Intro to Cultural Anthropology

What will be covered on your final

exam?

Intro to Cultural Anthropology:

Final Exam
Time: 9am-12pm
Date: Thursday, May 14th
Place: JESTER A121A

Format
Multiple Choice, Matching, and/or Fill in
the Blank Questions
Short Answer Questions
Essay Question over Aint No Makin It
Total Possible Points: 100 (for 25% of
the final grade)

Key Topics to be Covered

Patterns of Family Relations
The Culture of Capitalism and Early
Globalization
The Cultural Construction of the Nation-State
The Cultural Construction of Social Hierarchy
Race and Racism
The Culture of Power and Resistance
Museums and the Politics of Representation

Resources
Robbins Book: Chs. 3, 5, 7 (only the
designated pages)
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power-introduction
Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Womens Worlds,
intro chapter, ch. 1
Blackboard PDF Readings: Seriff Article
Film: A Small Happiness (film about women in
rural China)
Jay Macleod book, Aint No Makin It

Key People to Know

Carol Stack Emma Lazarus
Philip Bourgois

Franz Boas

Karl Marx
Pierre Bourdieu
Benedict Anderson
MichelFoucault
Samuel George Morton
Michel de Certeau
W.E.B. DuBois
Ernst Renan
Stephen Jay Gould
Sir Francis Galton

Key Words Wk 10: Patterns of

Family Relations
Kinship

Descent

Bilateral

Matrilineal

Patrilineal

Matrilocal

Patrilocal

Polygamy

Polyandry

Brideservice

Dowry

Bridewealth

Exogamy

Endogamy

affinity

Key Idea: Patterns of Family

Relations
patternsoffamilycomposition(kinship,descent,residence
ExamplesoftraditionalTrobriand,ChineseandJu/wasi
communities.
Matrilinealandpatrilinealdescent;itsrelationtopatterns
ofmarriage,arrangementofmarriage,powerofmaleor
female,brothersorwives;familylivingpatterns,etc.
Youmaybeaskedtocompareandcontrastsomeaspectof
kinshipbetweenthethreecultures.

Ju/wasi Family

Bilateral kinship
Nuclear Families
Bride service at marriage
Occasional polygamy
Primary Relationship: husband and wife

Trobriand Family

Matrilineal Kinship
Extended Matrilineal family (clan)
Bridewealth
Matrilocality
Primary Relationships: Brother and
Sister

Chinese Kinship

Patrilineal Descent
Patrilocal residence
Dowry
Primary relationship: Father and son
Clan Exogamy

Marriage Gift Exchanges

Bridewealth: marriage gifts of
husbands family to wifes parents
Brideservice: requirement of groom to
work for a period of time for the parents
of the bride
Dowry: The goods the brides family
supplies to grooms family or couple

Writing Womens Worlds

Focuses on particularities of
womens everyday lives
Examines how women
negotiate their social life:
question of AGENCYindividual choice
Challenges static,
homogeneous and bounded
idea of culture
Challenges the trope of the
oppressed Muslim woman

Key Words : Capitalism and

Early Globalization
Colonialism

Capitalism

Wage labor

Centerperiphery

Metropolis/Col Surplus value

ony
of labor

Social
relations of
production

Commodity
fetishism

Commodities

Early Globalization
Sidney Mintz:
Sweetness and Power
Demonstrates
connections between a
metropolis (England)
and its colonies
Uses a historical
analysis of a commodity
produced in the
colonies for
consumption in Europe

Commodities
Goods that are the
product of social
relations between
individuals at work
Goods whose value
comes from human
labor, which is
invested in their very
form

Commodity Exchange and

Consumption
Once commodities hit
the market, they
become objects to be
bought, sold, and
consumed and are
divorced from the labor
power and social
relations invested in
their production
Commodities become
objects that seem to
have mysterious origins

Development of Unequal
Global Economies
Historically, we begin to see inequality between
nations or geographic regions --particularly
between European nations and non-European
colonies
At the same time, European countries developed
industrialized economies that supplied
manufactured goods to the rest of the world.
Early forms of globalization have evolved over
time into what we now commonly refer to as late
capitalist globalization.

