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Chapter 4, The Growth of Anthropological Theory

Chapter 4, The Growth of Anthropological Theory. Chapter Outline. Evolutionism American Historicism Psychological Anthropology Neoevolutionism French Structuralism Ethnoscience Cultural Materialism Postmodernism Concluding Thoughts on Anthropological Theory. Anthropological Theory.

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Chapter 4, The Growth of Anthropological Theory

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  1. Chapter 4, The Growth of Anthropological Theory

  2. Chapter Outline • Evolutionism • American Historicism • Psychological Anthropology • Neoevolutionism • French Structuralism • Ethnoscience • Cultural Materialism • Postmodernism • Concluding Thoughts on Anthropological Theory

  3. Anthropological Theory • Attempt to answer questions such as: • Why do people behave as they do? • How do we account for human diversity?

  4. Evolutionism in Brief • All cultures pass through the same developmental stages in the same order. • Evolution is unidirectional and leads to higher levels of culture. • A deductive approach is used to apply general theories to specific cases. • Ethnocentric because evolutionists put their own societies at the top.

  5. Morgan’s Evolutionary Stages • Lower savagery: From the earliest forms of humanity subsisting on fruits and nuts. • Middle savagery: Began with the discovery of fishing technology and the use of fire.

  6. Morgan’s Evolutionary Stages • Upper savagery: Began with the invention of the bow and arrow. • Lower barbarism: Began with the art of pottery making. • Middle barbarism: Began with domestication of plants and animals in the Old World and irrigation cultivation in the New World.

  7. Morgan’s Evolutionary Stages • Upper barbarism: Began with the smelting of iron and use of iron tools. • Civilization: Began with the invention of the phonetic alphabet and writing.

  8. Diffusionism in Brief • Societies change as a result of cultural borrowing from one another. • A deductive approach is used by applying general theories to explain specific cases. • Overemphasized the essentially valid idea of diffusion.

  9. American Historicism in Brief • Ethnographic facts must precede development of cultural theories (induction). • Any culture is partially composed of traits diffused from other cultures. • Direct fieldwork is essential. • Each culture is, to some degree, unique. • Ethnographers should try to get the view of those being studied, not their own view.

  10. Functionalism in Brief • Through fieldwork, anthropologists can understand how cultures work for the individual and the society. • Society is like a biological organism with many interconnected parts. • Empirical fieldwork is essential. • The structure of any society contains indispensable functions without which the society could not continue.

  11. British Functionalists • Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were strong advocates of fieldwork. • Concentrated on how contemporary cultures meet the needs of individuals and perpetuate the society. • All parts of a culture are interconnected so a change in one part of the culture is likely to bring about change in other parts.

  12. Psychological Anthropology in Brief • Anthropologists need to explore the relationships between psychological and cultural variables. • Personality is largely the result of cultural learning. • Universal temperaments associated with males and females do not exist.

  13. Psychological Anthropologists Benedict and Mead • Interested in exploring relationship between culture and the individual. • Benedict described whole cultures in terms of individual personality characteristics. • Mead’s early research brought her to Samoa to study the emotional problems associated with adolescence and later to New Guinea to study male and female gender roles.

  14. Neoevolutionism in Brief • Cultures evolve in proportion to their capacity to harness energy. • Culture is shaped by environmental conditions. • Human populations continuously adapt to techno-environmental conditions. • Because technological and environmental factors shape culture, individual factors are de-emphasized.

  15. Lévi-Strauss • Maintained mental structures preprogrammed in the human mind are responsible for culture and social behavior. • The human mind thinks in binary oppositions—opposites that enable people to classify the units of their culture and relate them to the world around them.

  16. French Structuralism in Brief • Human cultures are shaped by preprogrammed codes of the human mind. • Focuses on underlying principles that generate behavior rather than observable behavior. • Rather than examining attitudes, values, and beliefs, structural anthropologists concentrate on the unconscious level.

  17. Ethnoscience in Brief • Attempts to make ethnographic description more accurate and replicable. • Describes a culture using the categories of the people under study rather than categories from the ethnographer’s culture. • Because it is time-consuming, has been confined to describing very small segments of a culture.

  18. Cultural Materialism in Brief • Material conditions determine human thoughts and behavior. • Theorists assume the viewpoint of the anthropologist, not the native informant. • Anthropology is seen as capable of generating causal explanations. • Deemphasizes the role of ideas and values in determining the conditions of social life.

  19. Postmodernism in Brief • Calls on anthropologists to switch from cultural generalization and laws to description, interpretation, and the search for meaning. • Ethnographies should be written from several voices—that of the anthropologist along with those of the people under analysis. • Involves a return to cultural relativism.

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