AN101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Body Language, Participant Observation, Human Evolution
Document Summary
Provided the opportunity, support and rationale for anthropological research. Worked as researchers, administrators, intelligent agents, educators of colonist administrators. Do not talk to people in power, individuals will think you"re a spy. Salvaging: preserve a culture/ cultural traits before the became extinct. Buffers between natives and rulers, were sensitive to feelings and cultures of people, they were advocates, trying to soften the blow. Studying survivals: reconstructing the evolution of practices and institutions (searching for pure cultures: foragers as windows into the foraging past. Explanations of diversity: pre-scientific phase (19th c and earlier) Racial determinism of difference: explained mental capacities, social, cultural differences, meant deficient, less evolved, inferior, polygenesis different origins of humans, monogenesis biblical story of creation; degeneration- fall from grace, stages of evolution- primitive to civilized. With scientific methods: objectivity, fact collection (positivism); rationalism. Have to be something you can observe and see. Race was replaced by idea of culture to explain difference; explains diversity; different but equal.
