ANT-2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Ethnocentrism, Feminist Anthropology, Cultural Relativism
Document Summary
Makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange (spiro 1990) teaches us to look at ourselves from the outside as a somewhat strange culture. The view that a culture is similar to a biological organism, in which the parts work to support the operation and maintenance of the whole. Religions, and family organization, for example, contribute to the functioning of the whole culture. The view that one must study all aspects of a culture in order to understand it. The perspective that cultures are complex systems that cannot be fully understood without paying attention to their different components, including economics, social organization and ideology. The view that each culture must be understood in terms of the values and ideas of that culture and not be judged by the standards of another. According to boas, no culture is more advanced than any other.
