ANTH 206 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Egalitarian Community, Ethnography, Episteme
8 Jun 2018
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9/7/17
Brief History of Env. Anthropology
• Evolutionism
o Morgan, Tylor, Marx, Engels
▪ Morgan- lawyer and senator, worked with Iroquois confederacy
▪ Others inspired by Morgan, Morgan has a scheme of human evolution: savagery,
barbarism, civilization
• Focused on kinship systems: humans are originally matrilinear, this changes with
other cultural practices
• Compared North America to Asia, tried to demonstrate single origin of
mankind (monogenist)
• Define race and privilege in society
• Savagery: hunting and gathering
• Barbarism: agriculture
• Civilization: scripture
▪ Tylor- animism, polytheism, monotheism, science (no exam questions)
• Similar framework of evolution and progress, applied to different domains of
culture
▪ Marx- primitive society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism
• Marx defines MODES OF PRODUCTION
• Materialist approach, concerns of livelihood, social organization around
consumption, distribution, etc.
o Evolutionism= limited number of stages, fixed sequences. Directionality (little regression),
progress from simple to complex, technological thinking
▪ Environment is NOT an important factor but material culture and production systems
are
▪ Thought they could predict where society is headed-- Marx thinks either capitalism
destroys everything or we turn to communism
• Theological
• American Anthropology
o Emerges in response to racial theories (some using evolutionist theories- white man at top
for example)
• Boas considered father of North American anthropology
o Historical particularism, focused on social and physical surroundings and history
o Did’t at to put order to ciilizatio
o Cultural relativism- elements of a culture must be considered according to the terms of that
culture, that is what makes them meaningful
▪ Penis gourd example
• Natives of New Guinea are not fascinated by them, anthropologists and those
studying culture are fascinated
• Feedback with anthropologists made them more intricate, become more part of
identity
• Leslie White
o Wants to restore credibility of evolutionism- categorizes world into technological, social and
ideological realms
▪ Culture is features of the world, concrete.
o Posits evolutionary stages
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o Technological determinism- everything starts from material, all social organization rests on
technology, tools, resources, etc.
▪ Capacity of human groups to harness energy (ExT=C)
o Not too interested in ideology feedback into material techniques, ONLY LOOKS AT
MATERIAL BASE
o Seen as overly simplistic- evolutionary theories of use of energy undermined by nuclear era
• White vs. Steward
o White thinks Steward wanting to generalize but not too much is foolish
o White sees evolutionism as akin to gravity
• Unilinear Evolution Cons
o Boils down cultural diversity to limited set of stages and categories
o Cannot explain all data
o Simple cultures are actually very complex- difficult to understand how people think, we all
have the same brains, etc.
• Neoevolutionism
o Service and Sahlins
o Try to keep idea that society goes from simple to complex, similar to Steward's multilinear
evolution
▪ General and particular evolution
o See how the state develops
o Emphasis on positive feedback interactions between technology, demographics, ecological
change/ mark regression as exceptional
▪ Regression= North Americans misuse caloric intake and eat junk food (AKA
maladaption)
• Julian Steward
o Study effects of environment on culture
o Materialist focus
o Sauer influence, encourages environment and culture link
o Cultural ecology= concept, method, a set of procedures, NOT A THEORY
▪ Focus on the cultural core, looks for regularities in adaptation (similar environment,
similar features in cultural core)
o Cultural core= interaction between technology and environment (tools and resources)
▪ Second Layer of Observation= social organization that emerges due to cultural core
▪ Third Layer= other aspects of culture, not closely related to core but shows greater
variability
• Athig that he could’t eplai i ters of lielihood
o Shoshone Indians
▪ Seasonal resources influence migration and settlement patterns
▪ Berries --> isolated families
▪ Pine nuts --> groups of families
o Critiques
▪ Colonization
• Steward focuses on elders describing life prior to colonization
▪ US State/Admin
• No focus on loss of land, species going extinct
▪ Globalized Economy
• What becomes valuable that was not previously valuable?
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• Gold/timber, etc.
▪ Diffusionism
• Transfer of technology from one culture to another
• Steard focused o localized culture, did’t look too deepl
▪ Limits of core seem arbitrary
• How to define the most important livelihood, why is the core livelihood and not
something else, like rituals
• Do all cultures gain identity from livelihood?
• Puerto Rico
o Local systems of production and sub cultures within a complex national structure/culture
▪ Chosen because each culture has different cultural cores, livelihoods and social
organizations
▪ Focus on livelihood and economic practices
▪ Also looked at administrators and elites
• Political Ecology
o Political Economy= issues of production, consumption, class relations, power, ownership,
marginalization
o Ecology= integral part of political economy
▪ Mining vs. lumber have effect on every other aspect of political economy
o Uneven distribution of costs/benefits of ecological change
o Dependence and world-system theory
▪ Dependence= nations are organized so that relations are not equal, some nations take
resources from others, force primary producers to exploit their own resources to
afford technologies
• Neofunctionalism (Rappaport)
o Unit is populations and ecosystems, NOT CULTURES
o Liberal adaptation of concepts from ecology (niche, ecosystems, etc.)
o Environment is not a background, populations within a system of energy exchange
▪ In cultural ecology, people take from environment, little explanation of environmental
change
▪ Rappaport looks at population relation and feedback with environment
o Detailed, quantitative studies
▪ How many calories taken from a field vs. how many expanded on maintaining field,
etc.
o Harris
▪ Difference with traditional functionalism= function is to preserve a population or a
system near carrying capacity rather than social order (Malinowski)
• Not necessarily just increase population, but prevent collapse
▪ Harris sees desires for food, sex and love as universal all with minimum efforts
• Outcomes of culture, behavior, etc. is to maintain a population
• Mechanism is taken for granted
• More complex- what food do you value? Sexual practice, organization of
society along gender lines go beyond maintaining population
▪ Explained popular riddles- apparent lack of fit between culture and environment
• Not for academics, far-fetched and often incorrect explanations
• Example: holy cows
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