Anthropology Chapter 8; Political Systems
Political scientists focus on contemporary and recent nation-states. Anthropologists look global and comparative.
Anthropological studies have revealed substantial variation in power (the ability to exercise one’s will over others,
authority is formal, socially approved use of power), authority and legal systems in different societies. ‘Sociopolitical
organization’ is a better word in discussing regulation or management of interrelations among groups and their
representatives
Service listed four types of political organization. These organizations now only exist within the context of state
organization.
•Band: small kin-based group among foragers. Everyone is related through kinship or marriage. A type of
organization in which hunters and foragers work, hunt and life together, but it is also a political group.
•Tribe: economy based on nonintensive food production (horticulture and pastoralism). They have no formal
government and no reliable means of enforcing political decisions.
•Chiefdom: intermediate form between tribe and state. Social relations mainly based on kinship marriage, descent,
age, generation and gender. Chiefdoms were also kin based.
•Differential access: favored access to resources by superordinates over subordinates
•State: formal governmental structure and socioeconomic stratification
In general, when food production becomes more complex and extended, the population of the units grows and the
economy becomes more complex. Many sociopolitical trends reflect the increased regulatory demands associated
with food production.
Bands and tribes
Modern hunter-gatherers live in nation-states and an interlinked world. Most contemporary hunter-gatherers rely
on governments and on missionaries for at least part of what they consume.
The San (Botswana and Zimbabwe). Kent: tendency exists to stereotype foragers; stresses variation among foragers.
To the extent that foraging continues to be their subsistence base, groups like the San can illustrate links between a
foraging economy and other aspects of band society and culture.
The Inuit
- Conflict resolution > means of settling disputes. All societies have ways of settling disputes along with
cultural rules or norms about proper and improper behavior.
- Foragers had no formal law(> legal code of a state society, with trial and enforcement provisions) but had
methods of social control for dispute settlement.
- Hunting and fishing by men were the primary Inuit subsistence activities. Men faced more danger than
women did, more men died. Adult women outnumbered men, it was permitted for some men to have more
women. But if a men seemed to be taking additional wives just to enhance his reputation, a rival was likely
to steal one of them.
- A jilted husband could try to kill the wife stealer, but then he was often killed by himself; retaliation. He
could also challenge a rival to a song battle. But if he win, it won’t guarantee the returning of his wife.
Tribal cultivators
Nowadays there are no totally autonomous tribes. But there are societies in which tribal principles continue to
operate. Typically tribes have a horticultural or pastoral economy and are organized into villages and / or descent
groups. They don’t have a socioeconomic stratification and no formal government. Regulatory officials are village
heads, ‘big men’, descent group leaders, village councils and pantribal associations. (all have limited power)
- Horticultural villages are usually small, have a low population and open access to strategic resources.
- Age, gender and personal traits determine how much respect people receive.
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- Egalitarianism (gelijkheidsstreven) diminishes as village size and population density increase.
The Yanomami believe that the position of village head (> local tribal leader with limited authority). His authority is
limited, he can only persuade (overtuigen), harangue (toespreken) and try to influence public opinion. He is first
among equals. When a village head dies, it isn’t his son or his brother that follows him. Village leaders are chosen for
their qualities (it is an achieved not an ascribed status).
The Big Man (south Pacific) is a generous tribal entrepreneur with multivillage support. Men became Big Man
because they had certain personalities; they did not inherit their status but created it through hard work and good
judgment. His supporters, recognizing his past favors and anticipating future rewards, recognized him as a leader
and accepted his decisions as binding. A Big Man worked hard not to hoard wealth but to be able to give away the
fruits of his labor, a stingy (gierige) Big Man would lose his support.
Big Man could forge regional political organizations, sometimes temporarily, by mobilizing supporters from several
villages. Pantribal sodalities > nonkin-based groups with regional political significance (Central Plains of North
Amercia, tropical Africa). Likely to develop in situations of warfare with a neighboring tribe. Plains > leadership
needed to raid enemy camps and manage summer bison hunt.
Many tribes that adopted this Plains strategy had once been foragers.
Among the Masai of Kenya (eastern and southeastern Africa), men born during the same four-year period were
circumcised together and belonged to the same named group, an age set, throughout their lives. The sets moved
through age grades, the most important of which was the warrior grade.
In some parts of western and central Africa, pantribal sodalities are secret, made up exclusively of men or women.
Some pastoralists have chiefs and live in nation-states. Nomads must interact with a variety of groups, unlike most
sedentary societies. Basseri > smaller population, chief, khan, is similar to village head, position achieved; allegiances
are with person. Qashqai > multiple levels of authority, more powerful chiefs, authority can be more coercive,
allegiances with office.
As part of a larger whole, pastoral tribes are constantly pitted against other ethnic groups. In these nations, the state
becomes a final authority, a higher-level regulator that attempts to limit conflict between ethnic groups. State
organization arose not just to manage agricultural economies but also to regulate the activities of ethnic groups
within expanding social and economic systems.
Chiefdoms
Chiefdoms were a transitional form of organization that emerged during the evolution of tribes into states. Carneiro
defines the state as: “an autonomous political unit encompassing many communities within its territory, having a
centralized government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for work or war, and decree and enforce laws”.
Chiefdom and the state are ideal types. But you can debate if societies are early states or tribes.
In a state the ruler is elected, an appointed leader. Chiefdom is in between a smaller band and a larger state.
Social relations are based on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation and gender (states bring nonrelatives
together). Chiefdoms may include thousands of people living in many village or hamlets. Regulation is carried out by
the chief and his assistants who occupy political offices. Office > permanent political position.
Chiefs regulated distribution and consumption. At certain seasons people would offer part of their harvest to the
chief through his or her representatives. And chiefs sponsored feasts at which they give back some of what they had
received. Unlike big men, chiefs were exempt from ordinary work and had rights and privileges.
Social status in chiefdoms was based on seniority of descent. The status of a chief was ascribed. A chief is always the
oldest child of a formal chief. Usually men but in the Pacific it can also be women. There is a lack of sharp gaps
between elites and commoner. The status systems of chiefdoms were associated with differential access to
resources, some had privileged access to power, prestige and wealth.
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Weber defined 3 related dimensions of social stratification
- Economic status or wealth; all a person’s material assets; basic of economic status
- Power; the ability to exercise one’s will over others; basic of political status.
- Prestige; esteem, respect or approva; basic for social status.
In archaic states there were contrasts in wealth, power and prestige between entire groups of men and women.
(Stratum > one of two or more groups that contrast in social status and access to strategic resources.)
- Superordinate stratum; upper, elite group; privileged access to valued resources
- Subordinate; lower, underprivileged group; limited by privileged group
Sociopolitical type
Band
Tribe
Chiefdom
State
Economic type
Foraging
Horticulture, pastoralism
Productive horticulture,
agriculture, pastoral nomadism
Agriculture, industrialism
Examples
Inuit, San
Yanomami, Masai
Qashqai, Polynesia
Type of regulation
Local
Local, temporary regional
Permanent regional
Ancient Mesopotamia,
Permanent regional
contemporary US and Canada
State systems
* Population control  (fixing boundaries, establishment of citizenship categories and censusing) states regulate
population through administrative subdivision; province, districts, ’states’, countries, sub counties and parishes.
Population displacements have increased with globalization and as war, famine and job seeking churn up migratory
currents. People in states identify themselves by ascribed and achieved statuses rather than only as members of a
descent group or extended family.
* Judiciary  (laws, legal procedure and judges) states have laws based on precedent and legislative proclamations.
All states have courts and judges. Contrast between states and nonstates is intervention in family affairs.
