THEORIES & THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS INANTHROPOLOGYBraklelyn G. ReantilloStudent, MA.Ed. - Social Studies

History of Theory in Anthropology

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Historians of anthropology often trace the birth of Anthropology to the 16th –century encounters between Europeans and native peoples in Africa and the Americas.

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History of Theory in Anthropology

For Europeans, these African/American natives and their practices seemed BIZARRE or IRRATIONAL, yet it was important to live with them to UNDERSTAND their CULTURES.

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History of Theory in Anthropology

CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING as one of the roots of Anthropology

emerging focus on EVOLUTION

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Other cultures could be changed, that they could and should be “civilized”.

The movement by Europeans to “civilize” others between the 16th and 19th centuries destroyed some of the world’s CULTURAL DIVERSITY, but the field of Anthropology emerged.

Despite colonialism’s impact on cultures, anthropologists support the value of other ways of life and try to support the needs of people formerly colonized/dominated by powerful nation-states.

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THEORY

(More specific explanations that can be tested with empirical evidence)

THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

(General idea about how phenomena

are to be explained)

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THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

Plato and Aristotle (5th millennium

B.C.) believed that animals and plants form a single, graded continuum going from more perfection to less perfection.

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THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

Chain of Being (Macrobius)

“The attentive observer will discover a connection of parts, from the Supreme God down to the last dregs of things, mutually linked together and without a break. And this is Homer’s golden chain, which God, he says, bade hand down from heaven to earth.”

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THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

Systema naturae (Carolus Linnaeus, 1707-1778) Classifying plants and animals by placing

humans in the same order (Primates)as apes and monkeys

All species were created by God and fixed in their form.

Humans, apes, and monkeys had a common ancestor.

Hierarchical classification scheme (descending) kingdom – class – order – genus - species

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THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

Jean Baptiste Lamarck (744-1829) Species were not fixed in form. Acquired characteristics could be inherited

and therefore, species could evolve. Individuals who in their lifetime developed

characteristics helpful for survival would pass those characteristics on to future generations, thereby, changing the physical make-up of the species.

This hypothesis is now dismissed due to failure to produce evidence to support it.

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THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

Natural Selection Theory (NST) Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

He rejected the notion that each species was created at one time in a fixed form.

NST is the process through which the physical and genetic forms of the common ancestor diverged to become both monkey /primates and human

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EARLY ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

A. Early Evolutionism

1. Darwinism“Culture generally develops/ evolves

in a uniform and progressive manner. Most societies pass through the same

series of stages, to arrive at a common end.”

Culture change

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EARLY ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

2. Edward Tylor (1832-1917) “ Culture evolved from the simple to the complex and that all societies passed through three basic stages of development: savagery – barbarism – civilization…”*Diffusion: spread of cultural traits*Acculturation: borrowing of culture as a result of contact between two cultures/societies

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EARLY ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

2. LEWIS HENRY MORGAN ( 1818-1881)CULTURAL EVOLUTION

19th C. European Idea All societies progress

through stages Europeans = most

advanced Justification of

European Colonial Rule

Lower Savagery

Middle Savagery

Upper Savagery

Lower Barbarism

Middle Barbarism

Upper Barbarism

Civilization

Scheme of Social Evolution

EARLY ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

B. “Race” Theory

This posited that the reason human cultures differed in their behaviors was because they represented separate subspecies of humans, or “races”.

By the 19th century, few cultures were being “civilized” in the way Europeans expected.

“RACE” THEORY

*Systema naturae : Humans are classified into 4 distinct races (American, European, Asiatic, African), each defined by physical characteristics as well as emotional and behavioral ones.

* Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840)He is the founder of the field of biological anthropology. He divided humans into 5 “races” - Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethhiopian, American – to help classify the variety of humans that European colonists were encountering

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“RACE” THEORY

*Samuel Morton (1799-1851) He was the first to explicitly link “race” with

behavior and intelligence.

Crania Americana (1839): Not only were native Americans a separate “race”, but their behavioral differences from European Americans were rooted in the physical structures of their brains.

