Chap. 1: Intro to Cultural Anthropology

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08/17/2017 Added

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Chapter 1 of Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (212)

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[00:00:04.789]In chapter one,
[00:00:06.583]we deal with what is anthropology very broadly.
[00:00:10.559]So we'll focus on the scope of anthropology,
[00:00:14.125]the holistic approach used in anthropology,
[00:00:17.353]the nature of anthropological curiosity,
[00:00:21.423]the various fields of anthropology,
[00:00:24.179]and specializations within those fields,
[00:00:27.265]and finally the relevance of anthropology to everyday life.
[00:00:32.255]If we consider the scope of anthropology,
[00:00:34.406]anthropology is a discipline
[00:00:36.048]of infinite curiosity about human beings.
[00:00:39.530]It's broader in scope than most other disciplines,
[00:00:43.628]and every part of the world containing human populations
[00:00:47.422]is of interest to anthropological study.
[00:00:50.988]This is important to realize,
[00:00:52.811]in that if you take a course in political science
[00:00:56.423]or sociology or even psychology,
[00:00:59.720]most of the focus is on the West.
[00:01:02.715]But anthropology has a much broader scope,
[00:01:06.286]in that it includes all human populations,
[00:01:09.993]even populations in very remote places,
[00:01:12.351]such as the Kalahari Desert or the Amazon Basin.
[00:01:16.592]And it also has a great deal of historic depth
[00:01:20.785]through its interest in archaeology.
[00:01:24.915]One of the important things that characterizes anthropology
[00:01:28.166]is its holistic approach,
[00:01:30.496]and so it's a unique discipline
[00:01:32.104]because it employs a holistic, or multifaceted,
[00:01:35.371]approach to the study of human beings.
[00:01:38.189]So not only do we study their behavior,
[00:01:40.975]but we study their biology,
[00:01:43.095]the nature of the environment in which they live,
[00:01:46.841]dimensions of their health,
[00:01:48.905]what their past history was,
[00:01:50.637]and perhaps even, in an evolutionary sense,
[00:01:54.538]where they originated several thousand years ago.
[00:01:59.382]Under the heading of Anthropological Curiosity,
[00:02:03.331]traditionally anthropologists generally focus
[00:02:06.191]on typical characteristics of a population,
[00:02:08.871]such as traits or customs.
[00:02:11.417]The advantage of this approach is
[00:02:13.060]that you get a very kind of global, general view
[00:02:16.512]of what's typical and, quote, "normal"
[00:02:19.105]or common in a particular society,
[00:02:22.056]but what it ignores
[00:02:23.903]and what has now been more frequently focused on
[00:02:28.022]is intra-cultural variation.
[00:02:30.573]We know that because of different sorts of contact
[00:02:34.781]particular people may have had with the outside world
[00:02:38.437]or because they're living
[00:02:39.707]in a different kind of environment,
[00:02:42.770]that there is intra-cultural variation
[00:02:46.030]in terms of how they adapt to that environment.
[00:02:48.190]So intra-cultural variation
[00:02:50.152]is becoming a much more important dimension
[00:02:53.110]of basic anthropological research.
[00:02:56.730]And one of the things that we like to do is
[00:03:00.023]to look at different characteristics of human groups.
[00:03:03.524]That is, we want to understand human diversity.
[00:03:07.158]And one of the major ways of doing this is
[00:03:10.035]to engage in cross-cultural comparisons,
[00:03:13.365]which typically is the field of ethnology.
[00:03:17.227]Although the authors in this text kind of conflate
[00:03:22.507]cultural anthropology with ethnology,
[00:03:24.797]but I like to reserve the term ethnology
[00:03:27.494]to the practice of making cross-cultural comparisons.
[00:03:33.516]There are three broad fields of anthropology,
[00:03:37.895]biological or physical anthropology,
[00:03:40.523]which studies a variety of things,
[00:03:42.318]such as human variation
[00:03:45.096]in body form,
[00:03:46.972]body coloration,
[00:03:49.450]how they adapt to different sorts of
[00:03:52.893]epidemiological threats,
[00:03:55.212]to a hominid evolution.
[00:03:58.073]That is the development of humanity
[00:04:01.431]beginning with the hominids or bipedal apes,
[00:04:06.727]originating about five to seven million years ago,
[00:04:10.846]to the emergence of large-brained,
[00:04:14.023]bipedal hominids that we call humans.
