Culture
What are the 4 subfields of anthropology?
§Biological / physical anthropology - the study of human genetic origins, evolution, and variation
§Archaeology – the study of the material evidence left by peoples of the past.
§Linguistic anthropology – the study of human’s symbolic communication and meaning
§Cultural anthropology – the study of human ideas and practices
Explain the relationship between human language and culture. How does language shape reality?
•Benjamin Lee Whorf and his colleague Edward Sapir argued that words and grammatical structure actually shape one’s reality.
•People can think about only those things that their language can describe or express.
•Without the words or structures with which to articulate a concept, that concept will not occur.
What are the strengths of participant observation? What unique perspectives does it offer?
■if we know that our common sense is shaped by a process of differentiation and becomes productive through the way we talk about ourselves, then a way we might overcome this (at least partially) is by placing yourself fully in another discursive/knowledge-producing context.
■Take away those geographic barriers that also service as mental barriers. Instead of living just outside of the village, live IN the village.
■Seek out natives like they are your peers, develop an appreciation and interest in the things they are interested in
■>this way you adopt their common sense/their way of representing the world/their way of knowing
Define the term 'reification' and explain how the concept of race has become reified throughout history.
Our concepts of race become reified – they become so widely used and referred to that they become people’s “common sense”
Race becomes reified through literature, media, language, etc.
It becomes a system of representation
Define statuses and roles
¡Titles like father or aunt for example, can tell us how these individuals fit into a family – we call these titles statuses.
¡Statuses suggest certain obligations to others in the family or larger community – we call these expectations roles
¡Eg. In Korea, uncles might have a special role as ‘protector’ and older brothers can be someone who looks out for you, pays for meals, etc.
¡Think-pair-share - Think about a few statuses in your family. Eg. aunt and uncle, or grandparents. What roles do they play in your family. Does it change based on whether they are on your dad’s side vs. mom’s side?
Give 3 examples of how people may respond to, resist or embrace cultural systems that they are a part of.
eg. accepting a family role, work expectations, gender expectations.
eg. a student walking into a classroom and sitting in the desk facing the wrong direction.
eg. localized mcdonalds menus that reflect local tastes
Explain how language is affected by social class, ethnicity, and gender
•Code-switching – the use of several language varieties in a particular interaction or in different cultural contexts.
•Using one dialect or set of linguistic codes when speaking with your parents vs when you are speaking with your friends.
•Using different codes when speaking to different races.
What are emic and etic perspectives? What are the strengths of each? Give examples.
■Etic – from the perspective of the observer. Descriptions that typically arise from the ethnographer and the anthropological community.
■Tend to be based in science and are informed by historical, political, and economic studies and other types of research.
■The etic approach acknowledges that members of a culture are unlikely to view the things they do as noteworthy or unusual.
■They cannot easily stand back and view their own behavior objectively or from another perspective (pg 49 in textbook)
■Eg. Hurston’s friends can’t understand why their folk tales would be of any interest to anyone.
■The townspeople dismiss them as “lies” – however, the anthropologist, equipped with a theoretical perspective, might attribute some significance to these stories that the people telling them are unaware of.
Define race and the flawed biological assumptions often associated with it.
Phenotypic traits (skin color, hair color, hair texture, eye color, height, nose shape, blood types, etc) may be more common in some geographic areas than others
>but the variation is gradual and continuous with no sharp breaks
>these traits are adaptive responses to certain environmental factors
>they do not align with any discrete 'race' or 'type'
What are the strengths and weaknesses of kinship terminology systems and lineage diagrams?
-Different lineage systems lead to different conceptualizations of who is family and who is not
-Decides how inheritance/land/property/housing is allocated.
-shows us what kind of forces hold people together.
-shows us cultural expectations and if/how people negotiate these expectations
-illuminates people’s economic motivations for marriage
-can show us how/when/why systems change.
eg. changes in family size, prevalence of divorce, increased number of unmarried adults due to economic pressures, urbanization, migration, etc.
-We have to be careful about the ethnocentric assumptions of these theories.
-We can’t forget that variation and change are possible.
Describe the role that early anthropologists played in defining the concept of culture in anthropology.
eg. Armchair anthropology, Structural Functionalism, The Culture Concept, Wiggle Room, The Symbolic Turn
What might be a consequence of globalization in terms of language?
Language loss -
•The current patterns of increasing global interconnection threatens to diminish language diversity worldwide.
•As the cultural, political, and economic systems established by colonialism continue to dominate, people are forced to participate in the languages of these systems in order to access these systems.
•>eg. English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Russian
•As a result, the languages of Australia, South America, the American Pacific Northwest, and Siberia are experiencing rapid language loss.
Discuss some of the ethical considerations of representing other cultures.