Crania Aegyptiaca (1844): “Race” differences were ancient and unchanging. This justified the exploitive relationships of colonialism and slavery and fought Darwin’s idea of evolution.

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“RACE” THEORY

*Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)He argued that significant and stable

differences existed between people of African versus European descent. He implied that these differences illustrated God’s creation of human “races”.

*Francis Galton (1822-1911)Eugenics: A social and political movement aimed at manipulating “races” by selectively breeding humans with desirable characteristics and preventing those with undesirable ones from having offspring

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“RACE” THEORY

*Richard Herrnstein & Charles MurrayThere are “race” differences in IQ (and

success in life) and social policies should discourage “races” deemed to have low IQs from having many children.

The scholarly use of race theory declined after WWII.

Nazi genocide/ Holocaust Biologists were able to show that purely

genetic races of humans are not clearly identifiable, and therefore, not applicable to humans.

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C. DIFFUSIONISM

British School of Diffusionism German-Austrian School of Diffusionism

G. Elliott SmithWilliam J. PerryW.H.R. Rivers Aspects of higher civilization were developed in Egypt and filtered out to cultures throughout the world (diffusion).

Friedrich RatzelFritz GraebnerWilhelm Schmidt People borrow from others because they are basically uninventive There is existence of several different cultural complexes (kulturkreise, German)

DIFFUSIONISM

AMERICAN SCHOOL OF DIFFUSIONISMClark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber Attributed characteristic features of a culture

area to a geographical center, where the traits were first developed and from which they then diffused outward.

If a given trait diffuses outward from a single culture center, it follows that the most widely distributed traits found to exist around such a center must be the oldest trait.

CONTEXT OF MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY19TH – 21ST CENTURIES

European & American Colonialism

Scientific approaches to studying people, society and culture

Decline of colonialism, national liberation movements, “native anthropologists”

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EARLY MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY

Franz Boas Founder of American

Anthropology HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM

Bronislaw Malinowski Trobriand Islands (Pacific) FUNCTIONALISM Bronislaw

Malinowski1884-1942

Franz Boas1858-1942

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FUNCTIONALISM

Specific cultural institutions function to support the structure of society or serve the needs of individuals in society.

Early functionalists include Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Meyer Fortes, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, and Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard.

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EARLY MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY

CULTURAL ECOLOGY & NEOEVOLUTIONISTS“Culture is the way in which humans adapt to

the environment and make their lives secure.”

Leslie White (1900-1975) Julian Steward (1902-1972) Marshall Sahlins (born in 1930) Elman Service (1915-1996)

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STRUCTURALISM(STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY)

“Universal original human culture can be discovered through analysis and comparison of the myths and

customs of many cultures.”

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)

A theoretical approach that holds that all cultures reflect similar, underlying patterns and that anthropologists should attempt to decipher these patterns.

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WHY STUDY CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY?

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.

When the spectrum or rainbow of human cultures has finally sunk into the void created by our frenzy….in the contemplation of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.

-Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, pp. 414-415.

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EARLY MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY

Psychological Approaches

*1920s: some American anthropologists began to study the relationship between culture and personality. Early proponents:

Sigmund FreudEdward SapirRuth BenedictMargaret Mead

1930s and 1940sAbram Kardiner There is a basic

personality in every culture produced by primary institutions.

Type of household, subsistence, childrearing practices

Basic personality gives rise to other institutions (art, folklore, religion)

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POLITICAL ECONOMY

“External forces explain the art, ritual, and the patterns of daily life, as a surface representation of the underlying structure of the human mind.”

*Moiety systems reflect the human mind’s predisposition to think and behave in terms of binary oppositions (contrasts between one thing and another).

This exists if a society is divided into two large intermarrying kin groups. (You are born into one of two groups and you marry someone in the other).

Claude Levi-Strauss Eric WolfSidney MintzEleanor LeacockAndre Gunder FrankImmanuel Wallerstein

“This approach reminds us that the world, every part of it, is interconnected, for better or worse.”

