Anthropology 4400E Chapter Notes - Chapter online reading: Relexification, Primordialism
16 Nov 2017
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Says now when we talk about culture we are very sensitive and the word culture bares quotations around it. We are careful not to say the culture of the nuer. John moore said that the concept of culture is dead or is currently dying. How anthropologists are not in favour of using culture" as a term. Culture is coherence and totalization versus disorder, contradiction and contestation. Things empower and disadvantage certain people in societies. Cultures are discrete (versus overlapping and unbounded) Joel kahn says culture like race is arbitrary. E. g. the minangkabau of sumatra do not possess their own culture because there are no traits that uniquely characterize all minangkabau and no other group. Cultures overlap by sharing traits thus they are not discrete and because they are not discrete they do not exist. The ignoring of external interactions, things that have been diffused or borrowed from other cultures.
