American Indian studies.
Fahad502
ethnohistory_and_ways_of_knowing.pptFour Fields of Anthropology
- Anthropological Method
- Describe
The four fields of Anthropology
Cultural: deals with
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Key concepts
Cultural Relativism
- Cannot judge a culture by the norms and values of another
- Must understand a culture on its own terms
***True of time, too (historical attitudes)***
- Controversy: What about maladaptive practices, violations of human rights or ‘historical wrongs’?
- FGM
- Persecution of minority groups
- Slavery
Ethnocentrism
- Belief one’s own culture is superior to others
- We can’t be objective if we are ethnocentric
- But: we always wear our “cultural glasses,” we just need to be sure they aren’t so “dark” that what we see is distorted.
- Awareness of “cultural glasses” helps you avoid ethnocentrism
Naïve Realism….
- Belief that everyone sees, interprets or understands the world in the same way.
- Issue cross-culturally and in studying past people or events
Can be subtle…
Way we usually see NE
Closer to Native view
Petroglyph-NY
Iroquois
Worldview: framework for making sense of our surroundings and how the world works
How does anthropology study culture?
Participant Observation
Informants, surveys, etc
Scientific method
Culture : Explicit vs. Tacit
Explicit:
clear, observable
Tacit- hidden “framework”
Culture :
Ethos = Motivations and perceptions about life and the world that guide life-way and choices
- -How people cope with and interact with world
- -reflected in cultural values
-Observable in human actions and what humans create
Anthropology, Archaeology and History:
“the Baggage”
- Disciplines rise from Western/Euro tradition
- Associated with colonial powers and imperial interests
- Used to justify nationalist or imperial goals
- Used to deny identity and legitimacy of subject peoples
Great Zimbabwe
Anthropology’s original goal:
Document “vanishing” cultures
- Colonized people expected to assimilate (or die)
- Removing cultural materials was
OK b/c people/culture would soon be gone
- Living people and human remains treated as no more than scientific specimens or curiosities to be exhibited
History: Purpose (now) understand how events come about and the impact of those events on human societies
Issues
Inherent bias (slant):
Records the activities and interests of the elite.
Viewpoint exclusively that of dominant culture.
Pre-contact Indigenous recording systems were ignored, denied meaning or purposefully destroyed
History’s Units: How events experienced
* Note: Race is a cultural construct, not biological fact and categories change over time
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Ethnohistory
- AKA : Social archeology, culture history
- Cultural patterns
- Continuity AND Change
- Uses
Oral histories
Cultural knowledge of indigenous people
Ethnographic Analogy
Anthropological, Archaeological and Historical theory
- Goal: Recover the culture history and experience of colonized (or otherwise unrecorded) people
Understand effects/experience of historical processes
Understand cultural processes (adaptation and change)
The four fields of Anthropology
Cultural: deals with
*
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