Political systems
The anthropological approach is global and comparative and includes non-states, while political scientists tend to
focus on contemporary and recent nation-states.
Power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others authority is the formal socially approved use of power
Political organization comprises those portions of social organization that specifically relate to the individuals or
group that manage the affairs of public policy (agencies and levels of government) or seek those individuals or
groups.
 Socio-political organization: also applicable to non-states (preferred)
Elman Service: Types/levels of political organization:
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Band: a small kin-based group found among foragers
- Modern foragers live in nation-states and an interlinked world
- All foragers now trade with food producers
- Most contemporary hunter-gatherers rely on governments and missionaries
- The San
- Inuit
 Tribe: a kin-based group with economies based on non-intensive food production (horticulture and
pastoralism)
 Chiefdom: a form of socio-political organization, intermediate between the tribe and state (farming or
herding economies)
 Differential access to resources (some people had more wealth, prestige and power than others did) and
a permanent political structure
 State: a form of socio-political organization based on a formal government structure and socioeconomic
stratification (nonindustrial states: agriculture)
 None of the first three types can be studied as a self-contained form of political organization, because all
now exist within nation-states and are subject to state control
Bands and tribes
The San
The Inuit
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Men faced more dangers than women did > women outnumbered men > permitted men to have multiple
wives
Conflict resolution:
 Try to kill the wife stealer
 Challenge a rival to a song battle
The Yanomami
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Patrilineal: ancestry is traced back through males only
Exogamous: people must marry without their own descent group
Village head: local tribe leader with limited authority (is achieved)
 Must lead by example
 Acts as mediator in disputes
 Must lead in generosity (cultivates more land)
Village fissioning: when a village is dissatisfied with its headman, its members can leave and found a new
village
Live in two nation-states: Brazil and Venezuela
The future of Yanomami remains uncertain
Big man
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An elaborate version of the village head: had supporters in several villages
A regulator of regional political organization
Kapauku Papuans (Indonesia)
 The Kapauku economy required collective cultivation and political regulation of the more complex tasks
 Called ‘tonowi’
 Created their status through hard work and good judgement
Pantribal groups
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Groups that extend across the whole tribe, spanning several villages
Especially likely to develop in situations of warfare
Caused an economic change among Native Americans: a specialized economy based on horseback hunting of
bison
Nomadic politics
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The scope of political authority among pastoralists expands considerably as regulatory problems increase in
densely populated regions
The Brasseri and the Qashqai (Iran)
 Use of the same pastureland at different times of year was carefully scheduled
Chiefdoms
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First chiefdoms perhaps emerged a thousand years earlier than states, but few survive today
Complex chiefdoms: ‘almost states’
Much of ethnographic knowledge about chiefdoms comes from Polynesia
Social relations are mainly based on kinship, marriage descent, age, generation, and gender (just like in
bands and tribes)
Regulation is carried out by the chief and his or her assistants, who occupy political offices
Chiefly redistribution: a flow of recourses to and from a central place (offers economic advantages)
The status of the chief was ascribed, based on seniority of descent
Endogamy: marriage within one’s own group (commoners/ elite)
States
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The first states emerged in the Old World around 5500 years ago
An autonomous political unit encompassing many communities within its territory, having a centralized
government
1. Population control: administrative subdivision, fixing of boundaries, censusing
2. Judiciary: laws, legal procedure, courts and judges
3. Enforcement: permanent military (against external threats) and police (internal) forces
4. Fiscal: taxation
Can fall (disintegrate) as well as rise
States bring nonrelatives together and oblige them to pledge allegiance to a government
Presence of stratification
1. Economic
2. Power
3. Prestige (‘cultural capital’)
Social control
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It is easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than to try to control their bodies
Ways in which elites curb resistance and maintain power:
1. Hegemony: a social order in which subordinates accept the ‘naturalness’ of domination
2. To make subordinates believe that they eventually will gain power
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3. To separate or isolate people while supervising them closely (prisons)
In public, the oppressed may seem to accept their own domination even if they question it in private
Because of its costumed anonymity, Carnaval is an excellent arena for expressing normally surpressed
feelings
Shame is an external sanction (non-Western) and guilt (Western) is an internal sanction
Makua, Mozambique: fear sorcery but they overwhelmingly mentioned shame as the main reason not to
steal a neighbour’s chicken
Shame can be a very powerful sanction
Example: The Igbo Women’s War
Gender
Because anthropologists study biology, sociology and culture, they are in a unique position to comment on nature
and nurture as determinants of human behaviour.
Men and women differ genetically:
Women: XX
Men: XY
Sexual dimorphism: differences in male and female biology besides the contrasts in breasts and genitals.  What
effect do these differences have on the way men and women act and are treated in different societies?
Attitudinal differences between the sexes emerge from culture rather than biology.