* Enforcement  (permanent military and police forces) all states have agents to enforce judicial decisions. The
government attempts to suppress internal disorder and to guard against external threats.
* Fiscal Systems  (taxation) states need financial or fiscal (> pertaining to finances and taxation) mechanisms to
support governments officials and numerous other specialists. States redistribute (through taxation), but generosity
and sharing played down. State organization doesn’t bring more freedom or leisure to the common people. Elites of
archaic states have reveled in the consumption of sumptuary goods
Social control
Social control refers to ‘those fields of the social system (beliefs, practices and instructions) that are most actively
involved in the maintenance of any norms and the regulation of any conflict. Norms are cultural standards or
guidelines that enable individuals to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Political systems
have informal, social and subtle aspects along with formal and subtle aspects along with formal governmental and
public dimension.
Hegemony > social order in which subordinates accept hierarchy as natural (developed by Gramsci). Bourdieu 
every social order tries to make its own arbitrariness seem natural and in everyone’s interest. Often promises are
made that thing will get better if you’re patient.
It’s easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than try to control their bodies.
Hegemony is one way in which elites curb resistance and maintain power. Another way is to make subordinates
believe they eventually will gain power. Separate or isolate people while supervising them closely is another way of
curbing resistance (terugdringen van weerstand).
In public, the elites and the oppressed may observe the etiquette of power relations. The dominants act like masters
while their subordinates show humility and defer.
Hidden transcript  the critique of power that proceeds out of sight of the powerholders. > expressed publicly at
certain times and in specific place. E.g. during Carnival, because of its costumed anonymity.
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Public transcript  open, public interaction between superordinates and subordinates. > when people are allowed
to assemble.
Often situations that seem to be hegemonic do have active resistance, but it is individual and disguised rather than
collective and defiant (uitdagend).
‘Informal’ social control  fear, stigma, shame and gossip. Gossip, can lead to shame, sometimes is used when a
direct or formal sanction is risky or impossible. Mead and Benedict  shame > external sanction. Guilt  internal
sanction, psychologically generated by the individual.
The Makua  3 main disincentives or sanctions (here: kind of punishment that follows a norm violation):
- Jail (Cadeia); the last phase of an extended political and legal process
- Sorcery attack (Enretthe); was believed such a punitive sorcery attack would kill or make the thief very ill.
- Shame (Ehaya); thief would experience extended feeling of disgrace (schande).
Shame can be a powerful social sanction.
Now there is a discussion that people aren’t just citizens of governments, they also are members of society and
social sanctions exist alongside governmental ones.
In the Igbo women’s war, women effectively used their social power (through song, dance, noise and ‘in-your-face’
behavior) to subvert the formal authority structure and, in so doing, gained greater influence within that structure.
Chapter 9; Gender
Nature > biological predispositions
Nurture > environment
Sexual dimorphism > marked differences in male and female biology, beyond breasts and genitals. Man and women
differ by primary sexual characteristics (genitalia), secondary sexual characteristics (lower voice by man, hair
distribution) and average weight, height, strength and longevity. Gender encompasses traits that a culture assigns to
and inculcates in males and females. ‘Gender’ refers to the cultural construction of whether one is female, male or
something else.
Gender roles > the tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.
Gender stereotypes > oversimplified, strongly held views about males and females.
Gender stratification > unequal distribution of social rewards between men and women (socially valued resources,
power, prestige, human rights and personal freedom).
Ann Stoler > the ‘economic determinants of gender status’ include freedom or autonomy and social power.
Recurrent gender patterns > patterns that are general but not universal, in many societies but not in all.
Ethnologists compare ethnographic data from several cultures to discover and explain differences and similarities.
Data relevant to the cross-cultural study of gender can be drawn from the domains of economics, politics, domestic
activity, kinship and marriage.
Cross-culturally the subsistence contribution (bijdrage aan levensonderhoud) of men and women are roughly equal.
But in domestic activities women dominate, and women work more hours than men do.
Among the societies known to ethnography, polygyny (multiple wives) is more common than polyandry (multiple
husbands)
Sanday > gender stratification decreased when men and women made roughly equal contributions to subsistence.
Gender stratification was greatest when women did much more or less than men did.
Gathering usually provides more food than hunting and fishing do, and it is often women’s work. When gathering is
prominent, gender status tends to be more equal than it is when hunting and fishing are prominent. Pregnancy and
lactation keep women from being primary hunters in foraging societies, the Agta are exceptional: women hunt with
dogs.
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By domestic-public dichotomy (> strong differentiation between the home and the outside world), public activities
have greater prestige than domestic ones do and often men are the one that are active in the public domain. So
gender status also is more equal when the domestic and public spheres aren’t sharply separated.
Warfare and trade are public arenas that can contribute to status inequality of males and females among food
producers. Gender stratification is less developed among foragers.
Matrilineal descent > people join mother’s group at birth. Matrilocality > living with family of the wife after
marriage. In these societies women’s status tends to be high (allocation of land, succession to political positions). It
disperse related males. These systems td to occur in societies where population pressure on strategic resources in
minimal and warfare is infrequent.
Matriarchies exist, but not as mirror images of patriarchies. Despite special position of women, matriarchy is not the
equivalent of female rule. Sanday > Minangkabau is a matriarchy because women are the center, origin, and
foundation of the social order.
Patrilineal-patrilocal complex > male supremacy based on patrilineality, patrilocality and warfare. Cultivators often
wage warfare against other villages.
Patriarchy > political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic
human rights. Societies that feature a full-fledged patrilineal-patrilocal complex, replete with warfare and
intervillage raiding, also typify patriarchy. Gender stratification typically reduced in societies in which women have
prominent roles in the economy and social life
The domestic-public dichotomy influences gender stratification in industrial societies. The traditional idea that ‘a
women’s place is in the home’ developed among middle- and upper- Americans as industrialism spread after 1900.
Earlier, pioneer women were recognized as fully productive workers in farming and home industry. The developing
of machine tools and mass production reduced the need for female labor, women were biologically unfit for factory
work.
Margolis > gendered work, attitudes and beliefs have varied in response to American economic needs. Changes in
economic led to changes in attitudes about women. As women increasingly work outside the home, ideas about the
gender roles of males and females have changed.
Alongside the economic gains of many American women stands an opposite extreme; the feminization of poverty.
This refers to the increasing representation of women and their children among America’s poorest people. The
percentage of female-headed households has increased worldwide and they mostly are poorer than male-headed
households. One way to improve the situation of poor women is to encourage them to organize. Membership in a
group can help women to mobilize resources, rationalize production and to reduce risks and costs associated with
credit.
Societies may recognize more than 2 genders. The contemporary US includes individuals who self-identify using such
labels as transgender, intersex, third gender and transsexual. Sex is biological, whereas gender is socially
constructed.
- Transgender > individuals who may or may not contrast biologically with ordinary males and females.
Individuals with varied perceptions of self and manner of gender performance.
- Intersex > a group of conditions involving a discrepancy between the external and the internal genitals.
- Third gender > Hijras in India.
- Transvestites > men dressing as women, Brazil. Most common way of forming gender alternative.
- Klinefelter’s syndrome > XXY, most common unusual sex chromosome combination and the second most
common condition (after Down syndrome) caused by the presence of extra chromosomes in humans.
- Triple X syndrome > XXX, usually no physically distinguishable difference with other women.
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Turner syndrome > several condition, 0 is most common. Girls with this syndrome typically are sterile
because of nonworking ovaries and amenorrhea (absence of a menstrual cycle).
Sexual orientation > sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex, same sex or either sex. Asexuality > lack of
attraction to either sex, also a sexual orientation. Each type of desire and experience holds different meanings for
individuals and groups. There is not enough information to determine the exact extent to which sexual orientation is
based on biology. Sexual norms vary from culture to culture.
