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“The truth is that cultural anthropology is the
description
,
interpretation
, and
analysis
of
similarities
and differences in human
cultures
”.
Module 1 − Introduction
Lecture note highlights: Psalm 8, The Unlikely Disciple, emic and etic, Jesus, Bible, Theology, and
Culture
What are the four subfield of anthropology:
The primary method of research conducted by cultural anthropologist is
ethnography.
“Because cultural anthropology draws together
history
,
economics
,
politics
,
religion
,
family
, and
psychology
to understand people’s social and cultural lives, it overlaps with several disciplines, but
none more than
sociology
” (14).
10 FAMOUS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS
HTTP://HARRISJONESANTHROPOLOGY.COM/2014/05/10-FAMOUS-CULTURAL-
ANTHROPOLOGISTS/
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
Sexuality
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Franz Boas* (1858-1942)
Theory of relativism
Race, Language and Culture (1940)
“Later missionary anthropologists and linguists made significant contributions to the discipline from
work that flowed directly from their
Christian
work in Bible translation and evangelism, even
establishing scholarly journals such as
Anthropos
and
missiology
(formerly known as Practical
Anthropology) with the express purpose of bringing together anthropology and missiology” (15).
Module 2- Culture
Lecture note highlights: Know how we talked about the Yanomami people, Lewis Henry Morgan,
Edward Burnett Tylor, Eugene Nida
“The ‘ethnic fair’ assumptions about cultures as
neatly
bounded and
highly
homogeneous entities
simply didn’t withstand scrutiny” (30).
“These first anthropologists are now often called
armchair anthropologists
for their gathering of
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data from travelogues and books rather than from their own direct research. They were most
interested in explaining why groups were so different from one another. Building on the biological
theories of evolution advanced by Charles Darwin and others, these scholars assumed all societies
moved from
simple
to
complex
forms in progressive evolutionary stages. They developed an idea of
Culture as a singular capacity that all human beings possessed to greater and lesser degrees. These
anthropologists did not talk about different
cultures
, only the differences in Culture, with a capital C.
In this view, all cultural development followed a
single
path, or line, from simple to complex” (28).
The theory of unilinear cultural evolution supports “cultural superiority, the idea that people of one
culture are more
enlightened, advance, civilized, or intelligent
than another and
racism
, the belief
that humans are organized into race groupings that are different from one another in
intelligence
and
worth
” (29).
“This new theory, which would come to be called
HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM
, argued that each
culture is a unique representation of its
history
and
context.
2.4 “Today, in light of
globalization
,
communication technology
, and
urbanization
,
anthropologists emphasize the importance of seeing cultures as
complex
, with
permeable
boundaries, instead of as isolated,
bounded
entities” (30).
“In other words, cultures can only be understood relative to the
historical, ecological
, and
social
context in which they developed.
“Cultural relativism is the view that cultural
practices
and
beliefs
are best understood in relation to
their
entire
context. A
symbol, belief, or behavior
may make little sense or even be offensive when
understood from an outsider’s cultural perspective” (31).
“Cultural relativism is distinct from
moral
relativism or
ethical
relativism.
Moral
relativism is the idea
that something is only right or wrong according to context-specific criteria. This notion is
incompatible
with Christian faith and ethics, and also is virtually impossible to put into
practice
”
(32).
“When
cultural relativism
is not practiced, people typically use the standards of their own culture to
understand others, which invariably leads to misunderstandings rooted in
ethnocentrism
” (32-33).
In anthropology, there are three kinds of ethnocentrism:
xenophobia
,
cultural superiority
, and
tacit
ethnocentrism
.
“Tacit ethnocentrism is the assumption that one’s own way of life is just
normal
, not
cultural
. Tacit
ethnocentrism is present, for example, when a person does not see anything particularly
cultural
about liking ice in a glass of water, or finding a mountain lake beautiful, or wanting a soft bed off the
floor” (34-35).
