Welcome to Challenge and Change in Society!

To begin…some important things to know My website My address: I think that grammar and spelling are very important. If you are here, it’s because you want to be, please act like it. If you don’t want to be here, please figure that out…!

DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS Social Science

What is Social Science? Social science is, in its broadest sense, the study of society and the manner in which people behave and influence the world around us. It tells us about the world beyond our immediate experience, and can help explain how our own society works - from the causes of unemployment or what helps economic growth, to how and why people vote, or what makes people happy. It provides vital information for governments and policymakers, local authorities, non-governmental organisations and others.

Social Science overview, animated 4mins

Why Study Social Science? What can it teach us? We study social science because social phenomena affect people’s lives in profound ways. Think about this list and how the study of social science affects each of these things: Families, Schools, the Economy, Mass Media, Attitudes, Social Networks

Why do we need social scientists to study things we already know are true? Answer this question: if a society brings in the death penalty, does the murder rate decline? Many of us may answer yes, obviously! We think we know the answer because our INTUITION is telling us what to believe. Intuition refers to knowing something through our own logic and emotion. We need social scientists to study life around us to either prove or disprove what our intuition tells us is right. They test commonly held beliefs of a society to help us see whether or not what we ‘know intuitively’ is right.

Families Families. What makes families more or less successful? What makes marriages more successful? What makes them fail? What are the effects of divorce? Does divorce hurt children? How much, in what ways, and for how long? A medical doctor can treat the effects of family dysfunction and divorce—say, with anti- depressants or therapy and so on—but we can learn and know more about how to prevent some of this dysfunction from doing social science.

Schools Schools. What are effective means of educating children? What makes for good teachers? How can we measure and evaluate teaching and learning? How can we overcome inequalities in educational achievement created by socioeconomic status and other factors? The “hard” sciences and medicine might be able to help a bit here, but these too are mostly questions for social science.

The economy. Fundamentally, what makes it grow or shrink? Few things are as central to people’s quality of life as economic prosperity. Here again, there is synergy with, say, medicine: getting sick affects your ability to be economically productive. But doctors are not going to be able to shed much light on this question. Economists and other social scientists can.

Mass Media Mass Media. The information conveyed through mass media—cultural, political, and otherwise—can profoundly influence how we understand the world. How is that information produced? What are the incentives and norms that govern media organizations? How does that information affect people? How does that information help or hurt people—for example, by dismantling or reinforcing stereotypes, or by mitigating or fomenting outright violence? Social scientists spend a lot of time trying to figure this out.

Attitudes. Why do people develop particular attitudes about social and political phenomena? How do those attitudes affect subsequent behaviour? Whether people like or dislike social groups, for example, has an impact on the quality of life for those groups. So we must understand the origins and evolution of attitudes like prejudice.

Social networks. The networks which people are embedded—which encompass families and schools as well as other institutions—can affect many things about them. Whether they are healthy, whether they are prejudiced, whether they can survive natural disasters, and so on.

Anthropology The study of all aspects of human life and culture. Anthropology examines such topics as how people live, what they think, what they produce, and how they interact with their environments. Anthropologists try to understand the full range of human diversity as well as what all people share in common. Anthropologists ask such basic questions as: when, where, and how did humans evolve? How do people adapt to different environments? How have societies developed and changed from the ancient past to the present?

Y Y What is Anthropology? (6mins)

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and the mind. This definition contains three elements. The first is that psychology is a scientific enterprise that obtains knowledge through systematic and objective methods of observation and experimentation. Second is that psychologists study behaviour, which refers to any action or reaction that can be measured or observed- such as the blink if an eye, an increase in heart rate, or the unruly violence that often erupts in a mob. Third is that psychologists study the mind, which refers to both conscious and unconscious mental states. These states cannot be seen, only inferred from observable behaviour.

What is psychology video

Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human social relations or group life. Sociologists examine the ways in which social structures and institutions such as class, family, community and power and social problems such as crime and abuse, influence society. Social interaction, or the responses of individuals to each other, is perhaps the basic sociological concept, because such interaction is the elementary component of all relationships and groups that make up human society.

What is Sociology video

Let’s put our new knowledge to use… Now that we understand the basics about Social Sciences, let’s put this knowledge to use. After watching the Documentary “Age of Anxiety”, we are going to think about how thinkers in each of the social sciences would view this topic.

