HLTB42H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Clifford Geertz, Thick Description, Mechanical And Organic Solidarity
Document Summary
Franz boas was responding to victorian ethnocentric notions. During colonialism europeans were travelling the earth and encountering other people and associating them as being primitive and inferior. Europeans thought that the people encountered were representing europeans from some distant historical past, as if they never experienced cultural change or had history. They thought that by studying other groups they would somehow illuminate their own distant historical past. All of this was an excuse for colonial expansion. Western officials regarded it as their duty to civilise the other. Was the key to establishing the 4 field approach. Was key in moving away from the arm chair approach. For him, he had to go out there and gather the data. Cultural relativism means that beliefs should be regarded and evaluated in their own context. Bronislaw malinowski is considered the founder of modern british anthropology. Was put in the tropaion islands by the australian government. Set the standard for collecting anthropological data.