Sex acts involving people of the same sex were absent, rare or secret in only 37 % of the 76 societies. In the others,
various forms of same-sex sexual activity were considered normal and acceptable. Flexibility in sexual expression
seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage. Both masturbation and same-sex sexual activity exist among other
primates.
Chapter 10; Families, Kinship and Descent
Nuclear family > parents and children, lasts as long as the parents and children remain together. It is widespread but
it isn’t universal, nuclear families don’t exist everywhere. Its significance in society differs from one place to another.
Family of orientation > the family in which one is born and grows up.
Family of procreation > formed when one marries and has children.
Descent groups > group based on belief in shared ancestry.
In most societies, relations with nuclear family members take precedence over relations with other kin (?).
Muslims of western Bosnia > households called zadruga; headed by a male household head and his wife, patrilocal.
Nayars in India > tarawads, matrilineal society.
Neolocality > living situation in which couple establishes new residence, a home of their own.
Expanded family households > include nonnuclear relatives. Extended family household > when an expanded family
households includes three or more generations. Collateral household > includes siblings and their spouses and
children. Within stratified nations, value systems vary to some extent from class to class, and so does kinship.
There are less nuclear families in the US than before. It’s because there are more women in the work force, which is
associated with the rise in marriage age. Divorce have become more common today.
There are differences in talking about your family. North Americans often define their families as consisting of their
husbands / wives and children. Brazilians mean with their family; parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and
cousins. Later they add their children, but rarely their husband/wife. Because they live in a less mobile society, they
stay close in contact with their relatives.
Among foragers, nuclear family and the band are two basic units of social organization. Nuclear families are more
stable than bands. Often families only hunt cooperatively as a band in certain seasons.
Descent groups > permanent social unit whose members say they have ancestors in common. Often membership is
determined at birth and is lifelong (ascribed status). They are often exogamous.
Matrilineal descent > people join the mother’s group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
Patrilineal descent > people join the father’s group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
These are types of unilineal descent (> one line only, the male or the female line).
(Am)bilineal descent = cogmatic descent > (one of) two lines, our society. Most of us don’t make a distinction
between the mother’s or the father’s family. There are not structural reasons to make a distinction.
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Descent groups may be lineages (> unilineal descent group based on demonstrated descent) or clans (> unilineal
descent group based on stipulated descent, they claims common descent form an apical ancestor but cannot
demonstrate it. Less direct impact on day-to-day practices).
A lineage uses demonstrated descent. Members can name their forebears in each generation from the apical
ancestor through the present.
Clan use stipulated descent. They don’t try to trace the actual genealogical links between themselves and their
ancestor. Sometimes a clan’s apical ancestor is not a human, but an animal or plant > totem.
Descent groups, except nuclear families, are permanent units with new members gained and lost in each
generations. To endure they need to keep some members home, patrilineal and matrilineal descent and the
postmarital residence rules ensure that about half the people will live out their lives on the ancestral estate.
Patrilocality > a married couple moves to the husband’s father’s community. Matrilocality > the opposite.
Ambilineal descent > flexible descent rule, neither patrilineal nor matrilineal. People can choose the descent group
they join and change their descent-group membership.
Often societies have families and descent groups. Obligations to one may conflict with obligations to the other, more
in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies. And in matrilineal there are higher divorce rates and greater female
promiscuity (vermenging).
Kinship calculation > how people in a particular society reckon kin relations. Kinship is culturally constructed, some
genealogical kin are considered to be relatives whereas others are not. Cultures develop their own explanations for
biological processes, including the role of insemination in the creation and growth of a human embryo. Through
questioning, ethnographers discovers the specific genealogical relationships between relatives and the person who
has named the, the ego.
Genealogical kin type > father’s brother
Kin term > uncle
In some societies there are different terms for e.g. the son of your sister and the son of your brother. Because we
don’t make distinction between them, we call them the same. Bilateral kinship calculations > kin ties calculated
equally through men and women. Matrilateral skewing > preference for relatives on the mother’s side.
Kinship terminology is a classification system. It is a native taxonomy, developed over generations by the people who
live in a particular society. A native classification system is based on how people perceive similarities and differences
in the things being classified.
Anthropologists have found limited patterns in which people classify their kin. Functional explanation > one based
on correlation or co-occurrence of social variables. Functional explanations attempt to relate particular customs to
other features of a society, such as rules of descent. Certain aspects of a culture are functions of others. They are
correlated variables, so that when one of them changes, the other inevitably change too.
Lineal kinship terminology > one based on correlation or co-occurrence of
social variables. The term uncle is used for both FB and MB. It distinguishes
lineal relatives (> ego’s direct ancestor or descendant (afstammeling)) form
collateral relatives (> relatives outside ego’s direct line (B, Z, FB, MZ)). Affinals
> relatives by marriage, whether of lineals (son’s wife) or of collaterals (sister’s
husband).
Bifurcate merging kinship terminology >
slits the mother’s side and the father’s side. It also merges (samensmelten)
same-sex siblings of each parent, mother and mother’s sister are merged under
the same term. But there are different terms for mother’s brother. Associated
with unilineal descent and unilocal postmarital residence rules.
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Generational kinship terminology > same term for parents and their siblings,
but the lumping is more complete; no distinguish between mother’s and
father’s side. Typical of ambilineal societies and it also characterizes certain
foragers bands.
Bifurcate collateral kinship terminology > separate terms are used for each of
six kin types of the parental generation; M, Z, MB, MZ, FB and FZ. This is not as
common as other types. Many societies that use it are in North Africa and in the
Middle East, it also may be used when a child has parents of different ethnic backgrounds and uses terms for aunts
and uncles derived from different languages.
Kinship terminology
Lineal
Bifurcate merging
Kin group
Nuclear family
Unilineal descent group
Residence rule
Neolocal
Unilocal
Generational
Ambilineal
Ambilocal
Bifurcate collateral
Varies
Varies
Economy
Industrialism, foraging
Horticulture, pastoralism,
agriculture
Agriculture, horticulture,
foraging
Varies
Chapter 11; Marriage
No definition of marriage is broad enough to apply easily to all societies and situations. A common 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.’ There are 3 sorts of marriage; sanction by civil law, defacto marriage and
religious marriage.
Plural marriages > marriages unite more than two spouses. In some patrilineal societies, Nuer, a women can marry a
women if her father has only daughters. The ‘wife’ has sex with men until she gets pregnant. The female husband
isn’t the genitor (> a child’s biological father), she is their pater (> one’s socially recognized father).
Exogamy > marriage outside a given group. Incest > forbidden sexual relations with a close relative, but it is socially
constructed. Many societies distinguish between 2 kinds of first cousins; parallel
cousins (> children of two brothers or two sisters, your mother’s sister’s
children) and cross cousins (> children of a brother and a sister, your mother’s
brother’s children). In communities with only two descent groups, cross cousins
always are members of the opposite moiety (helft), parallel cousins are members
of your ego’s own moiety. Some societies have patrilineal and other matrilineal
moieties.
In societies with unilineal moieties, cross cousins always belong to the opposite
group. Sex with cross cousins isn’t incestuous. In many unilineal societies people
must marry either a cross cousin or someone from the same descent group as a
cross cousin.
When unilineal descent is very strongly developed, the parent who belongs to a
different descent group than your own isn’t considered a relative.
The Lakher in Southeast Asia are strongly patrilineal. If ego’s parents divorce and
both marry again and get a daughter, ego can marry the mothers’ daughter but
can’t marry the fathers’ daughter. It’s because she belongs to the same descent
group.