Sex differences are biological, but gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and inculcates in males
and females (the same images of masculinity and femininity do not always apply).
Gender roles: the tasks and activities a culture assigns to the sexes  Gender stereotypes: Oversimplified, strongly
held views about males and females.
Gender stratification: an unequal distribution of social recourses between men and women.
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Restrict women sexually
Limit female access to public settings
Influenced by economic roles
Was greatest when the women contributed either much more or much less than the men did
Domestic-public dichotomy/ private-public contrast: strong differentiation between the home and the
outside-world (decreases equality of gender status)  statuses among foragers more equal
Ethnologists compare ethnographic data from several cultures to discover and explain differences and similarities
(cross-cultural).  The subsistence contributions of men and women are roughly equal, but in domestic activities
and child care, female labor predominates. Women tend to work more hours than men do.
Cross-cultural variation in gender status is related to rules of descent and postmarital residence.
Matrilineal-matrilocal complex: women are the basis of
the entire social structure
Matrilineal descent: descent traced through females
only (in many horticultural societies)
Matrilocality: residence after marriage with the wife’s
relatives (female status tends to be high)
Patrilineal-patrilocal complex: patrilineality,
patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy
Patrilineal descent: descent traces through males only
Matriarchy exists but not as mirror images of
patriarchies.
 Tends to occur in societies where population
pressure on strategic recourses in minimal and warfare
is frequent
For example the society of the matrilineal Minangkabau
of West Sumatra, Indonesia: women are the center,
origin and foundation of the social order.
Patriarchy: a political system ruled by men in which
women have inferior social and political status,
including human rights (dowry murder, female
infanticide, clitoridectomy)
Patrilocality: residence after marriage with the
husbands relatives
For example the Papua New Guinea highlands  sharp
domestic-public dichotomy
Stratification typically is reduced in societies in which women have prominent roles in the economy and social life.
Gender in industrial societies
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Gender roles have been changing rapidly in North America. The “traditional” idea that “a woman’s place is in
the home” developed among middle- and upper-class Americans as industrialism spread after 1900
Multiple things have caused better working situation for women nowadays:
 Wartime shortages of men (“work outside the home is a woman’s duty”)
 The notion that women are biologically unfit for hard physical labor faded
 Inflation and the culture of consumption
 After WWII: Baby boom and industrial expansion
Changes in the economy led to changes in attitude toward and about women
1966: the founding of NOW: National Organization for Women
 Promoted expanded work opportunities for women, incl. the goal of equal pay for equal work
The feminization of poverty: the increasing representation of women (and their children) among America’s
poorest people
 Married couples are much more secure economically than single mothers are
 Is not just a North American phenomenon, the percentage of single-parent households (usually femaleheaded) has been increased worldwide!
 Globally, households headed by women tend to be poorer than are those headed by men
Beyond male and female
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Gender is socially constructed and societies may recognize more than two genders (transgender, intersex,
third gender, transsexual)
Intersex people usually contrast biologically with ordinary males and females: there is a discrepancy
between the external genitals and the internal genitals (older term: hermaphroditism: the names of the Greek
god and goddess of sexuality: Hermes and Aphrodite)
(p. 220/221)
 XX Intersex person: internal female genitals, but external male genitals
 XY Intersex person: internal male genitals, but incompletely-formed/ambiguous/female external genitals
 True Gonadal Intersex person: ovarian and testicular tissue, the external genitals are
ambiguous/male/female
 XO/ XXY/ XYY/ XXX: don’t typically produce a discrepancy between internal and external genitalia, but
there may be problems with sex hormone levels and overall sexual development Transgender also
includes people whose gender identity has no apparent biological roots
Biology isn’t destiny; people construct their identities in society
Self-identified transgender people tend to be individuals whose gender identity contradicts their biological
sex at birth and the gender identity that society assigned to them in infancy
Gender variance is a human phenomenon that has taken many forms across societies and cultures
Sexual orientation
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Sexual orientation refers to a person’s habitual sexual attraction to, and sexual activities with:
 Heterosexuality: persons of the opposite sex
 Homosexuality: persons of the same sex
 Bisexuality: persons of both sexes
 Asexuality: indifference toward or lack of attraction to either sex
Whatever the reasons for individual variation, culture always plays a role in molding individual sexual urges
toward a collective norm
Read: Etoro, Papua New Guinea
Families, Kinship, Descent
Families
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Understanding kinship systems has become an essential part of the importance of those systems to the
people we study
To understand the social structure, an ethnographer must investigate kin ties
Nuclear family: parents and children; normally living together in the same household
- Lasts as long as the parents and children remain together
- Family of orientation: the family in which one is born and grows up
- Family of procreation: family which is formed when one marries and has children
