Keyed to Readings, Films, and Lectures
Page Table of Contents
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.
Culture
- Cultural and ethical relativism
- Ethnocentrism
- Participant observation
- Key informant
- Tribal populations
- Holism
- Strengths and weaknesses in an ethnographic approach
- Chimp and human culture: what's the difference? Learning styles and language for culture transmission
- Emics and etics
- Cultural universals (e.g., facial expressions of emotion)
Culture and Genes or Gene-Culture Interaction
- Cultural mediation (cooking food leads to genetic change in gut, teeth, etc.)
- Genetic mediation (basic color terms or how genes influence the content of culture, facial expessions of emotion)
- Cultural traits biologically adaptive and not adaptive
- Psychological mechanisms to transmit culture
Direct bias (assess the utility of the trait)
Frequency dependent bias (conform to what others are doing)
Indirect bias (do what role models or high status people do)
- Evolution means descent with modification
- Dual system of inheritance (biological and cultural heritages interact to make us uniquely human)
- Spices and preservation (an example of a cultural trait than enhances fitness)
Cultural Evolution
- Simple to complex and from generalized to specialized
- Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states
- Religion: ethnic, theocratic, and universalistic
- Exchange: reciprocity, redistribution & market exchange
- Status: accomplishments to hereditary inequality
- Self help to law
- Trends in cultural evolution
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 (or adaptations)
- Cold stress
- Lack of plant resources
- Complex technology
- Seasonal variation in resource availability and movement to resources
Yanomamö Environmental Problems and Solutions (adaptations)
- Yanomamö Environmental Problems and Solutions (adaptations)
- Gardening in the context of poor soils
- Difficulties in acquiring wild plants and animals
Yanomamö Ethnography
- Significance of warfare and its reflection in many cultural domains
- Contrasting leadership styles: Kaobawa and Moawa.
- Alliances
- Moves (macro and micro)
- Economy: gardening, hunting, gathering, and fishing
- Division of labor
- Genealogies and the problem of personal names and related ethical issues
- How an ethnographer adapts to another culture and achieves rapport
- Simple technology
Netsilik Ethnography
- Ethnography and historical reconstruction
- Stone, bone, snow, and skin complexes
- Clothing manufacture and food preservation as important kinds of technology
- The arctic as a variable environment and mapping on to resources
- Lack of vegetable construction materials
- Technology in action
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 (communal land)
- Sexual patterns of inheritance
- Methods of saving
- Sexual division of labor: agricultural production, vending, and wage labor
- The market and selling
Films and Reading
Chimpanzee Culture
- Tools, Greetings, and Medicine
- Learning: social facilitation, emulation, and imitation
- Females: diffusion of traits and greater tool use
Garden of Eden
- Labor time in the past
- The waning importance of warfare
- Lack of resource conservation because of simple technology and low resource demand
A Man Called Bee
- Working with a sovereign people
- Trade goods
- Political evolution and village size
- Micro and Macro moves
Of Cannibals, Kings and Culture: The Problem of Ethnocentricity
- Small boy giving orders and inequality
- Brazilian aboriginals looking and us and making judgements
- Are there objective moral facts?
Critical Concepts for Segment 2
Lecture Topics
- Marriage:
socially imposed monogamy
ecologically imposed monogamy
polygyny
polyandry
burden of marriage
endogamy/exogamy
conjugal fund
post marital residence
love and marriage
-
Marital choice for men and women
-
Economic dependence and independence
-
Romantic criteria and independence
Family Forms and Dynamics:
nuclear
extended (stem and joint)
matrifocal
sororate
levirate
decay of the nuclear family
function of the family
Goody's model of bride price and dowry systems
- Marriage Transactions:
dowry
exchange of females
bride price
indirect dowry
bride service
gift exchange
Kinship and Descent
sociocentric and egocentric status terms
kinship diagrams (circles, triangles, etc.)
