SOCI 202 SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY SPRING 2014 KOÇ UNIVERSITY Instructor: Deniz Yükseker

What is anthropology? Anthropology: the study of human beings Study of human past, human nature and human society

Anthropology Biological anthropology Cultural anthropology Linguistic anthropology Archeology Applied anthropology

Cultural (social) Anthropology Cultural anthropology studies variation in the beliefs and behaviors of members of different groups Culture: sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society Fieldwork Informants Participant observation Ethnography

Being observed changes the behavior of those observed

WHAT IS CULTURE?

Biology versus culture Physical biologists in 19th cc: variation in human societies stems from “race”  “races of man” Cultural anthropologists in early 20th cc: variation in beliefs and practices in human societies stem from “social learning,” not biology  single human race

Franz Boas (1858-1942): American cultural anthropologist Boas and his students: Cultural boundaries are fuzzy: cultural borrowing is important Culture is learned “Race”, language and culture are separate

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): Polish-British social anthropologist There are cultural universals Humans everywhere have the same “basic needs” They use culture to solve their survival problems

What is culture then? Learned and shared practices, beliefs, customs, traditions that are symbollically encoded.  Human culture depends on symbols Learned and shared knowledge that people use to generate behavior and interpret experience Culture is a whole way of life

Culture includes: Knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by humans as members of society Culture also includes material culture, such as the built environment and artefacts

Symbols No necessary link between the symbol itself and what it stands for symbols might change  Things might symbolize different things for different groups of people

Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s own culture is the best Cultural relativism: To recognize that other cultures are different; but also, that they are equally valid

Naive realism: The belief that people everywhere see the world in the same way Culture shock: State of anxiety that results from cross-cultural misunderstanding

So then, what do cultural anthropologists do? Ethnography: process of discovering and describing a particular culture. Ethnographers/anthropologists want to learn the “insiders’s point of view” They try to listen to and learn from their “informants”

Problems with the culture concept Can the culture of a “village” be generalized? Can all members of a nation have the same “culture”? Can a culture be “authentic” and have clearcut boundaries? Ways to overcome these issues: Anthropologists are sensitive to power relations within a community Multi-sited ethnography: anthropologists today often conduct multi-sited ethnography, rather than studying a “village” or “tribe”

“Uncontacted tribes” in Peru and Brazil Watch areal footage of an uncontacted tribe on the Peruvian-Brazilian border: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLErPqqCC54 What’s the point in this documentary from an anthropological perspective?

Case studies Richard Lee: “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” Laura Bohannan: “Shakespeare in the Bush” Sudhir Venkatesh: “How does it feel to be black and poor?” What points do these readings make?