraging: food collection

Foragers/hunger-gatherers live in marginal areas of the earth, deserts, arctic, tropical

forests.

Studying foragers requires cautious inferences because 1. They lived in all environments,

2. They evolve, 3. They interact with societies that did not exist until after 10,000 years

ago.

Australian Aborigines Ngatatjara avg less than 8 in of rain per year.

Ngatatjara were nomadic and women gathered fruits and water, males hunted, emus and

kangaroos.

Inuit

General Features of Foragers

Most live in small communities and follow nomadic lifestyle.

Do not recognize individuals land rights,

Division of labor based largely on age and gender.

Survey of 180 societies, gathering important to 30% of surveyed societies, hunting to

25%, and fishing to 38%.

Men usually contribute more to food-getting than women do.

Prefer foragers because allows to recognize important of fishing.

Kung spend 17 avg collecting food per week. 6 hrs making tools, 19 hrs doing housework.

Complex Foragers

Horticulture

Horticulture: growing of crops of all kinds with relatively simple tools and methods in

absence of permanently cultivated field.


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Two kinds of horticulture: dependence on extensive (shifting) cultivation where land is

worked for short time and then let wildlife grow (slash-and-burn technique), and

dependence on long growing tree crops.

Yanomamo is horticulture society.

Yanomamo live in lean-tos with inner side open to central plaza. Get most of calories from

garden produce, spend most time foraging . Use slash and burn planting plantains,

manioc, sweet potato, taro, and plants for medicine. Move village every 5 yrs.

Extensive cultivation requires lots of territory because new gardens are not cleared untilforest grows back.

Samoans

Horticulture supports larger more densely populated communities, way of life is more

sedentary, some have permanent villages because they depend on tree crops.

Intensive agriculture

Use techniques that enable permanent field cultivation.

Rural Greece

Agriculture year begins March with pruning of grape vines and hoeing of fields.

Winemaking begins September after grain harvest

Villagers use horses to plow wheat fields in October and November, they sow the seed byhand.

Wheat crop harvested following summer.

Cotton and tobacco are main cash crops.

Rural Vietnam

Khan Hau, wet rice cultivation is principal agricultural activity

General Features of Intensive Agricultural Societies

More likely to have towns and cities, high degree of craft specialization, complex political

organization, large difference in wealth and power.

Longer hours than horticulturalists

Men avg. 9 hrs work a day, 7 days a week; women avg. 11 hrs/day.

Work of women in intensive agricultural societies involves food processing and house work

Women also spend lot of time working in fields

Intensive agricultural societies more likely to face famine and food shortages

Producing for market calls for higher yield crops rather than those that are drought

resistant or require less nutrients

Farmers tend to concentrate on one crop.

Commercialization and Mechanization of Agriculture

Worldwide trend for intensive agriculturalists to produce more and more for a market

(commercialization) Involves increasing dependence on buying and selling with money.

Increase in commercialization of agriculture is associated with several trends:

1. Farm work becoming more mechanized because migration to industrial service jobs in

town and cities or hired hand labor become too expensive.

2. Emergence and spread of agribusiness, large corporation-owned farms operated by

multinational compaies and worked entirely by hired labor.

3. Reduction in proportion of population engaged in food production

In US less than 2% of population work on farms.

4. Much of produce is shipped to or received from markets in other countries


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Pastoralism

Some societies depend mostly on domesticated herds of animals that feed on natural

pasture (Pastoralism)

Pastoralists get protein from animals in form of milk and blood.

Trade animals for plant foods and other necessities.

Basseri Pastoralists

Herds of sheep and goats.

Migratory exploitation of grazing lands within territory, about 15,000 sq mi. Il-rah (tribal road): migration concept or route

Wool and hide are traded but are important to tribe.

Women are skilled spinners and weavers

woven goat hair provides for winter cloths because it insulates and repels water,

Lapps/Saami

Practice reindeer herding in NW Scandinavia intensively or extensively

Intensive system: constantly under observation within fenced area, accustomed to human

contact

Extensive system: allowing animals to migrate over large area, milking, breaking in and

corralling are harder.

Lapps eat meat of bull, which are slaughtered in fall after mating season

Meat and hides frequently sold or bartered for other food and necessities

General Features of Pastoralism

Practiced in grassland and semiarid habitats

Most are nomadic

Individuals or families decide what animals, but community decides when and where to

move.

More vulnerable than foragers and horticulturalists to famine and food shortages

Environmental Restraints on Food-Getting Farther away from equator, foragers depend much less on plants for food and much more

on animals.

80% of all societies practice horticulture or simple agriculture are in tropics, where as 75%

of all societies that practice intensive agriculture are not in tropical forest environments.

