ANTB19H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Manifest Destiny, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas
Document Summary
Kroeber wanted to study a native north american that was uncontaminated by the west. He had this idea of culture as fixed, pure, and whole. Prehistorical: people without history" in this view, history belongs to europeans, who set history in motion through power and conquest. History in motion of power and conquest. The problematic ideas of social evolution still very strong ( not to be confused with biological evolution) Salvage anthropology was an attempt to record and collect the languages and artifacts of cultures that might disappear. American anthropologists in the early 20th century collected languages, stories, tool, artifacts to be stored in museums. Problem becomes when everything reduce into just object, objectify and put in a museum, language, culture . But sometimes this approach led to the reification of culture, meaning cultural processes were turned into objects,or things, that could be easily classified.