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Human behavior with respect to mating with close relatives may express generalized primate tendency with urges
and avoidance. Father-daughter incest ten to be least likely when there was substantial paternal parenting of
daughters.
Why do societies discourage incest?
- Brother-sister mating lead to a decline in survival and fertility across several generations.
- Following the rules of exogamy, which force them to mate and marry outside their kin group.
Endogamy > marriage of people from the same group. Classes and ethnic groups are quasi-endogamous groups.
Homogamy > marry someone similar.
An extreme example of endogamy is India’s caste system. This are stratified groups in which membership is ascribed
at birth and it lifelong. Castes are grouped into 5 categories, a varna. Each varna includes subcastes, jati, these
includes people within a region who may intermarry. Castes are endogamous groups, but many of them are
internally subdivided into exogamous lineages. So traditionally Indians had to marry a member of another descent
group from the same caste.
Royal endogamy, based in few societies on brother-sister marriage, is similar to caste endogamy. Inca Peru, ancient
Egypt and traditional Hawaii allowed royal brother-sister marriages. Manifest function > reasons people in that
society five for a custom. Latent function > effects customs has that are not explicitly recognized by the natives.
Hawaiians believed in an impersonal force; mana. Mana depends on genealogy, the person whose own mana was
exceeded only by the king’s was his sibling. The most appropriate wife for a king was his own full sister.
There are also latent functions. The political function  when the king and his sister get children, they had the most
mana in the land, so no one could question their right to rule. Economic function  by limited numbers of heirs,
marriage of relatives helped keep estates intact.
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Leach observed that several different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to him, marriage can, but
doesn’t always accomplish the following:
1. Establish the legal father of a women’s children and the legal mother of a man’s;
2. Give either or both spouses a monopoly on the sexuality to the other;
3. Give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other;
4. Give either or both spouses rights over the other’s property;
5. Establish a joint fund of property – a partnership – for the benefit of the children;
6. Establish a socially significant ‘relationship of affinity’ between spouses and their relatives.
When same-sex marriage are legal, social construction of kinship easily makes both partners parents. Mater >
socially recognized mother of a child.
Outside industrial societies, marriage often is more a relationship between groups. We have the idea that love is
necessary for a good marriage. People don’t just take spouses, they assume obligations to a group of in-laws.
There are two sorts of gifts by marriage:
A bride wealth, bride price or Lobala > a substantial marital gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin.
This compensates the bride’s group for the loss of her companionship and labor and it makes their children full
members of the husband’s descent group. Mostly in patrilineal societies.
Dowry (bruidsschat) > substantial gifts to husband’s family from wife’s group. Very common in societies where
women have low statuses, India. Compensate the added responsibility when a man and his family take a wife.
In India, when the dowry is considered insufficient, the bride may be harassed and abused. Sati was a rare practice
through which widows were burned alive on the husband’s funeral pyre. But this is in 1829 banned.
Most nonindustrial food-producing societies allow plural marriages > more than two spouses simultaneously, aka
polygamy. There are two varieties:
Polygyny > man has more than one wife
Polyandry > women has more than one husband at the time.
Group-alliance nature of marriage seen in practice of continuation of marital alliances when one spouse dies:
- Sororate  husband may marry the wife’s sister if the wife dies. If she has no sisters or if they are already
married, he marries another woman from her group.
- Levirate  right to marry husband’s brother is husband dies, biblical term.
Divorce tends to be more common in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies. Often mothers have stronger bands
with the children, and in a patrilineal society she has to leave the children. Political and economic factors complicate
divorce.
In societies where the family is an important year-round unit with a gender-based division of labor, ties between
spouses tend to be durable. But in band-organized societies, foragers can always find a band to join or rejoin if a
marriage doesn’t work.
Even when polygyny is encouraged, most men are monogamous. This is because;
- There are equal sex ratios
- The custom of men marrying later than women
- There needs to be some agreement among existing spouses when another one is added, especially if they
are to share the same household.
Plural wives can play important political roles in nonindustrial states.
There is no single explanation for polygyny, its context and function vary from society to society and even within the
same society. Some man have multiple wives because of the levirate, prestige or want to increase household
productivity.
Polyandry is rare (southeast Africa) and practiced under very specific conditions. Polyandry ensured there will be at
least one man at home to accomplish male activities within a gender-based division of labor.
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Chapter 12; Religion
Religion is hard to define.
- Wallace  belief and rituals concerned with supernatural beings, powers and forces. (Supernatural >
nonmaterial realm beyond the observable world). Focus universal categories within the supernatural realm.
- Durkheim  key distinction was between the sacred and the profane. Every society has its own sacred
(heilige) but it varied from society to society.
- Reese  focused on groups of people who gather together regularly for worship.
- Turner  communitas > intense feelings of social solidarity, equality and togetherness.
Religion is associated with social divisions within and between societies and nations. Participation in common rites
may affirm and maintain the solidarity of a group of adherence. Religion is a cultural universal.
Sapir  ‘a religion’ > formally organized religion, such as the world religions.
‘religion’ > universal, refers to religious beliefs and behavior, which exist in all societies even if they don’t
stand out as a separate and clearly demarcated sphere.
Taylor  states in religion
- Animism > belief in souls or doubles, ancient humans were particularly intrigued with death, dreaming and
trance.
- Polytheism > belief in multiple gods
- Monotheism > belief in a single deity
He said that religion declines as science offered better explanations.
In addition to animism is a view of the supernatural as a domain of impersonal power or force which people can
control under certain conditions. Melanesians believed in mana > impersonal sacred force existing in the universe. It
was similar to our notion of good luck. In Melanesia, anyone could acquire mana by chance or working hard. In
Polynesia, mana wasn’t potentially available to everyone but was attached to political offices. Because high chiefs
had so much mana, their bodies were taboo (> sacred and forbidden, prohibition backed by supernatural sanctions).
The beliefs in spiritual beings and supernatural forces fit within Wallace’s definition of religion.
Magic > use of supernatural techniques (magical actions, offerings, spells, formulas, incantations used with deities or
impersonal forces) to accomplish specific ends.
- Imitative magic  voodoo dolls, to produce a desired effect by imitating it.
- Contagious magic  what is done to an object is believed to affect a person who once had contact with it.
Religion and magic serve emotional needs as well as cognitive ones (explanatory).
Malinowski  magic is used to establish control, but religion is ‘born out of … the real tragedies of human life’.
Religion offers emotional comfort.
Ritual > formal, repetitive, stereotyped behavior; based on a liturgical order. People perform them in special places
and times. They include liturgical orders, words and actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in
which they occur. Rituals are social acts, by joining you accept a common social and moral order, it transcends your
status as individual.
Rites of passage > rites marking transitions between places or stages of life. By the traditional Native Americans,
youths left his community to move from boyhood to manhood. Contemporary rites of passages include
confirmations, baptisms (doopsels), bar and bat mitzvahs, initiations, weddings and applying for Social Security and
Medicare. Passage rites involve changes in social status. Passage rites are often collective.
All rites of passages have 3 phases; separation, liminality (time out during which people have to left one status but
haven’t yet entered the next) and incorporation.
Rites of intensification > rituals that creates communitas and produce emotions that enhance social solidarity.
Totems > an animal. Plant or geographic feature associated with a specific social group, to which that totem is
sacred or symbolically important. Members of each totemic group believed themselves to be descendants of their
totem. It is a form of cosmology > a system, often religious, for imaging and understanding the universe. Lévi-Strauss
 one role of religious rites and beliefs is to affirm and maintain the solidarity of a religion’s adherents.
Totemism continue to demarcate (afbakenen) groups, including clubs and teams.