Extended family: family consisting of three or more generations; don’t necessarily live together
- Zadruga: extended family in the former Yugoslavia (patrilocal)
- Tarawads: extended family in southern India among the Nayar (matrilineal)
Descent groups: group based on belief of shared ancestry; may reside in several villages and rarely assemble
for common activity (basic units in the organization of nonindustrial food producers)
Industrialism and family organization
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American culture tends to promote the idea that kinship is, and should be, biological  for many North
Americans, the nuclear family is the only well-defined kin group
Neolocality: Married couples establish a new place of residence
In the lower class the incidence of expended family households is greater than it is in the middle class (an
adoption to poverty)
Collateral household: includes siblings and their spouses and children
Nowadays, other domestic arrangements outnumber the “traditional” American household:
- Women increasingly join the workforce
- The divorce rate has risen
- Smaller families
Populations with foraging economies are far removed from industrial societies in terms of social complexity,
but they do feature geographic mobility
The nuclear family is the most significant kin group
The band
For example the Native American Shoshoni
Industrial and foraging societies: mobility and the emphasis on small, economically self-sufficient family units
 nuclear families
Descent
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The analogous group among nonindustrial food producers
Often, decent-group membership is determined at birth and is lifelong (ascribed status)
Unilineal descent: the descent rule uses one line only: matrilineal or patrilineal
Members descent from the same apical ancestor
Lineage: uses demonstrated descent: members can name their forebears in each generation from the apical
ancestor through the present
Clan: uses stipulated descent: members say they descent from the same apical ancestor, they don’t try to
trace the actual genealogical links
- Sometimes a clan’s apical ancestor is not a human at all, but an animal or plant (totem)  symbolizes
the social unity and identity of the members; distinguishing them from other groups
Horticulture, pastoralism and agriculture
Descent groups are permanent units, with new members gained and lost in each generation
 Residence rules: ensure that about half the people born in each generation will live out their lives on the
ancestral estate (patrilineal/matrilineal descent and postmarital residence rules)
Unilocal rules of postmarital residence: patrilocality and matrilocality together
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Ambilineal (nonunilineal) descent: Membership comes through descent from a common ancestor. However,
people can choose the descent group they join, people can also change their descent-group membership, or
belong to two or more groups at the same time (achieved status)
There are rights, duties and obligations associated with kinship and descent (taking care of the kids)
Kinship calculation
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The system by which people in a society reckon kin relationships
To study this an ethnographer must determine the kin terms and then ask questions
Kinship is culturally constructed
Cultures develop their own explanations for biological processes, including the role of insemination in the
creation and growth of a human embryo
Ego: specific genealogical relationships between “relatives” and the person who has named them
Kin terms: the words used for different relatives in a particular language
Genealogical kin type: an actual genealogical relationship as opposed to kin term (father is, uncle isn’t)
Bilateral kinship calculation: kinship traced equally through males and females (for example father and mother)
Matrilateral skewing: a preference for relatives on the mother’s side
Kinship terminology is a native taxonomy, developed over generations by the people who live in a particular
society
If two relatives are designated by the same term, we can assume that they are perceived as sharing socially
significant attributes!
There are four main ways of classifying kin on the parental generation:
1. Lineal Terminology
- Is found in societies in which the nuclear family is the most important group based on kinship
- Lineal relative: anyone on the direct line of descent that leads to and from ego
- Collateral relatives: all other kin
- Affinals: relatives by marriage, whether of lineals or of collaterals
2. Bifurcate Merging Terminology
- Splits (bifurcates) the mothers side and the fathers side
- Merges same-sex siblings of each parent
3. Generational Terminology
- Does not bifurcate, but it does merge
- Uses the same term for parents and their siblings, but the lumping is more complete
- There are only two terms for the parental generation:
 Male member of the parental generation (“father”)
 Female member of the parental generation (“mother”)
- Is found in societies with ambilineal descent (where descent-group membership is not automatic)
4. Bifurcate Collateral Terminology
- The most specific: has separate terms for each of the six kin types of the parental generation
- A modern form: may be used when a child has parents of different ethnic backgrounds and uses terms
for aunts and uncles from different languages
Kinship terminology
Lineal
Bifurcate merging
Generational
Bifurcate collateral
Kin group
Nuclear family
Unilineal descent group –
patrilineal or matrilineal
Ambilineal descent group,
band
Varies
Residence rule
Neolocal
Unilocal – patrilocal or
matrilocal
Ambilocal
Varies
Economy
Industrialism, foraging
Horticulture, pastoralism,
agriculture
Agriculture, horticulture,
foraging
Varies
Marriage
What is marriage?
 Marriage is an institution with significant roles and functions in addition to reproduction
 No definition is broad enough to apply easily to all societies and situations
 A commonly quoted definition: Marriage is a union between a man and a woman such that the children born
to the woman are recognized as legitimate offspring of both partners.
