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
Concept of culture
• Examples of ways culture is
used.
Cow worship in India
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
E.B. Tylor
• Culture or civilization, taken
in its wide ethnographic
sense, is that complex whole
which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other
capabilities and habits
acquired my man as a
member of society.
E. B. Tylor 1871
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).
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.
Culture
• Culture is a system
• Culture is a process
• Implicit/ tacit ( internal)
• Explicit (external)
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
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
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
Kurds
.
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.
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:
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
Contemporary Issues in
the Middle East
• Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Resource problems: e.g.,
petroleum, water, land
Ethnic tensions (e.g., genocide in
Sudan, oppression of Kurds)
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Rise of Islamist states and
fundamentalist movements
• Kurds: language and ethnicity
• Language family
• Cultural history: migrations,
contact, and settlements)
corresponds to language
distribution
Kurds
• Strong ethnic, tribal, cultural, local
identity
• Role of the family and larger kinship
units
Status of women
Impact of nomadic pastoralist tradition
City versus country culture
Customs related to power, such as
patriarchy
• Importance of religion: Koran
Tension between local culture and
pan-Arab/pan-Muslim movements
• Polygyny is associated with Islam, but
is strongly cultural.
•
Various resources
• http://www.merip.org/
http://www.arab.net/index.html
http://www.mideastinfo.com/
http://www.dfaitmaeci.gc.ca/middle_east/countri
es-en.asp
•