Ahimsa > Hindu doctrine, principle of nonviolence that forbids the killing of animals generally. Western experts
occasionally cite that Hindus illustrate the idea that religious beliefs can stand in the way of rational economic
decisions. Bound by culture and tradition, they refuse to develop rationally. These assumptions are ethnocentric and
wrong. Sacred cattle actually play an important adaptive role in an Indian ecosystem that has evolved over
thousands of years. They use cattle manure to fertilize their fields.
If the faithful truly internalize a system of religious rewards and punishments, their religion becomes a powerful
influence on their attitude, behavior and what they teach their children. Political leaders have used religion to
promote and justify their views and policies. They gain support by persuasion or by instilling hatred or fear.
Witchcraft accusations often are directed at socially marginal or anomalous individuals. In peasant communities,
people who stand out economically, especially if they seem to be benefiting at the expense of others, often face
witchcraft accusations, leading to social ostracism or punishment. It becomes a leveling mechanism > custom that
brings standouts back in line with community norms. Religion often prescribe a code of ethics and morality to guide
behavior. The Golden Rule, for instance, is a religious guide to unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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Religion is a cultural universal, but 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. Shaman
> part-time magic-religious practitioner; curers, mediums, spiritualists, astrologers, palm readers and other
independent diviners.
Wallace  religions of stratified societies are ‘ecclesiastical’ (pertaining to an established church and its hierarchy of
officials). Here, powerful anthropomorphic gods have specialized functions, e.g. gods of love, war and death. Such
pantheons (collections of deities) were prominent in the religions of many nonindustrial nation-states.
In monotheism, all supernatural phenomena are believed to be manifestations of, or under the control of a single
eternal, omniscient (alwetend), omnipotent (almachtig) and omnipresent (alomtegenwoordig) being. Bellah viewed
most forms of Christianity as examples of ‘world-rejecting religion’. They are so named because of their tendency to
reject the natural world and to focus instead on a higher realm of reality.
Notes of salvation and the afterlife dominate Christian ideologies. Regardless of their social status, Protestants have
unmediated access to the supernatural.
Weber  linked the spread of capitalism to the values preached by early Protestant leaders. He saw Catholics are
more concerned with immediate happiness and security, protestants were more ascetic, entrepreneurial
(ondernemend) and future orientated  protestants financially more successful. Capitalism required that the
traditional attitudes of Catholic peasants be replaced by values befitting an industrial economy based on capital
accumulation. Protestantism placed a premium on hard work, an ascetic life and profit seeking. Weber also argued
that rational business organization required the removal of industrial production from the home. Protestantism
made such separation possible by emphasizing individualism.
The world largest religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese Confucianism and Buddhism. Islam is really fast
growing. About 1.1 billion people are Atheist.
Like political order, religion helps maintain social order. And like political mobilization, religious energy can be
harnessed not just for change bur also for revolution.
Revitalization movements > movements in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a
society. (For example; Jesus and Colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by Handsome Lake).
Syncretism > cultural, especially religious, mixes, emerging from acculturation – the exchange of cultural features
when cultures come into continuous firsthand contact. E.g. voodoo, or the Melanesian and Christian beliefs in cargo
cults. Cargo cults > postcolonial, acculturative religious movements in Melanesia. These movements may emerge
when natives have regular contact with industrial societies but lack their wealth, technology and living standards. In
one early cult, members believed that the spirits of the dead would arrive in a ship, they would bring manufactured
goods for the natives and would kill all the whites. By mimicking how Europeans use or treat objects, native hope
also to come upon the secret knowledge needed to gain cargo. Melanesians believed that all wealthy people had to
give their wealth away, just like Big Man.
Cargo cults are religious responses to the expansion of the world capitalist economy. Cult participation gave
Melanesians a basis for common interests and activities and thus helped pave the way for political parties and
economic interest organizations.
Anti-modernism > rejecting the modern for a presumed earlier, purer, better way. They consider technology’s use
today to be misguided or think that technology should have lower priority than religious and cultural values.
Fundamentalism > advocating strict fidelity to a religion’s presumed founding principles. It describes antimodernist
movements in various religions. Fundamentalists assert an identity separate from the larger religious group from
which they arose. They advocate strict fidelity to the ‘true’ religious principles of the larger religion and seek to
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rescue religion from absorption into modern, western culture. They believe that government processes and policies
must recognize the way of life set forth in scripture, the state should be subservient to God.
The number of Americans giving no religious preference grew. People who lack a religious preference aren’t
necessarily atheists, many of them are believers who don’t belong to a church. In the US, official recognition of a
religion entitles it to a modicum of respect and certain benefits, such as exemption from taxation on its income and
poverty. Not all religions receive official recognition.
Some anthropologists believe there are both sacred and secular rituals. Secular rituals include formal, invariant,
stereotyped, earnest, repetitive behavior and rites of passage that take place in nonreligious settings.
Problems with defining religion;
- How do we classify ritual-like behavior that occurs in secular contexts?
- How can we tell what is religion and what not?
- Who is to say which is “more religious”?
Chapter 13; Arts, Media and Sports
The arts include music, performance arts, visual arts, storytelling and written and oral literature. These
manifestations of creativity are expressive culture. Art is difficult to define because many cultures lack terms like
‘art’. Art > object, event or other expression form that evokes an aesthetic reaction. Aesthetics > the appreciation of
qualities perceived in art.
Mills > many cultures lack the roles of ‘art lover’ and ‘patron of the arts’ because art isn’t viewed as a separate,
special activity. But this doesn’t stop individuals from being moved by sounds, patterns, objects and events in a way
that we would call aesthetic.
Western culture sees art as something apart from everyday life and ordinary culture. In non-Western societies, the
production and appreciation of art are part of everyday life, as popular culture is in our own society.
Maquet (French anthropologists) > an artwork is something that stimulates and sustains contemplation. It compels
attention and reflection. He stresses the importance of the object’s form in producing such contemplation. Other
scholars stress feeling and meaning in addition to form.
Much art has been done in association with religion. Art may be created, performed or displayed outdoors in public
or in special indoor settings. Building dedicated to the arts help create the artistic atmosphere. In any society, art is
produced for its aesthetic value as well as for religious purpose.
Non-Western art is usually, but wrongly, assumed to have an inevitable connection to ritual. For example, by oral
arts, the audience is more interested in the performance than in the god for whom the performer may be speaking.
Aesthetic value is one way of distinguishing art, just like consider placement. When people see something in a
museum, they think it’s art. Tribal societies typically lack museums, but they may maintain special areas where
artistic expression take place. The boundary between what’s art and what’s not is blurred. In state societies, critics,
judges and experts tell us what’s art en what isn’t. To be culturally relativistic, we need to avoid applying our own
standards about what art is to the products of other cultures.
Studies of non-Western art ignore the individual and focus too much on the social nature and context of art. By art
objects from Africa, generally only the name of the tribe and of the Western donor are given, rather than that of the
individual artist. There is more collective production of art in non-Western than in Western societies, but it isn’t
always collective. Bohannan > the proper study of art should pay less attention to artists and more to art critics and
products. Haapala > artists and their works are inseparable.
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In nonstate societies, artists are not full-time professionals, they also hunt gather, fish or farm. For familiar genres,
societies ten to have standards by which they judge whether an artwork is complete. It may be difficult for artists to
innovate, but like impressionists, they may eventually succeed.
First artists occupied Blombos Cave, around 100.000 years ago. They turned animal bones into finely worked tools
and weapon points. And they were engraving artifacts with symbolic marks. A group led by Henshilwood has
analyzed bone tools from Blombos Cave. Sharp instruments show symbolic thinking (> people are using something to
mean something else).