 This definition isn’t universally valid for several reasons
- Plural marriages: when a men weds two or more women/ when a woman weds two or more men
(fraternal polyandry)
- Genitor (verwekker)
- Oater: socially recognized father (social paternity)
Incest and exogamy
 Exogamy: the custom and practice of seeking a mate outside one’s own group
- Has adaptive value, because it links people into a wider social network that nurtures and protects them
in times of need
 Incest: sexual contact with a relative, but cultures define their kin, and thus incest, differently (is also socially
constructed)
- Incest restrictions reinforce exogamy by pushing people to seek mates outside the local group
 Parallel cousins: the children of two brothers or two sisters
 Cross cousins: the children of a brother and a sister
 Moiety organization: a community with only two descent groups
 In societies with unilineal moieties, cross cousins always belong to the opposite group. Sex with cross cousins
isn’t incestuous, because they aren’t considered relatives.
 Is “stepfather-daughter-incest” really incest if they aren’t biological relatives?
Incest and its avoidance
 Incest is more common than we might suppose
 The effects of inbreeding: a decline in survival and fertility does accompany brother-sister mating across
several generations
 However, human marriage patterns are based on specific cultural beliefs, rather than universal concerns
about biological degeneration
 In most societies, people avoid incest by exogamy
 The practice of exogamy pushes social organization outward, establishing and preserving alliances among
groups.
Endogamy
 Rules of endogamy dictate mating or marriage within a group to which one belongs
 Most societies are endogamous units (classes and ethnic groups are quasi-endogamous groups)
 Homogamy means to marry someone similar, as when members of the same social class intermarry
 Homogamous marriage may work to concentrate wealth in social classes and to reinforce the system of
social stratification
 An extreme example of endogamy is India’s caste system
- Belief that intercaste sexual relations lead to ritual impurity for the higher-caste partner
- Although Indian castes (varna) are endogamous groups, many of them are internally subdivided into
exogamous lineages (jati)
 Royal endogamy is similar to caste endogamy: in a few societies based on brother-sister marriage
- For example: Polynesian societies
- The manifest function (the reason people in that society give for it): part of culture’s beliefs about mana
and sacredness
- The latent function (an effect the custom has on that society): limited conflicts about succession by
reducing the number of people with claims to rule
Marital rights and same-sex marriage
 Depending on the society, several different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to Leach,
marriage can, but doesn’t always, accomplish the following:
- Establish the legal father of a woman’s children and the legal mother of a man’s
- Give either or both spouses a monopoly on the sexuality of the other
- Give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other Give either or both spouses rights over the
others property
- Establish a joint fund of property for the benefit of the children
- Establish a socially significant relationship of affinity between spouses and their relatives
 Mater: socially recognized mother of a child
Marriage as group alliance
 Outside industrial societies, marriage is often more a relationship between groups than one between
individuals
 However, the Western notion that romantic love is necessary for a good marriage increasingly characterizes
other cultures as well
 Even if romance is as omnipresent as marriage, the two don’t necessarily go together
 Often it is customary for a substantial gift to be given before/at/after the marriage by the husband and his
kind to the wife and her kin (lobola)
- Very widespread in patrilineal societies: this gift compensates the bride’s group for the loss of her
companionship and labor
- An insurance against divorce: the larger the gift, the more stable the marriage
 Dowry: when the bride’s family or kin group provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries
- The dowry usually goes to the husband’s family, because when a man and his family take a wife, they
expect to be compensated for the added responsibility
- Correlated with low female status
- India
 Sati: the very rare practice through which widows were burned alive, voluntarily or forcibly on the husband’s
funeral pyre
 The continuation of marital alliances when one spouse dies:
- Sororate: the widower marries the sister of his deceased wife (if there are no (available) sisters, another
woman of the deceased wife’s kin group may be available).
- Levirate: the widow marries the brother of her deceased husband (often women prefer other
arrangements)
Divorce
 Ease of divorce varies across cultures
 Marriages that are political alliances between groups are more difficult to dissolve than are marriages that
are more individual affairs
 Cross-culturally, high divorce rates are correlated with a secure female economic position
 Divorce is harder in a patrilineal society, especially when lobola has to be paid back
 In contemporary Western societies, when romance fails, so may the marriage
- Although economic ties and obligations to the kids, along with other factors, may keep marriage intact
after sex, romance and/or companionship fade
Plural marriages
 Polygyny: a man has more than one wife
- Many culture’s approve of a man’s having more than one wife. However, even then most men are
monogamous
- The custom of men marrying later than women, promotes polygyny
- In many societies, the number of wives is an indicator of a man’s household productivity, prestige and
social position
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The second wife’s status is lower than that of the first (in certain societies, the first wife requests a
second wife to help with household chores)
- Plural wives can play important political roles in nonindustrial states
Polyandry: a woman has more than one husband
- Rare and only practiced under very specific conditions
- Most polyandrous societies live in South Asia
- Seems to be a cultural adaption to mobility associated with customary male travel
Religion
What is religion?