[00:04:17.575]Cultural anthropology, on the other hand, deals with
[00:04:22.544]current societies generally,
[00:04:24.780]although we do some research in the past,
[00:04:27.347]with a focus on beliefs and behaviors
[00:04:31.073]and values and attitudes in a contemporary population.
[00:04:36.160]Then applied or practicing anthropology deals with
[00:04:39.064]the application of
[00:04:42.315]anthropological methods to understand
[00:04:45.025]what is going on towards the development of a policy
[00:04:49.754]or the direct application of anthropological knowledge
[00:04:54.968]to guide
[00:04:56.899]governments or businesses
[00:04:59.651]or non-governmental organizations
[00:05:02.470]in their activities as they deal with people.
[00:05:06.329]Here you see, on page five of your text,
[00:05:09.648]a very complex
[00:05:13.835]characterization of the various fields
[00:05:16.572]and approaches in anthropology.
[00:05:18.096]On the left-hand side, you'll see those dimensions
[00:05:21.056]of anthropology that are devoted to understanding the past,
[00:05:24.539]such as historical linguistics,
[00:05:27.767]archaeology, or the study of material remains
[00:05:32.296]of people who don't have a written record,
[00:05:35.769]and physical anthropology, which is very frequently
[00:05:40.488]the study of human fossil remains
[00:05:44.379]and the kinds of characteristics
[00:05:45.890]that these bony remains have
[00:05:47.939]in terms of understanding activity levels, disease patterns,
[00:05:52.609]relative health, diet, things of that nature.
[00:05:55.989]And then if we look at the right-hand side,
[00:06:00.097]it says recent, past, and present,
[00:06:02.208]a descriptive or structural linguistics,
[00:06:04.498]how languages operate today,
[00:06:07.277]what are the principles
[00:06:08.958]in terms of grammatical principles of organization,
[00:06:13.394]sound system, et cetera.
[00:06:15.833]Ethnology or cultural anthropology are the study of
[00:06:20.427]cultural practices
[00:06:23.444]by various peoples in different parts of the world.
[00:06:26.395]And then physical anthropology in terms of human variation,
[00:06:31.153]we ask questions, for example,
[00:06:33.451]why do we see that there are different patterns of height
[00:06:37.605]and body form around the world?
[00:06:39.917]They seem to have a pattern or
[00:06:42.714]patterns of human skin coloration.
[00:06:46.350]Or physiological abilities, for example,
[00:06:50.265]many human populations don't have the ability to digest
[00:06:55.665]lactose in milk,
[00:06:57.468]lactose is a milk sugar,
[00:07:00.431]and that's because they cease the production
[00:07:03.802]of lactase, which is an enzyme.
[00:07:07.128]And some populations, this ability persists
[00:07:10.135]well into adulthood and for the rest of their life.
[00:07:12.997]But in other populations, the ability to produce lactase
[00:07:17.863]stops around the ages of five or six.
[00:07:20.449]And if more is consumed,
[00:07:22.548]then it leads to gastrointestinal stress.
[00:07:26.922]And then two layers in this big cake here,
[00:07:30.292]one is basic research, which the kind of basic scientific
[00:07:35.300]research that anthropologists do,
[00:07:38.772]like any other form of research, it's curiosity-driven,
[00:07:43.330]and then applied anthropology, which is essentially
[00:07:46.794]the use of two things.
[00:07:47.921]One is anthropological knowledge,
[00:07:50.204]and the second thing is
[00:07:54.081]the use of an anthropological approach
[00:07:56.747]to understanding something about a different culture.
[00:07:59.729]And applied anthropologists typically work for businesses.
[00:08:03.603]They work for governments,
[00:08:04.925]and they also work for non-governmental.
[00:08:08.772]If you look at biological anthropology,
[00:08:10.649]there are two primary focuses of study.
[00:08:13.392]One is human paleontology,
[00:08:15.628]and here we're looking at,
[00:08:18.103]largely, although not entirely,
[00:08:20.429]skeletal remains of humans that previously existed
[00:08:24.860]anywhere from 100 years ago to
[00:08:28.772]100, 150 thousand years ago and even beyond.
[00:08:32.562]If you look at some of the other hominids
[00:08:34.758]and their divergence from a common ancestor,
[00:08:38.630]that one path led to humans, the other to chimpanzees,
[00:08:42.918]about seven million years ago.
