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ANTH_220_Ch-5._03.2_.pptxCultural Anthropology
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Cultural Anthropology
Evolutionary theory influenced early cultural anthropologists.
Darwin’s evolutionary theory applied to nature; more complex organisms evolved from simpler organisms.
This idea of evolution from simpler to more complex forms was applied to culture in the 19th century. The result was a body of theories called Cultural Evolution.
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Cultural Anthropology
Cultural evolutionist E.B. Tylor believed that all societies evolved along three stages of developmental achievement – savagery (e.g. hunter-gatherers), barbarism (e.g. peasants), and civilization (complex societies with the ability to write)
He believed all societies could progress toward the level of civilization someday
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Cultural Anthropology
Another impact evolutionary theory had on anthropology was “race theory.”
Race theory said: people differ in their behaviors because they are different subspecies of the main human species. These subspecies were called “races.”
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Cultural Anthropology
Early race theorists such as Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) divided humans into five “races” – Caucasian, Mongolians (Asians), Malayans (South Pacific and Australian Aborigines), Ethiopians (Africans), and Americans (Native Americans)
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Cultural Anthropology
Unlike the cultural evolutionists, race theorists believed some races, due to their innate biology, were incapable of being “civilized.”
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Cultural Anthropology
The Rise of Current Anthropological Theory
The main opponent of evolutionism and race theory in anthropology was Franz Boas (1858-1942), an American anthropologist
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Cultural Anthropology
Boas contended that what those such as the race theorists saw as innate biological characteristics were actually a product of where a person was raised.
Also, unlike cultural evolutionists and race theorists, who made general assumptions about human races without doing actual fieldwork, Boas collected large amounts of actual data from the field, emphasizing humanity’s enormous complexity.
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Cultural Anthropology
Boas’ other contribution was Historical Particularism: whatever form a given culture has today is based on what happened in its own particular past
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Cultural Anthropology
The next major approach to emerge was also primarily American – the Psychological Approach in the 1920’s
This approach emphasized the relationship between culture and personality
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Cultural Anthropology
Abram Kardiner, a psychoanalyst, believed every culture produces a “basic personality structure” specific to all people in that culture, emerging from primary institutions in the culture
The primary institutions he took as given, adaptations to the environment
These primary institutions included such things as the child rearing methods used in dealing with aggression and sex, for example, or with the nature of the family (e.g. nuclear family vs. extended family)
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Cultural Anthropology
Kardiner: secondary institutions emerged as unconscious manifestations from the basic personality (Kardiner was influenced by Freud).
These secondary institutions would include art, folklore, and religion. Each culture was seen as being different in this regard as a reflection of the influence of the culture’s basic personality.
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Cultural Anthropology
As time went on, psychological anthropologists became more interested in universals among human personalities across cultures and less focused on the notion of a basic personality type to be found in each culture
At the same time, there also emerged more interest in the diversity of personalities within all societies
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Cultural Anthropology
Functionalism
While these developments were taking place in the U.S., in Europe, especially the UK, the functionalist approach was being developed in the 1930’s.
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Cultural Anthropology
As the name implies, functionalism looks at what function an aspect of culture plays in maintaining the whole culture.
Functionalism uses an organic analogy – seeing that parts of the culture, e.g. kinship or economics, are like organs are to a body –helping the culture function.
Cultural Anthropology
Functionalism assumes that the whole of society is supported by all of its parts. It thus assumes that the whole society operates in harmony. Therefore it underplays the degree of conflict within the society, especially between those who are the least powerful and privileged and those who are the most.
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Cultural Anthropology
Neoevolutionism
In the 1940’s American anthropologist Leslie White revived the evolutionist orientation.
He believed cultures evolve as the amount of energy in the environment is more “efficiently” harnessed – i.e. more advanced technology gives culture more control over the environment and advances them
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Cultural Anthropology
The problem with neoevolutionism is that it never explains why some cultures evolve while others either don’t evolve or become extinct. In other words, why are only some cultures able to harness energy highly “efficiently” compared to others? Who says what’s most efficient?
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Cultural Anthropology
Structuralism
The main proponent of structuralism was French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Structuralism believes that culture is a reflection of the underlying structures of the human mind.
Cultural Anthropology
In particular, Levi-Strauss noted the tendency of humans to think in terms of binary opposites - things that are mentally structured as opposites of each other – male/female, raw/cooked, hot/cold
Cultural Anthropology
Structuralists are often criticized as being primarily theoretical, with little fieldwork data being used to support their contentions about humans’ mental structure as being the foundation of social structure.
Ultimately most anthropologists believe that structuralism is too vague and lacking enough evidence to be a theory of choice in fieldwork today.
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Ecology
The first anthropologists concerned with the influence of the environment on culture were called cultural ecologists
Anthropologist Julian Steward believed that the reason for variation among cultures was to be found in how cultures adapted to their environment
Cultural Anthropology
This was especially true for cultures that depended directly on their environment and its resources, climate, and topography than cultures such as ours, where we have greater control over the environment.
