Chapter 4 Enculturation

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Chapter 4 Enculturation
Parades around the world Upper left China Bottom
left Nigeria Upper right Germany Bottom left
USA
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Objectives from last time

• How is culture ingrained in children?
• What did the following people contribute to the
  study of culture
• Sigmund Freud
• Margaret Mead
• Ruth Benedict
• Define cognitive anthropology and structuralism
  as theoretical approaches.
• Is culture prescriptive, or do people have a
  choice over their behavior?

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Enculturation and Emotion

• To what degree does enculturation influence
  emotions?
• Does happiness, anger, grief vary from society to
  society?
• Mead and Benedict culture influences emotions
• Psychological anthropologists biology
  influences emotions
• Interactionist sadness, anger, happiness,
  surprise are four cross-cultural emotions

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Mental Illness

• Is there a universal concept of normal and
  abnormal behavior?
• Early 20th century psychosis and neurosis were
  universal
• Benedict criteria of abnormality reflect the
  particular culture
• Culture-specific disorders
• Latah, amok, windigo, pibloktoq
• Biological and cultural variables

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Limits of Enculturation

• Enculturation is not completely determinative
• Different talents
• Different responses to environmental stimuli
• Without it, though, people are unable to think,
  behave, and develop emotionally in order to
  function in society.
• Variation
• Not all people are enculturated in the same way
• Norms do not dictate behavior
• Culture is always changing

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Chapter 6 Anthropological Theories
Top B. Malinowski, L.H. Morgan, E.B. Tylor, L.
White, C. Geertz Bottom F. Boas, A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown, J. Steward, M. Harris
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Todays Objectives

• What are the differences between 19th and 20th
  century anthropological theories?
• Are any of these theories adequate to explain
  culture, human behavior, or the structure of
  society?

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19th Century Evolutionism

• Unilineal Evolution
• Edward B. Tylor
• Savagery -gt barbarism -gt civilization
• Lewis Henry Morgan
• Kinship theories
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Racist
• Unclear about biological evolution

E.B. Tylor
L.H. Morgan
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Diffusionism

• British Diffusionism
• Culture originated in Egypt
• German Diffusionism
• Culture originated in several spots
• Diffused in circles
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Racist
• Assumption of spread of culture

Yellow - Clovis Pink - Mousterian Green -
Oldowon Purple - Acheulean Blue - Bamboo tools
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Historical Particularism

• Franz Boas
• Reaction against unilineal evolutionists
• Developed ideas of
• historical particularism
• cultural relativism
• Created new research strategies
• Participant-observation
• Worked in all four fields of anthropology
• Trained other anthropologists
• Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict
• Whats wrong with this approach?

Boas demonstrating a Kwakiutl dance
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Functionalism

• Structural-Functionalism
• A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
• Social institutions serve societys needs
• Psychological Functionalism
• Bronislaw Malinowski
• Society functions to serve the individuals needs
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Why are societies similar/different?
• Cant explain culture change

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Bronislaw Malinowski
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Functionalism A Model
Culture
The Whole Organs Individuals
Politics
Religion
Marriage
Economy
?
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Culture-and-Personality School

• 1930s and 1940s biological determinism
• Culture-and-personality guided by the idea that
  each culture is characterized by a dominant
  personality type.
• Example Ruth Benedict and the Plains and Pueblo
  Indians
• Apollonian and Dionysian
• Megalomaniacs and paranoids
• Culture of a group can be examined
• through individuals

Ruth Benedict
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20th Century Evolutionism

• AKA neo-evolutionism
• Led by Leslie White of U Mich
• Sociocultural systems evolved in relation to the
  amount of energy captured and used by members of
  society.
• E.g. agricultural systems
• Cultural ecology
• Julian Steward
• AKA ecological anthropology
• Focuses on how cultures adapt to environment

Top Leslie White Bottom Julian Steward
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20th Century Evolutionism

• Whats good about this approach?
• Rejected L.H. Morgans and E.B. Tylors
  assumptions
• Not ethnocentric
• Not racist
• Influenced by other developments in science
• Whats bad about this approach?
• Only focuses on the environment
• Culture change only occurs through adaptations

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Structuralism

• To investigate the thought processes of the human
  mind in a universal context.
• Founded by Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1940s
• Humans classify the world with binary oppositions
  (raw/cooked, hot/cold, nature/culture)
• Universalist structure of the mind produces
  similar thinking and cognition throughout the
  world
• Looked at kinship, mythology, cuisine, table
  manners

