ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Fall 2004, Week 1.1

• Pass out course syllabi & contracts

• Discuss course requirements

• Answer questions

• Collect completed contracts

• Look through Kottak textbook

• Look through Ishi and book report material

That’s all for today!

Anthropology 120

Fall 2004, Week 1.2

Thursday, September 2, 2004

What is Anthropology
and What Good Is It?

• Definition of Anthropology

• The culture concept

• Labor: the core of culture

Definition of Anthropology

• anthropos = man, logos = study

• anthropology is the study of man

• criticism: this leaves out half of our species

Definition of Anthropology

• Frank Worduck: “ study of old bones, broken pots, and bare breasted women”

• this isn’t any better

Definition of Anthropology

• Ruyle: “the scientific and humanistic study of, by, and for humanity”

scientific and humanistic study

• science: the objective study of reality through observation, description, and measurement

• humanism: centers on human beings and their values and capabilities - art, music, literature, and philosophy

of humanity

• Comparative perspective

• Time depth

• Holistic perspective

• Fieldwork perspective

• a defining aspect of humanity is culture

the culture concept

• popular concept (humanistic): the best that has been thought and said in the world, the “higher” achievements of a civilization, its art, music, literature, and philosophy

• anthropological concept (scientific): everything that people learn as members of a society, including technology, economics, and politics as well as art, music, etc.

Tylor’s definition of culture

• 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 by man as a member of society. The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind, in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of the laws of human thought and action.

labor: the culture core

• Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an outgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.;

labor: the culture core

• that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art and even the ideas on religion of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa, as has hitherto been the case.

labor: the culture core

• Engels, "Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx" quoted from Selsam, Goldway, and Martel, DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL CHANGE, p.30

by humanity

• ethnocentrism & Eurocentrism

• viricentrism and androcentrism

• elitism

for humanity

• must benefit human beings

• or not harm them

That’s it for today

Anthropology 120

Week 2.1

Tuesday, September 7, 2003

Question for Midterm

• As noted in lecture, Puvungna is >>> [A] a tribe in South America [B] a mythical country inhabited by ghost spirits [C] the Indian village that formerly occupied much of what is now the CSULB campus [D] the great god of the Yanomamo people [E] a well known Danish anthropologist.

Question for Midterm

• [C] the Indian village that formerly occupied much of what is now the CSULB campus

California: The Other Coast

• From “500 Nations,” hosted by Kevin Costner

Lies, Bribes, and Archaeology

• Puvungna

• The Organic Gardens

• the “West Village Center”

• the Gabrielino/Tongva

• the Juaneño/Acjachemen

• Chungichnish

• NAGPRA

NAGPRA

• Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act

• CSULB Repatriation Committee

• The Los Altos Collection [LAn-270]

Question for Midterm

As discussed in lecture, NAGPRA stands for >>> [A] a group of militant Indians [B] the national association of archaeologists [C] a law requiring the protection of Indian graves and the repatriation of Indian remains [D] a new technique for studying skulls [E] in fact, NAGPRA is a group that studies UFOs.

ANSWER

[C] a law requiring the protection of Indian graves and the repatriation of Indian remains

That’s all for today!

• Don’t forget, Book Reports are due next class

• Thursday, September 9

• At the start of class…

Anthropology 120
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Fall 2004, Wk 2.2

Thursday, September 11, 2003

TURN IN BOOK REPORTS!

Listen to KPFK 90.7 FM

VIDEO:

The History Book

Part One: A Flickering Light in the Darkness

(about 20 min)

The basis of science

Did you ever wonder why?

Historical, comparative perspective

look beneath the surface

Materialism

Not the same as consumerism

A strategy for analyzing human societies

social labor as the basis of human society

class analysis

landlords and priests

vs

peasants and craftsmen

Mechanisms of class rule

exploitation (rent)

violence (soldiers)

thought control (priests)

Feudalism and Capitalism

Who was Karl Marx?

• Lived in the 19th century

• Heir to the Enlightenment

• Spent most of life in exile, in London

• Wrote “The Communist Manifesto”
(with Fred Engels)

• Wrote “Das Kapital”

• Inspired revolutionaries throughout
20th century

Frederick Engels

• Wrote “Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”

• Based on the work of the American Anthropologist, Lewis Henry Morgan

Components of Marxism

• Scientific component

• Political component: socialism

• Philosophical component: atheism

Next Time

• the culture concept

• symbols

• the Iroquois

Anthropology 120
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Fall 2004, Wk 3.1

Tuesday, September 14, 2003

PICK UP BOOK REPORTS

AFTER CLASS

(and turn in late Book Reports)

VIDEO:

How the West Was Lost

The Iroquois

(about 20 min)

The Iroquois

1. influence on U.S. culture and politics

2. influence on social theory

The Iroquois

class equality

(ancestral communism)

gender equality

(matriarchy)

mariarchy & power

patriarchal definition of power

ability to coerce others

feminist definition of power

control over one’s own productive and reproductive abilities

What Is Culture?

