1 / 18

Anthropology & Culture

Anthropology & Culture. The study of humans & cultures Throughout the world Societies of past and present Anthropology uses both biology and culture Key approaches: specific approach, fieldwork, comparative method Primary contribution to social sciences: concept of culture

sora
Download Presentation

Anthropology & Culture

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Anthropology & Culture The study of humans & cultures • Throughout the world • Societies of past and present • Anthropology uses both biology and culture • Key approaches: specific approach, fieldwork, comparative method • Primary contribution to social sciences: concept of culture • What anthropologists produce: ethnographies, policies

  2. Concept of culture • Examples of ways culture is used.

  3. Cow worship in India

  4. Culture as a way of life • Behaviors, beliefs, meanings • Material, mental, and social products • Characteristics • Shared and integrated • learned (not “human nature”) • Symbolic and relative • Adaptive and dynamic • Ethnocentrism v. cultural relativism, critical cultural relativism

  5. E.B. Tylor • Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex wholewhich includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habitsacquired my man as a member of society. E. B. Tylor 1871

  6. Clifford Geertz • Culture is the framework of beliefs, expressive symbols, and values in terms of which individuals define their feelings and make their judgements” ( Clifford Geertz AmericanAnthropologist 59:32-54).

  7. Culture • culture of a people can be understood as the system of shared ideas and meanings, explicit and implicit, which a people use to interpret the world and which serve to pattern their behavior.

  8. Culture • Culture is a system • Culture is a process • Implicit/ tacit ( internal) • Explicit (external)

  9. Cultural Ecology • Ecology  cultural ecology • Humans in interaction with their environment • Adaptive strategies  culture as dynamic process • environmental setting • technology (tools, techniques, knowledge) • worldview • external forces and institutions

  10. Adaptation, be it biological or cultural, represents a better fit to specific, local environments, not an inevitable stage in a ladder of progress…wheels, like wings, fins, and brains, are exquisite devices for certain purposes, not signs of intrinsic superiority."-Stephen Jay Gould, 1983

  11. Key Issues • Carrying capacity = upper limit on production and population in a given environment • Sustainability, stress • Cultural basis of conflict • Resources as factors in conflict

  12. Kurds

  13. .Most of them live in I22245ran, Turkey, Armenia, Syria and Iraq. • There are an estimated 25 million Kurds throughout the world.Most of them live in Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Syria and Iraq.

  14. Robert Breneman: Kurds • Can you identify the regions he lived and did research ? • Defining the region geographically and culturally • (marked by mountains, desert, river and ocean) • How are the regions defined and why? For example, Middle East. • Importance of Middle East:

  15. Middle East • The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) and Pharaonic Egypt were the first to develop agriculture, writing, codified law, and complex social structure.The Golden Age of Islam brought advances in mathematics, astronomy, literature, and philosophy to Europe, Asia, and Africa.The dominant monotheistic traditions of today were all originated in the Middle East

  16. Contemporary Issues in the Middle East • Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan • Resource problems: e.g., petroleum, water, landEthnic tensions (e.g., genocide in Sudan, oppression of Kurds)Israeli-Palestinian conflictRise of Islamist states and fundamentalist movements • Kurds: language and ethnicity • Language family • Cultural history: migrations, contact, and settlements) corresponds to language distribution

  17. Kurds • Strong ethnic, tribal, cultural, local identity • Role of the family and larger kinship unitsStatus of womenImpact of nomadic pastoralist traditionCity versus country cultureCustoms related to power, such as patriarchy • Importance of religion: KoranTension between local culture and pan-Arab/pan-Muslim movements • Polygyny is associated with Islam, but is strongly cultural.

  18. Various resources • http://www.merip.org/http://www.arab.net/index.htmlhttp://www.mideastinfo.com/http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/middle_east/countries-en.asp

More Related