Key Words: Construction of

the Nation-State
Nation-State

Ernst Renan

Imagined
Community

Benedict
Anderson

Ideology

nationalism

Emma Lazarus Sovereign

territory
Infrastructure

citizenship

Hated others Violence:

ethnocide/gen
ocide

American bald Statue of

New Colossus

Key Idea: The Construction of

the Nation-State

Benedict Andersons definition of a Nation as an imagined

community (from Seriffs lecture)
Be able to name three or four symbolic representations of America
and the dominant stories, beliefs and values that these symbols
represent and reinforce.
Be able to define and give examples of three things (as outlined in
Robbins) necessary to construct and maintain a nation or nationhood:
1. The creation of hated and feared others;
2. Creation of an infrastructure to integrate members into a common
bureaucracy; and
3. The use or threat of armed forces.

Benedict Andersons definition

of a nation-state
"In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the
following definition of the nation: it is an imagined
political community - - and imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign.
"It is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellowmembers
The nation is imagined as limited because even the
largest of them has finite, if elastic boundaries,
beyond which lie other nations.

Key Idea: Globalization

Globalization=the intensification of
global interconnection resulting from the
transnational flow of people, culture,
commodities, capital, ideas,
information, technologies across
national and regional boundaries

Transnationalism
A condition by which people, commodities and
ideas literally cross national boundaries and
are not identified with a single place of origin
Transnational corporations: Corporations in
which business operations, manufacturing,
and marketing are spread around the globe, in
dozens of cities and societies.
Ex: Disney, Coca-Cola, WalMart; Nike:
Dispersed production; centralized control

Nike Corporation
Does not own its own factories
Relies on international team of
specialists to negotiate with
manufacturers, monitor production and
arrange shipment

Key Words:Social Hierarchy

Social Class

Caste

Karl Marx

Social
Hierarchy

Integrative
Theory

Exploitative
Theory

Ideology of
Class

Class System

Means of
Production

Surplus value
of labor

capitalism

Scientific
Racism

Structural
Racism

Structural
Inequality

Race

Key Idea: Construction of

Social Hierarchy
Compare/ contrast the integrative and exploitative theories
of social stratification
Know what each says about how to eliminate social
stratification.
Outline Karl Marx's theory of the origin of social
class;describe the key concepts in Marx's theory.
Discuss how ideology functions to legitimize or reinforce
social hierarchy.
Know the difference between a caste and class system.
Be able to discuss the cultural construction of race
Know Samuel George Morton's theory about the
connection between intelligence, race, and head size
Know Stephen Jay Goulds re-study and its results

How do People Come to

Accept Social Hierarchies as
Natural?
Karl Marx : Important Contribution: The Ideology of
Class
The notion that people in class societies come to believe
that social stratification is natural
These beliefs allow people to construct rationales to justify
and legitimize social discrimination and marginalization on
the basis of race, religion, gender, and ethnicity

Ideology of Class
A belief that the division of society into classes is both
natural and right.
Because the ruling class controls the institutions that
are responsible for determining how people view the
world (churches, schools, newspapers, media), it can
promote the view that their dominance of society is in
the best interests of all

The Ideology of Class:

American Style
Assumption: A Persons social position in the class
hierarchy is determined largely by achievements or
individual effort
Individuals who work hard will succeed:
Horatio Algers story
Those who dont succeed, must not be working hard
enough.
Therefore, poverty is the poor persons own damn
fault

Concept of Race
What is a race?
A group whose evident characteristics
(phenotypical and cultural) are popularly
believed to be the result of underlying
biological factors or genotypes.

Race
Race is a cultural construction that has
meaning in our lives because we invest
it with meaning.

