Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (212)

Page Table of Contents

Critical Concepts for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology 212

Below is a list of important concepts presented to you in the lectures, web readings, films, and texts.  As such, they represent a guide to structure learning.  If you fully understand these concepts, know their implications, and can provide concrete examples of how they work then you will have mastered the material for the first segment of the course.

First Segment

Culture

Culture and Genes or Gene-Culture Interaction

Cultural Evolution
· Simple to complex and generalized to specialized
· Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states
· Religion: ethnic, theocratic, and universalistic
· Exchange: reciprocity, redistribution & market exchange
· Status: accomplishments to hereditary inequality
  Trends in cultural evolution

Evolution
· Descent with modification or change in frequency of genes in a gene pool
· Adaptation
· Natural selection
· Mutation
. Not all traits are adaptive (consider the chin)
· Individuals designed to be reproductively selfish

Evolutionary Ecology
· Lootka-Volterra Logistic
· Limiting factors
· Carrying capacity
· Environmental resistance
· Intensification
· Innovation
· Population regulation and infanticide
· Myth of the ecologically noble savage

Energetic Ecology
· Energy flow
· Plant and animal levels
· Interconnectedness
· Energetic efficiency

Energy Extraction
· Foraging, gardening, pastoralism, agriculture, and industrial agriculture
· Intensification
· Landscape modification and biodiversity loss
· Increased input

Eskimo Environmental Problems and Solutions (adaptations)
· Cold stress
· Lack of plant resources
· Complex technology
· Seasonal variation in resource availability and movement to resources

Yanomamö Environmental Problems and Solutions (adaptations)
· Gardening in the context of poor soils
· Difficulties in acquiring wild plants and animals
· Pathogen stress

Yanomamö Ethnography
· Significance of warfare and its reflection in many cultural domains
· Alliances
· Moves (macro and micro)
· Economy: gardening, hunting, gathering, and fishing
· Division of labor
· Genealogies and the problem of personal names and ethical issues
· How an ethnographer adapts to another culture and achieves rapport
· Simple technology
· Protein and warfare
· Bellicose and refugee strategies

Netsilik Ethnography
· Ethnography and historical reconstruction
· Stone, bone, snow, and skin complexes
· Clothing manufacture and food preservation as important kinds of technology
· Lack of vegetable materials
· Technology in action
· Infanticide

Zapotec Ethnography
· Men, women, and culture: different views
· Interdependence of the sexes
· Homosexuality and first edition
· Informal & formal and public & private roles
· Zapotecs, a conquered people in a state
· The myth of ancient matriarchy
· Lack of culture as perceived by Mexican nationals
· Land tenure: private and ejido
· Sexual patterns of inheritance
· Methods of saving
· Sexual division of labor: agricultural production, vending, and wage labor
· The market and selling


Critical Concepts for Segment 2

Lecture Topics

Modes of Reciprocity (exchange):
• generalized
• balanced
• negative

Marriage:
• socially imposed monogamy
• ecologically imposed monogamy
• polygyny
• polyandry
• burden of marriage
• endogamy/exogamy
•conjugal fund


The incest taboo
o proximate versus ultimate causes
o Westermarck effect
o inbreeding depression
o sim pua and parallel cousin marriages
o Biblical and Western incest prohibitions



 

Family Forms and Dynamics:
• nuclear
• extended (stem and joint)
• matrifocal
• sororate
• levirate
• decay of the nuclear family
• function of the family
• causes of divorce as revealing the functions of marriage

Marriage Transactions:
• dowry
• exchange of females
• bride price
• indirect dowry
• bride service
• gift exchange

Kinship and Descent
• sociocentric and egocentric status terms
• kinship diagrams
• kin terminological systems: bifurcate merging and lineal
• unilineal descent
• bilateral descent
• characteristics of corporate descent groups
• kindreds, lineages, and clans
• prescribed patterns of kin behavior (avoidance, joking, respect)

Films:

• Dadi’s Family (film): family and marriage in a male farming system

• The Mende  family and marriage in a female farming system

Netsilik

Social Organization
• dyadic relationships
• spouse exchange
• bilateral descent and focus on the family
• Netsilik divorce
• patrilocal residence in relation to hunting
• father-children and mother-children relationships
• domestic cycle: development and break-up of extended families
• extended family ilagiit and leader inhumataq

Yanomamö

Social Organization
• patrilineal descent
• weak lineages
• sister exchange
• brother-in-law relationships
• name taboos
• contrasting styles in leadership
• nuclear family decay (roles of divorce and mortality)
• patrilocal marriage in relation to warfare

Warfare and Politics
• alliance formation: purpose and process
• levels of violence
• feasts and peacemaking

Miscellaneous
• yöbömou female puberty ceremony
• child betrothal
• Shamatari and Namoweiteri contrasts in to relatedness and social cohesiveness
    o following marriage rules
    o village size and warfare
    o village fissioning
    o rule breaking in marriage
    o kin relations and solidarity
    o sister exchange and double cross-cousin marriage

Zapotec

The Life Cycle: from birth to marriage
• birthing practices and role of mid-wife and husband
• the problem of weaning
• permissive child rearing and tristeza
• preferential treatment of boys

