ANTH 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Extractive Reserve (Brazil), Rubber Tapping, Cultural Evolution
Document Summary
Colonizers succeeded bc they were superior to those they conquered. Western & scientific superior to folk beliefs, arts, categories. Cultural differences & deficiencies of primitives and savages are inherent/internal defects (first world countries acquire/learn culture but underdeveloped are innate) Can be solved by changing to the civilized ways of western education, religion, democracy, capitalism (heart of darkness: late 1800s: armchair anthropologists. & military officers perpetuated ethnocentric perspective: applied evolutionary theories to understand societies & people, cultural evolution bias of early anthro (animals savages/primitives. Done thru discourse: framing what"s different as a threatening or defect other to the point that it seems natural (sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia) If it seems natural/obvious that group x is violent/evil, then it"s ok to act in the name of good things (humanity, democracy, development: conceals hidden interests of those in power, franz boas: founder of modern cultural anthro.