History of Racism

For centuries, European and American societies have been

characterized by racial stratification
Membership in certain racial or ethnic groups defined peoples
social, political and economic worth
In America, ones position in this racial hierarchy determined
whether that person could

vote
hold office
attend schools
marry a particular person
use certain businesses
go in certain buildings
even be buried in certain places

Racial oppression and

violence
Racial differentiation has been
responsible for insidious oppression
and cruelty throughout history
Slavery
Colonialism
Genocide

Scientific Rationale for Racebased Stratification

The attempt to scientifically prove that members of
one race (whites/Europeans) were intellectually
superior to members of other races (blacks, Asians,
native Americans)

Idea of Racial Typologies

based on the idea that distinct races had clearly identifiable
physical or phenotypic traits that could be classified and
cataloged and ranked as representing different evolutionary
stages of development that ranged from the primitive to the
civilized.
People of African descent were typed as Negroid and
represented as the lowest order of humanity while
Caucasians were thought to represent fully evolved civilized
humans.

Racial typologies and evolutionary racism

Race as a Cultural
Construction
Today anthropologists and most social scientists in
general vigorously dispute the idea of race as
biologically determined
Instead, anthropologists argue that race is not
natural or biological, but socially constructed:
Our ideas about race and racial difference are not a
natural product of innate genetic or biological
differences between groups, but are socially
constructed beliefs that we carry about difference,
which have little scientific or biological basis.

Eugenics

Efforts to breed better

human beings
Term coined by Darwins
cousin, Sir Frances Galton,
author of Hereditary Genius,
1869-social position is
reflective of innate intellectual
prowess
Idea of selective breeding
Eugenicists seek methods to
improve the hereditary human
traits

19th c: Dr. Samuel George

Morton
Philadelphia doctor in early19th century
Viewed brain size as criteria
for intelligence
Collected over 6,000 skulls
to measure cranial capacity
to determine brain size
Concluded that Africans and
Native Americans were
inferior races
Results feed pro-slavery
forces of 19th c
Worked to justify and naturalize
inequality along racial and
cultural lines

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

Anthropologist who challenged scientific racism and
evolutionary constructions of racial hierarchy.
Boas argued against the idea that physical, mental and
cultural characteristics of groups were biologically
determined and represented distinctive racial types.
Instead he argued that there was a great deal of variation
within and between groups. Moreover, one could find
equally gifted individuals from all racial groups.

William Edward Burghardt

DuBois (1868-1963)
African American sociologist and civil rights advocate
Concerned with how socially constructed perceptions about
racial difference helped to shape racist thinking in the US.
Established the primacy of the social construction of race
and racial differentiation over more murky biological
factors
DuBois was central in establishing a theory of the politics of
racial identification, or why and how people have come to
identify as one race over another.

The Ideology of Racism

Attempt to justify social position by a persons
innate, biological makeup, largely by race, mental
ability (intelligence) and gender
Assumption: Hierarchical ordering of society is seen
as an expression of a natural law: some people are
born more fit to lead and succeed than others

Social Construction of
Intelligence
Premise 1: Intelligence explains how well
people do
Premise 2: Peoples rank in society depends
on their own, innate ability--their intelligence
Premise 3: If it can be shown that intelligence
is inherited, than we can explain why it is that
the children of successful people tend to be
successful and why certain groups--people of
color,immigrants-- are disproportionately poor
Dangers\ous consequences: Discrimination;
Structural inequalities; Eugenics

Wk 15:Power and Resistance

Systems

Structures

Michel
Foucault

Modalities of
Power

Legal Power

Fictive kin
networks

Carol Stack

Disciplinary
Power

Strategies of
resistance

Strategies of
Resistance

Governmentali Philipe
ty
Bourgois

Tactics of
Resistance

Michel de
Certeau

Power vs
Force

Three Modalities of power

Legal
Prohibition, Punishments
Disciplinary
Conditioning, Individualizing &
Collectivizing
Governmentality
Management, Circulations, Populations