■The relationships we have with our subjects are necessarily defined by unequal power dynamics
■We are the mediators between the reader and our subjects.
■Because of the academic nature of our work, it is given great authority and wide distribution
■As such, we have a duty to represent them fairly and accurately.
Discuss what anthropologists mean when they say that race is socially constructed and explain how it is socially constructed in different contexts giving three examples.
Omi and Winant argue that racial categories are culturally defined, they can vary from one society to another and change over time - racial formation.
This is because race is a sociohistorical concept – racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical contexts in which they are embedded
The idea of race becomes a useful category for achieving certain political and economic ends
eg. US, Brazil, Japan
Identify the differences between kinship established by "blood", by marriage, and by choice.
-Kinship is the general way of talking about relatedness.
-Kinship can be by “blood” connections – consanguineal
-Or through marriage ties – affinal
-Kinship can also include “chosen kin” – no formal blood or marriage ties but for practical purposes, function as family.
Eg. adoption, godparents, brotherhoods/sisterhoods, etc.
What is the relationship between biology and culture?
§Rather than an assumed over-determination based on biology, anthropologists suggest a much more reflexive and plastic relationship between biology and culture
§Epigenetics – explores how the environment can directly affect the expression of genes during one’s lifetime
§Human microbiome – out of the 100 trillion cells that our body contains, about 90% are independent microorganisms that we inherent from our environment.
§>plays a key role in many bodily functions including digestion, vitamin production, drug metabolism, and immunity.
How do languages change? How do they stay the same?
Language can be normalized by a speech community.
Power may influence which aspects of language are adopted or rejected.
People may respond to language changes. (eg. language loss/preservation, AAE vs. SAE, national identity, dominant global languages, etc.)
What are some ways to give fairer representations of other cultures?
■Ways to give fair representations:
■>polyvocality – giving representation to more than one person’s voice or directly quoting instead of paraphrasing.
■>reflexivity – acknowledging one’s position in their research. How one’s background can affect their interpretations.
Explain what is meant by racial formation, hypodescent, and the one-drop rule.
•A racial classification system in which a person of mixed racial heritage is automatically categorized as a member of the less (or least) privileged group.
•Eg. a child born of a black parent and a white parent would automatically be considered to be black (legally or socially)
What do polyandry and other types of family structures tell us about the "naturalness" of the nuclear family.
There is strong ethnographic evidence that shows varying ideas of what a basic family relationship is.
>there is fraternal polyandry where there are multiple fathers in the household
>on the Malay island of Langkawi there is a de-emphasis on family by birth and an emphasis on the “house” and communal child rearing.
>In the 17th and 18th centuries among the Nayar of southern India, men and women did not live together after marriage and were not considered relatives. A child would grow up in a separate household than his “bio father” and was fathered by male siblings.
>these examples show that the mother-father-child triad is not the most normal, natural, or was always the most common.
Define culture and its (5) key characteristics
1. Culture is learned and taught formally and informally
2. Culture is shared yet contested - values and norms define what is important and appropriate. Can be contested and negotiated by members
3. Culture is symbolic and material - language, art, and practices convey cultural meaning
4. Cultures may be large or small. May contain a diversity of region, religion, race, gender, sexuality, class, generation, and ethnic identity.
5. Shapes how we classify and arrange the world - what kinds of people, categories, and things exist.
Explain Saussure's theory of a sign. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? Extra credit if you can draw it.
•A sign is composed of a signified and a signifier.
•Signified – a concept
•Signifier – a sound-image
Shows us the arbitrariness of a sign.
Shows us the relational nature of language.
Too rigidly theorized > languages sit on a continuum rather than belonging to discrete distinct languages.
Says individuals don't have the power to change language, but we know that people have agency + can make creative changes/reinterpretations/negotiations.
What was Zora Neale-Hurston looking for when she went to Eatonville Florida? What did she find? What does this tell us?
Was looking for "folklore". However, when she arrived, she found that the people of Eatonville didn't believe they were telling folklore. They believed they were just telling 'lies'. Shows us that our terms can only tell us so much about the aims and motivations of our subjects.
What is the difference between individual racism vs. institutional racism?
individual racism - expressed through prejudiced beliefs and discriminatory actions. eg. disrespect, suspicion, scapegoating, individual acts of aggression or violence.
institutional racism - patterns by which racial inequality is structured through cultural institutions, policies, and systems. eg. education, health, housing, employment, the legal system.
Recognize patterns of family/marriage and explain why these patterns represent rational decisions within cultural contexts giving an example.
Goldstein and others argue that polyandry is economically advantageous.
-allows brothers to hold on to their family land rather than split it
-allows brothers to pool income
-wife can be assured that her children will be provided for
-overall ensures higher standard of living