ANTH 202 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Laos, India, Ford Focus
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ANTH 202
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Socio-Cultural Anthropology ANTH 202
Intro Session – May 1st
4 streams of anthropology:
- Archeology: how people lived in the past; material culture, reconstructing societies that
no longer exist
- Biological/Physical: human variation, biological evolution of human species, forensic
- Linguistic: how language, behavior and culture are related
- SOCIO-CULTURAL: Social + Cultural + Ethnology → firsthand understanding of
human life and culture, causes and consequences of social change; Fieldwork
Dilemma → Academic and / VS Applied Anthropology?
ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH:
1. Questioning behaviors that are usually taken for granted → looking and paying attention
at everyday life: Ethnographic Approach
2. Connections between observations and larger system, structures, theories.
3. Self-reflexive, critical – understanding contexts
4. Focus on different perspectives and understandings of the world
5. Academic / Applied / Activist → ENGAGED
FIELDWORK = central methodology
Can be anywhere / not only studying “marginal groups” nowadays / place-based practices &
perceptions / Participant observation / Mixed methods (Surveys, interviews…)
Participatory mapping
→
different social groups, wealth distribution/ranking within cultures
Constraints? Remoteness, bureaucracy, risk, protecting identities, ethics…
➔ Research assistants = Local people who help with research
“Participant intoxication” → ex: having to adapt to local habits such as drinking a lot
Recognition of people’s time → Giving back, offering gifts
Historical Roots:
Rationale for colonialism: Non-Western countries were seen as less civilized so Western
countries such as England/France/Germany had a moral obligation to “help” them develop and
become + European in a sense → white man’s burden
However, they obviously had an implicit economic interest
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• UNILINEAR SOCIAL & CULTURAL EVOLUTION: 19th Century – Lewis Henry
Morgan
Process through which all cultures went:
Savagery → Barbarism → Civilization
Shift, evolution of livelihood practices and “technology”
Trying to understand the evolution of cultures and social structures
-Notion of “Religious evolution” -Edward B. Tyler (founder of cult anth)
Animism = belief that natural phenomena have spiritual essence/soul → amulets
Then → Polytheism (many Gods) → Monotheism (one single God)
CRITICIZEABLE!!!
- Assumes that all cultures → same stages
- Raking of cultures
- Seeks general laws… “universal” rather than particular
// Modernization theory (cf INTD 200): Progress as Eurocentric/Ethnocentric
• HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM: early 20th Cent – Franz Boas
≠ concept of evolutionary stages → each culture evolved within its own historical past
No comparison nor ranking, no attempt to find generalizable laws/universal changes
Cultural Relativism → understanding from within each cult, on its own terms, within its own
historical past
FIELDWORK > “armchair anthropology”
Initially → anth was “theoretical”, for “traditional” societies → colonialism, dev and
modernization seen as contaminating those societies
• Applied “Development anthropology”
→
PRACTICAL (Colonial) ANTH – 1930s –
Bronislaw Malinowski
Need to go through fieldwork
2 angles:
- Salvage Anth = understand acculturation, assimilation, cultural contact, social change,
beforehand
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Archeology: how people lived in the past; material culture, reconstructing societies that no longer exist. Biological/physical: human variation, biological evolution of human species, forensic. Linguistic: how language, behavior and culture are related. Socio-cultural: social + cultural + ethnology firsthand understanding of human life and culture, causes and consequences of social change; fieldwork. Can be anywhere / not only studying marginal groups nowadays / place-based practices & perceptions / participant observation / mixed methods (surveys, interviews ) Participatory mapping different social groups, wealth distribution/ranking within cultures. Research assistants = local people who help with research. Participant intoxication ex: having to adapt to local habits such as drinking a lot. Recognition of people"s time giving back, offering gifts. Rationale for colonialism: non-western countries were seen as less civilized so western countries such as england/france/germany had a moral obligation to help them develop and become + european in a sense white man"s burden.
