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• Dark Ages (theocracy)


  Knowledge was monetized by the church. Those who didn't agree will be declared as heretic.
• Philosophies clashing in the 19th century

  • Rationalism
  • Empiricism
• Rationalism


  Reality is a priori (prior thinking); Justification for knowing comes simply from thought; It's about reasoning; Method: deductive (start from general to specific cases); Newton is one of the proponents
• Criticism of rationalism: truth must be grounded in experiences
• Empiricism


  Grounded experiences as sources of knowledge; "What you see is what you believe"; To prove that something exists, you need to experience it; Rene Descartes: "I think therefore I am"
• Positivism (Auguste Comte)


  Different to empiricism is the use of method on how we validate truth; It is important to use natural science in understanding reality because society is the product of the force of nature; Comte's levels of knowledge: 1st theological, 2nd metaphysical, 3rd positivistic
• Criticisms of positivism: Never analyze in detail, ideas still very idealist, exclude non-western people
• Herbert Spencer


  Studied biological evolution
• Charles Darwin


  Studied natural selection
• Edward Tylor


  Systematically defined culture as something that is transmissible from generation to another, compatible with individual free will; Practiced salvage ethnography to document aspects of culture that persist despite changes; Believed in scientific objectivity by studying cultural survivals/remnants
• Criticisms of Tylor: Eventually became racist, very idealist in believing that non-western societies need to reach the level of western civilization
• Tylor's belief in monogenism


  One ancestor but culture is diffused due to variation in development, some cultures are less developed and some are more advanced
• Lewis Henry Morgan


  Very materialist, used technology as a variable to define the development of culture; Classification of cultural development: Savagery, Barbarism, Civilization
• Criticisms of Morgan: Too simplistic, technology is not the sole factor affecting kinship patterns
• Ideas of 19th century evolutionists were misappropriated to perpetuate and justify colonization and slavery by phrenologists and eugenics
• Cultural relativism (Boas & Kroeber)


  Focuses on history, has limitations when it affects lives and is used to justify killing (except for survival)
• Franz Boas


  Giddens: the agency is not only manipulating but engaging in the structure; Alfred Gell: humans as primary agents can transmit agency to non-humans, which then affects the humans
• Positive aspects of cultural relativism


  • Lessens judgment of others
  • Protects "cultural rights"
  • Embraces diversity
  • Against ethnocentrism/western centric approach
  • Emic over etic - against external judgements
• Historicalist (Boas)


  Deals with the history even of the most humble members of society, focuses on the history of people's achievements as a whole (vs. conventional historian's focus on the history of great men)
• Boas' scientific methods


  Looks for patterns not based on similar mental operations, but on naturalistic forms, technical motives, and derivation of symbols; Studies culture in its specific context rather than based on one's own standards
• Cultural determinism (Boas)


  Culture is a product of its own principle rather than the product of mental operations; Culture is a product of emotion and habit, not just reason
• Boas believed we shouldn't focus on the phenomenal (observable) aspect of culture, but the ideational (subjective, emotional) aspect
• For Boas, culture is diffused but not stagnant, it is continuous and never-ending, with no integration of culture due to varying histories and factors like naturalistic forms, technical motives, and derivation of symbols
• Role of individual for Boas

  Individuals interpret and modify the acquired culture to adapt to changing conditions
• Alfred Kroeber


  Extended Boas' focus on cultural history; Anthropologists shouldn't generalize but study the uniqueness of each culture using a historical approach; Emphasized the importance of studying patterns and internal relations within a culture rather than general laws
• Functionalism (Mauss, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown)


  Focuses on how social institutions or culture serve the needs of people; Mauss: Reciprocity is the basis of sociality, gift-giving transcends the division between spiritual and material; Malinowski: Participant observation, how culture satisfies human needs; Radcliffe-Brown: Society perpetuates itself through interdependent social institutions
• Criticisms of functionalism: There are free gifts that don't require reciprocation
• Culture


  Satisfies needs, causes social change as level of needs increase
• Malinowski


  Religion can help to attain the human ends directly
• Magic


  Helps individuals gain confidence to do their work, not to replace work
• Alfred Radcliffe-Brown


  Father of Structural-functionalism
• Functionalism


  • Social institutions act together to sustain the society, same as organs working together to sustain a living body
  • Views society as an entity composed of interdependent institutions (but there's an absence of opposition or conflict on Durkheim)
• Radcliffe-Brown


  • Focuses on comparative method (not just compare but contrast)
  • Advantage: despite the differences of cultures or symbols, there are similarities that you can make to generalize (scientific law)
• Important concepts (union of opposites)

  • Moiety: society composed of various twins (opposite but united)
  • Exogamy: what unites the twin is exogamy (marrying outside your group)
  • Totemism: symbols unite them—the twins (mythical association of family)
• Social structure


  The connectedness of human beings through a complex network of social relations
• Social organization


  Arrangement of two combined action
• Cultural Ecology (Leslie White & Marvin Harris)

  • Planless hedgehodgenism (Ecologist accuse the relativists as this because they don't want to generalize)
  • Functionalist: never analyze change, only try to revive the 19th century evolutionist but with additional analysis
• Charles Darwin's Natural Selection

  • All organisms exhibit variability
  • In order to survive, reproduce many offspring
  • Environment selects individuals best fitted to survive, while the less fitted fail to reproduce
  • Characteristics that are favored by natural selection are passed onto the next generation
• Cultural Ecologist and Materialist


  • Extends 19th century evolutionism
  • Natural selection (only explain the consequences of variabilities bit not the causes, which explained by cultural ecologist)
• Leslie White


  • Technology (materialist in a sense)
  • Society will change if mode of production (forces of production and relations of production) changes
  • Culture is just another structure that protects economy
  • Fails to connect technology to the development of culture, only explain the economic influences
  • There's no dominance of economy over the culture—how technology influences the cultural development