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Anthropology

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Anthropology & Culture The study of humans & cultures Throughout the world Societies of past and present Anthropology uses both biology and culture – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Anthropology


1
Anthropology Culture
  • The study of humans cultures
  • Throughout the world
  • Societies of past and present
  • Anthropology uses both biology and culture
  • Key approaches specific approach, fieldwork,
    comparative method
  • Primary contribution to social sciences concept
    of culture
  • What anthropologists produce ethnographies,
    policies

2
Concept of culture
  • Examples of ways culture is used.

3
Cow worship in India
4
Culture as a way of life
  • Behaviors, beliefs, meanings
  • Material, mental, and social products
  • Characteristics
  • Shared and integrated
  • learned (not human nature)
  • Symbolic and relative
  • Adaptive and dynamic
  • Ethnocentrism v. cultural relativism, critical
    cultural relativism

5
E.B. Tylor
  • Culture or civilization, taken in its wide
    ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which
    includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
    custom, and any other capabilities and habits
    acquired my man as a member of society.
  • E. B. Tylor 1871

6
Clifford Geertz
  • Culture is the framework of beliefs, expressive
    symbols, and values in terms of which individuals
    define their feelings and make their judgements
    ( Clifford Geertz AmericanAnthropologist
    5932-54).

7
Culture
  • culture of a people can be understood as the
    system of shared ideas and meanings, explicit and
    implicit, which a people use to interpret the
    world and which serve to pattern their behavior.

8
Culture
  • Culture is a system
  • Culture is a process
  • Implicit/ tacit ( internal)
  • Explicit (external)

9
Cultural Ecology
  • Ecology ? cultural ecology
  • Humans in interaction with their environment
  • Adaptive strategies ? culture as dynamic process
  • environmental setting
  • technology (tools, techniques, knowledge)
  • worldview
  • external forces and institutions

10
  • Adaptation, be it biological or cultural,
    represents a better fit to specific, local
    environments, not an inevitable stage in a ladder
    of progresswheels, like wings, fins, and brains,
    are exquisite devices for certain purposes, not
    signs of intrinsic superiority."  -Stephen
    Jay Gould, 1983

11
Key Issues
  • Carrying capacity upper limit on production and
    population in a given environment
  • Sustainability, stress
  • Cultural basis of conflict
  • Resources as factors in conflict

12
Kurds
13
.Most of them live in I22245ran, Turkey,
Armenia, Syria and Iraq.
  • There are an estimated 25 million Kurds
    throughout the world.Most of them live in Iran,
    Turkey, Armenia, Syria and Iraq.

14
Robert Breneman Kurds
  • Can you identify the regions he lived and did
    research ?
  • Defining the region geographically and culturally
  • (marked by mountains, desert, river and ocean)
  • How are the regions defined and why? For example,
    Middle East.
  • Importance of Middle East

15
Middle East
  • The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent
    (Mesopotamia) and Pharaonic Egypt were the first
    to develop agriculture, writing, codified law,
    and complex social structure.The Golden Age of
    Islam brought advances in mathematics, astronomy,
    literature, and philosophy to Europe, Asia, and
    Africa.The dominant monotheistic traditions of
    today were all originated in the Middle East

16
Contemporary Issues in the Middle East
  • Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
  • Resource problems e.g., petroleum, water,
    landEthnic tensions (e.g., genocide in Sudan,
    oppression of Kurds)Israeli-Palestinian
    conflictRise of Islamist states and
    fundamentalist movements
  • Kurds language and ethnicity
  • Language family
  • Cultural history migrations, contact, and
    settlements) corresponds to language
    distribution

17
Kurds
  • Strong ethnic, tribal, cultural, local identity
  • Role of the family and larger kinship
    unitsStatus of womenImpact of nomadic
    pastoralist traditionCity versus country
    cultureCustoms related to power, such as
    patriarchy
  • Importance of religion KoranTension between
    local culture and pan-Arab/pan-Muslim movements
  • Polygyny is associated with Islam, but is
    strongly cultural.
  •  

18
Various resources
  • http//www.merip.org/http//www.arab.net/index.ht
    mlhttp//www.mideastinfo.com/http//www.dfait-ma
    eci.gc.ca/middle_east/countries-en.asp
  •  
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