ANTHROP 1AA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Adam Kadmon, Kukulkan, Participant Observation
16 Sep 2016
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Thursday, September 8, 2016
Anthropology: Sex, Food and Death 1AA3
What is Anthropology
•Anthropos = ‘humankind’
•Logia = study of
•The systematic study of humankind, both in the past and in the present
•More specifically, anthropologists study human CULTURE
•Late 1800’s is when it began being taught as a discipline
Anthropologists study:
Human Culture: Learned behaviours and beliefs that shape our human experiences
Example: religion, spirituality, identities (gender, race, ethnicity, nationalism), food
preferences, etc.
Anthropologists study differences and similarities in culture around the world
Question: What are some of the ways in which we learn about culture?
Example: The Olympics are a way for people to embrace their own cultures, filmed
through a very nationalistic point of view, patriotism
Cultural identities are shared from generation to generation
Note:
•Culture is LEARNED
•We tend to think about many of our behaviours and identities as NATURAL/
BIOLOGICAL but many are NOT.
•Eg. Nationalism - use terms like “it’s in my blood to be an American,” but Americans
are taught what it means to be American
•A lot of people in present day make the assumption that they are born into a certain
culture, when really you must be taught the culture
Key Tenets:
!1
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Human culture: learned behaviours and beliefs that shape our human experiences. Example: religion, spirituality, identities (gender, race, ethnicity, nationalism), food preferences, etc. Anthropologists study differences and similarities in culture around the world. Example: the olympics are a way for people to embrace their own cultures, lmed through a very nationalistic point of view, patriotism. Cultural identities are shared from generation to generation. Note: culture is learned, we tend to think about many of our behaviours and identities as natural/ Thursday, september 8, 2016: ethnocentrism: the erroneous idea that one"s culture and its values are somehow right or superior to another culture"s. Many people therefore judge another culture according to the standards of their own. The four sub elds of anthropology: physical/biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, plus: applied anthropology. Cultural anthropology: the study of contemporary cultures and societies, culture is de ned as transmitted, learned behaviour, methodology: (how?)
