L3 Anthropology

• ANTHROPOLOGY

  ·       Study of people & its cultures
• MARCEL MAUSS

  • A person can be a chameleon but still be the same.  
  • French anthropologist
• Marcel Mauss:  TOTAL SOCIAL PHENOMENON

  ·       Says every sector in a community/society should cooperate for a well-balanced living
• Two Faces of Self:

  • Personne
  • Moi
• TWO FACES OF SELF: MOI

  ·       Person’s basic identity. A person’s sense of who he is. His body, basic identity, biological givenness.
• TWO FACES OF SELF: PERSONNE

  ·       Social concepts of what it means to be who he is. What it means to live in a particular institution, family, religion, nationality, how to behave given expectations & other influences
• LANGUAGE

  Has something to do with culture

  Most obvious part of culture, big effect on crafting the self.

  The self adjusts according to its exposure to the culture/society its born in
• LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

  Language is ingrained in the culture

  They are intertwined Particular language -> specific group of people

  Interacting with language = interacting with culture

  Learning new language = learning about specific society’s customs & behaviors
• CLIFFORD GEERTZ

  ·       American cultural anthropologist
• CLIFFORD GEERTZ: Definition on Culture

  System of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, & develop their knowledge about & attitude towards life
• THE IMPACT OF THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE ON THE CONCEPT OF MAN/CLIFFORD GEERTZ 1966

  ·       Don’t look for similarities between cultures

  ·       Analyzing the differences is more effective than trying to form vague notions of universals

  ·       Culture reveals the link between what man is capable of & how he behaves, helps define human nature

  ·       Culture is the accumulated totality of symbolic patterns that appear in different societies