[00:08:45.130]And then, in a more contemporary sense, human variation,
[00:08:48.926]and that is the fact that, for example,
[00:08:51.510]humans look slightly different
[00:08:53.699]depending on where you are on the globe.
[00:08:56.550]And so understanding the forces
[00:08:59.770]that lead to the development
[00:09:02.071]of different hair form, nose form,
[00:09:04.545]head form, skin coloration,
[00:09:08.089]physiological abilities that I mentioned earlier,
[00:09:10.874]such as the ability to continue to drink milk
[00:09:14.905]through the production of lactase,
[00:09:18.968]these are all topics
[00:09:21.105]fit for people who are in biological anthropology
[00:09:24.696]or interested in studying human variation.
[00:09:28.027]Then if we look at the field of cultural anthropology,
[00:09:30.873]which is the subject matter of the text,
[00:09:33.998]although we will talk a bit,
[00:09:35.991]we mentioned archaeology early on
[00:09:38.143]and biological anthropology.
[00:09:39.946]After this chapter, we'll pretty much
[00:09:42.613]leave those fields specifically
[00:09:44.621]and focus mostly on cultural anthropology
[00:09:47.292]and to some extent linguistics.
[00:09:49.924]But culture refers to the customary ways that a
[00:09:52.514]particular people or society thinks and behaves.
[00:09:55.770]So it's a focus on patterns of thought and understanding
[00:10:00.173]and patterns of behavior.
[00:10:02.098]The three branches of cultural anthropology
[00:10:04.055]are archaeology, linguistics, and ethnology.
[00:10:07.879]And again, ethnology is a way of,
[00:10:10.965]another way of saying cultural anthropology.
[00:10:12.931]But let's take archaeology,
[00:10:15.396]and archaeology is essentially
[00:10:17.946]the study of past humans
[00:10:20.724]and their patterns of behavior
[00:10:23.554]and sometimes their patterns of thought.
[00:10:26.788]And largely, archaeological populations are
[00:10:29.176]those populations that have left no written record,
[00:10:32.696]so we have to rely on the material record
[00:10:35.864]to understand something about the cultures
[00:10:39.372]of people in the past.
[00:10:41.413]Linguistics
[00:10:42.978]is essentially a study of the language patterns
[00:10:46.751]of any particular group.
[00:10:48.920]It can have historical dimensions.
[00:10:50.705]We mentioned earlier about
[00:10:53.252]how languages may have been related to one another
[00:10:56.396]or how sound systems, for example, in languages change
[00:11:01.066]to a contemporary understanding of grammar
[00:11:05.928]and phonology or the sound system of a language today.
[00:11:09.720]And again, ethnology is essentially
[00:11:12.490]a synonym for cultural anthropology.
[00:11:16.230]As we delve deeper into archaeology,
[00:11:18.418]archaeologists try to reconstruct history
[00:11:20.845]from the remains of human cultures.
[00:11:23.374]And most studies deal with prehistory
[00:11:27.507]because history proper is based on written records.
[00:11:30.653]But sometimes archaeologists
[00:11:34.620]engage in what we call historical archaeology,
[00:11:38.569]or they use a combination of the material record
[00:11:41.682]and written records to piece together
[00:11:44.419]what went on in the past.
[00:11:46.498]Anthropological linguistics is obviously
[00:11:48.862]the anthropological study of language,
[00:11:51.104]and it's divided into three components.
[00:11:54.189]So one is historical linguistics,
[00:11:56.050]and I talked a little bit about that before.
[00:11:58.929]That's how languages change through time.
[00:12:02.135]And then descriptive or structural linguistics,
[00:12:04.581]which deals with the
[00:12:08.606]sound system called phonology, P-H-O-N-O-L-O-G-Y,
[00:12:15.198]and the grammatical system of a language
[00:12:18.756]through the study of a syntax.
[00:12:21.053]And then
[00:12:23.321]morphology,
[00:12:24.845]which is down to the word level kind of analysis
[00:12:28.747]or the elements that carry meaning
[00:12:32.582]in linguistic utterances.
[00:12:34.780]Morphemes are equivalent
[00:12:37.774]to words more or less.
[00:12:39.157]And then finally the field of sociolinguistics,
[00:12:42.252]which talks about the use of language in everyday life.