Physical Anthropology

Physical or biological anthropology deals with the evolution of humans, their variability, and adaptations to environmental stresses. Using an evolutionary perspective, they examine not only the physical form of humans - the bones, muscles, and organs - but also how the body functions to allow survival and reproduction. (def sheet)

Ted Talk ooks_for_humanity_s_roots - t ooks_for_humanity_s_roots - t-10986

Article on Charles Darwin, read, discuss and summarize Article on Homo Neledi -human-evolution-change/

Interactive human evolution timeline evolution-timeline-interactive

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural anthropology is the study of the human as an individual, a product of society, and a maker of history and culture. It’s the nature of humans to live within structures of symbol, belief, and power of our own design such as religion, art, gender, war, ecosystems, race relations, kinship, science, colonialism, language, nations and states, play, mass media, illness, pain, and pleasure. In a word, culture.

Ted Talk- different cultures gered_cultures - t gered_cultures - t

Read and summarize article - “One Hundred Percent American” pg 40 in duotang Portraits of the World’s Most Remote Tribes worlds-most-remote-tribes/nenets

Rites of Passage A rite of passage is a ceremony and marks the transition from one phase of life to another. Although it is often used to describe the tumultuous transition from adolescence to adulthood, it does refer to any of life's transitions (Births and Beginnings, Initiations, Partnerings, and Endings or Death)

Reflection In your notebook answer the following questions: ~ why study other cultures? ~ what can other cultures teach us about the world? ~ what can other cultures teach us about ourselves? ~ how has knowledge of other cultures benefited us? ~ what do we know that we would not have known without this exposure? (specific examples)

Linguistic Anthropology

Language is part of what makes us human. Linguistic anthropologists study language, and how language is used in order to understand culture. Linguistic anthropologists are interested in how many languages there are, how those languages are distributed across the world, and their contemporary and historical relationships. They are also interested in language variation, why variations exist, how the variations are used (i.e., do you say ‘tomAto’ or ‘tomahto’?!), and what they mean when they are used in various contexts.

The Andean people- linguistic and cultural anthro

Read and summarize article “Are there superior and Inferior Languages?” duotang Read article: Do our words influence the way we think? /how-words-influence-thought

Archaeology

Archaeology is the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other such remains, especially those that have been excavated.

Indiana Jones

Forensic Anthropology

Definition Forensic anthropology involves the application of methods to modern cases of unidentified human remains. A forensic anthropologist can aid law enforcement in establishing a profile on the unidentified remains. The resulting profile includes sex, age, ethnicity, height, length of time since death, and sometimes the evaluation of trauma seen on bones.

Definitions of Culture Culture is referred to the learned, socially acquired traditions of the thought and behaviour found in human societies. Animals have simpler forms of culture too. (add def. to definition sheet) Culture could be compared to a computer program, the ‘software’ that tells people what to do under certain circumstances. It is therefore mental, with the ideas guiding behaviour. BUT- behaviour can also guide ideas. For example, the experience of poverty is an example of behaviours people are not programmed to do.

Society The term ‘society’ means an organized group of people who share a homeland and depend on one another for their survival and well-being. (add to definition sheet) There can be various cultures within societies. Anthropologists call these groups sub-cultures- they can be groups based on ethnic, religious or class distinctions.

‘What is culture’ video.

How Anthropologists conduct their work Participant Observation (def. sheet)~ Anthropologists commonly live with their subjects for long periods of time, participating as a community member and recording their observations. They believe that living in groups for a long period of time will ensure that they are accepted by the group and that their observations will be the same as they would be if the community was going on without them there.

Kenneth Good, Yanomami

Margaret Mead One of the most famous cultural anthropologists who fully immersed herself in another culture was Margaret Mead. Her most famous book is titled ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’, where she studied the experiences of adolescent girls in Samoa.

‘Margaret Mead: Coming of Age’

Dian Fossey Another excellent example of someone who devoted their life to living with her subjects was Dian Fossey. She was encouraged by the famous Anthropologist Louis Leakey to study Gorillas to possibly give insight into human behaviour.

Ethnographies What do Anthropologist do with their findings once they have them? They write books, papers, articles, journal articles… Without these ETHNOGRAPHIES (def. sheet), we would not know as much as we do about the world. (introduce ethnography assignment) THANKS ANTHROPOLOGISTS!!!

Other important concepts in Anthro…

One way that anthropologists compare culture is through the concept of KINSHIP (def. sheet). Kinship refers to a family relationship based on what a culture considers a family to be. What may be accepted in our culture (that a half- brother and sister are related, for example) are not accepted ideas in all cultures.

Kinship is broken down in two ways: Mating or marriage~ some parents who are not traditionally married may be rejected by others in the family Birth~ adopted vs. natural vs. foster children ‘Ficitive kinship’ is defined as acknowledging people who are not related to you as your family. An example of this is god parents.

Why do Anthropologists care about the concept of kinship? What does this tell them about different cultures?

Schools of thought in Anthropology Complete the worksheet ‘Schools of thought in Anthropology’ by reading pages in your duotang