ANTH 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Trobriand Islands, The Honeymooners, Eyelid
Document Summary
1840-1889: 9 million immigrants came into the us, majority from england, ireland, scotland and scandinavia. 1880-1925: 28 million immigrants came into the us, majority was from eastern and southern europe. 1908-1910: boas" study of immigrant head size. Differences in head size related to developmental factors (ex: nutrition) Differences overlap and are expressed in percentages: no unique racial groups (biologically speaking) Shift in focus away from trying to classify racial groups to looking at physical differences as environmental adaptations. Understanding human differences: by the beginning of the 20th century, boas and his students had, at an intellectual level, successfully changed the two ways academics had explained human differences: Racialist explanation: we can now talk about what they replaced it with. Von herder and his legacy: volksgeist volk (people, not subjects) geist (spirit or genius) Expressed in folklore, dance, music, art, architecture and language: geistwissenschaft (cid:862)sciences of geist(cid:863) = social sciences, understanding vs. Winks vs involuntary twitches of the eyelid.