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ECOLOGICAL FUNCTIONALISM

Theoretical approach that holds that the ways in which cultural institutions work can best be understood by examining their effects on the environment.

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ETHNOSCIENCE AND COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

Attempt to derive rules from a logical analysis of ethnographic data that are kept as free as possible from contamination by the observer’s own cultural biases

Ethnoscientists seek to understand a people’s world from their point of view (Emic Strategy)

Ex.: Studying language and formulation of rules underlying cultural domains, Kinship terms, plant and animal taxonomies, disease classification

“If we can discover the RULES that generate cultural behavior, we can explain much of what people do and why they do it.”

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ETHNOSCIENCE

A theoretical approach that focuses on the ways in which members of a culture classify their world and holds that anthropology should be the study of cultural systems of classification.

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ETHNOBOTANY

Describes the ways in which different cultures classify plants.

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ETHNOMEDICINE

An anthropological discipline devoted to describing the medical systems of different cultures.

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RECENT DEVELOPMENT IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY

• Edward Wilson and Richard Alexander• Evolutionary Ecology Approaches/

Sociobiology“Natural selection can operate on the behavioral or social characteristics of populations, not just on their physical traits.” (individual selection)

Adaptive- the ability of individuals to get their genes into future generations

• CULTURAL ECOLOGY - focuses on group selection (how certain behavioral/social characteristics may be adaptive for a group/society in a given environment)

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FEMINIST APPROACH

-Role of women in culture

Political view: Anthropologist’s tasks is to identify ways in which women are exploited in order to come up with ways on how to overcome these [exploitations].

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INTERPRETATIVE APPROACH

Goal of Anthropology: To understand what it means to be a person living in a particular culture, rather than to explain why cultures vary.

He popularized the idea that culture is like a literary text that can be analyzed for meaning, as the ethnographer interprets it.

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)

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POSTMODERNIST APPROACH

Ethnography is viewed as being “constructed’ almost as a work of fiction.

Anthropology is just another tool used by dominant powers to control others.

Michael Foucault (1926-1984)-Those in political power were able to shape the way accepted truths were defined.-In the modern age, truth is defined through science, and science, in turn, is controlled by Western political and intellectual elites.-Science became a way to understand the world, control the world, and dominate the world.

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PRAGMATIC APPROACH

The scientific study of human behavior depends upon the belief that it is possible to find answers to puzzling questions about humans

It is not where ideas come from but where they will lead you and what you can predict.

It is POSSIBLE to study humans and their culture; that is why up to these days, ANTHROPLOGY as a discipline continues to thrive.

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Table 4-1, p.87

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CULTURE (SUMMARY)

19th century evolutionism

A universal human culture is shared by all societies.

Turn of the century

sociology

Groups share sets of symbols and practices that bind them

into societies.

American historical

particularism

Cultures are the result of the specific histories of the people

who share them.

FunctionalismSocial practices support

society's structure or fill the needs of individuals.

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Sociobiology Culture is the visible expression of underlying genetic coding.

Cultural ecology and neo-

evolutionism

Culture is the way humans adapt to the environment and

make their lives secure.

Ecological materialism

Physical and economic causes give rise to cultures and explain

changes in them.

Ethnoscience and cognitive anthropology

Culture is a mental template that determines how members of a society understand their

world.

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Anthropology and gender

Roles of women and ways societies understand sexuality are central to understanding

culture.

Symbolic and interpretive

anthropology

Culture is the way members of a society understand

themselves and what gives their lives meaning.

Postmodernism

Cultural understanding reflects the observer’s biases and can

never be completely or accurately described.

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THE FUTURE (OF ANTHROPOLOGY) …

…DOES NOT END HERE . . .

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“It would hardly be fishwho discovered theexistence of water.”

-Kluckhohn (1949)

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REFERENCE

CAROL EMBER AND MELVIN EMBER,

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, 13TH ED.2011.

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QUICK QUIZ

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Thank you.

Let’s call it a day.

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