I. What is anthropology? The study of human beings and their experiences in all their diversity

A. Four sub-fields:

1. Archaeology
2. Biological/physical anthropology
3. Sociocultural anthropology
4. Linguistic anthropology

 

II. Sociological vs. anthropological approaches to society

A. Sociology = study of society, social institutions, and social relationships

1. aggregate behavior
2. statistics, surveys, focus groups
3. industrialized, "complex" societies

B. Anthropology

1. individual experience
2. participant observation
3. non-industrialized, developing, "simple" societies

C. Many of these differences between anthropology and sociology are blurring today

 

III. Historical roots of anthropology

A. Classical research of exploration and conquest (China, Ancient Greece and Rome)
B. 16th-18th century European "voyages of discovery": human similarities and differences
C. Changes in 18th century Europe
D. Primitive societies as key to Europe's past
E. Colonialism

 

IV. What is culture?

A. Root: Latin, cultus, cultivation
B. High culture
C. Anthropological definition of culture:

English anthropologist Edward B. Tylor, 1871:

"Culture, or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." (Edward B. Tylor. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, 2 vols. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958. Vol. 1:1).

 

V. Seven characteristics of culture

A. Learned and acquired
B. Necessary
C. Adaptive, design for living
Example: Witchcraft among the Azande in southern Sudan
D. Maladaptive
Example: nuclear families, work, and childcare in the US
E. Non-utilitarian
Example: clothing
F. Patterned
Example: Nursery schools in the US and Japan
G. Symbolic system
Example: globalization

 

VI. How anthropologists study culture

A. Decode symbolic systems.
Clifford Geertz: people are "animal[s] suspended in webs of significance [they themselves have] spun" (Thick Description, p. 5).
B. Ethnography or Thick Description.
C. Use other cultures to get a perspective on one's own culture and society
Example: Laura Bohannan, Hamlet, and the Tiv in northern Nigeria

 

VII. Structure of the course

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu