ANTH 1150 Chapter ALL: All Chapter Summaries + Review Questions for Final Exam
1 May 2018
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ANTHROPOLOGY
Unit 1: What is Anthropology? (pages 4-26)
• Anthropology is the detailed study of humanity in different times and places
o Anthropologists attempt to engender knowledge about diverse people and their
behaviour, their differences and commonalities
o In employing a scientific approach, anthropologists seek to produce a reasonably
objective understanding of human diversity and those aspects of life that all humans have
in common
• Development of Anthropology:
o Anthropology as a distinct field of inquiry is a relatively recent product of Western
society
o Historical works of anthropological significance include accounts of other people by
Herodotus the Greek (5th century BC) and by the Arab Khaldun (14th century)
o Discipline of anthropology took a long time to appear due to limits of human technology
( travel and communication)
▪ Slow growth was also due to failure of Europeans to recognize that they shared a
basic “humanity” with people everywhere ( cultural ignorance)
▪ Although political control and economic gain were major impetus for
colonialism, European sense of superiority and cultural imperialism justified
actions on indigenous population
• Cultural imperialism = promotion of one’s nation’s values, beliefs, and
behaviour above those of all others
o Development of anthropological thought:
▪ Early anthropological theory introduced concept of “cultural progress”
• concept of race was also put forward
▪ 19th century cultural evolutionary theories were challenged by empiricists, who
urged anthropologists to base their theories on actual first hand observation in
field rather than on ethnocentric biases and “arm chair anthropology”
• famous empiricist was Franz Boas: argued that every culture is unique,
with a unique history, and is neither superior nor inferior to one another
promoted cultural relativism (all cultures are equally valid and must
be studied on their own terms)
▪ early 20th century: empiricists turned attention to the diffusion of customs,
material culture and ideas from one culture to another
• functions of economic, social, religious, and political institutions
▪ 1950s-60s: study of culture change
• culture changes in direct response to technological “progress”
• societies evolved to fit a particular ecological niche and that the
environment influences their way of life
• *some anthropologists rejected this materialistic approach
• Four (5) major branches of anthropology:
o Biological anthropology focuses on humans as biological organisms, tracing the
evolutionary development of humans and studying biological variation within the species
today
▪ Paleoanthropology: study of fossil remains of our ancient ancestors, in order to
reconstruct the course of human biological evolution
▪ Primatology: study of biological and social nature of our closest relatives
(prosimians, monkeys and apes)
▪ *Forensic anthropology (relatively new field)
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o Archaeology study material objects from past cultures in order to explain human
behaviour
▪ Prehistoric (pre-contact) archeology: learn about human behaviour in the distant
past, far beyond the 5000 years that historians are limited to by their dependence
on written records
▪ Historical archeology: study cultures with historic documents available in order
to supplement the material remains left behind
o Linguistic anthropology study human languages, and may deal with descriptions of
languages, histories of languages, or with how languages are used in particular social
settings
▪ Descriptive linguistics: study of patterns and structure in language
▪ Historical linguistics: study of language origins, language change, and the
relationships between languages
▪ *study of language in its social setting = sociolinguistics
o *Applied anthropology put to practical use the knowledge and expertise of
anthropology, whether relating to land claims or human resource management
o Sociocultural anthropology study contemporary human groups
▪ Ethnography: collection of descriptive material on a culture
• Fieldwork is usually through participant observation, a method of
learning a culture through direct observation and participation in their
everyday life
• Culture shock = difficulty anthropologists have in adapting to new
culture that differs from their own
• Holistic perspective = fundamental principle of anthropology that the
various parts of culture must be viewed in the broadest possible context
to understand their interconnections and interdependence
o Must discover how all cultural institutions relate to one another
to understand cultural systems
▪ Ethnology: comparative study of cultures to explain human history
• cross cultural comparison
▪ Ethnohistory: study of cultures from the recent past using oral histories,
archaeological sites, and written accounts
▪ *culture bound = theories about the world and reality based on assumptions and
values on one’s own culture
• Ethnographers go into the field to observe and describe human behaviour
o Ethnohistorians study cultures of the recent past using oral histories and written
accounts left by explorers, missionaries, and traders
• Anthropological investigation:
o Physical/biological anthropologists and archaeologists excavate sites in search of
evidence of human activity
o Linguistic anthropologists are concerned with understanding how people employ
language to relate to one another
▪ Will often live for brief periods with people whose language they are studying
o Sociocultural anthropologists often immerse themselves in contemporary cultures by
living with group under study, taking part in their routine activities, and observing how
they live their lives
• The “Anthropological Perspective”
o Anthropologists attempt to answer the questions that people have asked throughout
human history
▪ Who are we?
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▪ Where do we come from?
▪ Why do we behave as we do?
o The multiple fields and subfields are put to use in order to gain a thorough knowledge of
any phenomenon under study
o Combined, these multiple fields and recourse to large collection of research results in an
anthropological perspective
o This holistic approach gives anthropologists a well-rounded knowledge of the people and
events they study
• *note: androcentrism = male-centeredness
• Anthropology and the Humanities:
o Qualitative research: gathering data based on interviews, documents, and participant
observation to understand human social behaviour
o Quantitative research: gathering of statistical and measurable data
Unit 2: The Nature of Culture (pages 29-47)
• Culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs and perceptions of the world that lie behind
people’s behaviour and are reflected in that behaviour
o These elements are shared by members of a cultural group, and when they are acted
upon, they produce behaviour that is intelligible to other members of that culture
o Culture is learned largely through the medium of language rather than inherited
biologically
o The parts of a culture such as economy, spirituality, kinship…etc. function as an
integrated whole
• Characteristics of Culture:
o Culture is shared
▪ Note: culture may differ within a society (group of people who live in the same
region, speak the same language, and are interdependent)
▪ multiculturalism
▪ social structure: relationships of groups within a society that hold it together
▪ subculture: cultural subgroup differentiated by status, ethnic background,
residence, religion or other factors that functionally unify the group and act
collectively on each member
▪ pluralistic societies: societies that contain distinct cultures and subcultures
▪ ethnicity: group of people who take their identity from a common place of origin,
history and sense of belonging
▪ ethnic boundary markers: those indicators or characteristics (e.g. dress, language)
that identify individuals belonging to a particular ethnic group
o Culture is learned
▪ Enculturation: process that transmits a society’s culture from one generation to
the next
o Culture is based on symbols
▪ Language, signs, dress, and behaviour are all cultural and based on the use of
symbols
▪ Most important symbolic aspect is language – ability to name, pronounce ideas
and things
• makes it possible for people to learn from cumulative shared experience
and to transmit culture from one generation to the next
o Culture is integrated
▪ Integration: tendency for all aspects of a culture to function as an interrelated
whole
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Document Summary
Unit 1: what is anthropology? (pages 4-26: anthropology is the detailed study of humanity in different times and places, anthropologists attempt to engender knowledge about diverse people and their behaviour, their differences and commonalities. It must provide for its own continuity, and it must furnish an orderly existence. Important aspect of this culture is art (ex. S signifies plural: free morpheme: morpheme that can occur unattached in a language (ex. French creole in caribbean: mixture of 17th century french vocabulary, west. African syntax, and elements from american aboriginal, anglo-saxon, and. In many cultures homosexual behaviour was viewed as natural and even expected (greece, rome, papua new guinea: gilbert herdt: investigated sexual rituals of the sambia in papua new guinea in the mid. In the vast majority of cases, households are made of families, though some household members may not be relatives.