 Belief and ritual concerned with supernatural (a nonmaterial realm beyond the observable world) beings,
powers and forces
 In many societies, people believe they can benefit from, become imbued with, or manipulate supernatural
forces
 Many definitions of religion focus on groups of people who gather together regularly for worship. These
groups accept a set of doctrines involving the relationship between the individual and divinity, the sacred, or
whatever I taken to be the ultimate nature of reality.
 Good anthropology understands that religious world are real, vivid, and significant to those who construct
and inhabit them.
 Communitas: an intense feeling of social solidarity
 The word religion derives from the Latin religare (“to tie, to bind”)
 But it is not necessary for all members of a given religion to meet together as a common body.
 In studying religion cross-culturally, anthropologists pay attention to religion as a social phenomenon as well
as to the meanings of religious doctrines, settings, acts and events.
 Religion is associated with societies and nations: religion unites and divides.
 Increasingly, world religions compete for adherents and global power, ethnic, regional and class conflict
come to be framed in religious terms.
 A distinction between “a religion” (a formally organized religion) and “religion” (universal: it refers to
religious beliefs and behaviour)
 Anthropologists agree that religion is a cultural universal
Expressions of religion: When did religion begin? Several theories:
 Spiritual beings:
- Tylor
- Religions arose, as people tried to understand conditions and events they could not explain by reference
to daily experience (death, dreaming, trance).
- Two entities inhabit the body: one is active during the day and the other is active during sleep and trance
states.
- Animism: a belief in spiritual beings (the earliest form of religion)
- Animism  Polytheism  Monotheism
- Because religion originated to explain things, Tylor thought it would decline as science offered better
explanations. He was only partly right: religion must have other functions and meanings.
 Power and forces
- In addition to and sometimes coexisting with animism: a view of the supernatural as a domain of
impersonal power, or force, which people can control under certain conditions
- Mana: a sacred impersonal force existing in the universe that can reside in people, animals, plants and
objects
o Melanesian mana is similar to ‘good luck’, anyone could acquire it by chance
o Polynesian mana is attached to political offices
 Magic and religion
- Magic: supernatural techniques intended to accomplish specific aims
- May be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or contagious (accomplished through contact)
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Magic exists in cultures with diverse religious beliefs, including animism, mana, polytheism and
monotheism
Uncertainty, anxiety, solace
- Religion and magic don’t just explain things and help people accomplish goals, they also enter the realm
of human feelings: They serve emotional needs as well as cognitive ones
- Malinowski: when people face uncertainty and danger, they turn to magic
- Despite the improving technical skills, contemporary societies can’t control every outcome and magic
still persists
- Malinowski: “Magic is used to establish control, but religion is born out of the real tragedies of human
life”
Rituals
- Rituals are formal – stylized, repetitive and stereotyped
- People perform them in special (sacred) places and at set times
- Repeated often, rituals translate enduring messages, values and sentiment into action
Rites of passage
- Customs associated with the transition from one place or stage in life to another
- Three phases: separation, liminality and incorporation
- Liminality: the limbo or time out during which people have left one status but haven’t yet entered or
joined the next
- Often collective: several individuals pass through the rites together as a group (communitas)
- Liminal groups submerge the individual in the collective
- Rites of intensification: the ritual creates communitas and produces emotions that enhance social
solidarity
Totemism
- A key ingredient in the religions of the Native Australians
- Uses nature as a model for society: Totems could be animals, plants or geographical features and
members of each totemic group believed themselves to be descendants of their totem
- A form of cosmology: a system (in this case a religious one) for imagining and understanding the
universe
- Totemic principles continue to demarcate groups in modern societies
Religion and cultural ecology
 Sacred cattle in India
 Ahimsa: Hindu doctrine of nonviolence that forbids the killing of animals
 Western economic development experts lament that Hindus are bound by culture and tradition and refuse
to develop rationally
- These assumptions are both ethnographic and wrong
 Sacred cattle plays an important role in an Indian ecosystem that has evolved over the thousands of years
- Peasants use cattle to pull plows and carts
- Peasants use cattle manure to fertilize their fields
- Dry cattle dung is a basic cooking fuel
 Far from being useless, as the development experts contend, sacred cattle are essential to Indian cultural
adaption
Social control
 The power of religion affects actions
 Religion can work by getting inside people and mobilizing their emotions
 Witchcraft accusations often are directed at socially marginal or anomalous individuals
- A levelling mechanism: a custom or social action that operates to reduce status differences and thus to
bring standouts in line with community norms
 To ensure proper behaviour, religions offer rewards and punishments: often a code of ethics and morality is
set up (Golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you) Moral codes are ways of
maintaining order and stability
Kinds of religion
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Cultural differences show up systematically in religious beliefs and practices
All societies have religious figures (those believed capable of mediating between humans and the
supernatural)
All societies have medico-magic-religious specialists
- Shaman: part-time magico-religious practitioner (curers, mediums, spiritualists, astrologers, palm
readers etc.)