In Europe, 30.000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic period, there was art. Cave paintings were separated from
ordinary life and social space. These images were painted in true caves. Art usually is more public than the cave
paintings.
Ethnomusicology > comparative study of music as an aspect of culture and society. The music side involves the study
and analysis of the music itself and the instruments used to create it. The anthropological side views music as a way
to explore a culture, to determine the role that plays music in that society and the specific social and cultural
features that influence how music is created and performed.
- Music is a cultural universal, and musical abilities seem to run in families (genetic basis).
- Music arose early in human history.
- All societies have lullabies, songs mothers sing to their children.
- Music units people in groups.
- Basongye people of the Democratic Republic of Congo distinguish between music and other sounds:
o Music always involve humans
o Musical sounds must be organized
o Music must continue
> music is inherently cultural and social
- Folk (> of the people) art, music and lore refer to the expressive culture of ordinary people.
Art can stand for tradition, even when traditional art is removed from its original (rural) context. Creative products
and images of folk, rural and non-Western cultures are increasingly spread and commercialized by the media and
tourism.
Art also functions in society as a form of communication between artist and community or audience. Sometimes
there are intermediaries between the artist and the audience. Art can transmit several messages; moral lesson or tell
a cautionary tale. Tension and resolution of drama can lead to catharsis > intense emotional release.
Often art is meant to commemorate and to last, to carry an enduring message.
Art enters the political arena. Much art that is valued today, was received with revulsion in its own time. No museum
director can mount an exhibit without worrying that it will offend some politically organized segment of society.
Appreciation of the arts depends on cultural background. It must be learned. Humor depends on cultural background
and setting. What’s funny in one culture may not translate as funny in another. In many societies, myths, legends,
tales and the art of storytelling play important roles in the transmission of culture and the preservation of tradition.
In nonindustrial societies, artists tend to be part-time specialists. In states, there are more ways for artists to practice
their craft full-time. Many non-Western societies also offer career tracks in the arts; e.g. a child born into a particular
family may discover that he or she is destined for a career in weaving. An artistic career also may involve some kind
of calling. Individuals may discover that they have a particular talent and find an environment in which that talent is
nourished. The arts usually are defined as neither practical nor ordinary. They rely on talent, which is individual but
which must be channeled and shaped in socially approved directions.
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The arts go on changing, although certain art forms have survived for thousands of years. Countries and cultures are
known for particular contributions, including art. Balinese – dance; Navajo – sand painting, jewelry, weaving; French
– cuisine; Greek – tragedies, comedies.
Mass culture (popular culture), features cultural forms that have appeared and spread rapidly because of major
changes in the material conditions of temporary life.
Any media-borne image or message can be analyzed in terms of its nature, including its symbolism and its effects. Or
as a text > anything that can be ‘read’, cultural product that is processed, interpreted and assigned meaning by
anyone exposed to it . In this way, text doesn’t have to be written; film, image or event. Fiske > individual’s use of
popular culture as a creative act. Media consumers actively select, evaluate and interpret media in ways that make
sense to them.
The media offer a rich web of external connection that can provide contact, information, entertainment and
potential social validation. Connection to a wider world, real or imagined, is a way to move beyond local standards
and expectations, even if the escape is only temporary and vicarious (plaatsvervangend). The arts allow us to
imagine lifestyles and possibilities beyond our own circumstances and personal experience. Media provides social
cement. The common information and knowledge that people acquire through exposure to the same media
illustrate culture in the anthropological sense.
Kottak > family planning turned out to be one area in which TV has influenced behavior in Brazil. The strongest
predictor of (smaller) family size is woman’s educational level. Limited number of players in each telenovela (>
nightly soap opera). Telenovelas may convey the idea that viewers can achieve such lifestyles by emulating the
apparent family planning of TV characters.
The influence of media and sports on culture and vice versa is reciprocal (wederkerig).
The popularity of football depends directly on the mass media. Arens > football is a peculiarly American pastime. It is
popular because it symbolizes certain key aspects of American life. If football were a particularly effective channel
for expressing aggression, it would have spread to many other countries.
Montague and Morais > Americans appreciate football because it presents a miniaturized and simplified version of
modern organization. They link football’s values, particularly teamwork, to those associated with business. Decisions
are simpler in football and football suggests that the values stressed by business really do pay off. Teams who work
the hardest can be expected to win more often than other teams do.
Cultural values, social forces and the media influence international sports success. Brazilian media are strikingly
intolerant of losers. The US has so many athletes that no single one has to summarize the country’s hope, like in
Brazil. American culture; hard work and personal improvement can be as important as winning. But by the
professional players, it mostly is all about winning.
American culture emphasizes achieved over ascribed status, identity emerges as a result of what the person does. In
Brazil, identity rest on being, focus on ascribed status. In American sports coverage, underdogs and unexpected
results provide some of the brightest moments. Brazilian culture has little interest in the unexpected. Brazilians use
health problems as an excuse, whereas Americans use poor health as a challenge that often can be met and bested.
Chapter 14; The World system & Colonialism
Truly isolated societies probably never have existed, societies always have participated in a larger system which
today has global dimensions > modern world system (> world in which nations are economically and politically
interdependent).
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Capitalist world economy > world system committed to production for sale or exchange, with the object of
maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs. Capital > wealth or resources invested in business with the
intent of producing profit.
Braudel > argued that society consists of interrelated parts assembled into a system. Societies are subsystems of
larger systems with the world system the largest. World system theory > discernible social system, based on wealth
and power differentials, transcends individual countries. Formed by a set of economic and political relations that has
characterized much of the globe since the 16th century, when the Old World established regular contact with the
New World. World system now is much more influenced by other things than before (capital system, trade).
Wallerstein > three different positions of economic and political power within the World System:
- Core  dominant position, strongest and most powerful nations, lots of export. Most of the Western
European countries, Australia, North America.
- Semi periphery  intermediate between core and periphery. Export both commodities (grondstoffen) and
industrial goods, like core countries, but lack power and economic dominance of core nations. BRICS.
- Periphery  least privileged and powerful countries. Economic activities less mechanized, produces raw
materials, agricultural commodities and human labor for export to the core and semi periphery.
Core countries increasingly rely on migration from people from other positions, these people do the work no one
else want to do; pick tomatoes, cleaning glass etc. It is very cheap labor.
By the 15th century, Europeans were profiting from a transoceanic trade-oriented economy and people worldwide
entered Europe’s sphere of influence. Led by Spain and Portugal, Europeans extracted silver and gold, conquered the
natives (taking some as slaves) and colonized their lands. Columbian exchange > spread of people, resources,
products, ideas and diseases between eastern and western hemispheres (halfrond) after contact. Previously rural
people had produced mainly for their own needs.
Sugar was a popular good, in the 17th century plantations based on a single cash crop developed, monocrop
production.
Industrial revolution > transformation of ‘traditional’ into ‘modern’ societies through industrialization of the
economy (In Europe, after 1750). It required capital for investment > transoceanic trade. European industrialization
developed from a domestic system of manufacture. An organizer-entrepreneur supplied the raw materials to
workers in their homes and collected the finished products from them.
The industrial revolution began with cotton products, iron and pottery. These were widely used goods whose
manufacture could be broken down into simple routine motions that machines could perform. The revolution began
in England, not in France;
- The French didn’t have to transform their domestic manufacturing system by industrializing because it had a
larger labor force.
- The French were able to increase production without innovating.
Britain’s population began to increase dramatically with industrialization. This fueled consumption and fostered
innovation. English industrialization drew on national advantages in natural resources (coals, iron ore, waterways,
easily negotiated coasts). Weber > nation’s cultural values and religion contributed to its industrialization.