1. popular or humanistic definition

2. scientific definition

popular, or humanisic definition

• Matthew Arnold -- a knowledge of the best that has been thought and said in ther world, an ability to see life steadily and see it whole

• A. Lawrenece Lowell -- “enjoyment of the things the world has agreed are beautiful; interest in the knowledge that mankind has found valuable; comprehension of the principles that the race has accepted as true”

more

• historians often use the term in a related manner, to refer to the so-called “higher” achievements of group life or of a period of history—specifically art, music, literature, philosophy, religion, and science.

anthropological definition

• much broader-- culture means not only the so-called “higher” achievements of groups life—art, religion, science, and the rest—but all the achievements of group life. It includes not only sonnets and symphonies and statues but also trinkets and tomahawks and tractors …

• This is the scientific definition.

Kottak:

• "culture: Traditions and customs that govern behavior and beliefs; distinctly human; transmitted through learning."

Leslie White

• By culture we mean an extrasomatic, temporal continuum, of things and events dependent upon symboling. Specifically and concretely, culture consists of tools, implements, utensils, clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of art, language, etc. All peoples in all times and places have possessed culture; no other species has or has had culture. …

symbols

We call the ability freely and arbitrarily to originate and bestow meaning upon a thing or event, and, correspondingly, the ability to grasp and appreciate such meaning, the ability of symbol. … (holy water example) Symboling, therefore, consists of trafficking in meaning by nonsensory means. White, Evolution of Culture, 1959, p 3

Clifford Geertz

• Believing, like Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (Geertz 1973:5)

"thick description"

• Anthropology, or at least interpretive anthropology, is a science whose progress is marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other. (Geertz 1973:29)

Marvin Harris

• Culture is actones, episodes, nodes, nodal chains, scenes, serials, nonoclones, permaclones, paragroups, nonoclonic types, permaclonic types, permaclonic systems, and permaclonic supersystems. . . . The Nature of Cultural Things, p. 168.

culture is:

• learned, not innate

• symbolic, not genetic

• shared, not purely individualistic

• integrated, not “a thing of shreds and patches”, but also diverse, variable, changing, and contradictory

• real vs. ideal culture

Where does culture come from?

• even the most materialistic natural scientists of the Darwinian school are still unable to form any clear idea of the origin of man, because under this ideological influence they do not recognize the part that has been played therein by labor.

Frederick Engels

• First labour, after it and then with it speech -- these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect.

• Engels, On the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

What is labor?

• The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments....

• Marx, Das Kapital

Some more concepts

• society: Organized life in groups, typical of humans and other animals (Kottak)

• social facts - regularities of behavior imposed on individuals by the system ( Caplow 1971, p. 4)

• Durkheim & Suicide

• C. Wright Mills and unemployment

• Outcastism in Japan
(Ruyle’s fieldwork)

Anthropology 120

Fall 2004 Week 3.2

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Outcastism in Japan
(Ruyle’s fieldwork)

• Anthropological fieldwork

• Importance of issue of race

• Significance of Japanese case

• burakumin -- eta -- hinin

• Tokugawa period (feudalism)

• Shogun -- daimyo -- samurai

• shi-no-ko-sho-eta/hinin system

• one-seventh of a human being

• Meiji Restoration & the Emancipation Proclamation

• Suiheisha -- Outcaste Liberation League

• dowa chiku -- Integration District

• Discrimination: employment, education, marriage

• class analysis of outcastism

• evolution of class society:

socialism
capitalism
feudalism
slavery
primitive communism

integration (dowa)

or
liberation (kaiho)

That’s all for now…

• Don’t forget, Book Reports are due NOW!

• We will review for the Midterm on Tuesday

• You can email questions to me by
8 am Monday morning

• eruyle@csulb.edu

Anthropology 120

Fall 2004, Week 4.1

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

MIDTERM ON THURSDAY

Midterm

• Kottak, Chs. 1-3,

• Xerox: All First Midterm Readings

Xerox readings

• Franklin, "Forward from the Past.” (1 page)

• Linton, "The 100% American.” (1 page)

• Miner, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” (3 pages)

• Lee, "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari.” (9 pages)

• Sheffield, “Sexual Terrorism.” (9 pages)

• Heise, “The Global War Against Women.”(6 pages)

• UNESCO, “Statement on Race … ” (5 pages)

• Feder, “Science …” & “Epistemology :” (14 pages)

• Lenski, “The Problem: Who Gets What, and Why.” (24 pages)

• Ruyle, “Refugees in Their Own Land.” (20 pages)

Some more concepts

• society: Organized life in groups, typical of humans and other animals (Kottak)

• social facts - regularities of behavior imposed on individuals by the system ( Caplow 1971, p. 4)

• Durkheim & Suicide

• C. Wright Mills & unemployment

• ecosystem: the complex of living organisms, their physical environment, and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space.

Midterm on Thursday

• Bring a SCANTRON Form 882

• Seating will be assigned

• Latecomers will not be admitted

• No makeups