In foraging societies, shamans usually are part-time, because they also hunt or gather
Societies with productive economies can support full-time religious specialists
Ecclesiastical religions: religions pertaining to an established church and its hierarchy of officials
In monotheism, all supernatural phenomena are believed to be manifestations of/under the control of a
single eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being
Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to values central to Protestantism
- Protestants placed a premium on hard work, an ascetic life and profit seeking: success on earth was a
sign of divine favour and probable salvation
Today, people of many religions and with diverse worldviews are successful capitalists
World religions
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Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism
More than one billion people claim no official religion
Over time, diversity within religion can give birth to new religions
Religion and change
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Religious fundamentalists seek order based on strict adherence to purportedly traditional standards, beliefs,
rules and customs
Like political organization, religion helps maintain social order
Revitalization movements are social movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders
emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society
- Christianity originated as a revitalization movement
Cargo cults: postcolonial, acculturative religious movements in Melanesia
- These are revitalization movements
- Many cults have used European culture as sacred objects (Europeans use these objects and have
wealth). Natives hope to also come upon the secret knowledge needed to gain cargo.
- Religious responses to the expansion of the world capitalist economy
Antimodernism describes the rejection of the modern in favour of what is perceived as an earlier, purer and
better way of life
Fundamentalism describes antimodernist movements in various religions
- Fundamentalists advocate fidelity to the “true” religious principles of the larger religion
- They see a sharp divide between themselves and other religions, and between a sacred view of life and
the secular world/nominal religion
- The state should be subservient to God
Conclusion
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Definition: Belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers and forces
- How do we classify ritual-like behaviour that occurs in secular contexts?
o Secular rituals: formal, invariant, stereotyped, earnest, repetitive behaviour and rites of passage
that take place in nonreligious settings
- How can we tell what is religion and what is not?
- Who is to say which is “more religious”?
Arts, Media, Sports
What is art?
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The arts include music, performance arts, visual arts, storytelling and literature (expressive culture)
Dictionary: “The quality, production expression or realm of what is beautiful (?) or of more than ordinary
significance; the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.”
Aesthetics: “The qualities perceived in works of art; the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of
beauty.”
Western culture tends to compartmentalize art as something apart from everyday life and ordinary culture
An artwork is something that stimulates and sustains contemplation; it compels attention and reflection.
Many of the high points of Western art and music had religious inspiration, or were done in the service of
religion.
In any society, art is produced for its aesthetic value as well as for religious purposes
- Non-Western art is usually, BUT WRONGLY, assumed to have an inevitable connection to ritual
- In fact, non-Western societies have art for art’s sake just as Western societies do
If something is displayed in a museum, or in another socially accepted artistic setting, someone at least must
think it’s art
Those who work with non-Western art have been criticized for ignoring the individual and focusing too much
on the social nature and context of art (generally, only the name of the tribe and of the Western donor are
given, rather than of the individual artist)
In Western societies, artists of many sorts have reputations for being iconoclastic and antisocial, while social
acceptance may be more important in the societies anthropologists have studied.
Art is work
Some societies tend to reward conformity, others encourage innovation
Art, society and culture
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Ethnomusicology is the comparative study of the musics in the world and of music as an aspect of culture
and society
Studies non-Western music, traditional and folk music and even contemporary popular music from a cultural
perspective
Nowadays, given globalization, diverse cultures and musical styles easily meet and mix
The fact that music has existed in all known cultures suggests that it arose early in human history
Possible biological roots of music: the way mothers sing to their children; lullabies
Music is among the most social of the arts
The Basongye people of Congo use three features to distinguish between music and noise:
1. Must involve humans
2. Must be organized
3. Must continue
Folk: the expressive culture of ordinary people
Art also functions as a form of communication between artist and community/audience
Art can lead to catharsis: intense emotional release
Art enters the political arena
Appreciation of the arts depends on cultural background
- Must be learned (part of enculturation)
- Whatever universal principles of artistic expression may exist, they have been put into effect in a
diversity of ways in different cultures.
Growing acceptance of the anthropological definition of culture has helped broaden the study of the
humanities from fine art and elite art to “folk” and non-Western arts
Sometimes children’s participation in arts/performances/sports exemplifies forced enculturation
In nonindustrial societies, artists tend to be part-time specialists. In states, there are more ways for artists to
practice their craft full-time.
