ANT 3212 Lecture

2.  started as a hobby of wealthy scholars in the 19th
century
 wrote travel diaries
 armchair anthropologists
– read other peoples accounts of their travels and
commented on the other cultural systems
 19th century anthropologists constructed stages of
cultural progress to explain cultural differences
 called unilineal evolution (Lewis Henry Morgan)
savagery → barbarism → civilization

3.  Looked for the past influences on a particular culture
that shaped its trajectory
 Emphasized that each culture has its own unique
past and must be understood on its own terms
 Need more information and must go out an collect
own data, not read others accounts of their
experiences because they are incomplete and biased
and written by untrained casual observers
 Franz Boas

4.  Cultural features should be explained in terms of the
function they perform
 How ideas and actions contribute to the well being
of the individual or the persistence of the society as a
whole
 Bronslow Malinowski
 Set forth the rules still followed form doing
fieldwork in the early 20th century – participant
observation

5.  Focused on the harnessing of energy
 Increases in the amount of energy harnessed would
lead to cultural complexity
Leslie White
– studied technological progress throughout human
history
Julian Steward
– though local environment and technology together
shaped a culture

6.  Modern anthropologist utilize a variety of
perspectives in approaching culture
 These can be divided into 2 categories – scientific
and humanistic
 Scientific approaches believe that culture can be
explained as an adaptation to the natural and social
environment (cultural materialism)
 Humanistic approaches emphasize the uniqueness of
culture and resist generalizing about human culture
as a whole
 Focus on description and interpretation instead of
explanation

7.  Ideational perspective
 Focus on ideas, symbols, and mental
structures as driving forces in shaping
human behavior.
 Adaptive perspective
 Isolates technology, ecology, demography,
and economics as the key factors defining
human behavior.

8.  This perspective emphasizes ideas,
thoughts, and shared knowledge and sees
symbols and their meanings as crucial to
shaping human behavior.
 According to the ideational view of culture,
one cannot comprehend human behavior
without understanding the symbolic code
for that behavior.

9.  An adaptive perspective is primarily concerned
with “culture as a system.”
 Social and cultural differences are viewed as
responses to the material parameters of life,
such as food, shelter, and reproduction.
 Human behaviors are seen as linked
systemically, such that change in one area
(technology) will result in change in another
area (social organization).

10. The End