E.g. a culture where drought was a problem would develop a religion where rainfall and water were prominent features of their mythology
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Cultural Anthropology
According to cultural ecologists, cultural traits are either adaptive or maladaptive, and cultures survive or go extinct through natural selection operating on these cultural traits
Cultural ecologists believe that natural selection operates on culture in a similar way it operates on animals in nature in biology -- cultural traits that help people adapt to their environment will help those people survive and reproduce, therefore maintaining their culture
Cultural Anthropology
One criticism of cultural ecologists is that they are too focused on the environment and its impact on culture – called environmental determinism
Another criticism of cultural ecologists is that they tend to focus too much on a given culture’s internal makeup and do not look at how forces outside the culture can have an impact on whether the culture survives or not
Cultural Anthropology
Political Economists
Unlike cultural ecologists, political economists focus much more intensively on economic forces, rather than natural forces.
Cultural Anthropology
For example, political economy examines the role powerful colonial societies (especially Spain, Portugal, France and Britain) have had on communities they colonized/dominated economically
The political economy approach has shown that aspects of many cultures (e.g. Native American) have been influenced, or even destroyed, by those who have colonized them
Instead of being destroyed by lack of adaptation to their physical environment, it was the political environment that destroyed many indigenous cultures today
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Cultural Anthropology
Most political economists are influenced by Marxism’s treatment of the economic sphere as fundamental to how societies operate. Economics is the organizing principle in society for Marxists.
Cultural Anthropology
However, there are limitations to attempting to explain everything solely on the basis of the economy and economic organization; while political economy shows that we are all part of a world system where cultures influence each other, it cannot explain all the adaptations that cultures make, nor explain why all aspects of a culture are the way they are
Cultural Anthropology
Evolutionary Ecologists
Represents a variety of approaches, all of which believe that evolution, through natural selection, operates on a population’s behavioral or social aspects.
They differ from cultural ecologists in that cultural ecologists focus on group selection, i.e. how a trait may help a group or culture be more or less likely to survive, while evolutionary ecologists are more likely to focus on traits that make individuals more adaptive so they can survive and thrive (and pass on their genes to the next generation) as a result of their individual behavior.
Cultural Anthropology
Evolutionary ecology has been controversial in that it focuses on biology, not on culture, and many anthropologists believe that biology is not the best conceptual tool to use in understanding culture.
Cultural Anthropology
Feminist Anthropology
- By the 1960’s women anthropologists began to point out that women were notably absent in many of the accounts of various cultures produced by men
- Feminist anthropologists began to show not only that women were responsible for positions of power in many societies but that they also were frequently the primary food producers
Cultural Anthropology
As a result of feminist anthropology, anthropologists became open to listening to more “marginalized” voices, as well as allowing the observer’s voice to be expressed in the fieldwork being done, since many feminist anthropologists used personal narratives in writing their fieldwork.
Cultural Anthropology
Interpretive Approaches to Anthropology
Just as feminists began to use a more personal approach to anthropology, interpretive anthropologists began to experiment with personal insights, particularly coming out of literary criticism
Cultural Anthropology
The main proponent of this idea was Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), who said that culture can be analyzed like a literary text.
He stressed the multilayered symbolic meanings of people’s actions. Cultural behavior is the acting out of those meanings. Culture, for Geertz, is an “acted document.”
He also said that anthropologists select the aspects of culture they want to study based on what is of personal interest to them, then they try to “translate” what they have learned back to the culture they are from, just as a literary critic would analyze a text based on his or her personal interpretation and present this interpretation to his or her readers.
Cultural Anthropology
Many interpretive anthropologists try to understand what it is like to be a person in the particular culture they are studying, instead of explaining why cultures vary.
What makes them different from other anthropologists is that they feel no two people see the world in the same way, so no interpretation of human behavior can be universal, nor can it be free of individual bias in describing the culture.
Cultural Anthropology
However, many anthropologists would contend that they have developed techniques for minimizing bias and increasing objectivity.
Ultimately, some anthropologists seek to interpret, and others seek instead to explain in a scientific fashion.
Cultural Anthropology
Postmodern Anthropology
Postmodern anthropologists take the notion that all knowledge is subjective from interpretive anthropologists but say further that all knowledge is shaped by “political powers that be.”
Cultural Anthropology
For postmodern anthropologists, even anthropology is just a tool used by dominant powers to dehumanize those they are studying by exoticizing them and seeing them as separate from ourselves – seeing people in different cultures as “The Other” and ultimately inferior to us
Cultural Anthropology
Postmodern anthropology has created tremendous controversy in the field, questioning all of the work anthropologists do, e.g. questioning their “scientific” work as distorted by objectifying principles that alienate them from those they study.
Postmodernists believe anthropologists should be a voice for the disenfranchised people they work with.
Other anthropologists often agree with advocating for those they study, but ask, does that preclude anthropologists from being scientists as well?
Cultural Anthropology
Pragmatic Anthropology
In the real world, most anthropologists do not have one sole theoretical perspective that they use under all circumstances
Many, if not the vast majority, are pragmatists – they look at the phenomenon they are studying and choose the most appropriate theoretical orientation to best explain that phenomenon.