[00:12:46.779]For example, all of us know the difference between
[00:12:50.185]a kind of very formal way of speaking
[00:12:52.776]to a very casual way of speaking.
[00:12:55.286]And we use these different forms
[00:12:57.289]depending on certain social cues that we receive.
[00:13:02.046]And so sociolinguistics is the study of
[00:13:05.840]how we essentially deploy language
[00:13:08.863]in very kind of creative ways depending
[00:13:11.048]on the social setting that we find ourselves in.
[00:13:15.720]Ethnology is commonly referred to as cultural anthropology,
[00:13:19.328]and ethnology's concerned with patterns
[00:13:21.303]of thought and behavior.
[00:13:23.468]And there are
[00:13:26.110]three basic types of ethnologists.
[00:13:28.571]One we call ethnographers,
[00:13:30.601]and these are people who focus on a
[00:13:33.993]specific society.
[00:13:35.592]And typically they like to get a very holistic,
[00:13:38.519]complete account of that society.
[00:13:42.517]And then we have ethnohistorians,
[00:13:44.912]who use a combination of ethnographic research
[00:13:49.057]and ethnohistoric research.
[00:13:51.763]And by ethnohistoric research,
[00:13:54.057]we essentially interview living people about
[00:13:57.981]what went on in the past to get a
[00:14:02.199]kind of a local picture
[00:14:03.827]of the history of a particular group.
[00:14:05.470]Then we have finally the field of cross-cultural research,
[00:14:09.483]which is sometimes known as
[00:14:12.785]ethnology,
[00:14:14.295]and people who do that kind of research are ethnologists.
[00:14:17.595]And here the goal is to try and understand variation
[00:14:22.384]in a variety of practices cross-culturally,
[00:14:25.259]whether we're talking about how people
[00:14:28.315]differently conceive of
[00:14:31.239]spirits and gods
[00:14:33.644]and other supernatural entities,
[00:14:35.948]or why certain people
[00:14:39.183]raise their children in a kind of very punitive way,
[00:14:44.177]and why other people raise their children
[00:14:47.033]in a kind of very relaxed and permissive sort of way.
[00:14:50.715]So cross-cultural research is, again,
[00:14:53.558]an attempt to document and then understand
[00:14:57.108]variation in behavior.
[00:14:59.714]Applied anthropology
[00:15:02.606]is essentially anthropology
[00:15:05.798]as it is used in businesses,
[00:15:09.690]by the government and in non-governmental organizations.
[00:15:14.249]About half of all professional anthropologists
[00:15:17.256]are applied, or practicing, anthropologists.
[00:15:19.756]And by, what we mean by professional anthropologists
[00:15:22.941]are people who've gotten an MA or a PhD in anthropology
[00:15:27.564]and who don't go on to teach at a university.
[00:15:30.548]So it has to do with the use of anthropology
[00:15:34.644]in the, quote, "real world".
[00:15:37.052]And it's important to understand that
[00:15:39.741]applied anthropologists may be trained
[00:15:41.615]in one or more subfields of anthropology.
[00:15:44.029]It's just not cultural anthropology.
[00:15:45.428]For example, if you look at a field called CRM,
[00:15:49.566]or cultural resource management,
[00:15:52.686]we find that these are archaeologists
[00:15:55.528]who are called upon to do excavations
[00:15:58.690]just before some major construction is put through
[00:16:03.386]to determine whether there are any cultural resources
[00:16:07.139]or remains of previous people
[00:16:10.090]that are worth preserving and studying.
[00:16:12.811]And so this is a very kind of practical applied field
[00:16:16.371]that's closely associated with the business world.
[00:16:22.262]Then if we look at the
[00:16:25.650]field of ethnology or cultural anthropology,
[00:16:29.528]we find that there are lots
[00:16:30.914]of different kinds of specializations.
[00:16:33.293]Economic anthropologists, for example, simple societies,
[00:16:37.954]study production, consumption,
[00:16:41.933]and exchange
[00:16:43.959]of resources that have been transformed,
[00:16:47.785]like food or tools,
[00:16:49.814]and how the economic system works in (mumbles) society,
[00:16:54.225]and trading relationships that people may have with others.
[00:16:57.977]Political anthropologists
[00:17:00.504]study politics generally,
[00:17:03.431]dispute settlement, how consensus is developed,
[00:17:07.576]and perhaps
[00:17:09.770]when a consensus
[00:17:12.855]breaks down,
[00:17:14.082]how conflict, even warfare, and feuding
[00:17:17.327]proceed in a particular society.