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Many non-Western societies offer career tracks in the arts
An artistic career may also involve some sort of calling, talent
Artists need support if they devote full-time to creative activity (families, kin groups, the elite)
Classic Greek theatre survives throughout the world
In some cases and cultures it’s not necessary for the artists to be innovative as they are being creative,
creativity can be expressed in variations on an traditional form
Media and culture
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Mass culture = popular culture
‘Text’ can refer to anything that can be read – that is, processed, interpreted and assigned meaning by
anyone exposed to it
Media consumers actively select, evaluate and interpret media in ways that make sense to them.
People use media for all sorts of reasons
Popular culture can be used to express discontent and resistance by groups that are or feel powerless or
oppressed
Another role of the media is to provide social cement, a basis for sharing
TV (Telenovelas) in Brazil  smaller families because people’s ideas about proper family size are influenced
as they see smaller families as stereotypes instead of the traditional bigger families
Sports and culture
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Sports and the media influence culture reciprocal
Throughout most of the world, soccer is the most popular sport
- An anthropologist contends that football is popular because it symbolizes certain key aspects of
American life
Cultural values, social forces and the media influence international sports success
The contrast between ascribed and achieved status:
- In Brazil, ascribed status is of more importance
- In America, achieved status is of more importance
(so no drugs!)
The world system and colonialism
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Isolated groups are impossible to find today
Truly isolated societies probably never have existed
The world system
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The world system and the relations among the countries within it are shaped by the capitalist world
economy
Capitalist world economy: a single world system committed to production for sale or exchange, with the
object of maximizing profits (rather than supplying domestic needs)
Capital refers to wealth or recourses invested in business, with the intent of producing profit
World system theory: the idea that an identifiable social system –based on wealth and power differentials–
extends beyond individual countries
Countries within within the world system:
- Core: includes the strongest and most powerful nations
- The complexity of economic activities and the level of capital accumulation is the greatest
- Semiperiphery: includes industrialized nations
- Like core nations, they export both industrial goods and commodities, but they lack the power and
economic dominance of core nations
- Periphery: includes the world’s least privileged and powerful countries
- Exports mainly human labour
Industrialization
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Industrial revolution: the historical transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of traditional into modern
societies through industrialization of the economy
Began with cotton products, iron and pottery
Started in England, not France
- In France they could grow the existing system, rather than having to adopt a new one
- England had to industrialize
1. Advantages in natural resources
2. Located at the crossroads of international trade
3. Particular cultural values and religion contributed to industrialization (Protestantism)
Socioeconomic effects of industrialization
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Standards of comfort rose, but prosperity was uneven
Marx: socioeconomic stratification between two opposed classes:
- The bourgeoisie (capitalists): the owners of the means of production
- The proletariat (propertyless workers): people who had to sell their labour to survive
Proletarianization: the separation of workers from the means of production
Class consciousness: recognition of collective interests and personal identification with one’s economic
group
Modern stratification systems aren’t simple and dichotomous, they include a middle class of skilled and
professional workers
Social equality tends to increase in advanced industrial societies
Occupy movement: demonstration against the disparities between the rich and the poor in America
Weber faulted Marx for an overly simple and exclusively economic view of stratification
- Wealth, power and prestige are separate components of social ranking, but tend to be correlated
Colonialism
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“Global culture”
Industrialization accelerated local participation in larger networks
Imperialism: a policy of extending the rule of a country or empire over foreign nations and of taking and
holding foreign colonies
Colonialism: the political, social, economic and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign
power for an extended time
British colonialism:
- In 1914 the British empire covered a fifth of the world’s land surface and ruled a fourth of its population
- The “sun never set”
- ‘The white man’s burden”: people in the empire were seen as incapable of governing themselves, so that
British guidance was needed to civilize and Christianize them
- Had substantial business interest in their colonies, but they also sought international glory and prestige
French colonialism:
- Mission civilisatrice: to implant French culture, language and religion throughout the colonies
- Two forms of colonial rule:
- Indirect rule
- Direct rule
- Had substantial business interest in their colonies, but they also sought international glory and prestige
Hundreds of ethnic groups and ‘tribes’ are colonial constructions
- Example: Sukuma language / Genocide in Rwanda
Postcolonial: the study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized
(mainly after 1800)
The former colonies can be divided into:
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Settler countries, with large numbers of European colonists and sparser native populations (Australia,
Canada)
- Nonsettler countries, with substantial native populations and relatively few European settlers (India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh)
- Mixed countries, with significant European settlement despite having sizable native populations (South
Africa, Kenya)
Internal colonization: as with the Americans to the Native Americans
Development
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Many economists assume that industrialization increases production and income. They seek to create in
developing countries a process like the one that first occurred spontaneously in 18-th century Great Britain
Intervention philosophy: an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific
directions
Neoliberalism:
- Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
- The government should stay out of its nation’s economic affairs – free trade!