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)
The incest taboo
proximate versus ultimate causes
Westermarck effect
inbreeding depression
sim pua and parallel cousin marriages
Biblical and Western incest prohibitions
Films:
- Dadi's Family: family organization and dynamics and marriage in a male farming system
- The Mende: family and marriage in a female farming system
Netsilik
Social Organization
dyadic relationships or partnerships
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
nuclear family decay (roles of divorce and mortality)
patrilocal marriage in relation to warfare
yöbömou female puberty ceremony
child betrothal
Shamatari and Namoweiteri contrasts in to relatedness and social cohesiveness
following marriage rules
village size and warfare
village fissioning
rule breaking in marriage
kin relations and solidarity
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
ü chaperoning
ü civil and church weddings and elopement
ü mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships
ü importance of virginity
ü a woman's status: from motherhood to mother-in-law
- Death
ü supernatural causes of death
ü curanderas, pharmacists, and doctors
ü mourning for the death: family and kin obligations
- Avoiding Danger and Misfortune: consequences of land poverty and high levels of physical aggression:
ü avoid arousing envy
ü household fortification
ü use of protective and preventative magic
- Social Relations and an Insecure Environment
ü Strong and relatively egalitarian husband-wife relationships
ü The moral superiority of women and marianismo
ü kindreds and sibling relationships may be mistrustful
ü compadre relationships
Critical Concepts: 3rd Segment
- Films
- Sex
- War
- Dispute Settlement
- Religion
- Acculturation
- Web Readings
- Films
- Protein and warfare
- Bellicose and refugee strategies
- Warfare, marriage, and abduction
- Modes of Reciprocity (exchange):
ü generalized
ü balanced
ü negative
-
Evolution
· Descent with modification or a change in frequency of genes in a gene pool
· Adaptation or solutions to environmental problems (physical and social)
· Natural selection or differential reproduction
· Mutation or a change in a gene
· Not all traits are adaptive (consider the chin)
· Individuals designed to be reproductively selfish
Some Women of Marrakech
ü Religious teaching about male dominance
ü Separate lives of men and women
ü Restrictions on women (purdah)
ü Rural-urban contrasts
- The Ax Fight
ü The hidden role of women
ü Maintenance of honor
ü Control of violence
- Kingdom in the Jungle
ü Brazilian and Venezuelan economic contrasts
ü Change will come but give them a choice
ü The expanding frontier
- Sex
ü Male and Female Differences
ü Warnings (mean & variation, fallacy, destiny)
ü What does a mean difference mean (variance issues)
ü Are universal difference biological differences
ü Biology and destiny
ü Naturalistic fallacy
- Major Areas of Focus
ü Anatomical
ü Physiological
ü Morphological and Physiological Differences: exploring dimorphism
ü Muscle and fat proportions
ü Aerobic differences
- Psychological (cognitive)
ü Vision
ü Language production and understanding
ü Hearing
- Developmental males slower to attain developmental benchmarks
- Behavioral
ü Sexual behavior
ü Division of labor
- Institutional (status)
- Male and female differences in terms of
ü Standards of attractiveness
ü Attitudes towards sex
ü Bases of sexual jealousy
- Important Similarities in Desirable Characteristics
ü kindness
ü understanding
ü intelligence
- Important Differences in Sexual Behavior and Standards
ü Promiscuity (it takes two to tango and the problem in questionnaire research)
ü Focus on youth or status
ü The double standard
- Homosexuality
ü Causes of sexual orientation is the fundamental issue
ü Biological and genetic causes
ü Recent research on 2d:4d ratios and birth order (each additional brother increases probability by 33%)
ü Heritability
ü Environmental causes: prison living
ü Politics and the science you believe
ü Zapotecs and the third sex (muxe): a culturally validated status
Dispute Settlement and Warfare
- Tribal compared to modern warfare
- Social Substituability
- Ember's Findings on resource insecurity and fear and mistrust
- Proximate causes of Yanomamö warfare
- Yanomamö warfare and blood revenge
- Netsilik aggression
- A tale of two Zapotec villages: La Paz and San Andres
- Conflict Resolution
Gossip, ridicule and song duels among the Netsilik
ü The Kpelle house palaver and neighborhood justice ? a focus on reconciliation
ü Yanomamö dueling
Critical Concepts: 4th Segment
Religion, Morality, and Cross Cultural Psychology
Elements of Religion
General conceptions of forces & entities
Animism and animatism
Magic is any form of interaction with the supernatural
- Sympathetic
- Contagious
Functions of religion:
- Explanation
- Sense of purpose
- Moral code (probably the most important especially in complex societies)
- Ecology (becoming better adapted to the environment)
Rites of passage to mark and celebrate changes of status
The spread and domination of Christianity and Islam
- Proselytize
- Independent of ethic boundaries
High and Moral Gods
- Created the world
- All seeing, knowing, present, and powerful
- Concerned with morality
- Associated with complex social organizations where anonymous people must interact
- But in small scale societies your reputation keeps you honest
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 but must be respected through prayer and offerings
World view (cosmology) and 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
- The Third World War: nations of the fourth world
Fourth World
- Nations and States
- States suppress nations
- Nations lack representation within states
Acculturation and The Process of Contact for Tribal Peoples
- Disease
- Depopulation
- Dependency (e.g., tools)
- Development
- Ethnocide
- Further loss of autonomy
- Degradation
Contact, Change, and Acculturation
Netsilik:
- Decrease in hunting cooperation as a consequence of modern weapons
- Reliance on Canadian government for food and social services
- Becoming more sedentary
Yanomamo
- Population concentration around mission stations leading to resource shortages and pollution
- Improved medical care, but Chagnon's model of contact and disease is questionable
- Missionaries: Catholics and evangelicals have different goals
- Creation of new needs: steel goods
- Brazilian gold rush and 1993 hashimo massacre
- Awarness of outside world and NGO's and Davi Kopenawa appeal to world
We are Mehinaku
Series of rituals establishing a "mythological charter" especially in relation to males and females in terms of
- Status
- Power
- Conflict
- Dependency