Anthropology
Anthropology Jan15th, 2008
Cultural Anthropology
-Margaret Mead went to eastern Samoa in 1925 when she was 23, and spent nine months in the field studying childrearing patterns and adolescent behaviour
-Renato Rosaldo the Ilongot Head-hunters
-Clifford Geertz: the Balinese cockfight
-Douglass Drozdow-St. Christian: what Samoans consider “good and proper body” and the meanings of making babies into “good and proper bodies”
Anthropology 025
Introduction to Socio-cultural Anthropology
Ethnographic Method- Immersion of researchers in the lives and cultures of the peoples they are trying to understand in order to comprehend the meanings these people ascribe to their existence (Robbins & Larkin 2006:310).
Participant Observation- The active participation of a researcher or observer in the lives of this being studied (Robbins & Larkin 2006:311)
>Earlier Ethnographers:
Focus in small-scale less complex societies that fell outside the sphere of European influence and culture
Anthropological Theories
>Evolutionism/Diffusionism:
All societies pass through a series of stages.
Lewis Morgan: Proposed that societies progress from inferior to superior under 3 stages: salvages, barbarians and civilized
>American Historicism or Historical Particularism:
The collection of ethnographic facts through direct fieldwork must precede the development of cultural theories.
Franz Boas: Dedicated to physical anthropology, geography and ethnology as taught on Germany.
Jan 22
French Structiralis
Ethnoscience:
The ethnographer must describe a culture in terms of native categories (emic view) rather than in terms of his/her own categories
Principal Advocate: Sturtevant, Goodenough
Cultural Materialism:
Material conditions determine human consciousness and behaviour
Stressed the “etic” view this means they advocated themselves to the analytical framework and tools used by outsiders in searching for patterns and
Cultural Anthropology
-Margaret Mead went to eastern Samoa in 1925 when she was 23, and spent nine months in the field studying childrearing patterns and adolescent behaviour
-Renato Rosaldo the Ilongot Head-hunters
-Clifford Geertz: the Balinese cockfight
-Douglass Drozdow-St. Christian: what Samoans consider “good and proper body” and the meanings of making babies into “good and proper bodies”
Anthropology 025
Introduction to Socio-cultural Anthropology
Ethnographic Method- Immersion of researchers in the lives and cultures of the peoples they are trying to understand in order to comprehend the meanings these people ascribe to their existence (Robbins & Larkin 2006:310).
Participant Observation- The active participation of a researcher or observer in the lives of this being studied (Robbins & Larkin 2006:311)
>Earlier Ethnographers:
Focus in small-scale less complex societies that fell outside the sphere of European influence and culture
Anthropological Theories
>Evolutionism/Diffusionism:
All societies pass through a series of stages.
Lewis Morgan: Proposed that societies progress from inferior to superior under 3 stages: salvages, barbarians and civilized
>American Historicism or Historical Particularism:
The collection of ethnographic facts through direct fieldwork must precede the development of cultural theories.
Franz Boas: Dedicated to physical anthropology, geography and ethnology as taught on Germany.
Jan 22
French Structiralis
Ethnoscience:
The ethnographer must describe a culture in terms of native categories (emic view) rather than in terms of his/her own categories
Principal Advocate: Sturtevant, Goodenough
Cultural Materialism:
Material conditions determine human consciousness and behaviour
Stressed the “etic” view this means they advocated themselves to the analytical framework and tools used by outsiders in searching for patterns and