ANTHR206 Lecture : Potlatch and Kula The ethnographic reality behind these concepts
12 Dec 2013
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Document Summary
In 1934 ruth benedict, a student of boas, best seller book called patterns of culture : said cultures are essentially personality types blown up into larger dimensions of a society, 3 cases, pueblo indians of american sw were. It helps environmental adaptation: rich environments with uneven distribution of resources. More wealthy groups would throw potlatches and in exchange the receiving groups would acknowledge their inferiority: problem: that"s not actually what the potlatch did. Seems intuitively obvious, but not always i. e. witchcraft and warfare: 1920-1950 the functionalist anthropology was very popular. If you break certain social rules, you may be accused of being a witch. In other cultures the people likely of being accused of witchcraft were overly ambitious shamans or medicine men: thought that witchcraft was a way of maintaining social conventions, warfare is more difficult to explain as advantageous.