Pastoralism practiced in regions of steppes (dry, low grass cover), prairies (taller, better

watered grass), or savannas (tropical grasslands).

Technological, social, and political factors rather than environmental factors determine

what kind of food-getting can be practiced in a given environment.

Origins of Food Production

8000 BC first evidence of changeover to food production, cultivation and domestication ofplants and animals in Near East.

Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery model: change in external circumstance, not necessarily

environmental, must have induced or favored changeover to food production.

Binford-Flannery model focuses on population pressure in small area as incentive to turn

to food production.

Archaeologists returned to idea that climatic change played role in emergence of

agriculture.

Ch 7.

Natural Resources: Land


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Foragers

Do not have private ownership of land.

Among foragers heavily dependent on fishing in rivers, individual or family ownership is

more common because fishing is more predictable.

Some individuals and families have private rights to trees.

Common in food-collecting societies for groups of individuals or kin, to own land.

Local groups try to maintain exclusive rights to particular territories.

Why some are more territorial than others? When plants and animals collected arepredictably located and abundant, groups are more likely to be sedentary and try to

maintain control over territory.

Horticulturalists

No ownership because rapid depletion of soil necessitates letting some of land lie fallow or

abandoning an area after a few years to move to new location.

Likely to allocate particular plots of land to individuals or families for use

Pastorialists

Pastoralists combine adaptive potential of both foragers and horticulturalists

Like foragers, need to know potential of large area of land.

Like horticulturalists, pastoralists must move when resource is exhausted

Also like horticulturalists, they depend for subsistence on human manipulation of natural

resource, animals, as opposed to horticulturalists land.

Community members have free access to pasture land

Grazing land communally held, customary for pastoralist individuals to own animals

When family herd falls below minimum for survival, they drop out of nomadic life and work

in sedentary agricultural communities. But in doing so, such family does not jeopardize

other pastoral families.

If fortunate were to share herds with unfortunate, all might approach bankruptcy.

Barth argued, individual ownership is adaptive for a pastoral way of life.

Intensive Agriculturalists

Individual ownership of land resources including right to resources and right to sell or

dispose of them is common among intensive agriculturalists.

In US, under Homestead Act of 1862, if a person cleared 160 acres of land and farmed it

for five years, the federal government would consider that person the owner of the land.

Colonialism, the State and Land Rights

Technology

Conservation of Resources: Types of Economic Production

Production: transformation or conversion of resources into food, tools, and other goods.

Incentive for Labor Subsistence economy: A nonprofit motive to work primarily for their own consumption

When resources are converted for household consumption, people will work harder if they

have more consumers in the household

Chayanovs Rule: people will work harder when theres more consumers and work less

when theres more workers.

Forced and required labor

Corvee: system of required labor

Division of labor: Gender and Age


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Children in nomadic had no work but were given lots of chore from helping with animals to

helping with harvest and food processing.

Beyond Age and Gender

Organization of Labor

Making decision about Work

Optimal foraging theory: frequent source of ideas about choices.

Distribution

Three systems often coexist in a society, the predominant system seems to be associatedwith the societys food-getting technology and level of economic development

Three types of distribution: reciprocity, redistribution, market or commercial exchange.

Reciprocity

Giving and taking without the use of money.

Exchange of goods and service without expectation of return gift.

Givers may derive economic and psychological benefits in addition to reproductive

benefits.

Sharing more likely when resources are unpredictable

Balanced Reciprocity

Explicit and short term in expectations of return

Cooperative work party or kuu

Gift exchange are personal and involve creation or perpetuation of some kind of enduring

relationship

Commodity exchange focus on objects or services received.

Kulu Ring

Horticultural Trobriand Islanders worked out scheme for trading ornaments, food and

other necessities with neighboring islands.

Trade is hidden in complex ceremonial exchange, called kuluring, an exchange of valued

shell ornaments across a set of far-flung islands.

Two ornaments: white shell armbands (mwali) given only in counterclockwise direction

and red shell necklaces (soulava) given in clockwise direction.

Possession of one or more of the ornaments allows a man to organize an expedition to

home of one of his trading partners on another island.

High point of expedition is ceremonial giving of valued kulu ornaments.

Redistribution

Accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person , or in a particular place, for the

purpose of subsequent distribution

Market or Commercial Exchange

Market or commercial exchange: exchange or transactions in which prices are subject tosupply and demand

Kinds of money

General-purpose money: money performs the basic functions of serving as accepted

medium of exchange, a standard of value, and store of wealth. As a medium of exchange,

allows all goods and services to be valued in the same objective way.

Money has no intrinsic value; rather society determines its value

Where food production per capita is not sufficient to support a large population of

nonproducers of food have special-purpose money, objects of values for which only

some goods and services can be exchanged on the spot through balanced reciprocity


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Anth Notes 1