Courtship and Marriage
• chaperoning
• civil and church weddings and elopement
• mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships
• importance of virginity
• a woman's status: from motherhood to mother-in-law

Death
• supernatural causes of death
• curanderas, pharmacists, and doctors
• mourning for the death: family and kin obligations

Avoiding Danger and Misfortune: consequences of land poverty and high levels of physical aggression:
• avoid arousing envy
• household fortification
• use of protective and preventative magic

Social Relations and an Insecure Environment
• Strong and relatively egalitarian husband-wife relationships
• The moral superiority of women and marianismo
• kindreds and sibling relationships may be mistrustful
• compadre relationships

Critical Concepts: 3rd Segment

Films
Sex
War
Dispute Settlement
Religion
Acculturation
Web Readings

Films
Some Women of Marrakech
· Religious teaching about male dominance
· Separate lives of men and women
· Restrictions on women (purdah)
· Rural-urban contrasts

The Ax Fight
· The hidden role of women
· Maintenance of honor
· Control of violence

Kingdom in the Jungle
· Brazilian and Venezuelan economic contrasts
· Change will come but give them a choice
· The expanding frontier

Sex
Male and Female Differences
•Warnings (mean & variation, fallacy, destiny)
•What does a mean difference mean (variance issues)
•Are universal difference biological differences
•Biology and destiny
•Naturalistic fallacy

Major Areas of Focus
•Anatomical
•Physiological
    Morphological and Physiological Differences: exploring dimorphism
    Muscle and fat proportions
    Aerobic differences
•Psychological (cognitive)
•Developmental
•Behavioral (especially sexual behavior)
•Division of labor
•Institutional (status)

Sexual Selection
•Intrasexual
•Intersexual
•Male and female differences in terms of
    · Standards of attractiveness
    · Attitudes towards sex
    · Bases of sexual jealousy

Important Similarities in Desirable Characteristics
·  kindness
·  understanding
·  intelligence

· Theoretical Views
Promiscuity (it takes two to tango and the problem in questionnaire research)
Focus on youth or status
The double standard

Homosexuality
Causes of sexual orientation is the fundamental issue
·  Biological and genetic causes
·  Recent research on 2d:4d ratios and birth order (each additional brother increases probability by 33%)
·  Heritability
·  Environmental causes: prison living
·  Politics and the science you believe
·  Zapotecs and the third sex (muxe): a culturally validated status

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
Averageness
Neotenous characteristics
Waist to hip ratio
Fluctuating asymmetry
    Correlations with health and reproductive capacity
Arbitrary cultural standards (foot binding, tatooing, tanning, & surgery)

Warfare (back)

“Primitive” and modern warfare
Embers’ findings: resource competition & fear and mistrust
Proximate causes of Yanomamö warfare
Warfare and blood revenge
The Third World War: nations of the fourth world
Netsilik aggression
A tale of two Zapotec villages: La Paz and San Andres

Conflict Resolution (back)
Gossip, ridicule and song duels among the Netsilik
The Kpelle house palaver and neighborhood justice – a focus on reconciliation
Yanomamö dueling

Religion (back)

Functions of religion
·  Explanation
·  Sense of purpose
·  Moral code

General conceptions of forces
·  Animism
·  Animatism

Magic
·  Sympathetic
·  Contagious

Yanomamö Religion

·  Four-layered conception of the world and heaven and hell
·  Creation myths
·  Jaguar myths and invention of social traditions and relations
·  Complex conception of the soul
·  Endocannibalism: dead relatives are buried in the bodies of the living
·  How to become a shaman and divining and curing


Zapotec Religion


Catholicism with some traditional beliefs
Family centered fiestas revolve around rites of passage
Community-Centered fiesta revolve around patron saints and status achievement
Participation as sponsor or paying guest important for social status



Netsilik Religion


Complex nature of the human soul and the importance of animals souls.
Powerful gods are largely dangerous or indifferent to humans.
World view (cosmology)
Creation myths
Tunrit beliefs
Beliefs about their position in the world and the afterlife:
    life is a struggle for food and clothing and must deal with bad luck in hunting and terrible weather
Complexity of the taboo system, especially in relation to hunting

 


Intellectual Property and Tribal People
Many of the innovations we use were invented or developed my native peoples
With the advent of biological prospecting they fear their inventions will be stolen

Patenting living things including human genes
Call for collaboration between scientists, pharmaceuticals, and nations
The difficulty of enforcement
 

Acculturation (back)


The Process of Contact
· Disease
· Depopulation
· Dependency (tools)
· Development
    · Ethnocide
    · Further loss of autonomy
· Degradation


Web Readings (back)


Biased Focus? A New Interpretation of the Upper Paleolithic Venus Figurines
    Venus figurines: male pornography or celebration of female achievement and status?
    Assumptions: made by men, gross features as the focus, and expression of male interest.
    Examination of fine features showing weaving and plaiting of hair and garments.
    Theories can help us see and they can blind us.


Intellectual Property
A new mode of colonialism
The value of native knowledge
The difficulties of compensation