ANT E105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Thick Description, James George Frazer, Franz Boas
Document Summary
Culture: system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a group of people. The process of learning culture is called enculturation. Norms: ideas/rules about how people should behave. Values: fundamental beliefs about what is important, true, or beautiful, and what makes a good life. Symbol: something that stands for something else. Mental maps of reality: cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications. Unilineal cultural evolution: all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex. Edward tylor, james frazer, lewis henry morgan. Historical particularism: cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories. Diffusion: borrowing of cultural traits and patterns from other cultures. Structural functionalism: each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium. Interpretivist approach: conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning.
