ANT102H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Biological Anthropology, Paleoanthropology, Historical Particularism
31
ANT102H5 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
31 documents
Document Summary
Lec 01: anthropology and the study of culture. Physical anthropology: the study of humans as biological organisms. Cultural anthropology: the study of the life ways of contemporary people. Culture: learned and shared ways of behaving and thinking. Culturally defined, arbitrary to cultivate high culture (la culture, arts) to anthropologists Based on symbols focuses on behaviour (cultural materialism) and belief/thought (cultural interpretivism) Interacts and changes fieldwork, ethnography, ethnology cultural relativism and sustaining diversity. Holism, studying intertribal warfare in papua new guinea. Cultures contain microcultures (class, ethnicity, age, gender, etc). Race is a social construct based on physical traits. Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange (spiro) example is nacirema culture. Cultural relativism: culture must be understood in terms of its own values and beliefs. Ethnocentricism: judging another culture by the standards of your own. Absolute c. r. is total acceptance (i. e. holocaust, female circumcision/genital mutilation) Cultural anthropologists support the survival of indigenous peoples. Biological determinism vs cultural constructionism (nature vs nurture)