- Trickle-down effect: economic growth which will eventually benefit everyone through a process
The second world
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The First World: the democratic West
The Second World: communist nations
The Third World: former Soviet Union and the socialist and once-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and
Asia // less developed countries
 A common, although ethnocentric, way of categorizing nations
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communism: a social system in which property is owned by the community and in which people work for the
common good
Communism: a political movement and doctrine seeking to overthrow capitalism and to establish a form of
communism as prevailed in the Soviet Union
Today only five Communist states remain: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam
Authoritarian: promoting obedience to authority rather than individual freedom
Totalitarian: banning rival parties and demanding total submission of the individual to the state
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia became post-socialist
Corruption: the abuse of public office for private gain
In post-socialist societies, what is legal and what is considered morally correct don’t necessarily correspond
(because of the old communist notion that ‘state property belongs to everyone and to no one’)
The world system today
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The spread of industrialization continues today, although nations have shifted their positions within the
world system
Industrialization has led to the destruction of indigenous economies, ecologies and populations
Genocide: a deliberate policy of exterminating a group through warfare or murder
Indigenous people: the original inhabitants of their territories
Anthropology’s role in a globalizing world
Globalisation:
1) Globalisation as a fact: the spread and connectedness of production, distribution, consumption,
communication and technologies across the world
2) Globalisation as a contested ideology and policy: efforts by international financial powers to create a global
free market
The globalisation of risk:
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Environmental and technological risks have multiplied
Concern about risk is often more developed in groups that are endangered less
The mass media hone risk perception
The distinction between the global, the national and the local is blurred
Global climate change:
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The causes of global warming are mainly anthropogenic: caused by humans and their activities
The greenhouse effect: a natural phenomenon that keeps the Earth’s surface warm
The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has reached its highest level and will continue to rise
without actions to slow it down.
The term climate change is preferred over global warming, because there are more changes
Radiactive forcings work to warm and cool the Earth, and should remain in balance
Because of the growing global demand for energy, warming (‘positive’) forces outweigh the cooling forces
Environmental anthropology/ ecological anthropology/ cultural ecology:
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How cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments and how people
used elements of their culture to maintain their ecosystems
Attempts not only to understand, but also to find solutions to environmental problems
Ethnoecology: any society’s set of environmental practices and perceptions (its cultural model of the
environment and its relation to people and society)
A clash of cultures related to environmental change may occur when…
…development threatens indigenous peoples and their environments
…external regulation aimed at conservation confronts indigenous peoples and their ethnoecologies
Deforestation
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Forest loss can lead to:
Increased greenhouse gas (CO₂)
Loss of global diversity
But the created land areas reflect more sunlight back to space (cooling force)
Often, deforestation is demographically driven (caused by population pressure)
Urban growth promotes deforestation (fuel wood)
Other causes: commercial logging, road building, cash cropping
Several causes, so different conservation strategies!
The challenge is to find ways to make forest preservation attractive to local people and ensure their
cooperation
Interethnic contact
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Acculturation: changes that result when groups come into continuous firsthand contact
Diffusion can occur without firsthand contact (cultural borrowing)
Westernization: the influence of Western expansion on indigenous peoples and their cultures
When contact with powerful outsiders seriously threatens an indigenous culture > “shock phase” >
ethnocide (a group’s cultural collapse) or genocide (physical extinction)
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Cultural imperialism: the spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others
The national or global can become that only if the local cooperates
Making and remaking culture
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During globalization, people constantly make and remake culture: they evaluate and assign their own
meanings to the information, images and products they receive from outside. Those meanings reflect their
cultural backgrounds and experiences.
As global forces enter new communities they are indigenized: modified to fit the local structure
People in motion
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The mass media play an important role in maintaining ethnic and national identities among people who lead
transnational lives
The linkages created through globalisation have both enlarged and erased old boundaries and distinctions
People travel more than ever
Most migrants, in a sense, live multilocally (in different places at once)
The diaspora: the offspring of an area who have spread to many lands
Postmodernity: our time and situation. Postmodern refers to the blurring and breakdown of established
canons, categories, distinctions and boundaries.
Postmodernism: a style of architecture
Indigenous peoples
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Social movements worldwide have adopted the term as a self-identifying and political label based on past
oppression but now legitimizing a search for social, cultural and political rights
The indigenous rights movement
Essentialism: the process of viewing an identity as established, real and frozen - to hide the historical
processes and politics within which that identity developed.
In our globalising world, anthropology has a crucial role to play by promoting a more people-centered vision of social
change.