ANTHRO 2A Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Evolutionism, Scientific Racism
Document Summary
Development of the culture concept in response to sociocultural evolutionism. Plural - world is made up of plural histories. Particular - culture must be understood in its own terms . Polistic - cultural traits must be understood within total culture. Heightened social and racial tensions during great depression (1929) A classification of human groups based on selected criteria that try to correlate physical forms and mental traits, temperament, and behavior. Racial categories socially and historically contingent and subject to change. Race seems obvious not because it"s natural, but because it"s sociocultural. There is a relationship between form and behavior!! Anthro started as a discipline in colonialism, but it has come to question fundamental assumptions of colonial enterprises. Make sense of other people"s lives and challenge assumptions about what is natural, universal, normal, and true. Race is no longer an analytical category. Race not used as explanation in analysis.