[00:17:19.658]Psychological anthropologists are interested in
[00:17:23.951]how the mind works cross-culturally,
[00:17:27.250]how people classify the physical or the spiritual world,
[00:17:32.464]their ability to perceive the world
[00:17:35.601]in terms of patterns of cognition.
[00:17:38.412]And then we have cultural anthropologists
[00:17:40.864]who study how the people
[00:17:44.916]they're interested in adapt to the environment,
[00:17:47.761]how they may adapt to a desert environment.
[00:17:50.036]For example, I began my career as a cultural ecologist
[00:17:53.287]while working in the Amazon,
[00:17:54.991]studied two different native peoples there,
[00:17:58.014]and looked at how things, such as the nature of
[00:18:02.805]game resources, soil resources, a pattern, their
[00:18:07.902]ways of making a living,
[00:18:10.751]producing food in that environment.
[00:18:12.852]Medical anthropologists, on the other hand,
[00:18:15.258]might be looking at the kinds of parasite loads
[00:18:18.925]a particular group has,
[00:18:21.418]or they may want to study
[00:18:24.259]the way in which shamans diagnose
[00:18:27.020]and prescribe cures for various sorts of illnesses.
[00:18:30.859]So these are just some of the specializations
[00:18:33.794]that we find in the field of culture.
[00:18:36.432]We need to talk about the relevance of anthropology,
[00:18:39.079]in that in order to understand humans,
[00:18:41.832]it is essential that we study humans
[00:18:43.980]in all times and places.
[00:18:46.522]The thing that really distinguishes anthropology
[00:18:49.340]from the fields, for example,
[00:18:51.389]of political science, sociology, and psychology
[00:18:54.964]is that those fields tend to focus
[00:18:57.274]on North Americans or Western Europeans,
[00:19:00.807]and they tend to ignore
[00:19:03.858]what goes on in the rest of the world.
[00:19:05.982]Anthropologists believe
[00:19:08.781]that in order to understand
[00:19:11.008]the full range of human diversity, we have to study
[00:19:15.230]all people in different times and different places.
[00:19:18.669]And anthropological studies can illustrate
[00:19:20.879]why other people are the way they are
[00:19:23.478]both culturally and physically, so we are kind of able
[00:19:27.742]to develop
[00:19:30.692]a cross-cultural test of
[00:19:33.563]the kinds of variations that we see
[00:19:36.083]in all humans in all times and all places.
[00:19:40.139]To end this chapter, I want to talk about weird people.
[00:19:43.162]And who are weird people?
[00:19:44.794]Well, they are Western, educated,
[00:19:46.869]industrialized, rich, and democratic.
[00:19:49.625]And what this means is
[00:19:51.616]that the kinds of research we have
[00:19:54.115]in the fields of psychology and sociology
[00:19:58.967]are based on
[00:20:00.888]studies of
[00:20:03.210]college students
[00:20:05.885]who are Westernized, educated, industrialized, rich,
[00:20:08.978]and living in democratic environments.
[00:20:11.416]And so, much of what we know about the world,
[00:20:14.781]at least especially from a psychological
[00:20:16.692]and a sociological perspective,
[00:20:18.805]stems from studies
[00:20:20.567]on these kinds of people.
[00:20:23.500]And
[00:20:24.760]this term, weird people,
[00:20:27.461]was
[00:20:29.161]devised by Henrich
[00:20:32.342]in a recent paper in the brain behavioral sciences,
[00:20:34.959]to point out that if you take a look,
[00:20:38.470]especially at the psychological findings
[00:20:41.221]of people who are weird,
[00:20:43.532]you find out, indeed, they are weird
[00:20:45.958]simply because they tend to be outliers in terms of their
[00:20:51.433]responses to standard psychological tests
[00:20:54.902]tend to be extreme compared to people who are non-Western.
[00:20:59.573]They may not have much education,
[00:21:01.589]who are living in a traditional rural environment,
[00:21:04.675]who are not very rich,
[00:21:06.261]and who may not be living under a democratic regime.
[00:21:10.182]So I'd end this first segment
[00:21:14.043]with noting that anthropology has
[00:21:17.908]a set of powerful tools
[00:21:19.469]to understand the full range of human diversity.

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Chap. 1: Intro to Cultural Anthropology

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