Fall, 2002NotesSocial Anthropology

#1 9/20/02

Syllabus and course. Objectives.

Introduction of instructor. Student background.

Basic problems of social anthropology: general ideas:

  1. humans are social animals – interdependent, live collectively, satisfy basic needs through group activity, derive satisfaction from social life, develop recognizable social forms across communities (e.g., religion, marriage and family, social control … ) How are we like other animals?

-primary needs (food, shelter, sex and reproduction, protection, child care, mobility) all socially

organized

-secondary needs (love, self-esteem, identity, status) all related to our social existence; these make

you a social self, a ‘you’

  1. we’re unlike other social animals How are we different?

a. forms of human social life diverse, therefore not genetically determined, so

  1. must be learned, culturally transmitted
  2. variable not only across species, but across time and within groups (societies or cultures) –
  3. individual variation and life-time variation
  4. and they change
  1. humans are more difficult to study than other animals How can we study ourselves?
  1. subject/object problem
  2. where’s/what’s the data? What we/they think? Say? Do? Say they do? Say about others?
  3. Ethnocentrism
  1. evolution of society and ancient social forms How did we get this way?
  2. sociocultural map today What’s going on with us today? How can anthropology contribute to contemporary life and the solution of modern problems?

#2 1/7/98

Interesting questions: how many people are there? How many have ever lived?

How many ethnic groups? Ever? Languages?

Where are they?

Some debatable propositions (i.e., gross generalizations based on observations)

  1. the old ones complain
  2. there are sources of conflict for every society (from within and from without), but also pressures for peace (trade, inter-marriage … )
  3. the females bear young
  4. the males inseminate them
  5. otherwise, roles are largely arbitrary until culture intervenes
  6. few men in any community would want to trade places with the women, but there may be women who feel the men have it better (more power, prestige, and/or wealth)
  7. some of them want to control the others (adults, elders, men)
  8. increasing age tends to confer authority
  9. small children are pretty much the same everywhere
  10. family is an important source of continuity and change; it also directly reflects external change and circumstances

Humans don’t come in neat types, so it is very difficult to generalize about them.

#3 1/9

Some experiences and observations from my trip to Alaska. Environment and people.

Netsilik – a band level society; hunter-gatherers

Economics – study of the way production and exchange of goods utilizing scarce resources may be developed to fulfill the needs of humankind; analysis of techniques and political-economic institutions

Economic determinism – theory that there’s a direct and necessary causal relationship between means of subsistence (forms of production) and the way of life of a given people; there must be some connection between economy and culture/society

EnvironmentSocial and

AndSubsistenceIdeological

TechnologyOrganization

-mild form of determinism merely states that production, distribution, exchange forms and consumption are linked within a sociocultural context

-relationship with environment is problematical

The idea of small-scale society comes from the radical difference between such societies and industrial states in terms of their impact on the environment and other peoples. The human beings themselves are not different; their institutions are not that different.

Basic means of subsistence of humankind:

Mode of productionOrg. of ProductionDistributionConsumption

Food Collectors:

Hunting/gathering(division of labor)same unitsame unit

Fishing

Food Producers:

Pastoralism(unit of production)(trade)

Horticulture(markets)

Peasant farming

Industrial agriculture

Issues: technology, markets/trade, population density, waste and pollution, impact on neighbors and other species …

General characteristics of small-scale economic systems:

  1. production for subsistence greater than for trade (sometimes no trade)
  2. little specialization of labor; division of labor by sex and age
  3. little difference of standard of living among community members; other values as important as amassing wealth
  4. family or community unit of production, not an association created for economic purposes
  5. few specialized institutions of distribution (kin networks)
  6. ritual regulates production and consumption
  7. relatively simple technology, labor intensive, natural energy, low or no waste
  8. low population density
  9. threats to production from climate and disease, not market conditions
  10. direct and indirect reciprocity (exchange and interdependence)
  11. knowledge of environment essential to life
  12. little private property or savings
  13. settlement pattern based on fluctuating size of group (band), mobility and dispersal

Myths or pre-conceptions about hunter-gatherers

-they live short, brutish lives

-they don’t have enough to eat

-contemporary ones are representative of the primordial scenario

#4 1/12/98

film: Faces of Culture (culture and subsistence)

-resistance of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists to modern life

-commonalities across big differences

cultural relativism

Eskimo-Indian Olympics – ear pull, tug of war, muktuk eating

#5 1/14/98

Netsilik Part I

Fishing types

Finish up economic systems.

Epistemological problem of social/cultural anthropology created by techno-economic determinist theories: how to explain ‘customs’ and many other social phenomena?

e.g. Windigo psychosis (sasquatch alive and well in Alaska)

couvade

Mauritanian fattening ceremony

Kula ring ….

Many others. Does socio-biology explain them? Historical particularism?

Ordering principles: distinctions and groups = identity.

  1. Distinctions
  1. kin/non-kin
  2. age
  3. sex/gender

These are all ascriptive, though based (even if metaphorically) on biology. They are universal, in some form (but we can’t predict what).

  1. status (relative)
  2. association

-formal or informal, related to 1 – 3

-residence, secret society (voluntary or not), guild, club, tea group, ethnicity (?)

These can be ascriptive or achieved; they are non-universal. On these are based the groupings.

  1. Formation of social groups – formalized or institutionalized distinctions; labelled.

-biggest group is ‘our people’ (tribe is a certain level of sociopolitical organization) – this identity comes out in contrast, in relation (as do others, to some extent)

  1. Social roles and relations – social interaction
  2. Social structure, social organization

Kinship

  1. descent rules
  2. descent groups
  3. marriage forms
  4. marriage regulations
  5. residence rules
  6. family types
  7. kinship terminology

words to know: affinal, consanguineal, lineal, collateral

functions of kinship: inheritance, succession, group membership (affiliation), socialization and child rearing, marriage regulation, collective social and economic activity …