Schools of Thought in Cultural Anthropology

HSP 3M

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Schools of Thought in Cultural Anthropology

• Cultural anthropologists develop theories to make sense of the evidence they have gathered.
• Sometimes they start with a theory and look for evidence but most anthropologists start with an interest in a topic, and as they research, they find that they are part of a school of thought.

Cultural Relativism �Franz Boas

• Franz Boas, a pioneer of modern anthropology in the early twentieth century, promoted the idea of cultural relativism, stating that an anthropologist cannot compare two cultures because each culture has its own internal rules that must be accepted. Everyone sees other cultures through the lens of their own culture.

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Cultural Relativism

• For example, if you were born and raised in the United States, you might view Canada differently than if you were born and raised in Canada.
• Boaz urged anthropologists to understand cultures on their own terms and avoid snap judgements about other practices.

Cultural Relativism

• Cultural relativism was a response to cultural evolutionism (the theory that all cultures evolve from “savage” to “barbarian” to “civilized”), which assumed an ETHNOCENTRIC view that nineteenth-century European culture was superior to all others.

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(Ethnocentric: believing that one’s own culture is superior to all others)

Functional Theory

• The idea that every belief, action, or relationship in a culture functions to meet the needs of individuals.
• This theory stresses the importance of interdependence among all things within a social system to ensure its long-term survival.

Malinowski

• Malinowski saw functional theory at work in the Trobriand Islands during WWI. Every year, there was a ceremonial exchange of a necklace and an arm band between two men on each island in the South Pacific.
• What seemed to be a highly ceremonial exchange had very real economic, social, and political functions, serving the needs of the individuals and the whole society (Schwimmer, 2007).

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Why?

• What seemed to be a highly ceremonial exchange had very real economic, social, and political functions, serving the needs of the individuals and the whole society (Schwimmer, 2007).
• Malinowski discovered that the jewellery travelled the entire circle of the islands in two different directions, linking distant individuals in what he called the “Kula Ring”.

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Cultural Materialism

• It was pioneered by Marvin Harris in the 1960s.

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• The theory states that materials or conditions within the environment (for example, climate, food supply, geography) influence how a culture develops, creating the ideas and ideology of culture FIGURE 1-13 page 29

According to Harris, culture develops in three stages

From Figure 1-13 (Haskings-Winner, Page 29)

Cultural Materialism

• Cultural materialism believe that society develops on a trial-and-error basis.
• If something is not of value to a society’s ability to produce or reproduce, then it will disappear from society altogether.
• Therefore, institutions, such as the law, government, and religion, must be beneficial to society or they will no longer exist.

Cultural Materialism Criticism

• One criticism of cultural materialism is that ignores spiritual considerations or that humans are thinking beings. Therefore, it is too simplistic.

Harris applied this theory to the Hindu belief in the sacred cow. �

• Among Hindus in India, the cow is a sacred animal that cannot be eaten. Harris found that cows are used in India for important agricultural work, pulling plows, and hauling heavy loads.
• This important function influences decisions about the best way to use a cow and contributes to the belief that cows are sacred and should not be eaten.

Maxine Margolis’s Research in North America, 1984

• This research supports the theory that material conditions change before ideas change.
• She studied women’s roles in postwar America and found that, even though the cultural ideal in the 1950s was for women into the workforce.
• Women’s material activities (in this case, going to work)drove the ideological changes of the feminist movement of the 1960s, not the other way around (Margolis, 1984)

Q. How would Margolis explain the differences between the two photographs below.

An equal rights protest in the United States in 1968. For more information, about this particular photo visit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/01/1968theyearofrevolt.gender1

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The stay at home wife and mother was the cultural ideal for women in the 1950s.

Feminist Anthropology

• By the 1970s, feminist anthropologists were re-examined anthropology to ensure that female voices were heard and included in research.
• They also compared cultures to see how many were dominated by men, how many were dominated by women, and how many were egalitarian.

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Ernestine Friedl

• Ernestine Friedl, an American feminist Anthropologist, concluded that in forager societies, the amount of freedom women had was strongly tied to their contributions to the food supply.
• Men and women are relatively equal in societies where women gather most of the food (i.e. foraging), but men are more dominant and women have less control over their lives and choices in hunting societies

Feminist Anthropology Today

• Today, feminist anthropologists continue to look at how cultures determine gender roles, try to debunk gender myths, and show how our ideas about gender are CULTURALLY CONSTRUCTED, that is created by the culture, not biology.
• They also look at how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation are constructed in various societies and the effect of those ideas on marginalized people (Lavenda and Shultz, 2010)

Postmodernism

• Is the theory that influences a number of disciplines, including anthropology.
• It is a belief that it is impossible to have any “true” knowledge about the world
• What we “know” about the world is our own construction, created by society.

Postmodernists

• Postmodernists try to deconstruct, or break down, what a society believes to be true.
• Postmodernists believe that anthropologists can’t study their subjects in a detached or objective way because of the personal relationships that develop between the anthropologist and informants during participant observation.
• Postmodernists practice reflexivity

Modern Postmodernisim

• Since the 1980s, postmodern anthropologists have more and more been doing research in their own cultural settings.
• Some of the recent research has focused on understanding the immigrant experience in urban Canada

(For example, defining the Italian cultural spaces in Toronto.)

Sam Dunn - a Canadian Anthropologist and Director

• Sam Dunn is a Canadian on SUBCULTURE of heavy metal music and heavy metal fans (sometimes called headbangers or metalheads)
• He explains in his two films, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2006) and Global Metal (2008)how his passion for heavy metal music led him to conduct his research at home and around the world.

Dunn

• Dunn’s work is an example of multisited fieldwork (fieldwork conducted in more than one location), studying a culture that crosses national and ethnic boundaries.
• Dunn is an insider in the headbanger culture and shows reflexivity in his documentary, frequently discussing how his own bias as a metal fan is affecting his research.
• Heavy metal fans are part of a worldwide community who absorb the music and transform it into a new form of cultural expression (Dunn, 2008)

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Subculture

• A small group within a larger group who shares a common system of values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and lifestyle distinct from those of the larger group.
• Heavy metal fans, part of a worldwide community who absorb the music and transform it into a new form of cultural expression (Dunn, 2008)

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Question to Consider

• Do you think it is possible for a researcher who is a member of the culture he or she is studying to conduct reliable research?