ANTHRO 3AC Study Guide - Final Guide: Binary Opposition, Eric Wolf, World-Systems Theory
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world,” is directly tied to the wealth of the nations of the center
of “global north”
• So each nation-state is linked to others as part of an
asymmetric system between nations
25.
Eric Wolf: Society and Culture as “Reifications” that ignore intercultural
relations in a World System
o Wolf believes that social structure will remain intact when roles are
differentiated and a new solidarity will be formed.
o The World System Theory states that inner and outer groups are
basically the same but the way they interact with the world system is
not due to modernization.
o We look too closely as anthropologist on individual culture when we
should be looking more broadly on how cultures interact with one
and another
o Reification refers to the process where social relations are looked at
as an inherent attribute of the people involved in them.
o Wolf thinks we should revert to an open system to go beyond
singular periphery, this is a system that allows both interactions
between internal elements and the environments, building-up and
breaking down of its material components
o We need to understand culture and societies as bundles of relations.
o This gives us a systematic understanding of human life
o There are complex relations that organize humans and things, but we
only see them just as cultures and societies
o According to Wolf, World is connected through many things such as
pathogens, migrations, economies (energy, finance, industry),
colonization
o He challenges the validity of concepts of society and culture as he
considers the world as being beyond ‘bounded systems’
Document Summary
22: code, binary oppositions, and structuralism (for l vi-strauss, code, can explain immense complexity of phenomena by getting at fundamental code, binary oppositions. In nature, there aren"t divisions but in order to make sense of everything around us we make one. This is where strauss defines structures in the term of binary oppositions: skate offers a specific pattern. Levi-strauss says that not only humans or mammals rely on binary thinking to create differences and thus to have a language for thinking about relations. Computers process complex information through a single binary opposition. Dna seems to rely on simple binary opposition: either this nucleotide, or that one. Language does too: structuralism, focus on binary code allowing for an analysis of the relations between opposed elements: not about function. If you want to understand yourself, you must understand yourself in terms of your relationships with other people