Inequality emerged and got stronger, owners started recruiting labor in places where living standards were low and
labor was cheap. Social ill worsened with the growth of cities.
Marx and Weber > focus on stratification systems associated with industrialization. Marx > saw socioeconomic
stratification as a sharp and simple division between two opposed classes; bourgeoisie (> owners of the means of
production) and proletariat (people who must sell their labor 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. Marx saw bourgeoisie and proletariat as socioeconomic divisions with
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radically opposed interests. He viewed classes as powerful collective forces that could mobilize human energies to
influence the course of history. No proletarian revolution was to occur in England but workers did develop
organizations to protect their interests and increase their share of industrial profits. During the 19th century, socialist
parties emerged to express a rising anti-capitalist spirit. Their concerns were to remove young children from
factories and limit hours during which women and children could work. By 1900, many governments had factory
legislation and social-welfare programs.
Modern stratification systems aren’t simple and dichotomous. Lenski > argued that social equality tends to increase
in advanced industrial societies. Proliferation of middle-class occupations creates opportunities for social mobility.
Differences in income and wealth that set off richest from poorest is widening.
Weber > faulted Marx for an overly simple and exclusively economic view of stratification. Weber defined 3
dimensions of social stratification; wealth, power and prestige are separate components of social ranking, they tend
to be correlated. Social identities based on ethnicity, religion, race, nationality and other attributes could take
priority over class. In addition to class contrasts, the modern world system is cross-cut by collective identities based
on ethnicity, religion and nationality.
The wealth that flows from periphery and semi periphery to core has helped core capitalists maintain their profits
while satisfying the demands of core workers. The current world stratification system features a substantial contrast
between both capitalists and workers in the core nations and workers on the periphery.
World-system theory stresses the existence of a global culture. It emphasizes historical contacts, linkages and power
differentials between local people and international forces.
Imperialism > policy of extending rule of one nation or empire over others and of taking and holding foreign
colonies. Colonialism > political, social, economic and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign
power for an extended time. Imperialism always imply colonialism. Age of Discovery (1492 – 1850) Spain and
Portugal along with Britain and France. After 1850 till the end of WWII, Britain and France.
British colonialism: At its peak about 1914, the British empire covered a fifth of the world’s land surface and ruled a
fourth of its population. They had two stages of colonialism;
- Began in the 16th century; western Africa, India, the New World (North America, Canada, Caribbean). The
American Revolution ended the first stage.
- Second period; Australia, India, new Zealand, Canada, eastern and southern Africa > ‘sun never set’. Britain’s
position as imperial power and the world’s leading industrial nation was unchallenged. They justified colonial
efforts by what Kipling called the ‘white man’s burden’. British guidance was needed to civilize and
Christianize them. After WWII, the empire began to fall apart.
French colonialism: Also 2 phases.
- Exploration of the early 1600s, Canada, Louisiana Territory, Caribbean, India.
- Between 1830 – WWII, North Africa and Indochina.
In Great-Britain, the sheer drive for profit led expansion but French colonialism was spurred more by the state,
church and armed force than by pure business interests. The French promulgated a mission civilisatrice > equivalent
of Britain’s ‘white man’s burden’. The goals was to implant French culture, language and religion.
They used 2 forms of colonial role; indirect rule (> governing through native leaders and established political
structures, in areas with long histories of state organization, Morocco) and direct rule (> by French officials in many
areas of Africa, where the French imposed new government structures to control diverse societies, many of them
previously stateless.
Whole countries, along with social groups and divisions within them, were colonial inventions. Hundreds of ethnic
groups and tribes are colonial constructions.
Postcolonial > describing relations between European nations and areas they colonized and once ruled.
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-
Settler countries; large numbers of European colonists and sparser native populations, Australia and Canada;
Non-settler countries; large native populations and relatively few European settlers, India, Nigeria, Pakistan;
Mixed countries; significant native and European populations, South-Africa, Algeria
Intervention philosophy > ideological justification for outsiders to guide or rule native peoples in specific directions
(White man’s burden, mission civilisatrice). Economic development plans also have interventions philosophies.
Bodley > the basic belief behind interventions has been the same for more than 100 years. Intervention philosophy
may pit the assumed wisdom of enlightened colonial or other First World planners against the purported
conservatism, ignorance or ‘obsolescence’ of ‘inferior’ local people.
Neoliberalism > principle that governments shouldn’t regulate private enterprise; free market forces should rule.
Smith > advocated laissez-faire (hands off) economics as the basis of capitalism. Free trade is the best way fot a
economy to develop (Liberalism).
Prevailed in the US until Roosevelt’s New Deal during the 1930s. The Great Depression produced a turn to Keynesian
economics, which challenged liberalism. Keynes > insisted that full employment was necessary for capitalism to
grow, governments and banks should intervene to increase employment and the government should promote the
common good.
Fall of Communism (1989-1991) saw a revival of economic liberalism. In exchange for loans, postsocialist and
developing governments must accept neoliberal premise that deregulation leads to economic growth.
First World – democratic West
Second World – former Soviet Union and socialist and once-socialist
countries of Eastern Europe and Asia.
Third World – less developed countries or developing nations.
communism (small c) > social system in which property is owned by the community and in which people work for
the common good.
Communism (large c) > political movement and doctrine seeking to overthrow capitalism and to establish a form of
communism such as that which prevailed in the USSR from 1917-1991.
There were 23 Communist states in 1985, now only 5; China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.
All Communist systems were authoritarian (> promoting obedience to authority rather than individual freedom) and
many were totalitarian (> banning rival parties and demanding total submission of the individual to the state).
Differences between Communist societies and other authoritarian regimes;
- The Communist Party monopolized power in every Communist state;
- Relations within the party were highly centralized and strictly disciplined;
- Communist nations had state ownership, rather than private ownership, of the means of production;
- All Communist regimes, with the goal of advancing communism, cultivated a sense of belonging to an
international movement.
Neoliberal economists assumed that dismantling the Soviet Union’s planned economy would raise its GDP and living
standards. The goal was to enhance production by substituting a decentralized market system and providing
incentives through privatization.
Corruption > the abuse of public office for private gain.
The World Bank’s approach to corruption assumes a clear and sharp distinction between the state and the private
sphere. The idea that the public sphere can be separated nearly from the private sphere is ethnocentric.
In postsocialist societies, what is legal and what is considered morally correct don’t necessarily correspond.
The spread of industrialization continues today, although nations have shifted their positions within the world
system. By 1900, the US had become a core nation within the world system and had overtaken Great Britain in iron,
coal and cotton production.
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20th century industrialization added hundreds of new industries and millions of new jobs. Mass consumption gave
rise to a culture of consumption which valued acquisitiveness and conspicuous consumption. Industrialization
entailed a shift from reliance on renewable resources to the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel energy is being depleted
rapidly to support a previously unknown and probably unsustainable level of consumption.
Industrialization and factory labor now characterize many societies in Africa, the Pacific, Asia and Latin America. As
industrial states have conquered, annexed and developed non-states, there has been genocide (> a deliberate policy
of exterminating a group through warfare or murder) on a grand scale.
Many native groups have been incorporated within nation-states, in which they have become ethnic minorities.
Many indigenous people survive and maintain their ethnic identity despite having lost their ancestral cultures to
varying degrees( partial ethnocide). And many descendants of tribespeople live on as culturally distinct and selfconscious colonized peoples, many of whom aspire to autonomy. As the original inhabitants of their territories, they
are called indigenous peoples.
Chapter 15; Anthropology’s role in a
Globalizing world
Globalization promotes intercultural communication, through the media, travel and migration, which bring people
from different societies into direct contact.
