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

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

3. Anthropology Biological anthropology Cultural anthropology
Linguistic anthropology
Archeology
Applied anthropology

4. 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

5. Being observed changes the behavior of those observed

6. WHAT IS CULTURE?

7. 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

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

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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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”

16. 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”

17. “Uncontacted tribes” in Peru and Brazil
Watch areal footage of an uncontacted tribe on the Peruvian-Brazilian border: What’s the point in this documentary from an anthropological perspective?

18. 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?