“Acknowledging how tacit ethnocentrism plays into our assumptions should humble us into
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Paul Hiebert (1983:23) defined culture “as the
integrated
system of
learned
patterns of
behaviors,
acknowledging the
strengths and limitations
of our vantage point on God’s world” (36).
“Culture is the
total
way of life of a group of people that is
learned, adapted, shared, and
integrated
” (36).
“Without culture, we have no
language
, no
symbols,
no
revelation
, and no
community
........ We are
always Christians in particular
times
,
places, and cultures
. We were designed, from the beginning,
to interact with God and each other through culture” (41-42).
Module 3 − Language
Lecture note highlights: 5 rule patterns of language, HCC (South Korea) vs LCC (USA)
“Language is a system of
verbal
and
nonverbal
symbols used to communicate” (46).
“As with culture, anthropologists ask many questions about language” (46):
–“How
different
are the various languages of the world?”
–“Are some languages more
developed
or
sophisticated
or just more
suitable
for particular
activities?”
–“How and why do languages
change
?”
In the late 18th century, Sir
William Jones
found the relationship of Sanskrit and classical Greek,
Latin, and modern European languages (46).
“By studying
linguistic morphology
, the patterns and structures of words in a language, Jones and
other scholars connected different languages into language families. A l
anguage family
is a group of
languages that derives from a common ancestor language. Each language family traces back to a
protolanguage
, the ancient language from which all the members of a particular language family are
derived” (46).
Descriptive linguistics is the “study of specific features of individual languages, such as patterns of
grammar
and
sound
” at a given moment in time (47).
ideas
, and products
characteristic
of a society.”
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“Phonemics is the study of specific structures and sounds in a particular language. Phonetics is the
study of all possible structures and sounds humans use in language. Together, these two areas of
study are known as phonology” (48).
Descriptive linguists utilize and (48):
−“study of all possible structures and sounds humans use in language"
−“study of specific structures and sounds in a particular language"
To form words and meaning, languages use (phonemes) and
(morphemes) (48):
−“sounds available in any particular language"
−“units of language that carry meaning"
“In English, many morphemes are simply
words
(e.g., the distinct phonemes— b, a, t— combine to
make one morpheme— bat)” (48).
“Syntax refers to the
order
in which morphemes appear” (49).
“Like grammar, the rules of syntax are
adaptable
and continually
changing
” (49).
“In 1960s, linguist became interested in social influences of on language” (52).
“In the 1960s, William Labov’s research of
social influences
on language helped to find
sociolinguistics,“one that addresses the mutual influences between
culture
and
language
,” as a
subdiscipline of anthropology, (52-53).
“One of the most influential thinkers in the development of language theory was Swiss scholar
Ferdinand de Saussure” (50).
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and structuralism – “Language, he argued, could be studied by
separating the human forms of speech (what he called
parole
) from the underlying rules on which
these utterances were based (the
langue
).
Parole could change with each speaker, reflecting
idiosyncratic pronunciation
,
kinesics
,
body
language
, or even the certain qualities applied to particular words such as
volume
,
tone
, or
emphasis , features known as paralanguage.
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What did not vary, Saussure argued, were the
rules
— the structure— that organized the meanings
of words in relationship to one another” (50).
“Saussure’s emphasis on the systemic structures of language gave rise to the term
structuralism
to
refer to his theory of language that says all languages share an underlying binary structure” (50).
“Linguist Noam Chomsky further developed structuralist linguistic theory in the 1950s and later. He
also referred to language as having two parts: surface and deep structure” (51).
“By comparing
linguistic systems
, Chomsky believed linguists could uncover principles of human
thought
generally
” (51).
“The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that language shapes people’s
perceptions, thoughts, and,
views
of reality” (51).
“Through attention to the social use of language and its cultural settings, these scholars supported
the idea that language use, as it is
modified
and
shaped
in real social contexts, potentially shapes
how people think and behave. In other words, culture is not just a reflection of language; culture
change
language” (52).
