ANTHRO 3AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Fishing Tackle, Three Positions, Margaret Mead

• School: Berkeley
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTHRO 3AC
• Professor: Cohen Lawrence

Document Summary

Anthropology lecture 4: the return of margaret mead: james baldwin and the rap on race. 20th century anthropologists strongly study culture but by the 60s they began to question culture. People around the world decided they didn"t want anthropologist defining their culture, they knew what their culture is and didn"t want strangers defining it. So questions of who gets to speak on culture arose. What culture - as a concept or tool for thinking- does, powerfully. Cultural anthropology makes the strange familiar and makes the familiar strange . For mead and benedict and for their teacher boas, anthropology could cause us to question our assumptions. It could serve as cultural critique : a lesson that we could do things differently and perhaps better, by paying attention to all the different ways different cultures think about what is normal and what is not. What culture as a concept or tool for thinking may do poorly.