Introduction to History of
Anthropological Thought
Judy Whitehead
TH 218
Telephone: 329-2011
Office Hours: Thursday 2-5 p.m. or by appointment.
E-mail: whitja01@uleth.ca.
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Why a Theory Course?
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The main, unifying course that provides a background to t
ideas that have been a part of the study of anthropology.
This background will help you in all your other courses.
Provides a common ‘culture’ and common ‘language’
anthropology students and anthropologists.
It is a rite de passage, an initiation ceremony, if you like.
More seriously, as stated in the introduction, there is no su
thing as a theory-less anthropology. No such thing as ‘pu
observation in the social sciences.
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Why is This So? Why Can’t we Just
go out and Observe People and
Cultures?
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Complexity of society life: no-one can observe everything in
the flux and flow of cultural interactions.
Example: Imagine yourself sitting in a coffee shop in southern
Italy and you were ‘observing’. Could you possibly record
‘everything’ that happened? How would you choose what to
record?
The complexity of social life means that anthropologists have
to pick and choose what is relevant in social and cultural life.
They choose the relevant bits through the use of concepts,
models and theories.
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Major Theme of the Course
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The major theme to be uncovered or covered in the course is the
relationship of anthropological categories and concepts to social and
cultural ‘reality’. Are cultures ‘objective’ things that can be faithfully
recorded? Do the anthropologists’ biases have a part to play in recording
and interpreting data? What new approaches try to address these issues?
What is the difference between an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ approach?
What is the role of ‘power’ between anthropology and the peoples it
studies?
How do differential power relations affect the representation of ‘others’?
What anthropological models have been created to deal with the different
power relations between anthropologists, ethnographic writing, and the
people being represented?
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The Age of Reason and
Emergence of Social Science
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The Age of Reason, c.1600-1800: Why Was it Called This?
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Belief that human intelligence could be applied to the
study of anything, including culture and society.
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Buoyed by the successes of the scientific revolution in
the ‘natural’ sciences.
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Thought that the Scientific Method Could be Applied to
all Domains: the physical world, the biological world and the
social world.
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What is the Scientific Method?
i. Belief in experimentation through the application of human
ideas to matter.
ii. Belief that empirical evidence would provide proof or
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disproof of experimental ideas.
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Impact of the Scientific
Revolution on Western Culture
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Optimism: Science and ‘reason’ would bring ‘progress’:
material, technological, and social.
The increasing perception that if society could be studied
scientifically, then it was a ‘natural’ object like any other
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Revolutionary and Reformist Thought: the idea that
societies and cultures could be changed for the better through
the application of social science to their domains.
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Belief that religious ideas no longer held the certainty
they once did in many, although not all, areas of social and
cultural life.
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The demystification of a sacred worldview.
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Example: the demystification of a
spiritual connection between animals
and human beings.
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animals and humans became increasingly
perceived as belonging to separate realms, with humans
possessing reason and animals lacking it.
ii.
This was most evident in the fact that animals
were thought to lack speech.
iii.
Descartes: the pre-rational animal world and the
rational human.
iv.
Lafontaine and his Animal Fables: animals could
not only communicate, but could provide mankind with
wisdom.
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Hobbes, Rousseau and
Wollstonecraft: Three Views of
Reason and Human Nature.
I. All Three Writers had Very Different Views of Human Nature,
but all thought that the basis of a just and ordered society was
one that corresponded most closely to human nature.
 In other words, all thought that existing social institutions and
cultural values could and should be subject to the ‘stern eye’
of reason and changed accordingly.
II.The idea of human nature as an object of study referred to:
 i.a philosophical construct signifying a pre-social state.
 ii.The biological aspects of being human, subject to biological,
‘natural’ laws: the appetites, passions, and biological rhythms
of being human.
 iii.The ‘natural’ environment outside human beings.
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 iv.The actual way of life of ‘indigenous’ peoples in North
Hobbes: Social Life is a War of All
Against All That Ends Only in Death
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‘Man in the state of nature possessed no security of
life or property, was in perpetual competition and
strife, and his life was nasty, poor, brutish and short.’
ii.
Only a sovereign power, to which all
agreed to give some of their liberty, especially the
liberty to kill or steal, would ensure a check on
mankind’s infinite desires and a modicum of
happiness.
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Rousseau: The Social
Contract
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In the state of nature, there was a perfect balance between
wants and needs. Natural man had no need to be
competitive or to covet another’s property, because all had
very little property.
It was only the advent of civilization and the institution of
property that created competition, greed and crime.
Property was the basis of social inequality, as contrasted to
‘natural’ inequalities. Social inequalities were more important
than ‘natural’ inequalities. It was society, not human nature
that created the criminal.
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Mary Wollstonecraft:
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The exclusion of women from the social contract.
Agreed with Rousseau on the character of the natural state.
Did not agree with him on the type of education for men and
women that would best correspond to this natural state.
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Strongly objected to his view that men and women were
NATURALLY different and that women possessed less natural
faculties of reasoning than men.
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She took Rousseau’s arguments a step further, and
argued for the ‘natural’ equality of men and women.
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The Age of Reason: Its
Promises and Problems:
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Promise of a ‘rational’ social order based on factually based
knowledge.
Problems: Those who are excluded from the ‘social contract’:
I. Women AND ????
II. Thought Assignment for Next Week: Think of other
categories of people who have been excluded from the social
contract, given the fact that ‘Nature’ has been defined to
mean a pre-social state and is also identified with ‘primitive’
peoples.
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