ANTA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Marcel Mauss, Linguistic Anthropology, Cultural Relativism
Document Summary
Lessons from a02: changing structural inequality is very hard to do. When writing essay compare evidence and outcome of each. Social structures can be very slow to change. Our cultural patterns and daily rituals are profoundly shaped by our structure. Structure and culture are sometimes hard to separate (this is illustrated well by the. Righteous dopefiend and how homeless drug injectors - left over lumpened class from neoliberal economic changes obey culture. Cultural values can get written into our bodies (the concept of habitus). This is found in fox, dahl, bourgois/schonberg on habitus, scheper-hughes) Culture is a necessary construct but it is also imperfect. In the wrong hands: cultural explanations can become essentializing, stereotyping, authoritarian (a. l. , miner, dahl, scheper-hughes, ashforth) It is an interpretive framework to help us understand difference don"t reify it! (miner). Mauss is not a separate source, he is part of durham"s source. Theres no such thing as a free gift.
