ANTH 310:  Introduction to Cultural Anthropology                   Instructor:  Jim Snoke

Spring Semester, 2007

Course Outline Series:  Chapters 1 and 2, Week 1

Text:  Cultural Anthropology – Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson

 

Terminology:  Each of you has been exposed to one or more of these – particularly if you have received a portion of your education in the United States, or in Western Civilization cultures in general, or somewhere within the Indo-European Language Family.

 

  1. Culture
  2. Society
  3. Subculture
  4. Sociocultural system
  5. Enculturation
  6. Ethnocentrism
  7. Cultural Relativism
  8. Diffusion
  9. Fieldwork
  10. Etics and Emics of Culture
  11. Mental and Behavioral Spheres
  12. Universal Pattern
  13. Infrastructure
  14. Structure
  15. Superstructure
  16. Cultural Materialism
  17. Enlightenment
  18. 19th Century Evolutionism
  19. Social Darwinism
  20. Marxist Evolutionism
  21. Historical Particularism
  22. Functionalism
  23. Culture and Personality

 

Chapter 1:

 

1.  Anthropological Perspective

2.  Contemporary and Ancient Peoples

3.  Typically non-western and non-eastern cultures but many Anthropologists study them exclusively.

4.  Sub-Fields:

            a. Cultural Anthropology

            b. Archaeology

            c. Anthropological Linguistics

            d. Physical Anthropology

            e. Applied Anthropology

 

5.  Distinctiveness about Cultural Anthropology

            a. Holism

            b. Fieldwork and Participant Observation

            c. Ethnography

            d. Ethnology

            e. Anthropology and Science

 

6.  Terms, Concepts, and Practices

            a. informant, participant, or respondent

b. Specialized research areas:  Ecological Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology.

            c. humanistic

            d. scientific

            e. hypothesis

 

Chapter 2:

 

This chapter gives terms and concepts that are usually somewhat familiar to students, but the specific way in which Anthropology defines them may not be as familiar.  Harris presents his “universal pattern”:  Infrastructure, Structure, and Superstructure in an attempt to introduce students to the notion that there can be a “science of culture”.  Etic and Emic concepts are presented as well, along with mental and behavioral concepts.  Get these straight in your mind and begin to apply them to thought and behavior processes you observe in our own society. 

 

Harris also presents material from the history of interpretive thought – “schools of thought” that have attempted to understand and explain human behavior through time. 

 

            A.  Alternative theoretical positions:

                        1.  Sociobiology and Biological Reductionism

                        2.  Dialectical Materialism

                        3.  Structuralism

                        4.  Structural Marxism

                        5.  Psychological and Cognitive Idealism

                        6.  Eclecticism

                        7.  Obscurantism

                        8   Cultural Materialism

 

            B.  For example:  Structuralism

 

                        1.  Anti-Positivist (anti-scientific)

                        2.  Idealist

                        3.  Dialectical

                        4.  Ahistorical

           

            C.  The problem with the 7 positions above is that while they can be used to explain similarities among human societies, they cannot explain the differences.  Also, the “cause and effect” arrows invariably point in the wrong direction, or are completely backwards.  This is the result of a pre-conceived, idealist strategy.