ANT370H1 Lecture 8: Lecture 8 - Symbols and Meaning Part 2-Interpretive - March 4
Document Summary
Lecture 8 - symbols and meaning part 2: interpretive. In north america the dominant focus was not social organization, but culture (possibly still true: due largely to franz boas; asserted the importance of the culture concept in understanding human diversity. Popularized this as a means of combatting racism: challenge became how to conceptualize and define culture . Not a concrete thing in the world that can be measured and documented as. However, if you"re observing culture instead, you have to ask what counts as culture? ; what exactly do you observe and document as being culture. Transformed by ritual process from one kind of person into another (boy to man, girl to wife, person to shaman, etc. ) Structural linguistics at the time maintained that words were composed of phonemes (units of sound) that were combined together according to agreed upon rules to create meaning (did not hold meaning alone) Arbitrary, yet agreed upon, rules that create meaning.
