Phil Arts - Midterms

• IN THE WESTERN WORLD, THE IDEA OF CULTURE IS SUMMED AS EUROCENTRIC
• objects created by man – artifacts.
• BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY- human biology and evolution
• ARCHAEOLOGY- material culture
• LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY- language
• CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY- culture; sociocultural
• Archaeology is the study of past cultures. Archaeologists are interested in how people of the past lived, worked, traded with others, moved across the landscape, and what they believed.
• Linguistic anthropology studies the nature of human languages in the context of those cultures that developed them. Scholars in the field seek to understand the social and cultural foundations of language itself, while exploring how social and cultural formations are grounded in linguistic practices
• Language- central role in defining who we are as humans
• Sapir Whorf Hypothesis- language not only reflects but can also shape how we think and how we act.
• Central concept in linguistics is communication.
• Communication- use of arbitrary symbols to impart meaning (pidgin vs. creole)
• Cultural anthropologists study how people who share a common cultural system organize and shape the physical and social world around them, and are in turn shaped by those ideas, behaviors, and physical environments. Cultural anthropology is hallmarked by the concept of culture itself
• Applied anthropology refers to the use of anthropological theory and research methods to solve practical problems. Anthropology is the scientific study of human cultures, societies, behavior, biology, and linguistics. Applied anthropology is also called practical anthropology
• HOW DO ANTHROPOLOGISTS MAKES SENSE OF ALL OF THESE VARIED INFORMATION ABOUT HUMANS? 1. HOLISM 2. COMPARATIVISM
• HOLISM 1. Perspective that emphasizes the whole rather than just the parts 2. Pushes an understanding of the bigger picture
• COMPARATIVISM is the search for similarities and differences between and among human beings in all of their biological and cultural complexities.
• System → refer to a group of interacting or interrelated parts that operate in relation to one another.
• parts in reference to culture are (of course) people.
• Behavior ~ means to act or conduct oneself in a specified way
• Knowledge- process of learning and discovery
• Art - Wide range of human artistic expressions
• Art is grounded in society and history.
• psychophysical experience (universally shared)
• Ruling class → dominant and canonical ( Dominant Self)
• Position of disinterestedness (disinterested appreciation) – “a judgement of taste” that is part of an ordered natural world.
• The theoretical foundations of this paper are twofold:

  •1. Aesthetic Perception – attachment of value to experience

  •2. Aesthetic Expression- re-creation of experience through which those values are reconstituted and/or transformed.
• Aestheticae “science of perception”
• Alexander Baumgarten - science which might direct the lower cognitive faculty in knowing things “sensately” - aestheticae
• According to Immanuel Kant

  For an object to be considered beautiful, viewers must completely detach themselves from any practical considerations of the object • Two (2) misconceptions: • 1. the critical use of judgement is uniquely Western • 2. the valuation of function over form is uniquely non-Western (social or spiritual/ritual practices)
• Although this concept of aesthetics as being rooted from Western elite society, this kind of judgement is also noticeable in large-scale, socially stratified societies of Asia. • For the moment, however, my intention is to illustrate the use of judgement in various non-Western contexts, where 'non-Western' refers to small-scale, non-state societies.