ANTH 100A Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Folk Taxonomy, Cultural Relativism, Social Darwinism
Document Summary
Lecture 2: diference and power: why classiication matters. There are many forms of social diference based on group identity: race, ethnicity, religion, class, language, gender, age, regional background. The content of these categories may be expressed in cultural terms what we wear, what we eat, how we marry and die but just like culture, these categories themselves are not biological. This is not only because race can be mixed, or hybrid, but because the boundaries of racial categories are constricted on the basis of folk taxonomies cultural constructs not science or biology. Instead of asking what is race? , we need to ask jeferson. The power of classiication is the power of rule and domination. In other words, taxonomy is not just academic: whoever"s. Folk taxonomy of human status becomes normalized within a political or social order can assert dominance over others. Racial classiication was historically linked with classiications of the natural world: the fallacy of social.
