ANTHRO 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Simone De Beauvoir, Holography, Symbolic Anthropology
Document Summary
Simone de beauvoir - one is not born a woman, once becomes a woman (sex vs. gender) Influential in creating the genre known as the new melanesian ethnography, which emphasizes creativity and innovation in cultures and how they understand the world. His concepts of symbolic obviation, figure-ground reversal, analogic kinship, holography and fractality of personhood have been critical in the development of anthropological theory. Modernity: (belief in) great divide between social and natural phenomena. Culture is what differentiates us from animals - its what makes us humans. Culture is that which is the universal - both animals and humans have it, it is just the different bodies that differentiate us. Culture is on top of basic human nature. Our basic human nature (part of the natural world) is what connects us with animals. We think culture is superior to human nature, but actually they are the same thing.
