1. Anthropological Concepts

2. Fundamental Concepts & Principles
Holism
Function
Relativism
Comparison
Structure
Adaptation
Culture

3. Holism the whole picture, all facets of human life interrelated
small scale vs. large scale societies
holism & its boundedness

4. Function Important proposition for holistic perspective
Social institutions, behavior, cultural logic operate to satisfy human needs – have a function
Primary & secondary needs
Function within a total system
Integrated system & equilibrium

5. Ethnographic Example: Holism and Function
The Tsembaga of PNG & their Pigs
Pigs seldom eaten, serve other functions, keep residence clean, prepare soil for planting
Pigs require minimum maintenance
Pig herds grow large, not enough tubers, feed on human food, intrude on garden crops, invade neighbors gardens – feuds
people move & distance themselves (carrying capacity of the land)
Elaborate ritual system - pig meat redistributed, pig herds decreased, lessen conflict, needed protein into diet, lubricate social relations

6. The Tsembaga Model

7. The Tsembaga Model

8. Relativism philosophical relativism methodological relativism
response to ethnocentrism
methodological relativism
linked to holism
dilemmas of relativism
relativism & comparison
examples
Female circumcision & anorexia

9. Comparison Cross-cultural comparison & the comparative approach
Self-Other (us and them)

10. STRUCTURE(S)/STRUCTURAL TYPES
systems of relationships, organization, forms of associations
standardized modes of behavior
structure & agency

11. Adaptation core concept of evolutionary perspective
any physical & behavioral characteristic that enhances the ability to pass on one’s genes or the genes of one’s kin to the next generation (adaptive strategies)
process organisms undergo to achieve a beneficial adjustment to an available environment and the results of the process
in cultural systems people make decisions about change
genetic evolution not subject to conscious choice
Malaria in Africa

12. Culture and Adaptation
Humans have adapted by manipulating environments through cultural means
All cultures change and adapt over time. Cultural adaptation serves to meets the basic needs of a cultural group for food and shelter, procreation, and social order.
Humans have come to depend more and more on cultural adaptation
What is adaptive in one context may be seriously maladaptive in another

13. Humans, Other Primates, Adaptation, and Culture
primates & genetics, sex partners, natural selection & behaviour
food getting, adaptation, environment, technology
Competition vs./and co-operation

14. Enculturation & Cooperation
enculturation is the difference -- common cultural perspective transmitted through learning
"a partly conscious and partly unconscious learning experience whereby the older generation invites, induces, and compels the younger generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking and behaving" (Marvin Harris)
Cooperation is the difference
Human groups placed cooperation before competition through exchange

15. Culture Humans are animals with a difference - make culture
humans organize life into groups - society
animals organize life into groups - society
habitual activities, imprinted relationships
distinction between culture & society
Society is distinguished from culture in that society generally refers to the community while culture generally refers to the systems of meaning

16. The Culture Concept: A Short History
Latin cultura -- cultivation or tending (agricultural)
civility & civilization (17th century)
18th century beginning of the universal histories & descriptions of "secular" processes of the human condition
folk cultures

17. Diverse Definitions of Culture
Topical: Culture consists of everything on a list of topics, or categories, such as social organization, religion, or economy
Historical: Culture is social heritage, or tradition, or custom that is passed on to future generations
Behavioural: Culture is shared, learned human behaviour, a way of life
Normative: Culture is ideals, values, or rules for living
Functional: Culture is the way humans solve problems of adapting to the environment or living together
Mental: Culture is a complex of ideas, or learned habits, that inhibit impulses and distinguish people from animals
Structural: Culture consists of patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviours
Symbolic: Culture is based on arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society

18. ANTHROPOLOGY & THE CULTURE CONCEPT
(19th cent.) E.B. Tylor - "culture... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.“

19. Clifford Geertz on Culture
(20th cent.) Geertz - "culture as... the fabric of meaning in terms of which humans interpret their experience and guide their actions... "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."

20. Culture in the Making Richard Fox (20th cent.)
culture is in a constant state of becoming/in-the-making
unitary set of rules & meanings continually are in-the-making through oppositions & struggles among groups, where groups themselves & the rules that regulate their interactions only develop in the process of ongoing social relations
culture always is, but it has always just become so

21. Features of Culture Learned Shared Habitualized Patterned, structured
Adaptive
Historically Charged
Big “C” or little “c”
Culture is open, receptive

25. Metaphors of Culture (and Society)
Culture/society as an organism
Culture/society as an economy
Culture/society as a system
Culture/society as a symbol
Culture/society as fractal
Other metaphors
As pattern, as fabric, shreds & patches
Vast instrumentality
As text