There are two meanings of globalization;
- Globalization as fact; the spread and connectedness of production, distribution, consumption,
communication and technologies across the world.
- Globalization as contested ideology and policy; efforts by the IMF, World Bank, WTO and other international
financial powers to create a global free market for goods and services (political meaning).
One key component of globalization is the globalization of risk. Environmental and technological risks have
multiplied. Concern about risks often is more developed in groups that are less endangered objectively.
Constant rebroadcasting magnifies risk perception. The rise of the Internet and cable/satellite TV, has blurred the
distinction between the global, national and local.
Scientific measurements confirm that global warming is not due to increased solar radiation. The causes are mainly
anthropogenic > caused by humans and their activities. The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon that keeps
the Earth’s surface warm. Greenhouse gases include water, methane and ozone, without them, life as we know
would not exist.
Scientist prefer the term climate change > global warming plus changing sea levels, precipitation, storms and
ecosystems effects.
Coastal communities can anticipate increased flooding and more severe storms and surges. Many island nations
projected to lose a significant portion of its land, displacing millions of people. Several factors, radiative forcings,
work to warm and cool the Earth. Positive forcings tend to warm the Earth (including Greenhouse gases) and
negative forcings tend to cool the earth (e.g. aerosols or volcanic eruptions).
Anthropology always has been concerned with how environmental forces influence humans and how human
activities affect the biosphere and the Earth itself. Ecological anthropology > study of cultural adaptations to
environments. Early ecological anthropologists showed that many indigenous groups did a reasonable job of
managing their resources and preserving their ecosystems. Ethnoecology > a culture’s set of environmental practices
and perceptions. In the face of national and international incentives to exploit and degrade, ethnoecological systems
that once preserved local and regional environments increasingly are ineffective or irrelevant.
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Anthropologists routinely witness threats to the people they study and their environments. E.g. commercial logging
(bosbouw), industrial pollution and the imposition of external management systems on local ecosystems. Today,
environmental anthropologists also try to find solutions to environmental problems.
The aim of many agricultural development projects, seems to be to make the world as much like a Midwestern
American agricultural state as possible. Often there is an attempt to impose mechanized farming and nuclear family
ownership, even though these institutions may be inappropriate in areas far removed from the Midwestern US.
A clash of cultures related to environmental change may occur when development threatens indigenous peoples and
their environments. A second clash of cultures related to environmental change may occur when external regulation
aimed at conservation confronts indigenous peoples and their ethnoecologies. Like development projects,
conservation schemes may ask people to change their ways in order to satisfy planners’ goals rather than local goals.
The spread of environmentalism may expose radically different notions about the rights and value of plants and
animals versus humans.
Deforestation is a global concern. Forest loss can lead to increased greenhouse gas production, which contributes to
global climate change. The destruction of tropical forests also is a major factor in the loss of global biodiversity, since
many species live in forests. Food producers (farmers and herders) do more to degrade the environment than
foragers do. Causes of deforestation; growing cities, commercial logging, road building, cash cropping and clearing
and burning associated with livestock and grazing.
To curb deforestation, we need conservation strategies that work.
Since the 1920s, anthropologists have investigated the changes that arise from contact between industrial and
nonindustrial societies. Acculturation > changes that result when groups come into continuous firsthand contact,
changes in the cultural patterns of either or both groups. Acculturation differs from diffusion, or cultural borrowing.
The term most often described westernization (> the influence of Western expansion on local peoples and their
cultures worldwide).
In the most destructive encounters, native and subordinate cultures face obliteration (vernietiging). When contact
with powerful outsiders seriously threatens an indigenous culture, a shock phase often follows the initial encounter.
Outsiders may attack or exploit the native people. During the shock phase, they may be civil repression backed by
military force. Such factors may lead to the group’s cultural collapse (ethnocide) or physical extinction (genocide).
Cultural imperialism > spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures,
which it modifies, replaces or destroys. Some commentators think that modern technology, international brands and
the mass media are erasing cultural differences. But others see a role for modern technology in allowing social
groups to express themselves and to survive.
As global forces enter new communities, they are indigenized > modified to fit the local culture.
All cultures express imagination, in dreams, fantasies, songs, myths and stories. With globalization, more people in
many more places imagine ‘a wider set of possible lives than they ever did before’. One important source of this
change is the mass media. The mass media also play a role in maintaining ethnic and national identities among
people who lead transnational lives. As groups move, they can stay linked to each other and to their homeland
through global media. Diasporas (people who have spread out from an original, ancestral homeland) have enlarged
the markets for media, communication and travel services targeted at specific ethnic, national or religious groups
who now live in various parts of the world.
Another key transnational force is finance. Multinational corporations and other business interests look beyond
national boundaries. Business, technology and the media have increased the craving for commodities and images
throughout the world. This has forces nation-states to open to a global culture of consumption. Peasants and tribal
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people participate in the modern world system not only because they have been hooked on cash, but also because
their products and images are appropriated by world capitalism.
The linkages created through globalization have both enlarged and erased old boundaries and distinctions.
Appadurai > today’s world is a translocal interactive system that is strikingly new.
Decisions about wheter to risk migration, perhaps illegal, are based on social reasons and economic reasons.
With so many people in motion, the unit of anthropological study expands from the local community to the diaspora
(> offspring f an area who have spread to many lands). Anthropologists increasingly follow descendants of the
villages we have studied as they move from rural to urban areas and across national boundaries.
Postmodernity describes our time and situation; today’s world in flux, these people on the move who have learned
to manage multiple identities depending on place and context. Postmodern refers to the blurring and breakdown of
established canons (rules and standards), categories, distinctions and boundaries. This word is taken from
postmodernism > style and movement in architecture that succeeded modernism. Postmodern now is used to
describe comparable developments in music, literature and visible art. Postmodernity describes a world in which
traditional standards, contrasts, boundaries and identities are opening up, reaching out and breaking down.
New kinds of political and ethnic units have emerged along with globalization. In some cases, cultures and ethnic
groups have banded together in larger associations.
The term and concept indigenous people gained legitimacy within international law with the creation in 1982 of the
United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Population (WGIP). This group has representation from all 6
continents. Social movements worldwide have adopted the term indigenous people as a self-identifying and political
label based on past oppression but now legitimizing a search for social, cultural and political rights.
Until the late 1980s, Latin American public discourse and state policies emphasizes assimilation and discouraged
indigenous identification and mobilization. Indians were associated with a romanticized past but marginalized in the
present. The past 30 years have seen a dramatic shift, the emphasis has shifted from biological and cultural
assimilation to identities that value difference, especially as indigenous peoples.
The indigenous rights movement exists in the context of globalization, including transnational movements focusing
on human rights, women’s rights and environmentalism. Transnational organizations have helped indigenous
peoples to influence legislation. Since 1980 there has been a general shift in Latin America from authoritarian to
democratic rule, but still inequality and discrimination persist.
Ceuppens and Geschiere > explore a recent upsurge of the notion of autochthony (being native to, or formed in, the
place where found) with an implicit call for excluding strangers. During the 1990s, autochthony became an issue in
many parts of Africa, inspiring violent efforts to exclude strangers.
Essentialism > the process of viewing an identity as established, real and frozen, to hide the historical processes and
politics within which that identity developed. Nation-states have used essentializing strategies to perpetuate
hierarchies and to justify violence against categories seen as less than fully human. Identity:
- A fluid, dynamic process, there are multiple ways of being indigenous;
- Potentially plural;
- Emerging through a specific process;
- Ways of being someone or something in particular times and places.
Anthropology teaches us that the adaptive responses of humans can be more flexible than those of other species
because our main adaptive means are sociocultural.
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