Two Modalities of RESISTANCE

Strategies
Within the Rules
Official Techniques
Tactics
Outside the Rules
Unofficial Means

Tactics of Resistance
Adaptive Strategies for dealing with Persistent
Poverty
Conditions of poverty and oppression require a
cultural adaptation and resistance built on trying to
compensate for living at economic/political fringes of
society:
This adaptation takes the form of sets of
practices/oppositional styles

Fictive Kin networks

Swapping and other forms of reciprocity
Speech Play and Verbal Arts
Folk religious activities and productions

Example: Fictive Kin Networks

Carol B. Stack; 1960s study on poor
midwestern black community called The
Flats
She suggests that poor people coped by
fostering kinship ties and fictive kinship links
to form close, cooperative groups that ensure
economic and social support in times of need.
Swapping: food, shelter, child care, personal
possessions: generalized reciprocity
Disincentives to marry: welfare, sharing

Example: Underground
Economy in El Barrio

The fieldwork of Philipe

Bourgois
Womens activities
Baby-sitting
Working off the books as
seamstresses
Tending bar in social clubs
Taking in boarders

Mens activities
Street corner car repair
Selling numbers/drugs
Working for unlicensed
contractors

Seriff Media Presentation:

Case Study of Everyday Tactic
of
Resistance
South Texas Brick Factory

Worker
Takes factory clay and
surrepticiously forms it into
folk figures for his
community
A form of folk art production
that, when seen in political
historical context, can be
viewed as an act of
resistance

Issues in Museum
Representation: 19th century
The Rise of Object-based Epistempology
The role of the Natural History museum
The place of representation of human
cultures in these museums
The metanarrative of progress and social
evolution
Museums as civilizing rituals for new
immigrants: how to be a civilized American
citizen

Overarching issues with

Museum Representation

Decontextualization of objects from their original cultural

contexts
Recontextualization through the lens of western scientific and
aesthetic interpretative frameworks
Objects assigned new generalized meanings and values as
objects of ethnography or art
Museum exhibitions distanced from cultures their collections
represent: both in space and time (assignment of objects to a
traditional past
Ethnic communities represented as isolated, unchanging,
coherent, and unbroken traditions
Perpetuates acts of imperialism, appropriation, and ethnocentric
insensitivity

New Movements in Museum

Representation: 21st Century
Museums becoming more people and
community-centered (rather than object
centered)
Museums becoming interested in peoples
living cultures rather than just their past
Greater interaction between museums and
indigenous peoples
Increasing presence of native voices

The Postmodern movement in

Museum Representation
Inclusion of Native perspectives
Acknowledgement of Multiple truths
Recognition of how people feel about
objects
Situation of objects and peoples within
particular histories of contact, relations
of power, development

Example from the Field:

Forgotten Gateway
New Model for Immigration Museum
Knowledge drawn from everyday experiences and
emotions of visitors, not from authority of subject
Inclusion of multiple voices on single issue
Histories that have been hidden are brought to light:
histories of forced migration; conflicts; dangers; racial
profiling
Note: Think about what this new model for museum
exhibits has in common with Lila Abu-Lughods new
model for ethnographic writing

New Techniques in Museum

Representation
Inclusion of contemporary stories in history exhibit
Opportunities for visitors to include their own family
stories
Opportunities for visitors to enter the conversation
through talk back boards
Inclusion of visitor interactives allowing visitors to
discover through interacting directly with artifacts and
stories
Inclusion of oral histories from different stakeholders
invested in the same issue
Labels which stress open ended questions rather
than didactic facts

Why is all this important?

Tolerance
Diversity
Adaptability/Accountabil
ity
Understanding where
our assumptions come
from
Recognizing our own
positionality and how
that influences how we
think about
ourselves/others