Claude Levi-Strauss
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Cultural Materialism

• Marvin Harris
• Refined the neo-evolutionist approach of White
  and Steward
• Key ideas in materialism are
• Infrastructure technology
• Structure domestic and political economies
• Superstructure non-material culture
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Ignores social, political, religious values
• Technologically deterministic
• Neglects the idea of symbolism

Marvin Harris
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Marxist Anthropology

• Marxs evolutionary scheme of societal
  development
• Based on L.H. Morgans unilineal evolutionist
  idea
• Marxist stages tribal, Asiatic, feudal,
  capitalist, socialist, communist
• Form of materialism
• Class struggle important to change in society
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Marxs model of societal evolution

Karl Marx
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Symbolic Anthropology

• Study of culture through interpretation of the
  meaning of the symbols, values, and beliefs of a
  society.
• Human behavior cannot be explained by means of
  the scientific method.
• Goal is to interpret symbols within the
  worldviews of that society.
• Called an emic approach
• Reminiscent of Boass particularism and
  relativism
• Thick description interpreting relationship
  among symbols
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Focuses exclusively on symbols
• Human behavior explained by meaning of symbols

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Cognitive Anthropology

• Study of cognition and cultural meanings to
  discover unconscious classification systems that
  structure human thinking processes.
• Developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Examples
• Kinship terminology
• Colors (Berlin and Kay)
• black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown,
  purple, pink, orange, and grey
• simple societies will have few color words
  (white/black) evolutionary sequence
• complex societies will have numerous color
  words (red, green, blue, yellow . . . To colors
  found in a J. Crew catalogue)
• Bird (Boster) and insect classification

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Psychoanalytic Anthropology
Sigmund Freud

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Human behavior reflects innate emotions
• Id sex and aggression, basic needs
• Ego conscious personality
• Superego your conscience
• Neo-Freudian approaches to anthro
• Melvin Spiro and the Trobrianders
• Attempt to study relationship among unconscious
  thoughts, emotions, and motives of humans (id and
  superego).

Trobriand Woman
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Sociobiology

• Very recent theory (1970s)
• Study of the biological basis of social behavior
• Led to evolutionary psychology
• Darwinian assumptions
• Interested in general strategies of behavior
• Like ethologists for humans

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Sociobiology - Examples

• Sexual behavior
• Humans have to procreate
• What are the cultural practices and values
  related to sexuality?
• Can be modified by learning experiences
• Inclusive fitness
• Maximization of fitness of species
• Kin selection favoring your relatives
  (nepotism)
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• Idea of innate predispositions (not learning)
• Presents situations not found in nature

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Evolutionary Psychology

• Nature/nurture paradox
• Draws on ethnography, psychology, and
  evolutionary theory
• Human mind is not passive, but adapts and reacts
  to culture and environment
• During the Palaeolithic, mind and culture
  co-evolved
• Genetically evolved predispositions
• Intuitive understanding of biology and physics
• Interest in soap operas and reality TV

Palaeolithic Tools Reality TV
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Feminist Anthropology

• Developed in the 1960s and 1970s
• Reaction to the feminist movement in the U.S.
• Emphasizes that gender roles are important in
  ethnographic research.
• Questions assumptions regarding male and female
  behavior based on biological differences.
• Created general awareness of gender in
  anthropology.
• Nature/culture opposition ?/??
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• From androcentric to gynocentric
• Some discount biology entirely
• Only women can research women

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Postmodernism

• How do we know what we know?
• Principles
• Scientific participant-observer is flawed
• There is no true objectivity in anthropology
• Interpretive model does not work
• Should talk to people themselves
• Some famous postmodernists
• Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus,
  Kent Flannery, Michael Fischer
• Whats wrong with this approach?
• How will we ever know anything?
• PoMos have exaggerated the past mistakes of
  ethnographers.

Clifford Geertz
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Materialism versus Culturalism

• Reflects difference between scientific approach
  and humanistic-interpretive approach.
• Materialists
• Focus on technology, environment, biology
• Includes cultural materialists, Marxists,
  sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists
• Culturalists
• Includes structuralists, psychological
  anthropologists, symbolic and cognitive
  anthropologists, postmodernists