“Language hierarchy can even portray certain languages as intrinsically
superior
to other languages”
( 55).
“While languages are not inherently
better
or
worse
than one another, where many languages are
used in a single society, there are always political dynamics in which the use of various languages
becomes
hierarchically
arranged” (56).
Module 4 − Social Structure and Inequality
Lecture note highlights: Cross-cultural Servanthood . . . , elites vs low classes, Karl Marx
“
social structure
(also called social organization or social order) refers to the ways people
organized
their lives in relation to one another at the level of society” (66).
“
race, class, gender, religion, language, dialect, and citizenship
, are just a few important
elements of social structure that influence an individual’s life chances” (66).
Sociologist Max Weber (see chap. 11) identified three related areas of social stratification:
wealth
, or
economic status;
power
, or the ability to influence others; and
prestige
, or the social affirmation and
approval given to some members of society.
“Within every society, differences in
age, gender, race, ethnicity
, and many other
categories
become social statuses arranged in hierarchical systems. Yet social stratification is not a
consequence of difference alone; it forms around the ways those differences are given relative
value
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in society” (67).
“
Race
is a cultural category that divides the human race into subspecies based on
supposed
biological differences” (71).
Two varying views on ethnicity:
–“Primordialism is the view that ethnic identity, like race, is a
naturally
occurring and immutable
feature of human life” (77).
–“Instrumentalism (or constructivism) is the idea that ethnicity
changes
with people’s interests and
context” (78).
"
Class
(also called social class) is a cultural category describing how people are grouped according
to their positions within the
economy
” (80).
“In societies in which class is particularly fixed, anthropologists use the term
caste
” (81).
•
culture has some spiritual elements
Module 5 − Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
“For anthropologists, sex and gender are
distinct
concepts.
Sex
refers to biological maleness or
femaleness, known as sexual dimorphism, usually given at birth.
Gender
describes what it means to
be male or female in a particular culture” (88).
“In the United States, gender statuses— boy, girl, man, or woman— are usually ascribed, based on
biology.
A gender status is a
position
a person can occupy in the social order that is directly related
to maleness or femaleness. ...... Each gender status is connected to a gender role, a set of
expectations regarding proper
behavior
and
appearance
for a particular gender.” (89).
“The process of learning how to act according to the gender norms of society is called gender
socialization” (95).
“As children grow, gender socialization
continues
. Ideals of womanhood or manhood are often
expressed in
ritual,
particularly rites of passage in which a community marks a person’s transition
from childhood to adulthood.......... The quinceañera is a ritual passage of a girl from
childhood,
to
adulthood
, that is popular in Mexico and other Latin American countries and in the United States”
(96).
“Sexuality includes biological sex but also refers to
sexual thoughts
,
feelings
, and
behaviors
.
Though some societies (including the contemporary U.S.) enculturate people to believe sexuality is
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just natural, anthropologists study the many ways in which human sexuality is shaped by cultural
norms
and
values
” (98).
“In many conservative Islamic countries, this understanding of male and female sexuality is
expressed in cultural institutions such as
purdah
— the seclusion of women from public view— and
restrictive clothing such as the
burqa
, a long garment covering every bit of a woman’s body,
including her eyes.
“In the United States, the notion that women are more
emotional
, and thus less likely to use
logic
in
decision making, has historically led to the
marginalization
of women in political and economic
spheres” (102).
“In Indonesia, it is thought that
men
are the more passionate and emotional gender. Men, the
thinking goes, are more likely to give in to their passions. They are more easily tempted by things like
gambling, drinking, and sex
. It makes good sense, then, for women to control family
finances,
trading
, and other aspects of
economic
life” (102).
“Regardless of how individual Christians interpret passages about men’s and women’s
roles
and
status
in the church, it is clear that there is to be no
oppression
or
inequality
in how Christians treat
one another (Gal. 3: 28; Col. 3: 11)” (104).
