culture lecture notes

Lecture Notes on Culture: Why we do what we do
• Anthropology – study of culture
• How and why cultures differ and are similar
• Theoretical orientation – attitude about how cultural phenomenon is to be explained.
Early evolutionism(Tylor and Morgan) - culture evolved from simple to complex- 3 stages of development savagery, barbarism, civilization

- to account for variations – societies in different stages of evolution
Historical Particularism – (Boas) disagreed with evolutionists that cultures are governed by universal laws
- cultural trait has to be studied in the context of the society in which it appeared - only after body of the data was gathered could theories be proposed and interpretation made.
Diffusionism - British school – most aspects of civilization were developed in Egypt and diffused to other parts - German-Austrian school- from different cultural complex - American school- features of culture area to a geographical culture center Question: how a culture accepts and rejects?
Functionalism (Malinowski)
- Cultural traits serve the needs of individuals in a society
- function of cultural traits is its ability to satisfy same basic needs or derived needs of the members of the group - needs include nutrition, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, relaxation, movement, growth Question: Needs are universal, then why ways of satisfying them vary from one culture to another?
Structural functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown) - aspects of social behavior maintain society's social structure rather than satisfying individual needs Question: How to determine whether a cultural trait is contributing to the maintenance of society or not?
Psychological approaches (Benedict and Mead) - cultures could be characterized in terms of different personality types - Culture and personality types are linked - Culture is responsible for personality differences between sexes
Structuralism (Levi-Strauss) - culture as a surface representation of the underlying structure of the human mind which is predisposed to think and behave in terms of binary opposition - Like grammar in language, there are rules of thoughts that underlie culture
Ethnoscience - attempts to derive these rules from logical analysis as free as possible from contamination of biases - if we can know the rules of behavior , then we can explain much of what people do and why they do it
Cultural ecology (Steward) - explanation for some aspects of cultural variation could be found in the adaptation of societies to their environment - cultural traits can be adaptive or maladaptive
Political economy - assumes external forces (e.g. politics, economy, world history) explain the way a society changes and adapts
---------------
Ethnography - a (thick) description and analysis of a single society
Participant observation (fieldwork) - systematic observation and data collection

Reference:
Ember, C., & Ember, M. (1990). Cultural Anthropology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc